Mary Cathryn Pryor Obituary - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Pryor was born February 13, 1928, in Russellville, Arkansas, to Roy Bryan and Mamie Ashmore Speer, and grew up in New Deal before enrolling at Texas Tech University. She stayed a Red Raider for life, wearing the red and black long after graduation. Most of her teaching career, more than 30 years of it, played out in Friona, the town she always called home.

In 1951 she married Benny Dowell Pryor, and the two raised their family in Friona while Mary built a reputation in the classroom teaching junior high students. Outside of school, she filled her time quilting, finishing pieces that became keepsakes for her family.

For families across the South Plains, her story tracks a familiar path. Kids grow up in small towns like New Deal, head to Tech in Lubbock, then carry that Red Raider loyalty back out to places like Friona for decades of work and family life. Former students and neighbors in Friona and New Deal remember a teacher who spent almost four decades in front of a classroom, longer than most careers last altogether.

Nearly a century of life, and decades of it spent teaching Texas history to kids who probably had no idea their teacher helped write a small piece of it herself.