Obituary of Grace Carter

Ila Grace Carter was born on July 13, 1928 in Stillwater, OK to Oscar and Myrtle (Fitzpatrick) Bilyeu. Grace passed from this life on Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at the age of 86. Grace was born the youngest of seven children. She was working as a telephone switchboard operator (asking “number please”) when she married Earl Carter in 1954. Earl and Grace had met while attending Bethany Peniel College now known as Southern Nazarene University. Grace left the telephone company to be a full time homemaker and raise her four children until the last one was entering kindergarten. In 1970, Grace started working for Tulsa Public Schools in the school cafeteria at Lee, Horace Mann, Barnard, and back to Lee knowing that she would be off work almost every day her children were out of school. She returned to being known as a homemaker and wife and began taking care of her grandchildren in 1988. Grace was preceded in death by her husband, Robert Earl Carter in 2005. She was a member of the Southwest Church of the Nazarene in Tulsa for many years but in recent times had been attending the Sapulpa Church of the Nazarene with her son Richard and his wife Darla. Grace is survived by her children (in chronological order), Robert Carter of Tulsa, Alan Carter of Tulsa, Roberta Hines of Claremore, OK and Richard Carter of Glenpool, OK and; a brother, Doyle Bilyeu of Bethany, OK; six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.