Argyl Darleen Rivers

Argyl Darlene Rivers, age 93, passed away on Thursday, August 14, 2014. She was born Argyl Darleen Massinger in Burr Oak, Jewell County, Kansas on October 11, 1920 to Henry and Gertrude (Francis) Massinger.

Her maternal grandparents moved to Jewell County, Kansas in 1871 where grandfather, O. W. Francis became a prominent farmer. He built a large and interestingly styled house for his family in 1909. Today it is a famous landmark in Jewell County, Kansas, known as the Francis House.

Argyl’s mother was a school teacher in Kansas when Argyl was young. Her mother moved from Kansas to Chivington, Colorado because teachers earned more in Colorado and Argyl spent most of her remaining childhood years there. In Chivington she became lifelong friends with the Abrams family and spent much of her time with the Abrams daughters Jane, Tyne, Ethel, Belle, and Jean and “Mom and Pop Abrams”. She remained close to the Abrams family for the rest of her life, even after she moved away to Texas.

Argyl’s mother and father were separated and in Argyl’s high school years, her mother remarried a man in nearby Towner, Colorado and she moved there with her mother where she finished high school. She attended college in Greeley Colorado and earned a teaching certificate after two years of study. She also received a degree from the University of Kansas many years later.

Argyl taught elementary school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in the early 1940s. There she met and married Johnny Sponske, a mining engineer. During WW2, Johnny served the military in a coal mining operation in Palmer, Alaska where he and Argyl lived a rustic life in the Alaskan wilderness. Johnny passed away the early 1960s.

In the summer break in 1966 Argyl booked passage on a freighter ship with ports of call around South America. On this trip she met Sidney Rayal Rivers, a British citizen from Grand Cayman Islands, BWI who worked as a seaman on the ship. They married on February 1, 1969 and lived for a short time in Kansas City. That summer they moved to Houston, Texas where Sidney would be closer to the ports that he shipped out of and they made their home close to the Port of Houston in the Idylwood Addition of Houston’s historic East End. She was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star.

Argyl became a widow for the second time when Sidney passed on August 10, 1989. She was preceded in death by her step-sister and husband, Bobbie and Clarence Weber of Eads, Colorado. She is survived by sister-in-law, Annette Ebanks of Cayman Islands, BWI, step-son, William H. Rivers and wife Elsa of Tampa, Florida, step-daughters Hulda Ebanks and Marlenia Anglin, and her life-long friends Jean Warden and Jane (Abrams) of Lakin, Kansas, and numerous other friends.

There will be a visitation 5 to 8 pm on Thursday evening, August 21 and funeral services will commence at 10 am on Friday, August 22 at Forest Park, 6900 Lawndale, Houston, TX 77023.