Duncan Banner
Published: 05 Feb 2003

Dera Beatrice Romine left this world on Monday, Feb. 3, 2003. Service will be at 10 a.m. Thursday in Chisholm Trail Church of Christ. Graveside service will be at 2:30 p.m. in the Washington Cemetery, located southeast of Washington. Arrangements are under the direction of Callaway-Smith-Cobb Funeral Home in Marlow.

Dera Beatrice Romine was born in 1912, the eldest of nine children born to Annie and Tom Wilson of Washington. She attended Simpson Grade School, Washington High School and Oklahoma City School of Cosmetology. After graduation, she began a successful beauty parlor in the middle of The Great Depression. The business was not far from her family in the Simpson community where she met a teacher at the Simpson School, John Wesley Romine.

Dera and John married in 1937, later they moved to Washington for a new position as grade school principal. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, they moved to California to join those working in the defense industry. Dera worked for a short time in a cannery until she trained as a welder, joining John already in the shipyards. They worked side by side building the Liberty ships that helped win the war. Her strong work ethic and skill resulted in the admiration of those who knew her.

After World War II, like so many temporarily displaced Oklahomans, Dera and family returned to their native home. After purchasing land at Washington, they began a small dairy and farming venture which expanded over the years to include ranching. With their faith in God and their commitment to education, they enabled all three of their children, Wesley, Patricia and Maxine, to achieve college degrees.

In 1952, with their own hands, John and Dera built a new home which they would occupy for the next 45 years. Dera's passion for gardening supplied not only food for the growing family, but beautiful flowers that were admired by all who saw them. Her blossoms entertained at banquets, hospitals and weddings. The Norman Westside Church of Christ, which was their church home, was seldom without her bouquets.

Dera loved to sew. So, her closet was full of new creations for herself and her daughters.

In 1993, Dera lost John, her partner in life. She joined her daughter, Pat, in the Duncan community where she built her new home, and surrounded herself with the roses and other flowers that she lovingly moved from the farm.

Survivors include her three children, Wesley Romine and wife, Betty, of Danville, Calif., Patricia Romine Pearson and husband, Gary, of Duncan and Maxine Romine-Jenkins and husband, Ron, who live on the family farm in Washington; three grandchildren, Van Romine of Upland, Calif., John Pearson and wife, Sherry, of Oklahoma City and Gina Pearson Jones of Duncan; three great-grandchildren Alex Jones, Celia Jones and Alyssa Pearson; two brothers and sisters-in-law, Lloyd and Ruth Wilson of Macomb and Don and Shirley Wilson of Moore; and two sisters and brothers-in-law, Wanda and Hoyt Burns of Washington and Cozata and Leland Jackson of Pueblo, Colo.

She was also preceded in death by two brothers, Cleo Wilson and Vernon Wilson, and two sisters, Pauline Wilson and Juanita Blevins.