William Warren Edwards

William Warren Edwards, Landscape Architect, was born to Warren Hamilton Edwards and Pauline Mills Edwards on November 28, 1929, in Oklahoma City on Thanksgiving Day and passed away on November 11, 2024. Warren attended, like his father, Putnam Heights Grade School. He attended Harding Junior High and graduated from Old Classen Highschool. He at tended the University of Oklahoma where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Botany. Warren served in the Air Force as an Intelligence Officer in the Strategic Air Command in the 93rd Bomb Wing at Castle Air Force Base in Merced, California. 

He received a degree in Landscape Architecture from the School of Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. At graduation he received the Certificate of Merit of The American Society of Landscape Architects and won, in competition, the Dumbarton Oaks Junior Research Fellowship in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University which called for a year of study in Europe.

He worked in offices in Texas, North Carolina and Florida before establishing his practice in Oklahoma City in 1965. In private practice he designed sites throughout much of Oklahoma and in Oklahoma City, as well as in Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Los Angeles, New York, South Carolina and Kentucky. 

Warren was a 30-year member of the Oklahoma City Historic Preservation and Landmark Commission and its representative on the Capitol-Medical Center Zoning and Improvement Commission. He was a member of the Oklahoma Historical Society, Putnam Heights Historical Preservation Area, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, The Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, The English-Speaking Union and a life member of the Oklahoma City Zoological Society. For some years a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Oklahoma College of Architecture and the Board of Advisors to the master's program in Landscape Architecture there. He was an adjunct instructor in Landscape Architecture at Oklahoma State University for 15 years.

Warren dearly loved his siblings, niece, nephews and grand nieces and nephews and always enjoyed hearing of their activities from childhood to their college years. He never lost interest in music, reading, enjoying friendships and being with family. He was a lover of nature and all things in the natural world as evidenced by his profession. And Warren always maintained: “a dog will always be man’s best friend”.

Warren was preceded in death by his parents and his sisters, Caroline Edwards Waggoner and Ronnie Claire Edwards. He is survived by his longtime friend, Elizabeth Prosser, his sister, Helen Edwards Woodward and her husband, Jack, of Norman. Also, his niece Amanda Woodward Olszewski and her husband, Ben, and their daughters Helen, Caroline and Mary Mills of Oklahoma City; two nephews, Jackson Woodward and his wife, Dorothy Jane of Louisville, Kentucky and their children Doe, Jack, Mae and Gray and his nephew, Geoffrey Woodward and his children Simms, Geoffrey and Will (Warrens namesake) of Nashville, Tennessee. 

The family is grateful for the care and friendship extended to Warren by Brooke Segrest, Elizabeth Mayo, Rene Fleming, Teresa Osburn and Epsie Field. For remembrances your favorite charity, the Kemp Music Fund of the First Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City, The Design Guild of the School of Design at North Carolina State University in Raleigh North Carolina or the scholarship fund of The English-Speaking Union of Oklahoma City c/o Communities Foundation of Oklahoma. 

Services for Warren will be Wednesday, November 20th at 1:00PM at the First Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma City. 

"Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, shatters the white radiance of eternity." -  Percy B. Shelley