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Updated: 23 Apr 2012
Created:  23 Apr 2012

 
Ada News
Ada, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma
August 28
, 2008

 

Services for Billy Lenard DePrater, 72, Konawa, are 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 29, 2008, at Swearingen Funeral Home Chapel in Konawa. Ed Bray will officiate. Burial will follow at 2 p.m. at South Heights Cemetery, 1815 S. Ridgeway Street in Sapulpa.

Mr. DePrater died Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008, at an Ada hospital. He was born Oct. 4, 1935, in Sapulpa to William J. and Maude DePrater.


He lived in Keifer until he was 12 when his family moved to Konawa. He attended Vamoosa schools and graduated in 1953. He then attended Bethany Penile (now known as Bethany Nazarene) in Bethany. He graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry from East Central University in 1958, and was employed by Oklahoma State Department of Health. He received a Public Health Service Grant to attend the University of Oklahoma where he received a masters degree in Sanitary Science and Public Health (Industrial Hygiene). He continued his career with the Bureau of Mines at the Helium plant in Keys, Okla., and later he transferred to the Bartlesville Petroleum Research division where he worked in Physical Chemistry in the development of rocket fuels and propellants. He was co-author on several scientific papers out of this facility.
 
He transferred to the Public Health Service and was the chief chemist on the Delaware Estuary Study working to clean up the Delaware and Raritan Rivers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He developed several tests to study estuary waters. He also taught mini classes in Mass-Spectroscopy at Rutgers University and CC&Y.; He transferred to the Robert S. Kerr Regional Laboratory in Ada., in 1965, and worked there until 1982.

He married Ann Brewer in 1956.

Survivors include two sons, William DePrater and wife, Shawna of Ada, and Bruce DePrater of Fresno, Calif., three daughters, Cindy DePrater of The Colony, Texas, Cheryl Gurley and husband, Gary of Redondo Beach, Calif., and Stacy Shelton and husband, Douglas of Norman; two grandchildren, Brealyn Brashier and Oliver Shelton; two sisters, Vera Bland and Margaret Paxton, and several nieces and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his father, William J. DePrater, who died in 1963, and his mother, Maude Stephens DePrater who died in 1996. Swearingen Funeral Home, Konawa.

 

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