Ruth Hames Sparks

Ruth Hames Sparks, 90, died Saturday, May 28, 2005, at the home of her daughter, Joyce Sparks Johnson, of Mooresville. The funeral will be at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at First Wesleyan Church, 301 Bethpage Road, Kannapolis. Dr. Forbis L. Kivett will officiate. Interment will follow at Carolina Memorial Park. The family will receive friends from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Fellowship Hall of the First Wesleyan Church. She was a daughter of the late Rev. J.M. Hames and Ethel Lois Mullinax Hames, of Greer, S.C. She received her B.A. in 1936 at Limestone College and was a member of the Limestone College Touring Choir for three years. In 1958 she attained her Masters Of Education degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She taught school for 38 years and was active in her church. She and her late husband, the Rev. Carl V. Sparks, were happily married for 61 years. They have one daughter, Joyce Johnson, of Mooresville. Joyce and her late husband, Phifer Johnson, had two children, Carol Ruelle Johnson, of Dallas, Texas and Benjamin and Elizabeth Johnson, who are the parents of Jacob Levi Johnson and Anna Catherine Johnson, of Mooresville. She is also survived by a sister, Frances Hames Simmons and her husband, Mitchell Simmons, of Lookout Mountain, Tenn. Memorials may be donated to the First Wesleyan Church, 301 Bethpage Road, Kannapolis, NC 28081 or Hospice of Iredell County, 150 Fairview Road, Suite 325, Mooresville, NC 28117, in her memory.