A retired Houston school teacher will celebrate her 90th birthday Aug. 7 in Ozark, where she is a resident at an assisted living facility.
Mary Stockstill began teaching kindergarten here shortly after the family arrived west of Houston on the Little Piney River. She was born in Avon, southeast of Chillicothe, where she lived with her family of three brothers and three sisters. Growing up as a farmer’s daughter, she attended school in a one-room building and graduated at Avalon. She attended North Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg after working her way through school. She received her teaching degree at age 22.
She taught in one-room schoolhouses and later her met her husband and followed him around the world as part of his Air Force career. After World War II, they lived in Japan, where they adopted two children, James Eugene (who died in October 2005) and Thomas Wayne, who is an addictions counselor in Indiana.
They later located to Texas County after his retirement, where she taught at Houston. She retired in the mid-1980s after her long teaching career that included receiving her master’s degree from then Southwest Missouri State University. She and her husband, Ercel Thomas Stockstill, moved to St. Robert. After her husband died in the late 1980s, she moved to be closer to her older brother, Charles, and family at Ozark. She continues to live in Christian County, where she is deaf after losing much of her hearing in her 30s. She has limited vision, but can read large writing with visual aids.
Those wanting to send her birthday wishes can write her at: Ozark Riverview Manor, 1200 W. Hall, Ozark, Mo., 65721.