BANGOR – Sarah Jane White Spruce, mother of author Tabitha King, was recalled Monday as a devoted mother, lover of words and dedicated employee. She died Saturday at age 83.

She and her husband, Raymond Spruce, had eight children and were married for 63 years.

“She was a good mother,” Jack Cashman, a senior adviser to Gov. John Baldacci who grew up in Old Town and knew the Spruce family, said Monday. “She was always active with the kids [and] active in the church.”

Spruce was born Dec. 7, 1923, in Old Town to Almon F. White and Harriet M. White.

Described as a lifelong student, Spruce was the valedictorian of her high school class and a senior at the University of Maine, where she took classes for 16 years.

Spruce converted to Catholicism in 1944 and loved the church.

Along with raising her family, she worked in the family business at Spruce’s General Store in Milford and was employed at the Old Town city clerk’s office. She also was an administrative secretary at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service.

“She was the queen bee over in the administrative office as far as secretarial work was concerned,” Vaughn Holyoke, who worked with Spruce, said. “She was always helpful. She got along with people very well and was nice to work with.”

Like her daughter, Spruce had a curious mind and a passion for writing.

She was an accomplished Scrabble player, a lifelong Boston Red Sox baseball fan, and a gifted seamstress and knitter, known for her quilts, sweaters and mittens.

“She was just a very nice woman,” Cashman said. “They were a very nice family – a good Maine family.”

A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. today at St. John’s Catholic Church, 207 York St., Bangor, with the Very Rev. Richard McLaughlin pastor, celebrant. Interment will be at Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor. Gifts in her memory may be sent to St. Joseph Healthcare, P.O. Box 1638, Bangor 04402-1638. Condolences to the family may be expressed at www.Brookings

Smith.com.

Excavation

By Sarah Jane White Spruce

Bury me in orange.

I want to lie there bright and gay

Beneath my four, or slightly more,

Feet of clay.

When other men in other times

Disinter my grave

I would they’d find

A twist or two of orange twine

In my dank cave,

And pick it up, a brilliant thread

Against the whitened bones of one long dead.

When someone picks my scrap of orange ravel,

I hope he comprehends

I gaily travel.