Carrie Will Coffman Praeger

She graduated from the University of Oklahoma when she was nineteen, spent the next eight years teaching school and helping her younger sister and brother through university. She taught herself typing and shorthand, took a job with Phillips Oil Company in New York City, where she met Otto Praeger. They were married in 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma, and spent the next five years in Bangkok, Siam (now Thailand), where their three daughters, Janet Alice (1929), Elinor (1930) and Helen Elizabeth (1932) were born. The family returned to the US in 1933 and lived in Washington, DC, San Diego, California and Washington again. She taught piano, arranged a friend's concert tours, and helped many Thai students with their education until her death at age 52.