Freda Merle (Sprinkle) Hulse Hassell

Freda Merle Hassell, 93, Edmond, Okla., passed away on July 10, 2025.

She was born on November 9, 1931, in Rogers County, Oklahoma, to Claude C. and Delitha Lucille Sprinkle.

Her family moved to Alma, Nebraska, in 1943, when her father (deceased in 1966) took a job with the Kansas-Nebraska Gas Company. Her mother (deceased in 2002) is buried in the Hill City, Kansas, cemetery.

Freda graduated from Stockton High School in 1949. She married Wendell L. Hulse in 1950 and had four children who survive her: Lynn Hulse of Gun Barrel City, Texas; Cindy Hulse Meador of Edmond, Oklahoma; Tim Hulse of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Karen Yelinek of Norman, Oklahoma.

Her husband's job in the oil field, on drilling rigs, meant moving frequently, first to Kimbell, Neb., and then to Farmington, N.M., where her husband became a partner in a drilling fluids company. They sold out in 1965 and moved back to Stockton, where they operated a marina at Webster Lake. Later, they relocated to Hill City, where they operated a restaurant and marina. When the marina closed, her husband went to work in the oil business again, and they moved to Iran, where her husband worked for a drilling supervisory company on contract with the Iranian Oil Company. When civil war in Iran broke out, they moved back to Moore, Okla., and her husband worked for Phillips Petroleum as a contract drilling supervisor in their North Sea operations. On a rotational leave back to the USA, her husband died in an auto accident in January of 1979 while traveling to visit family in Logan, Kansas. Freda was interred next to his grave on September 27, 2025, in the Pleasant View Cemetery in Logan.

She is preceded in death by brothers Claude C. Sprinkle, Jr., and Kenneth Ray Sprinkle; and an infant sister, Bonnie Sue Sprinkle.

She is survived by her sisters Joann Owen, Hill City; Sheri Lynn Schlemer, Puyallup, Wash., and Linda Kay Hensley, Valley Center, N.D.; and brothers Louis Sprinkle, Rincon, Ga., Paul Sprinkle, Sequim, Wash., Tommy Sprinkle, Dallas, Texas, Raymond Sprinkle, Hill City, and Rodney Sprinkle, Wichita.