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Page third date, and she accepted. They were married in November of 1942, despite his mother's misgivings that perhaps Ruth was a bit of "the party girl."
Less than a month after they were married, Ruth proved her strength and stability as she helped her new husband endure the grief of losing his only sibling. Bill and his brother Jim, who was two years younger, had been inseparable in childhood:
hunting, hiking, fishing, working long hours on the family farm in Stafford, New York, attending the same elementary and high schools. In December 1942, Jim was found alone at the farm, dead from a bullet wound in the head. Although the coroner ruled the death a suicide, Bill Stokoe remains convinced that it was an accident. "There was no investigation other than the deputy sheriffs, and Jim was preparing fora hunt, hence the gun, and looking forward to getting married in a couple of weeks" Jim's death was the worst hurdle Bill Stokoe had ever had to face, and George Detmold remembers that for many years Bill spoke about his brother as if he were still alive. Stokoe believes that his brother's death changed him he feels that he "absorbed" some of his brother's qualities, that he was 'softened" and "made more human" After the death of Jim Stokoe, Bill and Ruth Stokoe were needed to help run the family farm because Bill's parents both held full-time teaching positions. Ruth Stokoe "became a farmer's wife" raising chickens, cooking, and baking. But both she and Bill
Stokoe knew that farm life wasn't for them. Stokoe applied for and was accepted into graduate school at Cornell in When George Detmold was discharged from the army in late 1945, he returned to Cornell to teach (and to coach fencing, and he and Stokoe resumed their friendship. Soon after, in 1946, Stokoe was offered an assistant professorship at Wells College, a women's school on Cayuga Lake at Aurora, not far from Cornell. Stokoe chose the position over one offered by Yale. In on the basis of a recommendation from Stokoe, then chair of the English Department, Detmold was also offered a position at
Wells. He and Stokoe continued to work and socialize together for the next four years.
Their training at Cornell had an enormous impact on their

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