Margaret Spotts

Margaret Lois Chapuis Spotts passed away with loving family by her side on September
5, 2022, following a brief battle with malignant melanoma. She was 86 years old. She
was preceded in death by her husband Relton Weir Spotts in August of 2018.

Margaret was born at home in Salt River Township, MO, on September 23, 1935, to
Leon Ernest Chapuis and Bessie Hallows Chapuis. Margaret, her two sisters and
brother grew up on a farm in Louisiana, MO. She loved to play on the sandy banks of
the nearby Salt River, ice skate the farm’s frozen ponds in the winter, sled the hills, and
climb the sugar maples and collect their colorful leaves in autumn. She was active in the
4-H Club and the Girls Auxiliary of the Grassy Creek Baptist Church. Rural farm life also
required hard work. The family raised and butchered most of their meat, made their own
sausage, and smoked meat in their own smoke house. They raised chickens for eggs,
grew all their vegetables, ground their wheat into flour, made molasses from sugar
cane, and tapped the maple trees to make syrup. With no refrigerator, they stored their
food in an icehouse filled with ice blocks cut from the frozen river. One of Margaret’s
many chores was to spread layers of sawdust over the ice blocks as insulation. To earn
money in grade school Margaret raised baby chicks, 400 or so at a time, that the mail
man delivered to her with his truck.

Margaret attended Love School, a one-room schoolhouse serving first through eighth
grades, and had the same teacher for six of those years. The family farm was nearby,
and the teachers often boarded with them. At Louisiana High School, she was the
majorette for the school band, played forward for the basketball team, and acted in the
junior and senior plays. She was elected as Student Representative and Homecoming
Queen her senior year, and Barnstorming Queen her freshman year. During high school
she worked for Stark Brothers Nursery. She graduated Salutatorian in 1953.

Margaret left home to study at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where she worked
in the library. Deciding she wanted to become a registered nurse, she transferred to
Evangelical Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in St. Louis, MO after her freshman
year. She received her bachelor’s degree in nursing in 1957.

In St. Louis Margaret met Relton, the handsome man who would become her husband
of almost 60 years. She needed dental work done and heard students at Washington
University Dental School needed patients, so she signed up. Relton noticed her in the
dental chair of his friend and came over to ask her out. Relton proposed to Margaret in
1957 at a Christmas dance in Waukegan, IL, when he was serving as a lieutenant at
Naval Station Great Lakes, and she was working at Victory Memorial Hospital.

During their engagement, when Relton was serving as the ship’s dentist aboard the
USS Rockbridge, Margaret boarded a bus to Boulder, CO and spent the summer of
1958 working at Boulder Community Hospital. She took several bus tours to mountain
destinations, including Pikes Peak and Rocky Mountain National Park, and fell in love
with the mountains. After the summer she went back to Missouri and worked at Pike
County Hospital in Louisiana.

Margaret and Relton were married at the First Baptist Church in Louisiana, MO on a
cold and snowy January 3rd, 1959, while Relton was still in the Navy. While stationed in
Norfolk, VA for six months, they loved exploring the northeast United States together.
Margaret worked at De Paul Hospital during this time. Following his Navy service, the
couple moved to Streator, IL where Margaret worked as an industrial nurse at Owens-
Illinois Glass Company. They moved to Rockford, IL in 1960, then to Boulder in 1963,
where they lived for 37 years.

With four children born in the span of six years, Margaret devoted herself to her family.
She supported each of her children through years of scouting. She was a timer at swim
meets. She drove miles shuttling her kids to activities. She volunteered as a school
nurse and worked in her husband’s dental office. She learned to ski.

When her children were mostly out of the house, Margaret spent three summers at
Yellowstone National Park, where she sold jewelry in Hamilton’s Stores and worked as
a cook in Grant Village. She became a member of Yellowstone’s 100 Mile Hiker’s Club.
She loved her time there.

Following their retirement, Margaret and Relton moved to Henderson, NV to enjoy the
desert sunshine and warmer climate. They returned to Boulder in 2017.

Margaret will be remembered not only for her devotion to her family, but also for her
love of animals and autumn, travel and national parks, card games and word games,
puzzles and reading. She has been reunited with her beloved husband, but she will be
missed.

Margaret is predeceased by her husband and parents, her sister Dorothy Lamberson
and her brother Leon Chapuis. She is survived by her son Brian L. Spotts, his wife
Sara and their son Tyler, of Portland, OR; daughter KR Spotts and her daughter Kristen,
of Boulder, CO; son Barry R. Spotts, his wife Jan and their sons Justin, Jeremy and
Jared, of Austin, TX, daughter Kara Diane Palmer, her husband Jon and their sons
Drew and Tommy of Seattle, WA, and sister Virginia Penrod and her husband Clyde
of Louisiana, MO. Private family memorial services will be held.