Mar 13, 2016 6 min read

CLAYSVILLE – Mary Sprowls may have retired as an ordained pastor two years ago, but her services are still in high demand.

In one week in early February, Mary officiated three funerals, and she received a phone call, asking if she would perform a wedding – in October 2017.

Mary dutifully marked it down on her calendar. After all, she’s never been one to disappoint her family or friends – no matter what her age.

Mary was 9 years old when her mother died, and she quickly became the woman of the house, cooking, cleaning and mothering her younger sister, Elizabeth, who was 2 at the time.

“It was good for me. I didn’t seem to mind at all,” Mary said. “It forced me to grow up fast, but that didn’t hurt either.”

Truer words were never spoken. On Tuesday, the Pleasant Grove Village resident will turn 100 years old.

Mary Jane Chase was born March 15, 1916, in East Finley Township, the second youngest of Fred and Elizabeth Grandon Chase’s eight children. She said that while her mother was giving birth to Mary in the family’s home, her father was in the barn, tending to a litter of “little piggies.”

“He covered them up real good,” Mary said. “Their tails froze off, but he saved them.”

After her mother’s death, Mary gladly accepted the added responsibilities. For years, she cooked breakfast for her father, getting up at 5 a.m. every day to do so. She washed clothes, canned vegetables and baked bread.

“We didn’t even know there was a Depression,” Mary said. “We didn’t live extravagantly, and Daddy would see that there were potatoes in the bin, and sometimes apples. We always had pigs to butcher.

“Banks were closing, but I remember hearing them talk about it. Daddy used Mellon Bank, and it always seemed that it was stable and there was no chance of closing. If Daddy wasn’t worrying, why should I?”

Despite the abundance of household chores, Mary still attended school, first at the Dickerson one-room schoolhouse, then the new Lagonda schoolhouse. She graduated from eighth grade.

Mary was 17 years old when she met Harold “Brick” Sprowls at a sqaure dance on Ed Hathaway’s nearby farm. The two immediately hit it off, but Mary would not let Brick walk her home that first night because he had come with another girl.

Two weeks later, Brick surprised Mary, showing up in the pasture where she was walking to the dance. He joined Mary, her brother, Frank, and his wife, Gladys.

“Brick was his nickname, and I like Brick best because that’s the guy I fell in love with,” Mary said. “I think I was his partner more that night. When intermission time came, we went into the kitchen, and I sat down in a high chair, and we talked; what about, I do not remember.”

But she does remember that Brick sang a “love” song to her, with the last stanza being:

“In our breakfast nook

Between your chair and my chair

Maybe there will be a high chair

And we’ll call it yours and mine.”

The couple married on April 20, 1936, and had five children, two of whom survive: Larry Sprowls and Sue Kite. The Sprowls’ three other children died of cancer: Betty Ann Plants, who died in 1985, and Charles and John Sprowls, both in 2005. In addition to raising her children, Mary continued to care for her father.

While Mary managed the household, Brick worked as a farmer, then later as a steelworker. Mary recalls what a big deal it was when electricity came to the community in 1947.

“I remember the house being wired, and we bought the first refrigerator we ever owned,” along with an electric washing machine and iron, Mary said. “But we still had the outside toilet that we called Aunt Fanny.”

In 1962, Mary received her minister’s license and was ordained. Brick followed suit a year or two later, not long after the couple purchased their first home on a 48 1/2-acre farm in Pleasant Grove.

The couple had been searching for property, but they had difficulty finding one they could afford. Then one day, Mary was on the party-line phone talking with her daughter Betty Ann when Oral Merritt came on the line.

“He was asking if he could use the phone to call the dog pound to see if they would care for his dogs while he was away,” Mary said. “I said, ‘Oral, Brick will take care of your dogs for you.’ He said he appreciated it, and accepted the offer.”

After Oral returned from his trip, he decided to sell his farm, and the price was right for the Sprowls family, said Mary, noting that she still has the receipts from the payment book.

“It was a very happy time,” Mary said. “It was on a blacktop road … We had a bathroom with all of the water, both hot and cold, a furnace to heat the house, so everyone was warm.”

Shortly thereafter, Mary took a correspondence course and earned her doctor of divinity. She taught a class of ladies a two-year course from the Tidewater Bible Institute. “Not long after that, they took God and the Bible out of our schools,” Mary said.

Disappointed but not defeated, Mary decided to offer Sunday school classes in the basement of the family’s home. She made invitations, and her nephew, Darrell Sprowls, delivered them to homes throughout Pleasant Grove.

The first day, seven children showed up. The next week, there were 21 kids.

“It seemed that we were on the right track and encouraged,” Mary said. “The money I earned from my job supplied all of the materials I needed, such as lessons, paper, pencils and whatever.”

By this time, adults had started to attend as well, so Brick decided to enlarge the basement by removing a wall and laying a brick foundation. He, with the help of his neighbors, also added windows. The basement church was dedicated July 13, 1969.

It didn’t take long to outgrow the expanded basement, so, in 1972, Mary and Brick donated land from their farm to build a chapel. Friends and family volunteered their time to lay concrete blocks and install wiring and windows, and on July 21, 1974, the debt-free Roadside Chapel was dedicated.

“The church goes on, and if Jesus tarries until July 22, 2017, we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary,” Mary said. Her great-grandson-in-law serves as the church’s pastor.

After the dedication, Mary and Brick continued to enjoy their lives together before Brick died in 1999 at age 84.

“Our love and friendship did not end until 66 years went by,” Mary said.

Mary has written a memoir, “Down Memory Lane,” for her family, and she’s working on her family tree. And until 2014, when she grew beans and tomatoes, Mary was a avid gardener.

“That year, I finally felt older,” Mary said. “That was too much. I get tired now.”