Later Years
Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970. She had a modified radical mastectomy, which was often used at the time to combat the disease, and because of difficulties in finding a good breast prosthesis, she decided to make her own. Handler went on to found a company, Ruthton Corp., formed by her and Peyton Massey, which manufactured a more realistic version of a woman's breast, called "Nearly Me".
Though the Handlers took a more hands-off approach to their company's business practice after resigning, they still kept creating more ideas. One project Handler took on in the 1980s was Barbie and the Rockers. She was credited as a writer of the 1987 film Barbie and the Rockers: Out of this World. Handler was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1997.
She died in California from complications of surgery for colon cancer on April 27, 2002, aged 85. Her husband Elliot died nine years later at the age of 95.
Read more about this topic: Ruth Handler
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!” and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We watched her jug a hare, once, on television, years ago.... The hare had been half rotted, then cremated, then consumed. If there is a god and she is of the rabbit family, then Saskia will be in deep doo- doo on Judgment Day.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)