Born during the Great Depression, she was the fourth of five daughters raised by their loving parents Mabel and James Lotz in rural northwest Missouri. She went by her middle name and pronounced it Y-von rather than the more common E-von.
The Lotz family enjoyed a good life. Yvonne told about talking movies with one of her sisters while sitting on the cellar step. Each would get a tomato and eat it with a spoon like they held a cup of ice cream.
Fresh from her high school graduation, at which retailer James Cash Penney spoke, Yvonne moved to Kansas City. She arrived at bustling Union Station and moved in with her oldest sister, Lorene and her husband Bill. Yvonne got a job at Western Auto’s headquarters downtown, working as a bookkeeper. Her career also took her to Clark Manufacturing in Atherton, Mo., Puritan-Bennett Corp. and Evans Electric in Kansas City.
Yvonne carried high self-esteem and great confidence into any difficult situation, including a divorce that left her with three sons and a mortgage. She told how the mortgage company at first refused her money on the grounds that no woman could keep up the payments. Of course, she did keep up that mortgage, and it was in that house that Yvonne formed a new family.
She married Monte C. Barbour after meeting him at a Parents Without Partners picnic. Monte’s son, Russ, from a previous marriage and Yvonne’s sons, Larry, Kevin and Mark, meant she cared for five men. It can be tough to get four boys to listen. Her crowded supper table had a standing rule: pass the salt and pepper, butter and other dishes when called for or the leaf is coming out of the table.
Yvonne is survived by her husband, Monte C. Barbour, four sons, Larry Davis of Buckner, Mo., Lynda and Kevin Davis of Buckeye, Az., J.J, and Mark Davis of Lee’s Summit, Mo., Melia and Russ Barbour of Glen Allen, Va., her sister Dixie Ruth Bowman of Liberty, Mo., and many grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.
The family suggests donations to the American Cancer Society.
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