Arline Weaver Sprayberry

Arline Louise Weaver Sprayberry, 95, strong woman and gentle soul, transitioned peacefully on July 27, 2024. She was born in Marshall County, Alabama, on December 16, 1928, the only child of Zola Hicks Weaver and A. E. Weaver. She had resided in Gadsden since 1948 and had been a member of 12th Street Baptist Church since her marriage to Truman Walker Sprayberry in 1951. She was a survivor of many physical challenges, including mobility. But as the lyrics of one of her favorite gospel songs describes, in the last week of her life, she flew to “a lovely land, a wonder land.”

She loved birds, especially redbirds and hummingbirds. Stoic and hopeful, she was a child of the Great Depression, and the unique spelling of her first name was chosen by her mother to signify that Arline was a very special person. After she survived an emergency appendectomy when she was five years old, a neighbor gave her a tiny green kerosene lamp that she kept as one of her few possessions for the rest of her life. While her parents picked cotton and farmed, they put her in the fields to keep eyes on her. Though the severe macular degeneration she developed later in her life was probably due to these roots, she maintained through her whole life and even when housebound a strong love for the outdoors, for farming and gardening. When the Weavers moved to “the city,” they maintained a large vegetable garden back of the house, and at times three generations of the family planted, picked, prepared, froze, canned, and enjoyed the fresh vegetables from the 1950s through the late 1970s.

During the 1940s, her family moved from Marshall to Etowah counties, and Arline attended Gadsden High School and then graduated in 1948 from Arab High School, where she was selected a member of the Beta Club, an honored academic distinction. When her family moved back to Etowah County, she began a job as a bookkeeper at The Gadsden Times. Not long after, she met Truman Walker Sprayberry, a veteran of World War II who worked in the automotive department at Sears, Roebuck and Company. One day when their work breaks chanced to coincide, Truman started a conversation with her in a coffee shop, either The Coffee Cup, or Runt’s. Her favorite dates with Truman involved people-watching on Broad Street in downtown Gadsden. Arline and Truman soon married on June 9, 1951, in the pastor’s study at 12th Street Church, back when the church was actually on 12th Street.

After their only child, Sandra Louise, was born in 1956, Arline resumed her career at The Gadsden Times. There, she was appreciated for her quick, smart skills of business. She was a role model as a working mother who balanced both roles well. As parents, Arline and Truman worked alongside each other as Room Mother and PTA President when Sandra attended Walnut Park Elementary School. Truman was later awarded a lifetime membership from the Alabama Congress of Parents and Teachers in 1966, a recognition that Arline wished had not been omitted from his obituary. During these years, they worked for inclusiveness for young learners, educationally and socially. Wanting to be outdoors and close to Sandra, Arline began working as a playground supervisor at Walnut Park.

Almost every Sunday afternoon after church, the family of three would travel to “the country” in Boaz, Arab, and Ashville to visit their extended families. Arline and Truman were very intentional about connecting Sandra with her people, for Arline loved and respected her own cousins and elders and the places from where she originated. She loved Truman’s sisters, brothers, and their spouses, and was lovingly and deeply interested in the lives of their children (nephews and nieces and grands- and greats-). She “kept up” with her relatives. Some of Arline’s favorite times were at the “all day singings with dinner on the ground” at Hopewell Church in Ashville, where family and friends presented Southern meals extraordinaire, including a variety of homemade iced layer cakes, and gathered in the small church to listen to delicious rounds of old-time hymns performed by gospel groups.

For family trips, Arline got up at 2:00 a.m. to fry chicken to eat from the car trunk or picnic table on the annual family road trips to Daytona Beach and The Smokies. Her favorite foods were garden-fresh and home-canned vegetables. She also loved freshly caught, fried fish and shrimp. On special occasions, Arline cooked the best fried green tomatoes that her daughter and son-in-law, Sam, have eaten anywhere, any time. The dresses she sewed from her mother’s Singer were tasteful, unique, and colorful. She preferred cotton as fabric. One of her most beautiful creations, a vivid, full-skirted dress, Sandra hung in her house as an unfinished work of art.

Arline taught by look and deed more so than words. Though she could speak bluntly, she often reserved comment and expression of her own wants and needs. When asked if someone could get her anything, she most often said, “I can’t think of anything.” Practical, hardworking beyond belief in her prime, and deeply caring, she fiercely loved and was the primary caregiver for her husband of over 50 years throughout his decline and death in 2001.

And yet her super power was her memory. Perhaps because of her diminished eyesight and hearing, Arline could recall names, places, and dates to an astonishing, almost supernatural, degree. Without analysis, she laid out details to bring those dead to life. She was her family’s lifeline to their past, and she will be missed so much as a vital link. When asked, she always helped her family piece together their backgrounds. Her details stretched from the 19th to 20th centuries and provided markers for how to strive to be in the 21st century.

Always a person of beauty and dignity, she maintained those attributes and grace when the indignities of aging began to deepen. In addition to her daughter and son-in-law, Sandra Sprayberry and Sam Munyer, who were her primary caregivers, Arline would like to thank her nieces and nephews, too numerous to name; her friends Gloria, Myra, Donna, Karen, Rick and Renée; assistance-givers Denise, Kim, Cathy, Lisa and Bob; and doctors Metcalfe, Padula, and Dabbs. She received countless acts of kindness and support, food, and flowers on earth, and the only adequate expression of the family’s deep gratitude is to “pay it forward.”

The family requests no flowers. Arline was a person who always eschewed gifts and regularly exercised return policies, bargain shopping, and comparison pricing. The family therefore asks that in Arline’s remembrance, each person instead perform an act of kindness for an elderly person. The gift will be beyond price, and mutual.

Visitation at Collier-Butler will be Friday, August 2, 2024, from 10:00-11:00, followed by graveside services at 11:30 at Rainbow Memorial Gardens on Highway 77 in Rainbow City. Dr. Craig Carlisle will officiate. Arline, Sandra, and Sam understand if you can’t attend and they absolutely respect your own personal, vulnerable conditions, such as mobility issues, health risks, and fast-paced, busy careers. Even in a long life, life is too short to do anything but practice understanding, and, as Arline said, “It makes no difference to me.” She knows that she was deeply loved and will be deeply missed. What matters most are the human relationships forged over love, time, and lives of service to each other.