Margaret Ashby

Funeral services will be held for Margaret Pauline Ashby, 98, Oklahoma City resident, at 11 a.m. Thursday in St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Clinton.

Mrs. Ashby died Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Oklahoma City.

Margaret Ashby was born Dec. 29, 1917, to Matthew N. and Anna Lourena (Arington) Ruyle, in Iowa Park, Texas. She was raised in Clinton and graduated from Clinton High School. During the war she worked at the phone company, and was a nurse’s aide at the old Clinton Hospital.  

Later she met her husband, James Orbie Ashby, in Arapaho, and they married in Clinton in 1945. The couple resided in Oklahoma City, where she enjoyed being a homemaker and mother of three children.

Margaret was a devout Catholic, a member of Sacred Heart Parish, and enjoyed attending Mass daily. She took care of her mother, and later her sister, in a nursing home for many years. She loved volunteering when she could, gardening, and being with her family.  

She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband; two sisters, Agnes Stehr and Mary Lee Nickel; five brothers, William Bruce Ruyle, Matthew Glen Ruyle, Edward Leander Ruyle, Richard Kimbrough Ruyle and Robert Reeves Ruyle; and one granddaughter, Monica Rider.

She is survived by two sons, Mike Ashby and wife, Carole, of Oklahoma City, and Patrick Ashby and wife, Cathie, of Edmond; one daughter, Ramona Ann Rider, of Ft. Worth, Texas; and five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Services will be officiated by Father Thomas Pudoka. Interment will follow at Clinton Cemetery under the direction of Kiesau-Lee Funeral Home.