Mary Belle Booher, aged 99 years, breathed her final breath Monday morning, July 2, to the sound of her eldest grandson, Kevin Rehl, reading the Twenty-third Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. She embodied a lifelong example of faith, talent, artistry, dignity, endurance, humor, and love. She was born Mary Belle Bass, one of six siblings to Grace and Shelby Bass, in Winifred, Montana, on March 2, 1919.
After her family moved to Oklahoma, she married Theron Elwood Booher in 1942 and moved to Luther, where they together raised five children on what grew to be an 800-acre dairy farm. Her countless surviving friends and neighbors will remember her ceramics studio behind the farmhouse, her delicious cooking, her beautiful soprano voice, her Siamese cats, and her neat-as-a-pin home. She played hopscotch with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and let us all ring the farm’s dinner bell. She encouraged reading and a love of the natural world, loved singing everywhere, including in the church choir, and taught Sunday School. She didn’t like seat belts, margarine, or low-fat milk.
Mary Belle joins her husband of 53 years (d. 1995); two of her daughters, Pamela Anne Rehl (d. 1995) and Susan Vinette Gilliland (d. 2017); and one granddaughter, Emerald Dae Cox (d. 1998). Surviving family includes a brother, Bob Bass, Edmond, and two sisters, Reba Dawkins, Edmond, and Gloretta Agnew, Tustin, CA; three children, Timothy Theron Booher, Allen Keith Booher, and Karen Elizabeth Boiles and their families, all of Edmond. Mary Belle is also survived by 13 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren, and countless friends. All are invited to a memorial service at the First Christian Church of Luther, 415 E. 1st Street, at 2pm Sunday, July 22. The family extends its heartfelt thanks to Mary Belle’s long-term care from Jillie Ronas, Patty Puckett, and the staff of Tuscany Village in Oklahoma City. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to First Christian Church of Luther.
