Betty Jean Lewallen Mcever

Betty McEver was raised in Hillsboro, Texas. After completing high school, she enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a bachelor's degree at age 19. In 1946 she married her childhood sweetheart, Bill McEver, in Hillsboro. She and Bill moved to New Orleans. Having previously served in the Army Air Force, Bill enrolled at Tulane University on the GI bill and graduated in 1949 with a bachelor's degree. Betty entered medical school at Tulane University and was academically successful. Like most women of her generation, however, she put family and child-rearing first, and she chose to leave medical school before obtaining her degree. Betty and Bill raised two children: Rodger Paul McEver, a physician and medical researcher in Oklahoma City, and Kay McEver Norton, an attorney and university president in Greeley, Colorado. Bill's career in the oil field services industry took him and his family to Natchez, Mississippi, then Lafayette, Louisiana, and then Oklahoma City. True to her principles, Betty was a devoted wife and mother. She provided her children with a loving foundation that fostered their transition to adult life. After their children were grown, Betty and Bill moved several more times: to New Orleans, Houston, Denver, and Ventura and Thousand Oaks, California. In 1997 they returned to Oklahoma City. Despite serious chronic illnesses, Betty remained committed to her family. She loved tennis, had a life-long passion for reading, and traveled extensively with Bill in their retirement years. She was emblematic of the greatest generation to which she belonged: unassuming, kind, ethical. In 2012 Bill preceded her in death. She is survived by her son and his wife Gigi, her daughter and her husband Tom, her grandchildren, Eric Andrew McEver, Whitney Lea Norton, Paige Meryl Norton Rangel and her husband Tony, her great-grandsons Adriano Thomas Rangel and Diego Hill Rangel, and her great-granddaughter Allesandra Grace Rangel. Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (www.omrf.org).