Private family burial for Maha Sultan, age 70, of Frederick, Oklahoma, will be Sunday, December 24, 2023, at the Frederick Memorial Cemetery.  Dr. Sultan passed away Saturday morning, December 23, 2023, at her home in Frederick, surrounded by her family.  Services are under the direction of Jackson Funeral Home.  A Time for Remembering Dr. Sultan will be held at 4:00 p.m., Wednesday, December 27, 2023, at the Lois Long Center, 114 South 9th Street, Frederick, Oklahoma.   Please bring a single page written memory to put in a "Book of Life" that will be given to her beloved son, Awuley.

In 1953, a little girl was born in Syria, the fourth of ten children, to a young attorney, Ahmad Sultan, and his wife, Souad Sultan.  The young father would go on to become the Minister of Justice for his country, and the little girl grew in a context of security and privilege.  Then, one day when the little girl was thirteen, her father came home suddenly and told the family it had one hour to pack a bag and leave Syria.  The family fled to Istanbul.  The Ba'athists and the Assads had come to power in Syria.

The little girl's life suddenly was very different.  Born into an Arabic-speaking family, she and her siblings were enrolled in a private French Catholic school where only French was spoken.  Her mother left and her father asked her to take the responsibility for running a household and rearing her siblings.  (Although she was not the oldest, her father considered her the most responsible.)  She took the responsibility without complaint and saw all of her siblings successfully graduated and launched into the world.  Then it was her turn.

She learned English, enrolled in medical school and, upon completion, secured a physician's position in Canada.  After working in Toronto and Newfoundland, she heard of an opening in Frederick, Oklahoma.  She applied for the position, was accepted, and in 1993, brought her two-year old son to a new life in America.

Her new life wasn't easy, but she was grateful for what she saw as so much opportunity.  Her new hometown, steeped in its own value system, history and traditions, wasn't quite sure how to respond to this foreign-born, single mother, female doctor.  Slowly, the community began to accept her.  Slowly, she became acclimated to life in a small, Oklahoma town.  Slowly, she built a successful private practice.  And, slowly and always anonymously, she became the donor and benefactor to more people and more initiatives than the town will ever know.  And in 2007, she became an American citizen.  She's quick to point out that she is not a Syrian American…she's an American.

In 2014, Dr. Maha Sultan learned that she had breast cancer.  The NBC news correspondent and cancer survivor Betty Rollin wrote the popular book, "First, you cry".  Dr. Sultan didn't cry.  As she has done so many times in her life, she assessed her circumstances and began, immediately, laying out a plan to manage them.  Always tough and self-reliant, she expected the next year to be full of challenges she would have to meet alone.  Of course, there would be encouragement and help from her son, now grown and living out-of-state, and three of her sisters, two in Syria and one in California.  But as far as she knew, there was no one locally to travel this tough, unknown road with her.  Then, the town began to find out she had cancer.  First, with a trickle, and then with a torrent of good-will, people all over town, some her patients, some not, from every church, from every organization, lined up to volunteer to help…drive her to doctors' appointments, run her errands, bring her food, clean her house, anywhere a need was seen, or even imagined, the folks in Frederick stepped up to help.  The town shone bright. And she had no idea how to react to this out-pouring of grace.  "I was shocked." she said, "I could never have imagined that people I don't even know wanted to help…What is this?...What does it mean?"   What it means, Dr. Sultan, is that Frederick is your hometown.  It means that people here know how important you are to their lives and to the community.  It means the town is thrilled and relieved you're well again and back at work.   And it means that the Golden Rule is still acted out in small, rural towns like Frederick…small, rural towns that shine.

Maha is survived by her son, Awuley K. Quaye of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; five sisters, Roula Sultan-England of Davis, California, Faten Sultan Al Debsi of Houston, Texas, Amal Sultan Saadi of Roseville, California, Oula Sultan Ubaissi of Damascus, Syria, and Adibeh Sultan of Istanbul, Turkey; and two brothers, Mahmood Sultan of Clovis, California, and Mohsen Sultan of Granite Bay, California.