Martha Nell Spore

Martha Nell Spore, 62, of Throckmorton County, Texas passed away on Friday, September 25, 2009 on her family’s ranch near Fort Griffin. Funeral services will be at 2:00 p.m. Monday, September, 28, 2009 at the Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Ericksdahl Community near Avoca, Texas with Pastors Teresa Bonds and Trey Little officiating. Burial will follow in the Bethel Lutheran Cemetery under the direction of Tankersley Funeral Home of Stamford.

Martha Nell Sharp was born February 21, 1947 in Stamford, Texas to Comer Woodward Sharp and Mildred Johanna Seth Sharp. At the age of ten, she and her family moved to Lubbock, where she attended local schools and graduated from Monterey High School with the Class of 1965. She attended one year of college at West Texas State University.

Martha Nell met and married Richard Lawrence Spore in 1969. After he completed graduate school at Texas Tech University in 1971, they moved to Lake Jackson, Texas. From then until 1980, Martha was actively involved in PeeWee and Minor League baseball; the Lake Jackson Jayceettes, and her church, Christ Lutheran. In 1980 she and her family moved to the island of Krk, Yugoslavia, and followed that by another moved to Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Upon completion of her husband’s work in 1985 they transitioned to a two year assignment in the Southern Ohio river valley, and she set up a home in Wheelersburg, Ohio. In 1987, they returned to Lake Jackson and worked there until 1996. In that year, she and her husband took a final assignment to Bahia Blanca, Argentina. At that location, based on her many successful years of expatriate living, she founded the Bahia Blanca Expat Wives Club, and under its auspices was able to help many lesser experienced women become capable of running a home in a distant land.

In late 1998 she and her husband retired, and established a small cattle ranch that they named Riverview. In 2000, with the help of friends and family, they completed a rebuilding of the original Wilhelm/Kunkle homestead, and set up their final home there.

She was preceded in death by her parents, and her oldest son Steven Scott Spore. She is survived by her husband, Larry of the home, 1 son, Chris Spore and wife Sheryl of Breckenridge, 1 sister, Prissy Harvick and husband George of Albany, 1 brother in law, Tom Spore and wife Donna of Lufkin, and many nieces, nephews, and a host of friends.