Willa Mae Kinder

She was the only ambidextrous person I have ever met. She had beautiful, almost artistic, penmanship with either hand, primarily her left hand. She had beautiful red hair and blue eyes and firey personality that seems to be common with red heads. I remember that she played the piano very well and even wrote some unpublished Gospel music. She loved to sing and did it well. She was a working woman, a bookkeeper and always dressed extremely nice. She had a lovely smile and laughed often. After her father died in 1975, she and Uncle Johnny brought her mother to live with them in Clinton. Grandma Miller lived the remainder of her life with them. Aunt Willa Mae holds a dear place in my heart and memories. She died too young from medical mistakes preformed. She had a simple colonoscopy and in the process of the procedure, her colon was perferated. She developed peritanitis but it was not diagnosed quickly enough. She underwent an estimated 75 x-rays within a one week's period of time. The radiation damaged her liver and spleen. She suffered terribly for about a year before she lost her battle. Added by neice, Rhonda E Goforth

Obituary published in The Clinton Daily News, Clinton OK Sept. 31, 1987

Funeral services for Willa Mae Kinder, 59, wife of former Clinton Fire Chief John Kinder, will be held at 2:00 pm Thursday in the Kern-Schneider-Kiesau Funeral Home Memorial Chapel with Rev. Bob Stewart and Rev. Woodrow Stevens officiating. Pallbearers will be DeWayne Kinder, Junior Deonier, Ronald Dale Collins, Leroy Bennett, Don Crosswhite and Dan Day. Mrs. Kinder died Monday evening, Sept 28, 1987 at Presbyterian Hospital in Oklahoma City. She was born on July 28, 1928 near Cowden OK to John and Dean Reed Miller. She attended the Cowden school for 12 years and graduated as the salutatorian of her class. In 1947, she was married to John Kinder in the home of her parents in Cowden, OK. They farmed in the Cowden-Colony area until 1953 when they moved to Clinton where she was employed in various bookkeeping jobs. Mrs Kinder was a member of the Westside Pentecostal Holiness Church in Clinton, OK. She served as the church secretary, pianist and was a Sunday School teacher. Burial will be in the Sappington Chapel Cemetery at Cowden, OK. Survivors include her husband, John, of the home; two sons, Leon Kinder of Clinton, OK and Earl Kinder of Perryton, TX; two sisters, Ethel Davis of Yukon, OK and Ruby Gayle Collins of Altus, OK and three grandchildren, Chad, Kasey and Jeremy Kinder.