Alton Carlton Carpenter departed this life on Saturday afternoon, May 14^th, 2022.  Alton, known as Al to his many friends, was born in the small mining town of Paris, Arkansas on January 3, 1941, to Lowell Kenneth Carpenter and Helen Fern (Gattis) Carpenter. Following a mining accident in which Lowell was severely injured, the family moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1950 where they started the business known as L. K.’s Gulf Station and Grocery Store (an early forerunner of today’s convenience stores).

Al graduated from Fort Smith Senior High School and married the love of his life, Shirley A. Cooper. He went to work with his parents in the business. While working in the business he earned a bachelor’s degree from Ozark Technical University in Ozark, Arkansas. Upon the death of his father, Al joined his mother in operating the business. Al became a competent mechanic and spent most of his adult years in operating the station, garage, and grocery store.

In 1987 Al and Shirley moved to Pleasant Hope, Missouri to be near other family members. Later Al and Shirley moved to Springfield, Missouri to be nearer Shirley’s work as a health care worker. There they continued their residence until death took them just two weeks apart on April 30^th and May 14^th, 2022.

Al was a man of all seasons and of multiple talents. In addition to being a skilled mechanic he built prize winning T-buckets, he built his own aquariums and raised exotic fish, he built his own quilting machine and made beautiful quilts for family and friends and built model rail roads with lavish layouts.

The one word which best describes Al is “friend.”  While living in Pleasant Hope, he joined with friends from the community at June’s Café each morning to start the day with coffee and conversation.  When Al and Shirley moved to Springfield, he made a new set of friends and joined with them every morning at the Waffle House for a time of conversation and coffee. Friendship was a hallmark of his life. The words of the famous poem written by Sam Walter Foss in 1897, “The House by the Side of the Road” aptly describe Al’s life. The second stanza reads:

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

                Where the Race of men go by

                The men who are good, and the men who are bad,

                As good and as bad as I

                I would not sit in the scorner’s seat

                Nor hurl the cynic’s ban –

                Let me live in a house by the side of the road

                And be a friend to man.

Al was truly a friend to man and will be greatly missed by his family and his many friends.

Al was proceeded in death by his parents, Lowell and Helen Carpenter, his wife Shirley who passed away on April 30th, two brothers, John, and Kenneth, and by his sister, Elizabeth Ann Young.

He is survived by two sons born to his union with Shirley: Daniel and Robert Carpenter and by four grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren.