Delores Estelle Nealey Spruell

Delores Spruell of Shreveport, Louisiana died Saturday morning August 19, 2023 at Old Brownlee Care Center in Bossier City after a brief illness. Dolores was born the daughter of Lee Oris and Estelle Nealey on June 7, 1924 in the home of her maternal grandparents on Homer Street in Bossier City. She attended Queensboro Elementary School and graduated from Fair Park High School in 1941. It was at Fair Park where she met her lifelong love, Eugene Spruell. They were married in Monroe, Louisiana in 1942. When Eugene died in 2008, they had been married 67 years. They were the love of each other's life. They celebrated their love every day they were together. She is the mother of two sons, Malcolm Eugene Spruell III and Lee Oris Spruell, who will always hold their loving mother in highest esteem.

Dolores grew up in the Queensboro neighborhood of Shreveport. After marrying Eugene, she follows him, as a Baptist pastor’s wife, to various churches and in 1958 when Eugene joined the staff at East Texas Baptist College, she moved with the family to Marshall, Texas where her sons Malcolm and Lee Oris grew up. During Eugene's tenure at East Texas Baptist College, Dolores finished her bachelor's degree in elementary education and taught at elementary schools in Marshall and Shreveport. She always referred to her students as her “babies” and said she loved them just like they were her own.

Eugene's parents, Malcolm Eugene Spruell Senior and Olga Whitlock Spruell were important influences in her life. In her older years she loved  telling stories about Grandma and Pop, saying that they were living definitions of “good.”

A graveside service will be held at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at Forest Park West Cemetery beside her beloved husband, Eugene, and her mother and father, Estelle and Lee O. Nealey. Lee Spruell, Delores’s son, and caregiver in her final years, thanks the staffs of Old Brownlee Care Center and Bristol Hospice for their loving attention to his mom in her final days.

The family suggests memorials may be made to the Louisiana Baptist Children's Home, 7200 Desiard Street, Monroe, LA 71203.