Mary Ellen Scrivner
(March 26, 1923 - April 10, 2011)

Mary Ellen Scrivner, 88, of Huntington, loving wife, mother and grandmother, passed away Sunday, April 10, 2011 at the Wyngate Senior Living Community, Barboursville, WV. Funeral services will be held 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 14, 2011 at Klingel-Carpenter Mortuary by Dr. Paul Russell. Interment will follow in Woodmere Memorial Park. Mary Ellen was born March 26, 1923, the third child and daughter of Edgar Blaine King and Mary Vada Williams King, in a converted schoolhouse in Princeton, WV. She spent several months living in the Virginian Hotel after the family house in Stumpy Bottom (in Princeton) burned to the ground in 1927. Her formal education started in the first grade in Princeton, continued in Portland, OR, then in a one-room schoolhouse outside Yellow Jacket, CO, then in Cortez, CO and ended in Huntington at Marshall College. While at Marshall, she worked nights at Polan Industries making gun sights for World War II. In 1941, she interrupted her education and moved to Willow Run, MI with her family and from there she enlisted in the Womens Army Corps and served in the Medical Corp for about two years. After her discharge, she returned to Huntington and Marshall where she would become reacquainted with Charles Allen Scrivner. They were married June 3, 1947 and spent the next two summers as students at the University of Colorado. They returned to Huntington and she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Marshall College in 1948. Mary Ellen was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Huntington Civic League, the First United Methodist Church and the Cotillion Dance Club. She was a volunteer with the Tri-State Literacy Council and the Cabell Huntington Hospital Gift Shop for many years. She and Scriv enjoyed traveling, dining out and dancing to Big Band music. She enjoyed watching and identifying birds. She was a voracious reader and was fascinated by words and their origins. Most of all, Mary Ellen was a loving and caring parent and grandparent. To her granddaughters, she was “Grammy”, to her children, she was “Mom” and to her husband, she was “Mebby”. All of us loved her very much. Mary Ellen was preceded in death by Charles in 2009 and her sisters Rebecca Ann Evans in 1998 and Sarah Lucille Thomas in 1995. She is survived by two brothers and sister-in-law, Edgar and Suzette King and Robert King of Tucson, AZ; a daughter and son-in-law, Michele and Joe Farrell of Huntington; two sons and daughter-in-law, Rodney and Debbie Scrivner of Leawood, KS, and Thomas Kevin Scrivner of Riverside, CA; foster daughter Laura Carroll Chandler of State College, Pennsylvania; two granddaughters, Megan Farrell of Huntington and Kerry Farrell of Columbus, OH.
Visitation will be held Wednesday, April 13, 2011 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Klingel-Carpenter Mortuary. Memorial donations may be made to Hospice of Huntington, PO Box 464, Huntington, WV 25709 or the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Church Street Station, PO Box 780, New York, NY 10008.