Mary Lou Rivers, 93, Olathe, Kansas, formerly of Butler, Missouri, died Sunday, October 4, 2015 at Aberdeen Village in Olathe. A memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m. Monday, October 12 at Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, Kansas, with a reception to follow. A graveside service will be held at 1:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 21 at Oak Hill Cemetery in Butler, Missouri.

When it is said that someone is a "people person", we all know what that means. However Mary Lou took it to a new level. She never met a stranger. It never occurred to her to not make eye contact with everyone in her sightline (including the famous and not so famous) and make every effort to engage them in conversation. In her late years, often ending up in the emergency room for one thing or another, she engaged the ambulance drivers, medical technicians, the ER personnel, doctors, nurses, roommates, all the while remembering each person's name and telling them about her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they performed whatever medical assistance she needed. It actually became a social outing to her. The more people, the merrier.

In the hours and days immediately following Mary Lou's death, Jan and Robin found themselves consoling a steady stream of Aberdeen Village staff members who came into her room weeping, needing a long hug, telling how much they loved Mary Lou, how they always came to her room because she listened to them. Robin and Jan were delighted that someone who worked in the kitchen or in maintenance in another part of the building could have come to know and love their mother in her eleven short months there. Towards the end, when her warm smile dimmed, she still managed a twinkle in her eyes to let someone know how much she liked them.

Much of this friendliness and warmth came as a result of her upbringing in the little town of Foster, Missouri. Mary Lou was born in Foster, Missouri on August 25, 1922, the only child of Paul and Robyn (Plattenburg) Goodrum. As an only child, her idle hours were spent in her parents' general store, absorbing their lessons of honesty, compassion and friendliness to each and every person who came from miles around. She saw how her dad would quietly extend credit or slip in extra groceries to a family in need with no expectation of payback; and with a friendly handshake, would lend money to someone needing cash to get through until harvest, and how both parents would treat each customer with dignity and friendship. This friendliness shaped her personality and followed her to the University of Missouri in Columbia where she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta and chosen Savitar Queen. She majored in fashion merchandising and after college, moved to Kansas City where she was employed and modeled for the iconic clothing store, Rothschild's. It was there on an elevator she met the handsome and charming Fred Rivers. They married in 1942 and moved to Butler, Missouri. There in that small town setting they raised their two daughters, Robin and Jan, and had a shoe store and dress shop that attracted people from miles around, even from Kansas City, which their daughters could never understand. We are sure Mary Lou extended that same hospitality learned in her parents' general store to every customer.

Mary Lou was not a solitary, contemplative soul. Instead she was action-oriented. The first to take food to someone's door, the first to greet a new neighbor or resident in her retirement community, she was the quintessential "hostess-with-the-mostest", a one-woman welcome wagon. Beautiful, fashionable, adventuresome and fun, she also had an irreverent and spontaneous sense of humor with a repertoire of jokes that she could recall at any second. She could outlast anyone is a contest of joke-telling. This too amazed her daughters who could not even get to the punch line of one single joke.

Mary Lou had a great appreciation and love of music. She drove Robin sixty miles from Butler to Kansas City every single Saturday through six years of Jr. High and High School to Luyben Music on Main, so that she could have an half hour flute lesson with the principal flautist of the Philharmonic. She also expected Robin and Jan to take piano lessons from a young age in Butler. Robin did what she said, but after just a few lessons, Jan inquired, "When is that piano teacher retiring?"

She loved Charles Bruffy, director of the choir here in her church, and took delight as his Kansas City Chorale began winning Grammy Awards. She was always cheered up when he came to visit her at Aberdeen and take such an interest in her. In her 70's and 80's, if Mary Lou went missing on a Saturday afternoon, she could be found front and center at a jazz jam session at Fedora or Jardines. In the last few weeks of Mary Lou's life, she kept her TV on the music stations, usually smooth jazz. Robin, Jan and the hospice aides kept it on softly for her last days and hours. As she took her last breath, a beautiful, ethereal song came on called "My Rainbow". It was so stunningly fitting for her passage into her new victorious life, that it got everyone's attention in the room, their heads riveted to the TV screen to see if the music was real.

You cannot speak of Mary Lou without mentioning her love of sports. In person or on TV, she loved golf, tennis, college basketball and of course, the Royals. Like her parents who never missed listening to an A's or Royals game on the radio, she watched or listened to games to the end of her life. It was made all the more special when Jan married Al Fitzmorris, who was a Royals pitcher in the 70s. Mary Lou played tennis until she was 75 and golf until she was 85. Like her parents, she was a brilliant and competitive bridge player and played until she was no longer able to hold the cards. She also loved the game of cribbage and found several partners once she moved into a retirement community, playing on the cribbage set her parents had used, still nestled in its original box.

Mary Lou celebrated her 70th birthday by traveling to England for a three week course of study on English architecture, going to class in the mornings, touring in the afternoons, going to plays at night, cheerfully traversing the three flights of stairs to her flat each day and night. Just in the last few weeks, as Robin was organizing and cleaning out a drawer in a chest in her room, a drawer that had been tidied up scores of times, a little spiral notebook seemed to appear out of nowhere. She opened it and found that it was Mary Lou's hand-written travel journal of her three weeks in England from 23 years ago. The little book had never been seen before in all of the downsizing with her several moves. But there it was, such a treat to read, a description of the sights, the food, the people, the dancing, the sheer fun as she enjoyed three weeks in England and Scotland. It was a lovely glimpse into a more vibrant time in her life.

She and Fred, (who died in 1988) loved to play tennis, golf and travel with their friends, the Mechlers and Moores. As a couple, Mary Lou and Fred had warm and memorable parties in their home, with Fred choosing just the right records to be stacked onto the hifi to keep the party lively. When they lived in Columbia, Missouri from 1963 to 1967, they serendipitously found themselves living a few houses away from their new best friends, Betty Ann and Bill McCaskill. Those four, who instantly adored each other, got together almost nightly and could be heard laughing from many houses away. It was the McCaskill's five year old son who gave Mary Lou the very name Robin's children call their grandmother to this day. Will, banished to his second floor bedroom for time-out punishment, dramatically threw open his window and (unable to pronounce Mary Lou) yelled at the top of his lungs for what seemed like an hour for her to come rescue him, screaming, "WooWoo! Help me!" "WooWoo, come get me!" Robin perpetuated that tradition by having her children call their grandmother, WooWoo, which now at their ages of 48 and 46 sounds a bit odd. Jan decided on 'Nana' instead. After losing their spouses, Mary Lou and Betty Ann loved to go to parties at the Nelson and Kemper, have long lunches at the Raphael, and remained soul mates until Betty Ann's death a few years ago. Mother, a lifelong Missouri Democrat, loved nothing more than working on Claire McCaskill's campaigns. Just recently Jan and Robin began reading to their mother excerpts from Claire's recent autobiography. It conjured up such fun memories for Mother but she said she had a few extra details that she could add to what was in the book.

Mary Lou was always career-oriented and a bit of an entrepreneur. In her sixties and seventies, she started her own business where she got paid to anonymously shop in what used to be the best local department stores and dine in the best restaurants to write critiques of their services and food. She acquired Culinary Concepts as an account which meant she got to dine frequently at The American and give them her suggestions. We think she still thought she was doing that with meals in her retirement homes. When she was 80, she began a business where she helped place people her age in retirement settings. She would pick them up, drive them around and help them make a thoughtful choice; then the facility would pay her a commission.
She did this until she moved into a retirement community herself. She loved sales of any type and could not figure out how Jan and Robin were just the opposite. A couple of years ago when she was living in an assisted living facility, the staff decided to start having one-on-one talks with the residents to find out how the facility could improve. Since Robin and Jan heard her daily complaints, they were thrilled that she could tell the director himself. The appointed time came. He said, "Mary Lou, what could we do to improve?" She said, "First of all, you need to be on the floor more. You are the face of public relations and you are marketing all wrong. Secondly, this entire complex is facing the wrong way. It should be facing the north."

A life-long Presbyterian, in her final years Mary Lou particularly loved the comforting daily biblical devotionals in the book, Jesus Calling, and had her daughters read from it when they were with her. Because her grandson and his family had been missionaries in Ethiopia, and because she had a great-granddaughter born in Ethiopia, she took particular delight in the staff in her retirement communities who were born in Africa. Many came into her room unabashedly singing and dancing for Jesus, others gave their incredible testimonies and another fell to his knees with arms reaching upward and prayed for Mother. These poignant, humble and precious examples of faith, hope and love of Jesus drew Mother closer to the Lord, giving her that same hope and comfort.

She leaves behind her two beloved daughters, Robin Frazier (Bob) and Jan Fitzmorris (Al); four adored grandchildren, Al King (Melissa), Kara King Locke (Kevin), Rebecca Fitzmorris McKeon (Matt) and Matthew Fitzmorris (Cheryl); and several great-grandchildren, in whom she delighted, John Paul, Alex and Ellie King, Lauren and Hallie Locke, Connor and Kelly Fitzmorris, Grady, Jake, and Chase Hale, Daniel and Hannah McKeon.

Mary Lou's family would like to thank her devoted friends who visited her to the end, bringing their wit and wisdom and making her feel whole for a few hours. And to the remarkable staff at Aberdeen Village and Grace Hospice who made her feel loved and comforted to the end. The family also wishes to thank you for your kind expressions of sympathy.

In lieu of flowers, gifts in the name of Mary Lou Rivers may be made to First Presbyterian Church, Butler, Missouri, or to Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church, Prairie Village, Kansas.