Funeral services for Phyllis Ann Young will be at 2:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 3, 2023 in the Becker-Rabon Funeral Home Chapel.

Burial will follow in Highland Cemetery, Lawton, Oklahoma.

Phyllis Ann Young, 80, of Lawton, Oklahoma passed away peacefully Tuesday, April 25, 2023 in Lawton.

Phyllis Ann Young was born in Lawton on July 19,1942, to Pauline Phyllis (Harrold) and Foster C. Swindell. She was adopted by her stepfather, John C. Young. Her grandparents, James Altman Harrold and Margarett Elizabeth (Updegrove) Harrold were early-day Oklahoma Territory and Lawton pioneer settlers. She has lived and traveled in the Middle East, Europe, Russia, East Africa, Central America and the United States.

She finished high school in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with the Class of 1960 and received her associate in arts degree in 1962 at Fort Smith Junior College.

She began her government career in 1962 at the US Department of State in Washington, DC. While there she:

Served as the staff member to the US delegation to a 2-week United Nations conference on apartheid in Zambia (August 1967);

Appointed as the State Department Spokesman and Public Affairs Adviser at the Vietnamese Refugee Relocation Center at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas (July-December 1975);

Served as the editor of numerous State Department publications, including the Department of State Bulletin, the monthly journal that was the official record of US foreign policy (1977-1988);

Provided editorial assistance to the US delegation in Geneva negotiating an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union (June 1979).

In 1981, she received the State Department's Superior Honor Award for initiating the idea and developing the plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the establishment of the Department of State.

For the last 11 years of her career, Phyllis was the Policy Officer in the Department of State's Office of Press Relations and assisted the Spokesman prepare for the daily news briefing. She answered press inquiries from the media around the world and also briefed many groups — Americans and foreigners — about the State Department's history and the organization and function of the Press Office. Another interesting task she undertook was to consult with and guide officials of the Romanian president's and prime minister's offices on establishing and operating a press office for their "new" democratic government.

When she retired from the State Department in 2000, after 38 years of government service, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Phyllis with the Secretary's Career Achievement Award in recognition of her "exceptional performance and dedication to duty" during her years of service.

In addition to having deep roots in Lawton, Phyllis' decision to retire here was because life was saner here and there is no traffic!

Since returning to Lawton in 2000, her activities included serving as Vice President, Program Chairman and Membership Chairman of the Southwest Oklahoma Genealogical Society (SWOGS). She conceived of and wrote the series of booklets titled "Sources and Resources" that covers specific topics of interest to family historians.

From 2007 through 2019, she was the "voice" of SWOGS with her weekly "Genealogy Minute" broadcast every Saturday on KCCU and has authored the "Twigs & Stems" genealogy/history column published in the Lawton Constitution since 2011. She had devoted much time in researching her maternal history and that 500-year collection has been donated to the Museum of the Great Plains.

An interest in history led her to become active in the Lawton Heritage Association. She organized the docent program for the Historic Mattie Beal Home and served as the Docent Coordinator for more than 2 years. She also was its Membership Chairman and responsible for publicity and has served on the LHA Board of Directors. Phyllis represented the Lawton Heritage Association on the City of Lawton's Historic Preservation Committee. She served as an LHA volunteer in a variety of positions for nearly 20 years, to include being the very first Mattie Beal Home Docent Coordinator.

Phyllis prepared short articles on each of the 14 sites in Lawton that are on the National Register of Historic Places; they were published in the Lawton Constitution in January-April 2019.

She received the 2019 Educator in the Humanities Award from the Lawton Arts & Humanities Council for her work with the Southwest Oklahoma Genealogical Society and the Lawton Heritage Association. In addition to those two organizations, she was a member of The Quest Club.

She is survived by cousins, stepsiblings and many loving friends.