Fern Aileen Allen

Funeral service for Fern Aileen Allen, age 98 of Chickasha will be held at 10:00 am on Saturday, March 11, 2023, at College Heights Baptist Church with burial to follow in Red Hill Cemetery at Hammon, Oklahoma at 3:00 pm. Viewing will be Thursday and Friday from 9am-7pm at McRay Funeral Home. Fern was born August 26, 1924, in McClure, Oklahoma. She died March 3, 2023, in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Fern graduated as valedictorian from Hammon, OK. She worked in her dad's grain elevator as a teenager. She married James Lewis Allen on Christmas Eve, 1941. They were married 47 years before he passed away. During World War II she worked wiring airplanes for the Army Air Corps in California. After the war she returned to Oklahoma where she worked as a Post Master in Moorewood, Oklahoma as well as helping on the family farm. She worked in the schools at Gallup, New Mexico as director of lunch programs in Gallup-McKinley County, New Mexico for 15 years. She moved back to Oklahoma to be close to family and worked as director of special services at Grady Memorial Hospital until she retired in 1988. She worked as Chairman for many community organizations and was awarded the Chamber of Commerce Volunteer of the Year. One of the many organizations she worked with was Access Health Care which she helped to organize. She functioned as their director for over 20 years. During all this time she was active at College Heights Baptist Church where she also taught Sunday School. Fern was preceded in death by her parents Houston and Minnie Cope; brother Frances Cope and husband James Lewis Allen. She is survived by two sons, James Lewis Allen, Jr (Jim) and Nadine, and Larry Frances Allen and wife Joyce of Chickasha, Oklahoma; two sisters, Linda Dodson of Hammon, Oklahoma and Mary Ann Troncole of Bellville, Texas; 16 grandchildren; 16 great grandchildren; five great-great children and a host of family and friends