Lois Spurgin's Obituary
Lois Spurgin passed away peacefully in her sleep at Haven Hospice in Gainesville, FL, on February 14, 2024, at the age of 97. She was surrounded on Valentine’s Day by her family, who dearly loved her.
Her 1944 high school graduating class in Gregory, SD, consisted of about 10 students, and she was voted most likely to succeed. She attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for two years and was studying pre-law. Lois married three times and had three children (Carol Jean, David Mark and Lori Ann) with her first husband, Eugene (Gene) Gorden. She loved all the men in her life and outlived them all. In her words, she had a wonderful life. She was, however, still looking for a handsome, single, ninety-something-year-old and repeatedly asked her daughters if they’d met one.
She was born in the dusty town of Tuthill, SD. She, her mother and brother moved to Martin, SD, and eventually ended up in Gregory, another small town in the south-central region of South Dakota’s prairie. Following high school graduation, she left for the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and studied pre-law. She was in Gregory for the summer, an intern in a law office, when she met and married Gene Gorden and gave up the pursuit of law for the pursuit of family. They were together for twenty years and had three children together, Carol, David and Lori. She eventually moved to Florida with her second husband, William (Bill) Randall, her youngest daughter, Lori, and Bill’s two children, Mark and Martha. They owned the El Rancho Motel in Hernando for several years, but decided to learn the real estate business. They sold the motel and moved to Inverness, where they matched many, many people with the perfect property. Her third husband, Robert (Bob) Spurgin, had a home in rural Isle, Minnesota. His and her kids were all grown, so they spent summers in the north and winters at her home in Inverness, FL. After Bob passed away, Lois spent most of her time with daughters Lori, in Gainesville, FL, and Carol, in Hewitt, MN. Eventually, Carol and her husband, Roger Caputo, came to live with her in Inverness.
Lois was a life-long lover of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and she passed this thirst for information and excitement to her children. She read every time she stopped moving for a minute during the day and after she went to bed. She read every night until she found herself reading through her eyelids, when she reluctantly turned out the light. One corollary of having outlived her husbands was the extra room in bed for her books. She loved a good novel, but always read non-fiction first, anything from archaeology and paleontology to astronomy and physics to the history of Florida.
She read about so many wonderful places in the world, and she was finally able to visit many of them after her children were grown. She took cruises and tours with her husband, Bob, later with dear friend and companion, Charles (Chuck) Judd. Later yet, she traveled with close friend, Rosemary (Rosie) Labenz and her brother- and sister-in-law, William (Bill) and Bonnie Spurgin. Bob had been a POW in World War II, and they visited some of the places he had been. When she was in Hawaii with Chuck, she and the rest of their tour group found out, when visiting the USS Arizona Memorial, that Chuck had been in communications at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed, and had typed and sent the first message alerting the mainland brass to the bombing.
In her various travels, she was able to visit a South Sea island for tribal dancing and went to Egypt to see the pyramids and ride a camel. This, she had tried to decline, but the camel’s owner took her firmly around the waist and unceremoniously put her aboard. She loved it! Her favorite destination, besides England, Ireland and Scotland, was the Great Wall of China. She was enraptured, and talked about it often.
She more than fulfilled her high school prediction of success in academia, in business acumen and in enriching the lives of everyone blessed to be within her orbit. Everyone was family or a friend (even those she hadn’t met yet). She loved and had a big smile and open arms for everyone she met, and they couldn’t help but love her back.
Lois is survived by her daughters, Lori (Gorden) Harrison, Carol (Gorden) Caputo and Martha (Randall) Jackovics; her nieces, Luanne Good and Nanette (Good) Founds; nine grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
She is preceded in death by her husbands, Eugene Gorden, William Randall and Robert Spurgin, and her longtime companion, Charles Judd; her mother, Anna Mary (Dale) Good; her Father, Jacob Jackson Good; her brother, Jackson J Good; and her sons, David Gorden and Mark Randall.
There will be a memorial service for her, date and time to be determined. In accordance with Lois’s and her family’s wishes, we would appreciate donations to Haven Hospice in Gainesville, FL, in lieu of flowers.
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