Vyron Melvin Carpenter, Sr.

Vyron Melvin Carpenter, Sr., age 93, passed away Friday, October 28, 2022, at his residence. A graveside service will be held at Noon on Tuesday, November 1, 2022, at Old Woodbury Cemetery with the family officiating. A visitation will be held from 9:00–11:00 am prior to the service at Marshall and Marshall Funeral Directors in Hillsboro.

Vyron Melvin “Junior” Carpenter of Weatherford, TX was born on February 13, 1929, in Henryetta, Oklahoma to James and Pearl (Tolbert) Carpenter.  It was a Wednesday, on the precipice of the Great Depression. His father Jim, a coal miner from Henryetta, Oklahoma, died in a mining accident just 10 months after his birth. His mother, Pearl Tolbert, would go on to move to Donna, TX, where her father Melvin Bowers Tolbert lived, taking baby Vyron and his two older siblings with her. 

When he was 10, he sold newspapers on the street in Donna; in his early teens he loaded sacks of flour; and in his late teens, he helped two local dairies in neighboring Edinburg deliver fresh milk in heavy glass jugs. He was so much younger than the other helpers, they called him Junior, a nickname which would stick his entire life. 

In 1946, he stood in the parson’s living room, with only two friends as witnesses, and married Veda Truitt, who he’d met delivering milk to her home in Edinburg. He was 17; she was just 16. Neither of them had been able to finish high school quite yet. Her brothers were still coming back from war. 

Not long after, the young couple moved to Donna, Texas, as Vyron took a mechanic job for the local farm store and delivered pumps for deep well irrigation all over the Valley’s citrus farms. Not long after, he switched to driving a road grader for the water district; after a few years, he began working with the Donna school district, repairing their buses. He would work there for the next 20 years, becoming supervisor over all maintenance of grounds and vehicles for Donna ISD. 

In the meantime, he raised two sons, Melvin and Michael, the first arriving the year of his 18th birthday.  

In 1975, he and Veda left the Rio Grande Valley and moved north, him to take a job as maintenance supervisor for the Grapevine School District; her to take a job as engineer at Dickie’s, then a young company, and rise with them until she was sent to Europe to train others to make Dickie’s signature garments, taking Vyron with her. 

He retired in 1994 as the maintenance supervisor for the Weatherford School District, and within the next year, was diagnosed with colon cancer and had a stroke. After surviving those, he resolved to never sit still again, and with Veda, began buying up Depression glass to resell - which quickly became the work of their retirement, buying up china and crystal and driving to North Carolina regularly to sell to a company named Replacements, who knew Vyron and Veda as excellent suppliers for over 30 years.

He is survived by his wife of 76 years, Veda Truitt Carpenter; their sons, James Michael Carpenter, 68, and Vyron Melvin Carpenter, 74; their grandchildren, James Carpenter, Laura Carpenter, Beth Carpenter, Dr. Ariel Carpenter, Daniel Carpenter, and Marcus Carpenter; his sister, Irma Irwin and brother Patrick Senning.  

He is preceded in death most recently by his sister, Bertie Pearl; his father, Jim Carpenter; his mother, Pearl Talbert; his brothers, James, Herman, and George; and his sister, Frances.

He was a man who loved the sound of a well-oiled engine and the quiet of a winter’s early morning. He loved butter pecan ice cream and Dr. Pepper. He lived to laugh, and never got tired of a joke - or his many sayings, which survive among his grandchildren. He was a meticulous man who dressed in unstudied style and packed every dish and teacup as if he were swaddling a baby. 

He was a father of high standards and a grandfather of high expectations. A man of few words, he needed none when it mattered. With a look, an eyebrow, a disgusted sigh, you just knew his opinion, no captions needed. 

Besides, he didn’t need words. He had Veda Ruth Truitt, the love of his life, his spokesperson, his best friend, his partner, and his conscience. Together, they pulled their little family out of poverty and catapulted their children and their grandchildren into the middle class. It was the great joy of their life to raise, support, and advise six grandchildren, even sending one granddaughter to medical school. They had 76 years together and spent almost every day of those years together. 

At the end, he came home, to fall asleep at last on Friday, October 28th in his Weatherford home of over 40 years. He will be missed, especially when his grandchildren find themselves by the side of the road with a smoking car hood, or when his sons wish they could ask his advice on the right place to put a hot tub.

In lieu of flowers, the family request donations to Weatherford Animal Rescue (https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E330574&id=3).