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A graveside service will be held April 17, 2026, 2:00 PM at Waynoka Municipal Cemetery. Fairview Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Rose Ann Gornaflo Conley was born June 17, 1930 in Oklahoma City, the only child of Millard Francis and Madeline Leona (Leon) (Bolin) Goranflo, and passed away at age 95, January 9, 2026 in Enid. She was raised on the family cattle and wheat ranch on the Woods/Major County line outside of Waynoka.
Rose recounted a childhood in which she was first, "the apple of daddy's (Francis') eye", and piano lessons-begun at age 5-were a favorite. From a young age, Rose nurtured her artistic ability. It was always her gift; she could paint and draw with a true sense of color, remarkable attention to detail, and great ease. She counted among her friends the farmhands and the barnyard animals, and, for art classes, memorialized Bowser, Peaches and Siegfried in delicately painted oils that hung on the walls of the family home even decades later. She also especially enjoyed long summer days on horseback on the ranch, and annual visits to her "stylish and statuesque" maternal grandmother Malinda's home in Oklahoma City. These visits to dress shops and department stores, and lunch at the Woolworth counter made her feel stylish and special. Throughout her growing up years, Sundays were spent at the United Methodist Church in Waynoka. Rose sung in the choir, played the piano, and was a Job's Daughter. Sundays often meant meeting up with family friends, the Starks, and her girlhood bestie, Joan. What fun it was when, during one of their visits, both girls fell ill and got to stay home together and out of school for 2 weeks!
Rose spent her primary school years at West Creek School (District #24). In this one-room schoolhouse on the Belva Road, Leon was her teacher. In 8th grade mother and daughter would move together to the high school in Waynoka. There Rose would form decades-long friendships, and graduate with the class of 1948, and Leon would teach for 20+ years, retiring in 1966. From her earliest days, Rose, the self-described 'Oklahoma farm girl' craved adventure; she valued art, experiences, and good food; enduring friendships were a hallmark of her life. Her college years took her to Cottey College. Freshman year she met Jean, and the women formed a friendship that spanned 6 decades. They shared an uncanny intuition for what each other was going through, and several coincidences across time. They loved to have fun! During a visit in their fifties these girlfriends being silly and disruptive, were asked to leave a grocery store when joy riding on a grocery cart!
After Cottey, Rose was off to Oklahoma State University, then the state university in Wichita Falls- it was here, while working as a waitress in the summers, she developed an affinity for a cocktail hour Manhattan.
Ultimately, Rose would graduate from UC Colorado Springs with a BA in graphic art and commercial design. She studied for a time toward an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, but when that didn't hold her interest, circa 1956, Rose moved to Denver. She first dressed windows for Lerner's and then went to work for the USAF Civil Service on Lowery Air Force Base, drawing airplane parts for technical manuals.
In the fall of 1958, Rose encountered a "tall and dreamy Wyoming Airman" while riding the elevator in the building where they both worked. On their first date, Preston, typically, thoughtful and sentimental, gave Rose a rose. This sweet gesture would continue, with added roses for their daughters, marking most every special occasion throughout their lives. Rose and Preston Daniel Conley would marry less than a year later, August 17, 1960, and these farm kids were thrilled when a month later Preston was stationed in Germany.
Germany was home for 3 years as Preston served on both Air Force bases. This chapter was unquestionably a highlight of their lives! Rose and Preston used this time to embrace every opportunity. Enthusiastically, they opted out of base housing and lived in the community. They grew a close bond with one of their German landladies who treated Rose as a daughter, caring for her as she recovered from a broken leg, the result of an Alpine ski vacation. Weekends were spent riding the train as far as they could afford to go, exploring Europe for days at a time. The couple would leave Germany with a lifetime of memories, the beginnings of what would grow to be an epic cookbook collection for Rose, and dozens of her charcoal drawings of castles. They also were accompanied by Sigfried, a black Persian kitten, small enough at the time to fit in a coat pocket.
Rose and Preston were stationed next in Massachusetts. Forever weaving art into her life, Rose busied herself making their home, and she ventured into colonial cemeteries to do gravestone rubbings. In 1966, they learned they would welcome twins in July. "Over the moon!" was always how Rose would phrase it: she was over the moon to have identical twin daughters. With their characteristic attention to detail, Rose and Preston chose middle names for Melinda (Rae) and Vanessa (Lea) that not only reflected family ties, they began with "R" and "L", and let there be any confusion which twin was which, Vanessa L was always posed on the left of photos, and Melinda R, on the right!
After Preston's retirement from the USAF, the family followed a job to Southern California. This was definitely the big city for two tiny town kids. After living first in Sherman Oaks, the family found their little piece of paradise in a quarter acre of semi-rural agricultural and "fixer-upper" property in Reseda. The house and property reflected their shared rural upbringings as closely as the constraints of living in Los Angeles County would allow.
Rose carefully curated a home filled with artwork from her college days, the charcoal drawn castles in Europe; with photographs, new and old, Mid-century modern teak furniture, antiques and treasures from both Goranflo and Conley ranches. Walls were painted in cheerful colors and carefully matched in the style of the times with wall-to-wall carpet in the same shade.
The years rolled quickly by as Rose was happily involved in whatever her girls took on. She was part of the PTA, a room mother, and especially delighted in being "mom's taxi" for many a Girl Scout excursion. Summer vacations were punctuated with family road trips down Route 66 to visit Francis and Leon in Rose's beloved Waynoka. She could hardly contain her excitement on these drives, playing every country station available on the AM dial, or enthusiastically belting out her own renditions of "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" and "OKLAHOMA!" One summer, in her ever-present quest to create art that conveyed feeling and emotion, the family was made to stop at every windmill on the roadside; Rose would snap a picture with her Kodak Instamatic-saying it would be inspiration for the oil painting she purposed to do when she got home.
Christmas, always met with anticipation by children, were extra exciting when Francis and Leon would fly to Southern California to be with Rose and Preston and their doted on granddaughters. For kid or adult, Rose's home always had an open door. Some childhood friends of her girls became as sisters or brothers. Rose would easily agree to any birthday, slumber party/overnight guest or sleep away trip.
Always remembering with fondness her childhood pet entourage, every Conley family pet was beloved; Sigfried, Sherry, Sherman, BD, Sabrina, a pair of displaced box turtles that came to Reseda by way of Route 66, Serafina, and Perseus - she treasured them all!
Rose and Preston took tremendous pride in their “little homestead.” After building a patio off the back porch, countless summer evenings were spent hosting neighbors; Marcia, Jeri, Linda, Bernie, were frequent warm weather guests and visited late into the evenings. Rose and Preston enjoyed sharing the various fruits, vegetables, and flowers from their extensive gardens. Together, they grew and canned countless types of produce, made wine, crème de menthe, Sasparilla, root beer, beef jerky... Rose was forever searching out the perfect recipe from the impressive 1700 volumes of cookbooks she amassed. Her every search was peppered by teasing from the family: how could you ever find the same recipe twice with so many books to look through?
As her girls grew, Rose's interests did as well. She became a tutor for second language students, helped a friend campaign for city council, and took classes to become a travel agent. Likely remembering her fashionable trips to Oklahoma City, Rose loved nothing more than going out to lunch and spending the afternoon shopping at the mall with her girls, even as the one time charm school graduate would raise an eyebrow in astonishment of the clothing and hair styles popular in the 1980s and 90s....Rose prized higher education, and she celebrated as both daughters and their friends went off to college.
Preston's sudden death in December 1987 brought a stunning new chapter in Rose's life. Eventually, with her girls out of college and Leon in Oklahoma Rose followed her heart back home. She lived again for a time in Waynoka. Still young at heart, she renewed friendships, changed her physique, bought a sports car and new pair of boots, studied towards a pilot's license, and took long solo road trips to Iowa researching in libraries, graveyards, and community centers, the Goranflo family history.
It was another stunning turn in her life when Rose was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996. True to her fiercely independent nature, Rose drove herself to MD Anderson, checked into a long stay hotel, was treated for breast cancer for 3 months, and had returned home to Waynoka before she ever told a soul!
Wanting to have a little bit more of a big city life, mom bought a condo in Enid and rekindled her love of making a home. Her little 'jewel box' was the perfect reflection of her taste and style; she would call Surrey Lane home for 20 years. Her years in Enid brought other new ventures to her life as well. Based on her interest in genealogy, she joined the DAR. In 2000, she received a lifetime membership recognition from PEO, and she worked with the Oklahoma chapter of the DNC, hosting meet and greets for the candidates in her home.
During the season too, she formed a decades-long friendship with Vicki Hanousek, whom she loved as a sister, and Vicki’s granddaughter, Olivia. She especially enjoyed encouraging Olivia in her interests, notably, art and travel. Beginning in her 80’s, Rose would frequently articulate how much she loved life and how she didn't want to leave it. Amongst all that feistiness, for all that she could not reconcile or leave behind in her spirit, it's too bad one so ornery could not recognize and appreciate the impressive milestone of living 95 years!
In everything, Rose was always readily able to see color and beauty in daily, simple things. She loved a good cup of coffee, a cat on her lap and the smell of an August thunderstorm on the prairie. . .
Dementia is an insidious disease, and as it began to steal her quietly away, Rose found a home at ESC. For the better part of the last 12 years, she was lovingly cared for, especially by Alicia Webb and James Olson, who create community for all there, and who cared for Rose with extra measures of grace, humor and patience. They were her safe harbor.
Rose's parents, Millard Francis Goranflo and Madeline Leona (Leon Bolin) Goranflo, her husband, Preston Daniel Conley, her daughter, Vanessa Lea Conley, and a host of extended family and friends, all pre-deceased her.
She is survived by her daughter, Melinda Conley of California, and her cousins, Robert C. Bolin of New Mexico and Anne Eunice Bolin of North Carolina.
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