Ann Martin Rutland

Ann Martin Rutland and her brother Frank Martin were born in Gadsden, Alabama, where they graduated from Gadsden High School in the 1950s. Ann graduated from Randolph Macon Woman's College, majoring in Political Science. She went on to serve others as a home executive and community volunteer. After marrying her extremely generous and supportive husband, she moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she still lives. Ann and her husband have four daughters and nine grandchildren. Frank graduated from Vanderbilt and Harvard Law School and practiced law in Washington, DC. After retirement, he and his lovely wife now live in Charleston, West Virginia, and Magnolia Springs, Alabama. They have two sons and a daughter and four grandchildren. Ann told this story to her four daughters as they were traveling to Gadsden to have Thanksgiving dinner with Grandmother and Pops. The youngest daughter was about three. She is now in her forties, so this is a rather old story. Ann says: "Never do anything in a hurry." With the education Ann and her brother received, she feels that readers might expect something more erudite, but the story of this little tree tells all about striving and achieving one's dreams. Ann wrote the story and Frank sketched all the images in The Happy Life of Christopher Tree, without which the book would be very dull indeed!