Sybil Leonard Armes

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Sybil Leonard Armes
Born	January 16, 1914 (1914-01-16) (age 94) Gatesville, Coryell County, Texas, USA
Died	June 29, 2007 (aged 93) Dallas, Texas
Occupation	Author Christian musician Texas poet laureate
Religious beliefs	Baptist
Spouse	Clinton Woodsom Armes (1912-1999}, married sixty-one years until his death
Children	Paul Woodson Armes (born 1950) David Armes Nancy LeCroy

Sybil Leonard Armes (January 16, 1914 - June 29, 2007) was a prominent Baptist author and musician, who served as alternate poet laureate for the U.S. state of Texas in 1969. Among her survivors is Paul Woodson Armes (born 1950), the president of Wayland Baptist University in Plainview in Hale County in the South Plains who previously pastored in Corpus Christi.

Mrs. Armes wrote four books of religious poetry and hundreds of devotional poems for various church and denominational publications. She also penned two books of religious meditations.

She was born near Gatesville in central Texas and attended rural public schools in the area. She then enrolled in the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (then Baylor College for Women) in Belton in Bell County near Temple in central Texas.

In 1938, she married Clinton Woodson Armes (May 24, 1912 - August 11, 1999), a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The couple was wed for sixty-one years until his death.

Mrs. Armes was a teacher for a time. One of her students was the future Dallas Cowboys coach, Tom Landry, a native of Mission in south Texas. Woodson Armes taught at Baylor University in Waco and pastored for twenty-six years congregations in Waco, Fort Worth, and El Paso.

In 1961, Mrs. Armes was the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor convocation speaker. She was given an honorary doctor of letters degree. She also served as a UMHB trustee from 1972-1981. In 1976, she received the university's Outstanding Alumni Award. She was listed in Who's Who in American Women.

In 1987, Woodson and Sybil Armes were honored jointly at a ceremony in Independence, Texas, with the Texas Baptist Elder Statesman Award.

Mrs. Armes died in a Dallas-area nursing home, where she had resided during her last years. She was survived by three children and their spouses -- David and Shirley Armes of Long Beach, California; Nancy and Jan LeCroy of Dallas; and Paul and Duanea Armes of Plainview -- and by granddaughters Sarah Thompson and Ashley Armes.

A musical scholarship has been established at Wayland University in Mrs. Armes' name.

Ten days after Armes' death, a second Christian writer in Texas, Jo Carr, a female Methodist pioneer, died at her home in Lubbock.