Della Alene Kirby

Della Alene Brown Kirby passed away October 29, 2011 at Muskogee, Oklahoma. Services were held November 4, at 2:00 p.m. at the North Fork Baptist Church in Eufaula, officiating was Reverend Walter Mullican of Oklahoma City. Internment followed in Greenwood Cemetery under the direction of Hunn, Black & Merritt Funeral Home & Crematory. Pallbearers were Karl Rivers of Eufaula, Mike Brown of Sallisaw, Robert Gaddy of Muskogee, Mike Scifres of Eufaula, Clarence Kirby of Eufaula and Marshall Pruitt of Eufaula. Honorary pallbearers were Kenneth Bass, Norman Wagoner, Jimmie Dornan, Rick Bailey, Ronnie Rippee and Ed Reynolds. Della was born in Fame, Oklahoma on April 26, 1914 to Jesse Martin Brown and Audrey Bell (Boatmun) Brown. She was married to Ernest Raymond Kirby April 2, 1936 in Eufaula, Oklahoma. One child was born to this union; William Foster Kirby, Born August 21, 1946. She attended schools in Eufaula and Tulsa, Oklahoma. While in high school, she was listed as an outstanding student in the Oklahoma Honor Society and later at the University of Oklahoma. During World War II, she was a Civil Service employee in the Personnel Office at the Naval Ammunition Depot in McAlester, Oklahoma where she was supervisor of statistics for about 8,000 people who were employed there during the war. In 1959, she was employed by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma where she worked for seventeen years, three and one-half years of which were as Medical Record Librarian at the Oklahoma Baptist Hospital in Muskogee. When the hospital closed she was invited to go to Oklahoma City to work in the Baptist Building, which is the headquarters for Baptist work in Oklahoma. She served as a secretary in the Baptist Foundation Office five years and later in the Executive Office until she retired in 1976. She was a member of the North Fork Baptist Church in Eufaula; Past President of Green Country Porcelain Artists; Past Matron of the Order of Eastern Star, Eufaula Chapter 161, where she served on numerous district committees and in 1983 was personal page to the Worthy Grand Matron of Oklahoma during the State Convention in Guthrie. In 1984, she was chosen to be personal page to the Most Worshipful Grand Patron of the General Grand Chapter at the State Convention. She was a charter member of the State White Shrine Club No. 1. Della was preceded in death by her parents, a brother, Dyton Brown, two sisters, Willie Mae Jones and Mary Juanita Owens, and her husband Ernest Raymond Kirby, of fifty-eight years. She is survived by her son, William Foster Kirby of Eufaula; her grandson, Matthew Foster Kirby of Muskogee; her granddaughter, Delana Lee Kirby of Irving, Texas; one sister, Utha Faye Fritz of Bixby and several nieces and nephews.