Flora Ruth McDonald
Flora Ruth McDonald was born on 6 July 1915 at Davis, in Murray County, Oklahoma, the daughter of Elbert Earle McDonald, called Earl, a Texas-born farmer, and Susie Malinda Edgmon. She had two brothers, Joe and Bobie. The family moved to Hughes County before 1920 and settled at Calvin, where she graduated from Calvin High School in 1933 and went on to some business college courses.
On 2 October 1938 at Wewoka she married William Ralph Dowdy of Holdenville, five years older, the only son of a Holdenville contractor. Her father died at Calvin in 1943 while Ralph was in the Pacific. She had three children: Diane, Roberta Ruth, born at Tulsa on 23 December 1949, and Alan. In April 1950 her husband's parents were killed by the Holdenville tornado. At times she worked at Texaco, where Ralph was a land man, and later in management at a plumbing company, but her main occupation was always her home and her children. She knitted, quilted, crocheted, gardened, watched birds and walked.
Ralph died on 31 May 2007 after sixty-eight years of marriage. Ruth lived on, in her last years at Inverness Village in Tulsa, and in 2015 the Centenarian Club of Oklahoma inducted her at a hundred, with a framed certificate and a Golden Okie button. Asked why she thought she had lived so long, she said: "I like to walk and that kept me active." Her grandchildren called her Gran Gran.
She died peacefully on 10 August 2016 at Inverness Village, aged 101. After a visitation at Schaudt's Funeral Service in Glenpool, the Rev. Gary Volz conducted a graveside service at the Holdenville Cemetery on Saturday 13 August 2016, and she was buried beside Ralph under their stone carved with cattle and a farmhouse. She left Diane Rach of Calgary, Roberta Hooper and her husband Don of Fletcher, Alan Dowdy of Broken Arrow, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Her parents, her husband and her two brothers had died before her.
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Cite: Heirology, "Flora Ruth McDonald (1915-2016)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/flora-ruth-mcdonald-1915-2016-9ee8a8.