‘Grandma’ loved 403 hurting children

By Kayla Rinker

Contributing Writer

CENTRALIA – If Grandma tells you to make the beds before you leave for school, you make the beds. If Grandma tells you to be sure and move the furniture and thoroughly scrub the baseboards on a Saturday morning, you grudgingly do that, too. If Grandma insists that you are one of God’s most precious creations and that God doesn’t make junk, you hold tight to her words for the rest of your life.

Lillian “Grandma” Spry passed away April 2 at the age of 89. Born Nov. 17, 1919, she lived in Centralia for most of her life and was a longtime member of First Baptist Church there. She married Charles Spry on June 24, 1939. He died in 1971. Their children are Sharon Carter, 71, St. Charles; James “Butch” Spry, 69, Oskaloosa, Iowa; and Cathy Armstrong, 62, Mecosta, Mich.

Along with her eight grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson, Spry embraced the title of Grandma to 403 foster children in her lifetime.

“She had this compelling need to be needed,” said Carter, Spry’s eldest daughter, “and she was exactly what was needed for those girls.”

The Sprys started their foster care ministry soon after their youngest child got married in the late 1960s. Working closely with the Boone County court system, their home became a safe haven for children and youth who were either first-offender juvenile delinquents, victims of abuse or abandoned—and usually they were a combination of all three.

“I remember the very first family she took in,” Carter said. “There was a 17-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, an 8-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy. The oldest girl took her siblings and ran away from home while her parents were working. Come to find out that her father was sexually abusing her and her sister, and when he started making goo-goo eyes at her 8-year-old sister she just couldn’t take it and she ran away. I’ll never forget that family. Anyway, they made it to Boone County where they eventually ended up with my Mom and Dad.”

Just a few years after they opened their home, Charles Spry died suddenly of a stroke at the age of 50.

“I was worried about her and I tried to discourage her from taking any more children,” Carter said. “But she knew she could do it and needed to do it. From then on she told the court system she would do better with girls only. She felt she could relate to them better and she firmly believed that boys needed a strong male figure in their lives.”

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Spry kept from 10 to 12 girls much of the time. In 1983, Spry started foster care for a 7-year-old bi-racial girl named Jenny.

“It was love at first sight for Mom,” Carter said.

Referred to as Spry’s “crowning jewel” by fellow First Centralia church members, Jenny Andrews, now 33 and married with two children of her own, came to Spry after she was removed from an abusive home. Though Andrews was only supposed to stay temporarily, she ended up living with Spry until she graduated high school.

“She was more like a mom than a grandma,” Andrews said. “She encouraged me in everything I wanted to do. She would make sure us girls were active in the children’s ministries and youth group. I played the flute in the band and I know she didn’t get much as far as a stipend from the government to take care of those extra things. She poured her own money into me to help me succeed.”

Spry also taught Andrews and the other girls valuable life lessons while they stayed there. Everybody under her care learned responsibility through daily chores and weekly “deep cleaning” sessions.

“Her house always sparkled,” Carter said. “When we were little we had to have every bed made, every dish cleaned, dried and put away and it sparkled all the time. Things were no different for those girls. Mom said she didn’t want the children who came to think she was their personal maid. Also, she was always meeting with judges and counselors so she wanted her house to look good.”

Andrews said Spry also stressed the importance of inner beauty to her girls.

“Some of the other girls were older than I was and they would wear makeup and Grandma would say, ‘You don’t need all that makeup. You need to be beautiful on the inside, that’s much more important that what’s on the outside,’” she said.

The fact that Spry was able to receive respect from so many young people still amazes Carter.

“I didn’t even like my own children when they were adolescents,” Carter said. “The only way to get through to them is to build relationships in such a way that they want to please you. It’s amazing that she was able to do that with those girls so quickly.”

“The Lord will always take care of you” was one of Spry’s most famous sayings. Spry put God first in her life and her passion for troubled and hurting youth was inspirational to all those who knew her.

“Sometimes my husband and I would talk about Mom and try to understand why she would choose to have so many foster children,” Carter said. “We finally came to believe that she was doing her part to make the world a better place. Those children were starved for someone who cared enough to spend time with them. Mom’s faith that she could be that someone was simply remarkable.”