Graveside services for former Frederick resident, Galene Dunham, age 96, of Arlington, Texas, will be at 1:00 p.m.,  Sunday, January 7, 2024, at the Council Hill Cemetery near Checotah, Oklahoma, with Rick Martin officiating.  Burial will follow under the direction of Jackson Funeral Home of Frederick.  Mrs. Dunham passed away at her home in Arlington on Tuesday morning, January 2, 2024.

Ella Galene (Cathey) Dunham was born on December 14, 1927, at Boynton (Muskogee County), Oklahoma, to Clarence Daniel and Roxy Alma (Phillips) Cathey.  She started school at Elm Grove Grade School.   After graduating from high school at Checotah Public Schools, she attended Northeastern State College in Tahlequah.  Galene transferred to Oklahoma A&M in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she joined a "home-made" sorority of a dozen raised-on-the-farm country girls who all lived in Murray Hall.    They called themselves the "Alfa - Falfas", with a mascot of an alfalfa hay bale.  The main reason this is so important is that Galene went home with a couple of sisters from Tillman County in southwest Oklahoma.  There is where she met the love of her life, Gilbert K. Dunham!  Gilbert was the best friend of those two sisters' brother, and he was home on leave from the United States Air Force.  They only actually dated four or five times but did talk on the phone a lot.  Gilbert proposed over the telephone!  Galene said "YES", so Clarence and Alma drove Galene all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.  Gilbert and Galene were married on April 10, 1954, in the only Southern Baptist church in town.

The rest is history!   They were an Air Force family until Gilbert was honorably discharged, then they headed back to Tillman County to be a farm family until Gilbert passed away on October 15, 2006.  They raised their two daughters and enjoyed fifty-two years of marriage together in Frederick.  For many of those years, Galene was a fixture at the Frederick Carnegie Library.  She loved to read and to talk about books with other readers.  She enjoyed being a librarian.  She was a member of the First Baptist Church in Frederick.

Galene is survived by her daughters, Sally Heighton and her husband Don, of Keller, Texas and Betsy Dunham of Arlington, Texas; her granddaughter, Michaela Watt and her husband David of Jenks, Oklahoma; and a niece, Kimberly Yates.

She was preceded in death by husband, Gilbert; her parents, Clarence and Alma; her brothers and their wives, Gale and Alice Cathey,  and Bob and Bobbie Cathey.

Memorial donations may be given to the First Baptist Church, 201 East Grand, Frederick, OK  73542 or to the Council Hill Cemetery Fund, P. O. Box 38, Council Hill, OK 74428, in loving memory of Galene Dunham.