WILLIAM DOYCE SPEARS

1928-2020

William Doyce Spears

1928 - 2020

William Doyce Spears passed away on July 16, 2020. He was 92.

Doyce was born in Prescott, Arkansas, in 1928. Doyce’s father spent his career in the Navy, and the family moved around the world when he was a child, including stints in the Philippines and China. He attended Ouachita University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he enrolled in ROTC. Later, as a commissioned First Lieutenant in the Army, Doyce led an infantry platoon in the Korean War and fought on the frontlines.

After completing his service, he met June. They married in 1953 at Church of the Open Door in Greenville, Mississippi. They lived together in Arkansas, where he worked for Lion Oil.

After Doyce took a job with Dow Chemical, they moved to Freeport, Texas, in 1955. Three years later they moved again to nearby Angleton, Texas, where they raised their daughters Cara and Lynn.

Doyce was an inventor, a craftsman, and a mechanic. His knowledge was vast.

He worked at Dow for more than 40 years as a research chemist. At Dow he patented a type of bacteria that helped clean wastewater.

He was a keen mechanic and repaired his own cars. His daughters can recall watching him use a tree limb and chain hoist to lower a new engine into his 1955 Chevy.

He was a Freemason, and a “do it yourself ” kind of man. Doyce enjoyed maintaining his home, gardening and doing his own repairs.

He was quiet and kind, and a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather.

He was preceded in death by his parents Ernest Eugene Spears and Willie Gertrude Loe Spears. He is survived by his wife, Bettye June Johnson Spears, his daughters Cara Barer and husband Jorge, and Lynn Rich and husband Mark, four grandchildren, Brooke Barer, David Barer, Robert White, and Rae- Ellen Kuhner, and four great grandchildren, Kayda White, Aubrey White, Jocie Haughton, and Early Barer.

In lieu of flowers donations to your choice of charity may be made in his memory. Graveside funeral services will be held at Sweet Home Cemetery in Blevins, Arkansas.-