Mary’s Obituary On Sunday morning Mary Adeline DeArmond took the last breath of her 97 years, all lived in her native Missouri, where she flourished as brightly and boldly as the flowers blooming all around her home of nearly five decades on Grand Avenue in south Joplin. Born in Butler on June 29, 1921, to the attorney Henry E. Sheppard and the musical diva Adeline A. Nentwig Sheppard, Mary spent summers swimming races against friends in the lake. She played the drums and the cello and found a strong soprano voice that she shared in church choirs and with family and friends.
She turned heads as “Fair Butler” before graduating from Butler High School, attended secretarial school in Kansas City, and married another Butler native, James A. DeArmond, Jr. Mary and Murph – as Mary would affectionately call her husband until his death in 1991 – raised a daughter, Anne, and a son, Michael, in Lamar before moving to Joplin in 1962. While he worked as an engineer at Allgeier, Martin and Associates, Mary found work for attorney Jerry Wells as a paralegal. She later worked for Spencer, Scott, and Dwyer as a legal assistant.
At the age of 60 – on May 14, 1982 – she took a giant step, graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Missouri Southern State College. Just over one year later she earned a Master of Arts from Pittsburg State University. And, in the fall of 1989, Mary took an appointment as a lecturer in English at Missouri Southern.
Throughout this period of her life and well into her later years, Mary traveled extensively with family and friends, including to Europe. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church of Joplin, and involved with several local organizations including the PEO Sisterhood. In addition to her parents, Mary was preceded in death by her husband, a sister, Elizabeth Hinson, and a brother, John Sheppard.
Survivors include her children; James Michael DeArmond and wife Barbara of Kansas City, Missouri, and Anne Bunton and husband Thomas of Nevada, Missouri; grandchildren, David Bunton and wife Jessica Haines of St. Charles, Missouri, and their son, Riley; Chris Bunton and wife Holly of Arlington, Va. ; Gabriel DeArmond and wife Janel of Columbia, Missouri and their children, Taten Lyngstad, and Turner DeArmond; and Cortney DeArmond and Geoff McCarrell of Prairie Village, Kansas; sister, Sally Huskey of Iola, Kansas. Funeral service will be Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Joplin with Pastor John Oerter and Pastor Dave Burgess officiating.
Interment will be Saturday at 2:00 p.m. in Oak Hill Cemetery, Butler, Missouri with family serving as pallbearers. The family will receive friends at First Presbyterian Church on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until service time. The family requests that memorial contributions be made to Macular Degeneration Research, through brightfocus.org.
Flowers are welcomed as well.
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