“In enjoyed it, I really did,” she says.

She majored in English, a department in which she found her fellow students dazzling.

“Rona Jaffe [bestselling author] and I were both in class together,” she notes. “She was brilliant even then––I was very average.”

Fitzgerald, who went to a local public school in Methuen, Mass. Found the other students’ credentials slightly overwhelming.

“I felt very young and inexperienced,” she says, “especially with so many prep school kids around. An awful lot of them get in.”

She recalls the seemingly magical process by which she was eventually able to catch up.

“I started with a D and got up to an A by the end,” she says. “Someone must have taken me under their wing.”

Those A’s are far from the mind of those who know her today.

“I doubt many people know about [where she went to college],” Cathy Fitzgerald says. “The only time we ever discussed the subject was when my children turned college age.”

If she has been completely satisfied with her career, it is because it has allowed her to join family values with her work.

“It’s only been a couple of years that a family member didn’t either bake or make the crust or slice the apples of every single pie we sell––and we sell thousands each day,” her daughter-in-law says.

And Fitzgerald proudly counts off the growing clan that inhabits the orchard grounds.

Not only “have I been here for our parents, both my husband’s and my own, but now we do have a family right here on the premises,” Ruth says, proudly counting off three children and a current tally of nine grandchildren––three each.

The entire family comes from the area around Methuen.

“You have to know where you come from,” Fitzgerald says, “and we’re real old New Englanders. We go back, DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution] and all that.”

She muses for a minute before adding, “I never imagined I’d be doing this, but it’s worked out very well. I wanted to be with my children growing up. We truly are so lucky.”