The red, brick home overlooking the double hills in Highland Village just up from the city park was home for Fay Spicer.
She loved her colorful azaleas that bloomed each spring. She enjoyed the smell of the freshly cut grass, when her husband Bob Spicer kept the front yard manicured to a tee. She savored those moments when a father and son played catch with the baseball in the front yard.
“She adored her home,” Rhonda Carper, 69, would remember her mother on this Nov. 24 day of celebration.
Home is where the heart is, and for this “sweet lady” of grace and kindly ways, there was no place like what a daughter would describe as “the house on the hill” that Fay Spicer called home for 63 years.
“It was a beautiful life of love,” said the Rev. Sandy Saunders. “A life of purpose.”
A farm girl who found her shining knight
Fay Ingle was a country girl who grew up on a farm in Arkansas as the second oldest of nine children, where they came to know hard times including the stock market crash of 1929 that led to the 10-year Great Depression and World War II of 1939 to 1945.
“She grew up fast in the Great Depression and World War II,” son Bobby Spicer said.
Life was stressful in the financially difficult years of the Great Depression.
“They had a tough life, but they kept on going,” Carper said, “She knew what an outhouse was, and they had a well to get water.”
Fay Ingle was an attractive young woman with an engaging smile and a penchant for dancing, and her beauty caught the eye of a young soldier at Camp Robinson, the military base in Little Rock, Arkansas. They married July 9, 1946, in Newport, Virginia, and in 1948 made Fayetteville home, where Bob Spicer played professional baseball for the old Fayetteville Highlanders and later the Major League farm team of the Chicago Cubs that would lead to stints with the Los Angeles Angels and the Kansas City Athletics.
She was his bride for 69 years.
She adored her knight in shining armor.
“She said the secret to a happy marriage was compromise,” Carper said. “Sometimes you give; sometimes you take.”
Wherever you saw the couple together, Bob Spicer held her hand. Fay Spicer always tightly clutched her husband’s arm.
A mother’s love
They reared a daughter and a son in a Christian home.
“They made sure we went to church,” Bobby Spicer said. The Spicer family worshipped at Snyder Memorial Baptist Church, joining in 1951.
Fay Spicer worked as a teacher’s assistant for Cumberland County Schools, and she knew the value of what education would mean in raising children, including her own.
“She made sure we made straight A’s,” Bobby Spicer said.
And missing a day of school, his sister said, was not acceptable.
“And she taught us right from wrong,” Bobby Spicer said. “She always would find out about my shenanigans, and I spent many a day at the weeping willow tree for misbehaving. I want to thank our neighbors for cutting down that tree.”
Bob Spicer was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and later suffered a stroke before his eventual death at age 90 on Feb. 7, 2016.
“Mom never left his side,” Rhonda Carper told us. “She said that was her place.”
A husband’s death broke a wife’s heart.
“When Dad died, she began to decline,” Carper said, “We were determined to keep her at home, God willing.”
Even with home caregiving assistance, Bobby Spicer checked on his mother often throughout each day and would call his sister, who resides in Port Orange, Florida, to tell Rhonda Carper how their mother was faring.
“Bobby,” she looked toward her brother, “thank you for your devotion and love for her.”
Fay Spicer’s twilight years were pensive. She kept up with news from her church, and those she came to know through the cards and letters they would send to her home. She liked quiet moments just to herself to relive memories of yesteryear fondly.
An angel’s whisper
Evelyn Fay Ingle Spicer died peacefully on Nov. 18 at her Highland Village neighborhood home.
“She is dwelling in the house of the Lord forever,” Saunders, the preacher, would tell us. “Fay knew the way, because Fay knew Jesus. When the angel whispered, the angel said, ‘Fay, it’s time to come home.’ And the first person she saw was Jesus, and his face. And Bob.”
Saunders remembered a woman of gentleness.
“What you saw in her, put it into your practice,” he said. “The first thing you learned from her was her love for God, then her children and grandchildren. Fay loved everybody, and Fay loved every day.”
Epilogue
The red, brick house overlooking the rolling double hills not so far from the city park was not just a house, but a home for Fay Spicer, and filled with cherished family photographs of happy days, months and years, and the figurines and pictures of the red cardinals that brought her joy.
“Our parents were so good to us,” Rhonda Carper said, remembering her parents’ love for her and her brother for all of their lives. “Thank you, Mom, for never giving up on me and Bobby. So, fly away to heaven, Mama cardinal. Reunite with Papa cardinal and be at peace.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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