She turned her humble roots into a south Charlotte land empire. Ruth Threatt dies at 96.
Ruth Threatt, daughter of a cafe and pool hall owner, turned her humble roots into a south Charlotte land empire.
Providence Country Club. The Arboretum. Blakeney. Charlotte Equestrian Center.
Those are but a few of today’s well-known landmarks dotting an estimated 120,000 acres that Threatt bought piecemeal over decades and later gradually sold.
Threatt was a world traveler and naturalist, and one of the few women of her Great Depression generation to rise through the ranks of male-dominated corporate America.
She accomplished that with not just an accounting degree, but also a vision, drive and warm and generous spirit like no other, great-niece Keli Reule told The Charlotte Observer.
“She was way ahead of her time,” Reule said.
Ruth Rowland Threatt died peacefully in Indian Land, S.C., on Sept. 15 at age 96, after a life of service, her family said.
Order of the Long Leaf Pine
For Threatt’s long career promoting safety as president of the North Carolina State Motor Club — think today’s AAA — Gov. Jim Hunt in 1978 awarded her the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. That is North Carolina’s highest honor given by the governor.
She started at the motor club as a bookkeeper earning $35 a week, after her first job at the Belk store in downtown Charlotte, according to her obituary.
We know it as “uptown” today, but center-city Charlotte was “downtown” pre- and post-World War II.
Thirty-five dollars a week “was good money in 1944,” Threatt’s family said in her obituary. “She would walk out of that building 35 years later as the first female president of a major southern motor club.”
Threatt invested part of her salary in south Charlotte acreage, Reule said. Her husband, Lloyd Threatt, couldn’t have afforded such investments on his mechanic’s income, she said.
Ruth Threatt was born on May 31, 1925, in Charlotte’s Belmont neighborhood, where her father ran Rowland’s Café and Pressing Club, according to her obituary. Her future husband was a neighbor.
Reule said Ruth Threatt’s dad also ran a pool hall and other businesses in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood. Threatt attended Villa Heights School, Charlotte Technical High and Women’s College in Greensboro, now UNC-Greensboro, according to her obituary.
Move to a farm
The couple moved to south Charlotte after buying a 50-acre farm following their marriage in 1944, family members said.
They built their home from plans sketched by Lloyd Threatt on plain brown wrapping paper, according to the family.
Years later, they sold the land, which is now the Blakeney Shopping Center area.
Ruth Threatt traveled, not only because of her job but a desire to experience other cultures, meeting and instantly befriending people, Reule said.
She visited Africa several times when the only way to get there was by boat, Reule said.
On a business trip to New York City in 1970, her great-aunt chanced upon and immediately joined a gay pride parade and march, according to Reule. The events were among similar ones held in several U.S. cities for the first time that year.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” her husband replied when she got home and told him, Reule said.
Forever friend
Threatt’s personality was such that “she never met someone she didn’t find a commonality with,” neighbor Pauline Blehi told the Observer.
Blehi had just moved to the Blakeney Greens area off Rea Road in 2001 when she spotted the only other human being on her street at the time: a woman in a “beat-up old jean jacket” and flip-flops walking a chihuahua and a Jack Russell terrier — Tiger and Jellybean, she later learned.
The two quickly became forever friends, Blehi said.
Until recently, Threatt lived in a townhome on her old farm property.
She was an equestrian who helped coordinate the Mecklenburg Hounds Club. Members ride behind a pack of fox hounds that search for coyotes and fox “and give chase, but no longer apprehend” the wildlife, according to the organization’s website.
Threatt belonged to the Red Hat Society and loved animals, music, modeling, trips to New York City and growing large vegetables, her family said.
She baked 15 to 18 cakes to offer as door prizes at regular Charlotte Tech High Lunch Bunch gatherings of former students of her high school.
Blehi was always amazed to look out her window to see deer and squirrels and other wildlife approaching her neighbor.
“Animals and the land are what she loved,” her great-nice Reule said.
And travel, she said.
In a Facebook post two days after her friend’s death, Blehi said Threatt visited “every country in the world but three.”
Reule described her great-aunt as “book-smart and street-smart,” a woman “who had this incredible life experience and breathe of knowledge.”
Blehi said her friend also was an Elvis Presley devotee, of all things.
“I smile when I think she is in heaven whooping it up to Elvis’s blue suede shoes,” Blehi said in her Sept. 17 Facebook post. “A friend mentioned that God has a lot on his hands with Ms. Ruth in heaven, but I think God knows that. I most admit that thought brings a smile to my face.
“For those of us that knew Ms. Ruth, we know that she made us better people for knowing her. She will be missed.”
Threatt was preceded in death by her husband; her parents, William W. Rowland and Carrie Nathan Simpson Rowland; and her sister, Ann Rowland McArthur, according to her obituary. She is survived by her brother, Paul Turner, in Colorado, and several nieces and nephews.
Funeral arrangements were handled by Hankins & Whittington Funeral Home of Charlotte. Threatt requested that no funeral services be performed.
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 1:36 PM.