FROM THE TIMES-PICAYUNE DECEMBER 4, 1999

The passing of French Quarter characters seems so sadly routine now, stories of unique, sometimes legendary folks who disappear into the Confederate Mist – sometimes dead, sometimes dead, sometimes just departed – and there’s nothing we can do about it but drown our sorrows in a Pimm’s Cup at the Napoleon House, provided the Napoleon House survives, of course.

There’s bar owner Beachball Benny, and Mike Stark, the mask maker. Walter Feldman, the Jackson Square wizard. The Lucky Bead Lady. Pops, the old Creole with the dagger-like tongue who dirty-danced on Bourbon Street. Phyllis the Bartender. Pud Brown, with his saxophones tied to the handlebars of his banana-seat. Biff Rose, the cosmic piano player.

They are all part of the inexorable march of time.

Now add to that list the once-in-domitable Ruthie the Duck Girl, perhaps the Quarter’s most celebrated eccentric of the past 50 years.

No, she’s not dead. Ironically, she’s probably healthier, physically, than she has been in decades. But she is gone from the streets of the French Quarter and this time for good.

A fixture on the streets since the ‘40s, Ruthie came to epitomize the unregimented, unconventional and permissive side of Vieux Carre culture, the kind of insouciant charm that has seduced thousands over the years and burned, in those who paid attention, a memory of street life unlike anywhere else in America, maybe the world.

In a documentary about Ruthie by New Orleans filmmaker Rick Delaup, New Orleans artist Dawn Dedeaux said this: "Mayors come and go; economies come and go. But Ruthie has been a constant historical marker."

Indeed. With her trademark roller skates and legions of pet ducks – often sitting on bar stools next to her – Ruthie was what the Quarter’s street life was all about. She was brash, with a sailor’s tongue. Colorful. Congenial and snakebite mean, sometimes at the same time. She lived on a diet of Budeweiser and Kools. She wore a wedding dress just for the hell of it and danced and flirted and cussed in French Quarter barrooms until she was eighty-sixed, which was often.

But, at 65, the coils were coming loose fast. Streetwise for decades, Ruthie was picked up several times this past summer by the police and various social service agencies. She had never taken very good care of herself, frankly, but her physical and mental deterioration mandated something be done. She was dirty, disoriented and adrift in the streets – a danger to herself. So, in August, Ruthie the Duck Girl checked into a nursing home, no insignificant milestone, that.

"This is the last thing in the world I would have wanted for her – that anyone would have wanted for her," says Carol Cunningham, Ruthie’s confidante and guardian angel for the past 25 years. "I fought it for years. But she had started to get away from the norm. She wouldn’t have made it. It could not have come to a good ending."

Says filmmaker Delaup: "When people hear she’s in a nursing home, it all of a sudden starts a debate about whether that was a good thing to do. Everyone wonders: If you take away the beer and cigarettes, some may ask, what’s left of her life?"

What’s left of her life is the Uptown nursing home – its name and location kept private at the wishes of family and friends. There, Ruthie spends the bulk of her day with the two dogs and several parakeets that live there also; she always had a way with cops and animals. (This picture of her at the top of this column was taken on a visit to Audubon Park, where she went horseback-riding, just last month.)

She is prohibited from drinking, but sneaks a few cigarettes a day.

And that’s pretty much it. No more wild nights at Johnny White’s, no more beer binges at Checkpoint Charlie’s. That stuff all goes into the history file now.

Her old apartment on Dauphine Street is in terrible disrepair and needs dramatic renovation before it can be rented again. Delaup secured Ruthie’s famous hats, her fur coat – worn year round – and four pairs of roller skates for the Louisiana State Museum. The rest of her stuff – tons of pack rat belongings – has been thrown out, but some memorabilia will be auctioned off at a fund-raiser commemorating her birthday in January.

Cunningham called it "quite an undertaking" to clean out Ruthie’s apartment and she shed light on this old myth: There was always the story about how Ruthie was secretly wealthy and that her apartment was filled with cash. Well, it turns out that part of the story was true.

There was money everywhere - $200 in coins spread around the floor and dollars stuffed in old shoes and boots, some of them so deteriorated they were sent to the regional Federal Reserve for redemption, Delaup says.

And that’s that.

So now there is talk of raising money for a statue of Ruthie in the Quarter, like the one of Ignatius Reilly on Canal Street – something to preserve the idelible impression she left on her home streets.

Cunningham and Delaup are also hoping to raise money to buy Ruthie a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 where her brother and parents are buried in unmarked pauper’s tombs. (Her sister, Mary Louise, disappeared from town years ago, whereabouts unknown.)

Since Ruthie was an accidental tourist attraction, a tomb in the city’s landmark cemetery seems appropriate.

She was, Dedeaux says in the film, "Something larger than life, something operating on a different plane that gives our day-to-day experience a little poetry, maybe a little magic."

Dedeaux’s comments and those of many who know Ruthie can be seen Tuesday when Delaup’s touching film, "Ruthie the Duck Girl," airs at 8:30 p.m. on WYES, channel 12.