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George Ruffin is the owner of Ruffin's Jazz Club and Resturant He was born in Rocky Mount, N.C. At the age of 7 he was picking cotton under the hot sun in the fields of North Carolina. The pay: $4.00 for every 100 pounds. Growing up in a poor family, George knew what it meant to work hard and to be hungry. This eventually led him to come live with his uncle here in York so that he could better persue his education. He learned early on that "Knowledge is power and studying is the Key to success". Getting off the bus in 1966 as a young teenager with two paper grocery bags containing all of his worldly possesions, George began his persual of a life he had only dreamt about in North Carolina. George graduated from William Penn Senior High School in 1968, while holding down a job at the York Hospital as a maintenance worker. In 1969 he left the Hospital to take a job with the New York Wire Co. George married in 1970. In 1971 George took a job with the Schmidt & Ault Paper Co., motivated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to find a better life for himself and his family. The Job paid $2.30 per hour and in 1995 after 25 years of working full days 7 days a week for his family, Mr. Ruffin left making over $14.00 an hour. In 1985 George bought what is now Ruff's Laundromat, after which he formed a new company run from his home: Ruffin's Bail Bonding Service. He now owns a property management company to oversee his properties, He is the VP of the Crispus Attucks Assn., member of the board for the United Way of York, and a member of the advisory board for Penn State UniversityYork Campus. A long way from the 7 year old picking cotton in the fields of North Carolina. To this day a handful of cotton from those very fields hangs behind a glass frame in his office in the club. |
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