Obit of Keown, Elizabeth S. - Cleveland County, Oklahoma Submitted by: Gene Phillips 8 Jul 2007 Return to Cleveland County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/cleveland/cleveland.html ===================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ===================================================================== ::St John's Episcopal Church Columbarium--Norman OK Keown, Elizabeth S. KEOWN, Elizabeth S. Virginian, Loving Mother and Grandmother, Librarian, Devout Anglican, and Ardent Democrat. Elizabeth Seward (Betty) Keown passed on December 2, 2006, in Sacramento, California. Born on November 28, 1911, she was 95 years old. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer. She was the wife of Professor William Hamilton Keown, daughter of Murray Bland and Ellrania Allmond Seward, and granddaughter of William Walter and Catherine Van Name Allmond of Gloucester County, Virginia. Mrs. Keown grew up at Allmondsville in Gloucester County on the York River in Virginia. She lived in Gloucester until she moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1928 where she attended Eastern High School and then Goucher College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1934 with a major in French and Spanish. She received her Bachelor of Science - Library Service degree from Columbia University in 1942. Mrs. Keown held many library positions, including ones at Goucher College, the Army School for Special Service, the Pentagon, the Office of Inter-American Affairs, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma. While working at Washington and Lee College in Lexington, Virginia, she met her husband in 1943 as he was waiting to serve in the Army in Europe. In 1949 they moved to Norman, Oklahoma, where Professor Keown taught management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Oklahoma, established the Petroleum Land Management program in 1959, and retired as a Boyd Professor Emeritus in 1978. Mrs. Keown had returned to work in 1962 after taking care of her mother, and she retired in 1974. Mrs. Keown moved to Sacramento in August of 1991 to be near her granddaughter, Patricia Elizabeth (Beth) Griffiths, whom she helped to raise. Beth was always a constant source of happiness and inspiration. Her two more recent grandchildren, Beni and Ada Keown, also added immensely to her sense of joy and fulfillment via many visits during the last five years of her life. She lived independently in her own apartment in Sacramento from 1991-2006, where she died peacefully with the help of her family, Pop-Ins home health care, and Mercy Hospice. Mrs. Keown, a lifelong Anglican, grew up in Ware Episcopal Church in Gloucester, Virginia, and was an active member at St. John's Episcopal Church in Norman, Oklahoma, from 1949-1991 and at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento from 1991-2006. She loved Dixieland jazz, attending each jazz festival in Sacramento since 1983, and she won the Sacramento farmers' market peach cobbler contest in July 1996. Her lifelong passions included cooking, traveling, reading, candle- making, birds, and deeply affectionate connections with many close friends throughout the country. An ardent "FDR" Democrat, her greatest recent happiness was the national election results in November 2006; she fervently hoped for a return to an authentically compassionate national political life during her latter years. Mrs. Keown was preceded in death by her husband in July 1981; by her brother Murray Bland Seward in 1976; and by her sister Kathryn Seward Young in June 2005. She is survived by her two sons, Allan H. Keown of Sacramento and David W. Keown of Evanston, Illinois; her daughters-in-law, Diane Griffiths of Sacramento and Andrea Versenyi of Evanston; her grandchildren Beth Griffiths of La Jolla, California, and Beni and Ada Keown of Evanston; her cousin Otis Seward of Alexandria, Virginia; and her many friends. Mrs. Keown's cremains will be interred with those of her husband in the Columbarium at St. John's Episcopal Church in Norman, Oklahoma. The interment service will take place on one of the Sundays in April 2007, a date yet to be determined. A Requiem Eucharist will be held at Trinity Cathedral on January 7, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. It will be followed by a celebration of her life and New Orleans-themed dinner at 5:00 p.m. in the Great Hall of Trinity. Anyone wishing to honor her life is welcome. Memorial contributions may be sent either to St. John's Episcopal Church in Norman or to the Trinity Cathedral Outreach Fund in Sacramento. Published in the Sacramento Bee on 12/13/2006. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to Cleveland County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/cleveland/cleveland.html