Harriet Louise Spracklen Gillespie, 89, of Sheridan died Wednesday, June 20, 2001, in Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County.

Memorial services will be 11 a.m. Monday, July 23, at First United Methodist Church with the Rev. Joseph Keys officiating. Interment of cremains will be in the Masonic 8 section of Sheridan Municipal Cemetery. Arrangements are with Champion Ferries Funeral Home.

Mrs. Gillespie was born Aug. 8, 1911, in Sheridan to Clement L. (Clem) and Nellie Edith (Welch) Spracklen. She attended Linden and Taylor schools and spent several summers working on the ranch her father homesteaded in Gopher, Mont.

She graduated from Sheridan High School in 1928.  She went to work for Laurence Gillespie at the Mills-Jackson Co., and they married Christmas Day, 1931, in Billings.

They bought out the owners by 1935 and renamed the business Sheridan Stationery. The business moved to its present location at 206 N. Main St. when the Gillespies bought that building in 1957.

She sold the business in 1975 and retired in 1979.

She was a member of First United Methodist Church since 1924, and also belonged to American Legion Auxiliary, Daughters of the Nile and Friends of the Library.

She was an avid reader, loved to travel, did embroidery and spent as much time as possible during summers at the family cabin on North Piney in Story, which she and Mr. Gillespie built in 1955.

She was preceded in death by her husband; five sisters, Mabel Simmerman, Bess Bessey, Bertha Wolff, Myrtle Lind and Geraldine Danner; and a brother, Len Spracklen.

Survivors include two sons, John Gillespie of Chester Springs, Pa., and Jim Gillespie of Sheridan and St. Louis; and two grandchildren.

Memorials may benefit the Kalif Shrine Crippled Children Travel Fund, Box K, Sheridan, or First United Methodist Church.