Services for Melvin Dwight Brooking, 73, of Ada are 10:00 a.m. Thursday at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Father Billy Lewis will officiate. Burial will follow at Rosedale Cemetery. The family will receive friends from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Criswell Funeral Home.
Melvin Dwight Brooking was born January 12, 1944 to Vernon Lee “Bud” Brooking and Della Faye (Davis) Brooking at Seminole County, Oklahoma. He attended Pleasant Grove High School, later graduated from East Central University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Oklahoma State University with a master’s in Sociology. He was drafted into the U. S. Army February 1969 and served in the Vietnam War as a helicopter platoon assault squad leader. He met Helen Jane Cameron upon his return to Ada, and they married February 24, 1979. Together, they had two daughters, Meagan and Meredith. Melvin retired in 1997 from the State of Oklahoma’s Department of Rehabilitation Services after 30 years of service. For career Day at Meredith’s elementary school, he wrote and sang a jingle that pretty well summed up his career:
When I was a younger man
I traveled all about
I was looking for a job
That I could not live without
Then I meet a blinded person
Who could not find his way,
And he said, “Hey Mister, will you help me out today?”
So, I became a rehabilitation man
And to this day
I work with the disabled
Who cannot find their way
Some are blind and some can’t hear
And some ain’t got no sense
But with a little rehab work can find employment
Criswell Funeral Home, Ada