Graveside service for Lillian M. Underwood will be 11:00 A.M. Monday, December 28, 2020 at Sunset Memorial Gardens in Lawton with longtime family friend Rev. Gene Sanders, Associate Pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindsay, Oklahoma officiating.

Arrangements are under the direction of Becker-Rabon Funeral Home.

Lillian Mable (Johnson) Underwood, age 95, passed away peacefully at home Monday, December 21, 2020 in Moore, Oklahoma.  She was a determined, loving, and independent woman, living alone much of her life.  She was born November 27, 1925 to William Anvil Johnson and Alma Pearl (Copeland) Johnson in Brock, Oklahoma, the youngest of five children.  As many families of that time, they lived and worked on a farm in southern Oklahoma.  She grew up in Love County, Oklahoma near Marietta.

After graduating from Greenville, Oklahoma High School, Lillian moved to the Oklahoma City area as a young woman, serving in the Civil Service for the U.S. Army.  She later served at Fort Chafee, Arkansas and then at Fort Sill, Oklahoma for over 20 years.

During this time of working a full-time job, often with overtime hours and raising a young son while living with her parents, she tackled the task of building her own home in the western edge of Lawton.  She completed it in about four years, doing much of the work herself, and paying for it as she went.  The task was even featured in a Lawton Constitution newspaper Sunday edition in 1965.

She concluded her federal career at Fort Belvoir, Virginia as a Data System Analyst for the Finance and Accounting Division of the Army.  During her service in Virginia, she was assigned to a number of temporary duty stations in Western Europe.  She was considered an expert in the installation and configuration of Army payroll systems.

These TDY assignments instilled a life-long love of travel and exploration, leading to many domestic and foreign trips in her retirement, including Australia, New Zealand, northern Africa, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.  In her later years, she traveled with family to Alaska, Hawaii, and Yellowstone.  She loved traveling with her sister in their never-ending genealogy research.  She also loved to read and research on her computer, including still doing her own taxes in the last year of her life.

Above her dedication to her work and her love of travel, above all else she loved her Lord and her family.  She was an active member of First Baptist Church in Moore, and especially with her friends in the Lydia Sunday School class.

Lillian was an incredible mother, grandmother and great grandmother.  Though apart for much of the time by distance, family trips to visit her in Virginia, and later to Moore, were some of the best things in her life.   Her travels included attending her granddaughter's wedding on Grand Cayman and her grandson's wedding in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Lillian was preceded in death by his parents, William Anvil Johnson and Alma Pearl Johnson, her brothers Harden Johnson, Henry Johnson, and Eulis Johnson, and her sister Eula Hogue.

Survivors include her son and daughter-in-law, Gary and Susan Underwood of Bigelow, Arkansas, granddaughter, Kerri Sangalli and husband, Shane of Little Rock, Arkansas, grandson Kurt Underwood and wife Jessica of Conway, Arkansas, and great-grandsons, Will Sangalli, Carter Sangalli, and Collin Underwood.  She had many nieces and nephews and extended family as well as friends.

In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital www.stjude.org or Heifer International www.heifer.org