Mary Ann Purcell

     Mary Ann Purcell passed away peacefully at age 98 on December 1, 2023 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was born in Burlington, Iowa on April 23, 1925 to Andrew Frederik and Laura Clara (Rudiger) Andersen, the eighth of their nine children.

     As a teenager helping to teach Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church in Burlington, she realized that she had a passion for teaching children. She graduated from Burlington High School in 1942, from Burlington Junior College in 1944, and from Iowa State Teachers College in 1946. During World War II she worked at an aircraft parts factory in Burlington.

     Her teaching career started in September 1946 in Beloit, Wisconsin. In September 1947 she started teaching in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where a fellow teacher, Marie McBroom, introduced her to her brother, Bill Purcell, a petroleum exploration company employee from Grandfield, Oklahoma. They became engaged in January 1948 and they were married on August 29, 1948 in Burlington. Then they drove off together to Chickasha, Oklahoma, where they went into the automotive parts business with their in-laws, Raymond and Marie McBroom, and where their first two children, Pam and Laura, were born. Along with fellow members of the local chapter of the American Association of University Women, Mary Ann helped to organize and then became the director of the first kindergarten in Chickasha, and it was later taken over by the Oklahoma College for Women.

     In 1953 Bill began a long career in the insurance industry in Oklahoma City, and Mary Ann did some scouting and research and together they decided that the nearby town of Norman looked like a really nice place to live. After moving to Norman they had two more children, Bill and Mandy. She joined the Norman Kindergarten Association, and taught kindergarten at the University School on North Base, and also at Jackson Elementary School. 

     She and Bill enjoyed traveling together, singing together in church, and visiting and hosting their children and grandchildren and their large extended families. For forty years she has been a member of the Coterie Book Club, and she and Bill both enjoyed the festive gatherings of the Scandinavian Club and the Norman Lions Club. She was very interested in researching her family history and she gathered a lot of the recollections of her relatives and wrote about them. Mary Ann loved singing in the choir and growing in her Christian faith at University Lutheran Church in Norman. She took great delight in recalling her many wonderful memories of her family and her friends and her students. Mary Ann believed that we are called to love one another and to help and encourage each other, and she taught by example how important it is to express our gratitude and to pass on to others the love and support that we have been given. 

     She was preceded in death by her mother and father, her husband William Henry “Bill” Purcell, Jr., brothers Eugene, Paul, and John, sisters Emma Laura, Dorothy, Edna, Margaret, and Irene, and her son-in-law Richard Innes. She is survived by her four children, Pamela Marie Innes, Laura Anne Menard and her husband Gordon Menard, William Henry “Bill” Purcell, III and his wife Ursula Purcell, and Mary Anne “Mandy” Locke and her husband James Locke, twenty grandchildren and great grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. 

    A memorial service will be held on Saturday, February 3 at 11:00 am at University Lutheran Church, 914 Elm Avenue, Norman, Oklahoma 73072. Memorial contributions can be made to University Lutheran Church or to The Norman Public Schools Foundation, 131 S. Flood Avenue, Norman, Oklahoma 73069.