Karen Leveridge

Karen Leveridge 1933-2010   Karen Frances Leveridge, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend, passed away in Oklahoma City on April 6, 2010 after a prolonged illness. Karen's life was one devoted to service and filled with passion, optimism, and hard work on behalf of others. She might best be remembered and honored for her love of children, which was boundless. She experienced no greater joy than to interact with children, to view the world through their eyes. And children, in turn, were drawn to her. Even those with whom she spent only a few passing moments knew they'd found a true friend. The middle child of three born to Cecil and Frances Oakes, Karen began her remarkable life on February 3, 1933, in Norman, Oklahoma.  Her father was the superintendent of schools Paden, OK, and later Okemah, where Karen spent her formative years. Although she would later relocate to Oklahoma City and have the opportunity to travel to major cities across the country and around the world, she remained ever proud to have grown up in a small town. Karen Leveridge attended Oklahoma A&M from 1951-1953 before moving to Oklahoma City to accept a job with TransCon Trucking Company.  As a young adult, she was active at St. Luke's Methodist Church, which is where she met her husband, Lloyd Leveridge. The two were married on October 30, 1954, and remained devoted to each other through their nearly 56 years of love and mutual support. Karen was a committed participant in a variety of local, state and national education organizations, and was appointed to numerous related boards and commissions by various state leaders.  She was the first director and vice president of the State Chamber's Department of Education and Workforce Development, lobbying in the areas of education, ad valorem tax issues and workforce development and playing a key role in organizing SuccessConnection, a state-wide School-to-Work conference. Karen was founder and chair of the Oklahoma Coalition for Public Education. an organization who whose primary goal is the preservation and improvement of public schools. She was also Founder and Executive Director of the Oklahoma Network for Excellence, a foundation she helped create to support excellence in education, economic development, and quality of life in Oklahoma. Karen served as Executive Director of the F.A.I.R. Coalition, which achieved statewide reform of the state's ad valorem system, and served a three-year term as a member of the executive board for the North Central Association of School and Colleges, the nation's largest accrediting association, and as a member of the board for the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in Austin, Texas.  Karen was appointed by the United States Secretary of Education to the Review Panel for the U.S. Department of Education Secondary Schools Recognition Program; she also served as a member of the National Science Foundation Curriculum Review Committee. From 1977-81, she served two terms as the president of the Oklahoma Parent Teacher Association, was president of the National PTA's State President's Council, and served as Region Six Vice President of the National PTA, a position that required the administration of programs for more than one million members within the region's six states.  She also served as president of the Oklahoma City Camp Fire Board and as a member of the boards of the Easter Seals Society, the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, the Community Council of Central Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Adolescent Crisis Teenline, the Oklahoma Society for Crippled Children, the United Methodist Women, and the Oklahoma Alliance for Arts Education. Karen was appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Oklahoma Council on Health Care Delivery.  She was also appointed to the Mayor's Commission on Public Education and was an active member of the Oklahoma Conference for Women, League of Women Voters of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Academy for State Goals, the Red Cross Youth Advisory Committee, the Advisory Committee for the Women's Professional Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma and she served as vice chair for the Council on Education for the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Karen was honored many times for her hard work, energy, and dedication, receiving awards including the National Camp Fire Luther Halsey Gulick Award, the Phi Delta Kappa Lay Citizen's Award, the Outstanding Service Award from the South Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, the Distinguished Service Award from the Oklahoma Vocational Association, the Outstanding Service Award from the Oklahoma City School Board, and the Oklahoma Schools Advisory Council Award. In 1986, the OCPE established the Karen Leveridge Award for Service to Public Education. She received the Award of Merit from the Association for Career and Technical Education in 2000, which recognizes non-educators for meritorious contributions to the improvement, promotion, development and progress of career and technology education. Karen was an active member of a number of United Methodist congregations, including Hillcrest United Methodist, Chapel Hill United Methodist, and for the last 27 years of her life, the Church of the Servant. Karen lived a life of conviction, of passion, and of generosity. She devoted herself to the betterment of the lives of Oklahomans young and old, always believing that anything was possible through a combination of faith and hard work. She never met a challenge that she backed down from.  She never met an adversary that she wasn"™t willing to stand up to. She was outspoken, opinionated.  She raised her daughters to be strong and smart, and raised her sons to expect women to be strong and smart.  She loved, supported, and believed in her children and grandchildren with all her heart.  She could be counted on by friends and colleagues during good times and bad.  She traveled to every corner of the nation to cheer for her beloved Oklahoma Sooners, remained passionately devoted to her husband throughout their time together, and remained ever thankful for all the rich blessings God had given her. She will be sorely missed and remembered with great fondness by so many -- friends, colleagues, and family members whose lives are all the richer for having known her.  Karen is survived by her beloved Lloyd; her four children, Tony, Brett, Kim, and Julie; her daughters-in-law Marci and Meister; her seven grandchildren, Larissa, Rob, Matt, Eric, Kayla, Amanda, and Jerrod; and her five great-grandchildren, Asher, Evan, Reuben, Elise, and Caleb; a sister Linda, brother, Cecil Jr,. and a large extended family who will miss her greatly. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to the Alzheimer"™s Association and the American Cancer Society. To send flowers or a memorial gift to the family of Karen Leveridge please visit our Sympathy Store.