Alice Marie McCarley
1927 – 2020
Alice Marie Hannah McCarley died July 31, 2020 at the age of 93. She was born February 24, 1927 in Suffolk, Virginia. Her parents were Sallie Marie Riddick Hannah and Paul Joseph Hannah. Alice’s life abruptly changed as a teenager when her father died suddenly. In 1944 she graduated from Suffolk high school, team name, “Peanuts” (Go Peanuts!). At about this same time she could see the flames from burning tankers on the Chesapeake Bay torpedoed by German U-Boats.
After high school, she attended college for one year before transferring to the University of Virginia medical technician school where she completed her training and continued to work for several years. She was an excellent hematology technician and a few years later was sought out for a job at the V.A. Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. She accepted that offer and there she met her future husband, Ben Pushmataha McCarley, MD of McAlester, Oklahoma. Two people could not have had more divergent interests. Objectivity failed, the two married on January 30, 1954 and two-thirds of a century of happy marriage followed. She had her charm, loaded with kindness.
From Birmingham the family (now three) moved to Dallas, Texas where, except for six months, they lived for the next fifty years. For several of those years she was active in the leadership of Bible Study Fellowship. Alice’s life is one to emulate and she is greatly missed. The smiles and tears that burst forth when we think about her come from deep down inside.
For six months she and her family lived in the Peruvian jungle where she worked as a short-term assistant with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. They were there during the rainy season. Her comment- “They didn’t tell me it was going to rain twenty-four hours a day, every day, for several months.” It did, and as the rivers rose, so did the snakes. One day when she was carrying groceries to our cabin, she stepped on a snake, threw the groceries up in the air, cracked all the eggs, didn’t get snake bit, and came to the house and scrambled the eggs, bits of shell and all, just for us.
She changed the lives of her family, extended family, neighbors and friends with her humor, her good food, her devotion to Christ and her kindness and love. We look forward to a heavenly reunion with her.
She is preceded in death by one grandchild. She is survived by her husband, Ben McCarley MD; children Hannah McCarley Boyle (Mike), Betsy Billys Hill (Walt), Ben Pushmataha McCarley Jr, David Luke McCarley (Jill), 9 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren.
A public visitation will be held on Wednesday, August 5 from 3:00 P.M. t0 7:00 P.M. at Matthews Funeral Home. Funeral services will be held at Matthews Funeral Home Chapel on Thursday, August 6 at 2:00 P.M. with interment to follow at Gracelawn Cemetery in Edmond, Oklahoma.
To watch the service click on the link below: