Sibyl Ione (Frazier) Black passed on Sunday, June 27, 2021, at Bethesda Gardens Assisted Living, Fort Worth, Texas after living enthusiastically for 105 years and 8 months. In the last weeks before her death, she had decided that she had lived on this earth long enough and needed to be on her way home.
Sibyl was born in a one room log cabin in Rogers, Arkansas where she and her parents, Willis James and Minnie Anne (Hopkins) Frazier, lived for a year. They moved to Oilton, Oklahoma and then to Drumright, Oklahoma where Sibyl attended Drumright High School. She was the oldest of five children. After a move to Baxter Springs, Kansas, where she graduated from high school, the family returned to Drumright. She then attended Oklahoma Central State College for two years before going to work at Citizens Bank of Drumright.
Sibyl married William Payne Black in 1940 and became the wife of a pipeliner who was either gone for months or moved his growing family with him across the eastern and northeastern states during suitable construction months, always returning home to Drumright for part of the year. Sibyl became adept at packing, at a moment’s notice, into the trunk of a 1949 Ford, everything the family of five might need for a period of at least a six-months stay away from home. She made sure that the children were exposed to the history and historical and interesting geographical sites of all the many different places they lived. In 1953, Bill took a permanent job with Lakehead Pipeline in Superior, Wisconsin where the family learned to live by the big lake with all that entails. Sibyl worked at Superior National Bank after the three girls were older. There was one more move with the company to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin in 1968.
Sibyl had a wonderful creative flare which was exhibited in the decor of her many different homes, her wardrobe, and especially in the wearing of her eclectic jewelry. While in Fort Atkinson, she developed her amazing talent for drawing and painting using multiple mediums. Due to a health condition, Bill took early retirement, and they returned to Drumright where Sibyl became a "cardiac caregiver" in addition to keeping the house and the vegetable and flower gardens. After Bill’s death in 1980, she continued her activities which included family, First Baptist Church, clubs, gardening, U.S., and world travel including a bus tour of some of the western states late in life to make sure she had been in all 50 states. At age 82, she made the choice to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico to be near her youngest daughter, Billye Knox. She loved New Mexico but when the Knoxs were transferred to Fort Worth in 1998, she relocated near them. There she met her precious friend, Bobbie Cash, at the independent seniors’ apartments, and he became her constant companion whom she loved dearly. They traveled by car and planes across the U.S., including trips to Florida, Arizona, and Minnesota to visit her other two daughters. She enjoyed sharing her love of learning and adventure with her travel buddy. After 12 years of independent living at the Villas by the Lake and her last trip at age 100, she moved into Bethesda Gardens Assisted Living. She and Bobbie continued their relationship through visits and many hours of phone conversations recounting their travels. She was an incredible example of how to live cheerfully, enthusiastically, with constant curiosity, gratitude and faith and soak up the most out of life and is an enduring inspiration to her family and those who knew her. Her love of family, people, reading, learning, classical music, travel, and adventure live on in her progeny.
Many thanks to the staff at Bethesda Gardens Assisted Living for their outstanding and loving care and to Emily for her special friendship. And a world of thanks and gratitude from the family for the constant care and extra support for Sibyl by daughter, Billye Knox.
She was preceded in death by parents, Willis James and Minnie Anne (Hopkins) Frazier; husband, William Payne Black; brothers, James (Jamie) and Paul Frazier; and son-in-law, Major Gordon Essinger.
Sibyl is survived by her daughters, Anne (Bob) Sutherland, Becky (Doug) Pruitt, and Billye (Bob) Knox; grandchildren, Laurie (Kevin) Case, Brian Sutherland, Joey (Dan) Roether, Jeff (Lisa) Pruitt, Jamie (Tim) Thomas, and Toni (Ron) Hall; great grandchildren, Josh and Peyton Hall, Riley, Emma and Sawyer Thomas, Colton, Carter and Carina Pruitt and Reagan Roether; her sister, Paula Jean Johnson; brother, Robert David Frazier; many precious nieces and nephews; and companion, Bobbie Lee Cash.
A service will be held later, and burial will be in North Cemetery in Drumright, Oklahoma.
Memorials: In lieu of flowers, a donation could be sent to your favorite charity in her memory.
Visits: 7
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the
Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors