Brad Ward

1922 - 2017

WHITESBORO - Funeral services for Brad Ward, 94, will be at Meador Funeral Home, 401 Hwy 377 N, Whitesboro, Texas on Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 1:00 p.m. with interment to follow at Mt. Tabor Cemetery, Sandusky, Texas. Bob Keck and Gene Deckard will officiate. The same funeral home will host visitation on Friday, March 24th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Brad Hays Ward, the second child and eldest son of Hays Benjamin Ward and Nora Elliot Ward, was born October 19, 1922 near Chickasha, OK. He died at Texoma Medical Center in Denison, Texas on March 18, 2017, eight years to the day after the passing of his wife of over 60 years, Betty Ann Moran Ward, a Gordonville native. His parents and five of his eight siblings also preceded him in death. He is survived by his son, Richard Brad Ward, of Sacramento, California; brother, Jimmy Ray Ward and sisters, Bobbie June Ward Stone and Nelda Faye Ward Keck. Also mourning his passing are unofficially adopted children and grandchildren, Derek Fletcher, Leslie Fletcher, Jonathan Fletcher, Kenneth Landis, Kelsey Landis, Jarod Fletcher, Gerren Fletcher, Meg Fletcher, Dalton Wheat and Daxton Landis. This honorary family deeply loved their "Papaw" and cared for him in their home during the final years of his life. Along with Jake Anderson, they will serve as pallbearers.
When Brad was five years old, the family relocated to acreage near Fox, OK, where Brad completed his primary and secondary education, graduating from Fox High School in 1940. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in June of 1941 and served in an air defense unit of the Army Air Corps on various Pacific islands until the end of World War II. After his honorable discharge, he entered Oklahoma Southeastern State College at Durant, where he met fellow student Betty Moran. They were married in the parlor of her rooming house on May 30, 1947. After completing a B.A. in Education at Southeastern in 1948, Brad attended Oklahoma A&M College (later Oklahoma State University) at Stillwater, taking a M.A. in School Administration in 1951.
Following stopovers in various other Oklahoma towns (Bakersburg, Stillwater, McAlester), the Wards settled in Bartlesville in 1955 and lived there until 1978. Brad taught in the Bartlesville schools and served as vice-principal and then principal at Central Junior High. In 1962, the city's teachers elected him president of the Bartlesville Education Association. In 1978, Brad left Bartlesville to become a vocational instructor in Edmond, OK.
For most of his adult life, Mr. Ward was an active member of the Church of Christ. For over 20 summers, he acted as Head Boys Counselor for the church-associated Sooner Youth Camp at Lake Murray, Oklahoma. He was a founding member and original elder of the Church of Christ at Ramona, OK.
Recently, Brad estimated that he had built around 3000 birdhouses during his lifetime, starting at age nine. After moving to Gordonville in 1981, he focused on restoring the bluebird population in northern Grayson County, founding the Tioga-Whitesboro-Sadler-Gordonville-Rock Creek bluebird trail and building 350 bluebird houses to equip it. He became known as "The Bluebird Man" and delivered well over 100 lectures on bluebird habitat and the construction and location of bluebird houses to organizations in Grayson and adjoining counties.
In 1985-86, he worked with the Texas Sesquicentennial Committee and commemorated 150 years of Texas statehood by helping organize various activities, including feeding the wagon train and laying a stone mosaic in the Highway 377 right-of-way at the south shore of Lake Texoma.
Brad also became an unofficial historian for the Gordonville area. Authors contacted him frequently for help finding a former Red River ferry crossing, an abandoned settlement or a nearly forgotten cemetery. The Comanche tribe brought history home to him by certifying a post oak tree near his house as an official trail marker tree. From 1992 to 1999, he served as Justice of the Peace for the Gordonville area. Mr. Ward suffered the effects of Parkinson's disease during the final decade of his life.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested memorial donations to The Michael J. Fox Foundation (www.michaeljfox.org).