Deceased: Roy E. Spriggs
Date: February 2, 2008
Roy Ernest Spriggs 98 of rural Pittsburg passed away at 11:45 am, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at Mt Carmel Regional Medical Center of Pittsburg, Kansas, following a short illness.
He was born February 20, 1909 in rural West Mineral, Kansas, one of 12 children born to Joel Etra Spriggs and Bertha Estelle Hamblin-Spriggs.
He attended Myram Country School. As a boy he loved to fish and hunt. During the winter he would hunt rabbits and muskrats, trapping the muskrats and shooting the rabbits through the head so as not to make holes in the pelts. His older brothers always wanted Roy to go hunting with them because he could climb like a monkey and run like a deer. Roy would climb the trees to get raccoons and crawl into culverts to get skunks. Growing up he did a lot of cultivating, always cultivating bare footed. He would stand on the back of the mule drawn cultivator and use his toes to pull weeds that the cultivator missed. He enjoyed watching ducks swim on the pond. When a baby duck went under the water and did not resurface or a grown duck started swimming in circles and leaning to one side, he knew the culprit was a turtle. Roy would swim out to the duck, go under water and rescue the duck from the mouth of the turtle. As a teenager he got a job dragging the roads. He would drag 5 to 6 mile!
s of road with horses, dragging two 2" x 12" planks. Each plank was 12 to 14 feet long. It would take Roy one full day to drag all 5 to 6 miles of road. This was done 2 to 3 times a month, depending on the weather. His wages was around $1 (one dollar) a day. Roy seldom drank milk with his meals. He drank most of his milk when he milked the cows, by hand, morning and night. About a quart of milk would not fit into the buckets and he would drink that amount from the bucket so he could finish milking the cows. As a child he got oranges and a stick of candy for Christmas. One year he got a pair of shoes but his favorite childhood Christmas was the year he got a little pocket knife along with the oranges and candy. As a child his illnesses were treated with syrup of onion juice, sugar was stirred into onion juice until the sugar melted. Sips of this was used to treat coughing, sore throats, congestion plus other illnesses they didn't have treatment for. Tobacco smoke puffed into!
the ear gave immediate relief to an earache. Flannel cloth saturated
with turpentine was applied to the chest for croup. If the croup continued, swallowing a lump of sugar with a couple drops of turpentine was a sure cure. Ring worm was treated by rubbing the husk of a walnut on the ring worm. The seven year itch, now known as scabies, was treated by bathing in the water used to douse plow shears in when sharpening and tempering the steel of the plow shears.
He was united in marriage to Mary Jeannette Wright, June 1, 1933, at the Methodist Parsonage in Cherokee, Kansas; she survives at home.
He is a member of Beulah Community Church.
Around 1937 P&M (Pittsburg and Midway) Mining Company wanted to mine for coal and bought much of the farm land around West Mineral. Roy moved his family from rural West Mineral to rural Pittsburg where he was a life long farmer, enjoying the simplicity of rural life always ready to help anyone or anything; helping a neighbor farmer get their hay baled before a rain, rescuing a fallen baby bird back into its nest, carrying a new born calf from the pasture into the warmth of the barn during a cold winter storm. His love for all creatures great and small was instilled in his daughters at a very young age. He farmed during the day and worked in the coal mines at night. He alway tried to get one strip of ground plowed before the sun went down, Tom and Jerry, his team of mules did not have lights, so he could continue plowing by the light of the moon seeing the difference in color of the freshly turned soil he knew where to plow. His love of fishing followed him into later life, h!
e and his brother Ray Spriggs built a cabin in Golden, Missouri prior to the establishment of Table Rock Lake. After the filling of Table Rock Lake he and his family enjoyed unmeasurable hours of fishing and boating on Table Rock Lake at Spriggs' Twin Coves.
Additional survivors include 2 daughters: Vicki Rae Spriggs-Bateman of Pittsburg, Kansas, Sharon Kay Spriggs-Perry and her husband Roy of Golden, Missouri; brother Ray Spriggs and his wife Hazel of of Pittsburg, Kansas; two grand-daughters Cindy Ulery-Bole and her husband Brad of Columbus, Kansas, Stephanie Bateman of Olathe, Kansas, four grandsons Michael Ulery and Craig Bateman of Pittsburg, Kansas, Brian Perry and his wife Christine of Helena, Montana, Jeff Perry and his wife Stephanie of Forth Worth, Texas, three great grandsons Nicholas and Alex Bole and Devin Ulery.
Roy was preceded in death by his parents, one son, one daughter, six brothers and 4 sisters; Infant son: Billy Dean Spriggs in1938, Daughter: Judith Ann Spriggs-Ulery in 2007,
Sisters: Lelah Sullinger, Lula Ziegler, Lola Scroggins, Golda Crain, Brothers: William Spriggs , Oscar Spriggs, Three month old Baby Boy Spriggs, Luther Spriggs, Lee Spriggs, and Ross Spriggs
Services will be 2:00 p.m. Monday (Feb. 4) at the Brenner Mortuary with Rev. Murray Balk officiating. Burial will follow in the Girard Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Brenner Mortuary, where friends may call after 10 a.m. Sunday.
In lieu of flowers the family ask expressions of sympathy be in the form of memorials to Beulah Community Church and/or Mt Carmel Regional Medical Center . Memorials may be left at or mailed to Brenner Mortuary, 114 E. 4th St., Pittsburg, Kansas.
Arrangements are under the direction of the Brenner Mortuary, Pittsburg.
Author: The Morning Sun
Section: OBITS
Copyright (c) 2008, The Morning Sun, A Morris Communications Corp. newspaper. All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment