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July 2016 Raymond Najib Habib November 11, 1921 ~ July 17, 2016 Raymond Najib Habiby, 94, formerly of Stillwater. passed away on Sunday, July 17, 2016 in Dallas Texas. Arrangements are under the care of Palmer Marler Funeral Home. A funeral service will be held on Saturday, July 23, 2016 at 10:00am at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. Interment will follow at Sunset Memorial Gardens. |
© Stillwater News Press Stillwater, Oklahoma October 2001 Afaaf A. [Habiby] Habiby June 25, 1926 ~ October 8, 2001 Afaaf Habiby, 75, Stillwater, died Monday, Oct. 8, 2001. Services will be Monday at 1 p.m. at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. Burial will immediately follow the service at Sunset Memorial Gardens. Colonial Chapel Funeral Home is directing the services. Habiby was born in Haifa, in what was then Palestine, June 25, 1926, to Adib and Salma [Yacoub] Habiby. Habiby was a Christian Palestinian refugee who became one of Lebanon's first prominent career women before immigrating to the United States and raising a family while earning a doctorate as a "returning student." She died after a six-year battle with breast cancer. She graduated from the English High School in Haifa in 1944, attaining the Oxford and Cambridge matriculation. She then took a secretarial course and went to work for the Iraq Petroleum Corp., which operated pipelines from Iraqi oilfields to Haifa. In the spring of 1948, she fled Haifa after Haganah troops took control of the city. Israel was declared a state a few days later. She went to Damascus, Syria, where her family of nine lived in a small home with another refugee family. Habiby was the first of the group to find a job and became one of the breadwinners of the extended group. She spent seven years working in Syria for the American Near East Foundation, which promoted ties between the U.S. and the Arab World. While there, she met former Oklahoma State University President Henry G. Bennett on a leg of his fatal final journey. Habiby moved with her family to Lebanon in 1955 and soon landed a job as the executive assistant to the chairman of the board of Middle East Airlines. During her 15 years at MEA in the 1950s and 1960s, Habiby traveled extensively on her own, to England, Iran, Egypt, Japan and points throughout the Middle East and Europe. In 1969, while on her second trip to the United States, a cousin suggested she call Raymond Habiby, a distant relative she had known in Haifa who had become an OSU professor and moved to Stillwater four years earlier. She decided to visit him, and, a week later, returned to Lebanon with an engagement ring. Two months later, on Dec. 20, 1969, they were married at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Stillwater. Less than a month after getting married, at age 43, she began coursework at Oklahoma State University. She had previously taken a few classes at Haigazian College in Beirut. Habiby received her bachelor's degree in political science in 1972, followed by a master's in family relations and child development in 1981 and a doctorate in home economics education in 1987. At the same time, she raised a baby niece, Suha E. Barsoum, for three years, and a daughter, Margot, who was born in November 1972. She taught English as a second language part-time for two years at Skyline and Will Rogers elementary schools. She was active in an assortment of volunteer organizations and clubs, including Stillwater Women's Club, Church Women United, Lahoma and Antiquers, as well as at St. Andrew's Church and the St. Andrew's Thrift Shop. Habiby loved to entertain. For three decades, she and her husband acted as advisers and surrogate parents for many of OSU's international students, particularly those from the Middle East. These included eight of her nieces and nephews who studied in Oklahoma.For many years, she cooked Sunday dinner for 20 to 30 students every week, holding an open house for those who needed a home-cooked meal. She also loved to travel and frequently spent summers in the Middle East or Europe, showing her family many of the exotic locales she had visited alone while working for the airline. The Habibys spent the 1975-76 academic year on sabbatical in Benghazi, Libya, and the 1984-85 school year in Amman, Jordan, where she did the research for her doctoral dissertation. She is predeceased by her parents and two brothers. Survivors include her husband, Raymond, of the home; daughter, Margot, of Dallas, Texas; two brothers, Sami Habiby of Amman, Jordan, and Anis Habiby of Chevy Chase, Md.; two sisters, Aniseh Masri of Damascus, Syria, and Salwa Audeh of Boulder, Colo.; and 20 nieces and nephews. Memorials in lieu of flowers may be made to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, c/o The Rt. Rev. Claude E. Payne, Episcopal Diocese of Texas, 3203 W. Alabama, Houston, TX 77098; The Jerusalem 2000 Campaign, The Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 12043, Newark, NJ 07101-5043; or the Raymond and Afaaf Habiby scholarship fund through the OSU Foundation. |
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