Doris Houx Kirkpatrick
Doris Houx Kirkpatrick died on Feb. 24, 2018, just five weeks after an arena full of University of Central Missouri Mules basketball fans celebrated her 100th birthday with song and cake.
Doris Lorene Smith, born on Jan. 15, 1918, was the second of seven children of Leona and Letcher Smith. She grew up in Henry County and graduated from Norris High School. In the midst of the Depression, she enrolled at Central Missouri State Teachers College to get a 60-hour certificate that would enable her to teach in a one-room rural school. She met that goal, but discovered that the rigors of being janitor, nurse, counselor and teacher felt too close to slavery. She returned to CMS and earned a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics Education in 1940. She received her diploma from the hand of noted self-help author Dale Carnegie, a former CMS student.
Doris Smith taught high school home economics in Green Ridge for one year before marrying James R. Houx, a farmer and banker in Centerview. While rearing their three children, she maintained large vegetable, strawberry and flower beds, plus refinishing and reupholstering furniture and sewing drapes, bedspreads and other furnishings for a new farmhouse. Her children's education and activities drew her into PTA, eventually serving six years on the State PTA Board, and 4-H, where she taught cooking and sewing, becoming a perennial judge at 4-H competitions. School financial problems prompted her election to the Centerview School Board where she balanced the budget during her six-year stint as president.
In the late 1950s, Doris Houx led the winning Johnson County campaign to get voter approval for a tax-supported regional public library for Johnson and Lafayette counties and she was appointed to the library board, serving for eight years. Earlier Red Cross volunteer work connected her with health care needs in the area and in 1960, she worked to gain voter approval of a tax levy for a public hospital in Warrensburg. After that success, she was repeatedly elected to serve on the Western Missouri Medical Center Board of Trustees, cited for her leadership in a 1994 Excellence in Governance award from the Missouri Hospital Association, and was a lifetime member of the Hospital Auxiliary.
Her personal interests included P.E.O., where she served as president and other offices in Chapter HW and was in charge of decorations for the 1981 P.E.O. International Convention in Kansas City. Her activities in the Warrensburg United Methodist Church included various Methodist Church Council committees, chair of the Board of Directors and accustoming 2-year-olds to Sunday school (with the late Wanda Lane) for 50 years. In later years, her lifetime love of gardening made support of Powell Gardens a natural.
In 1966, the family moved to Warrensburg, where Doris Houx became chair of the Community Social Concerns Committee that established the Survival Adult Abuse Center and Warrensburg Day Care Center. Her involvement in the city's Community Betterment Program led to beautification ordinances and a 1981 Missouri Governor's Leadership Award. As a member of the Chamber of Commerce, she was involved in liaison with Whiteman Air Force Base, among other projects, and served on the city's adjustment commission on zoning for a decade.
James R. Houx died in 1979. That year, Doris Houx collaborated with other prominent alumni of CMS to form the Central Missouri State University Foundation, serving as its sixth board president. Eight years later she married James C. Kirkpatrick, retired Missouri secretary of state. Among his many awards was Honorary Knight of St. Patrick from the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology). Soon, Doris Kirkpatrick also became an Honorary Knight of St. Patrick and joined him in many parades, political events and travel adventures. Mr. Kirkpatrick had also graduated from CMS, later serving on its Board of Regents. In 1996, the school began building a library to be named in his honor. He died in 1997 before the James C. Kirkpatrick Library was finished, but Doris Kirkpatrick filled in by participating in library events and helping to organize Friends of the James C. Kirkpatrick Library. She also established a home economics scholarship, later renamed the Doris Houx Kirkpatrick Family and Consumer Science Scholarship Endowment. She was a Distinguished Member of the Presidents Society and member of Mule Kickers athletic support group. Her alma mater, now known as the University of Central Missouri, paid tribute to Doris Kirkpatrick with a Community Service Award in 1987 and Distinguished Service Award in 1996.
Her final public honor will be a memorial service at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 15 in the Kirkpatrick Library. A reception will follow the service.
Survivors include daughters, Martha Houx Singer and Elizabeth Houx Burdsall; son, James R. Houx, Jr.; six grandchildren and eight great-grand children.
In lieu of flowers, contributions to the University of Central Missouri Alumni Foundation should be sent to “UCM Foundation – Doris Kirkpatrick Memorial”, 575 S. Holden St., P. O. Box 800, Warrensburg, MO 64093.
Sweeney-Phillips and Holdren Funeral Home is entrusted with arrangements.
(Paid Obituary)
