One person who also reached out to other people was Ruth Hughes, the voluntary organiser at Caltech of the visitors’ pound of toys and children’s bikes. A refugee from the Nazis, Ruth was remarkably perceptive and concerned for me as well as for the children. She astounded me when I was introduced to her by saying that she had first seen Stephen in the Athenaeum, the Caltech Faculty Club, and while everyone else was praising his courage and brilliance – in a land where success is adored and failure deplored – she had said to herself that there must be someone equally courageous behind him or he simply would not be there. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before and it quite threw me off my stride. Later when Stephen was awarded the Papal medal, Ruth presented me with a pearl brooch because, she said, I should be given something too.
— Travelling to Infinity (Jane Hawking), Loc. 3387–93