Paul Willard Gilbert

He was the older of two sons born to Willard Dyke and Ruth Alma Blickenstaff Gilbert. Paul attended elementary school in Leavenworth, KS and elementary and junior high school in Kansas City, MO before moving to Ponca City, OK to start 10th grade. After graduating from Ponca City H.S. in 1954, he attended Westmar College in Lemars, IA and Oklahoma A&M University (now OSU) from which he graduated in 1958 with a B.S. in Chemistry.

With the Oklahoma City Draft Board breathing down his neck, Paul enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1958. He attended Officer Candidate School at Newport, RI. On December 7, 1961, Paul received orders to go to Vietnam as an Advisor to the Vietnamese Navy. He was among some of the first Advisors to be sent by President Kennedy. After his discharge from the Navy in 1962, Paul came home to Oklahoma City and started graduate school at Oklahoma University.

Paul married Ellen Joyce Petty on August 19, 1967. They had met in a Sunday School class at the church his father pastored. Their courtship was long-distance, as Paul moved away from Oklahoma City less than a year after they met, and he was working and living all over the western U.S. After they married, they lived in Shreveport, LA for about a year and a half before being transferred to New Orleans where they settled. They continued to live in NOLA for 35 years until Hurricane Katrina washed them out in 2005, and they moved to TX.

All of Paul’s career was spent in the chemical water treatment business, starting out in the mid-sixties as a salesman/technician in the oil fields of Louisiana and ending as the Technical Director of Southwest Engineers forty years later. His work took him to oilfields in South LA, NM, WY and KS, lumber mills in North LA, and sugar mills in South LA, FL and Central America, as well as cooling towers and boilers everywhere in-between. After he retired, he indulged himself in the hobby of woodturning, filling the 3-car garage with the tools and machines he needed to make beautiful things. Paul was a member of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) over the past 50+ years and served as an ordained elder. After he retired, he was a member of the Dallas Area Woodturners and the American Association of Woodturners. With no formal training, Paul was an excellent teacher. Whether it was a children’s or adult Sunday School class, a Cub Scout meeting, tutoring a neighbor girl in math, instructing his nieces or grandniece in how to use the lathe to turn a bowl or chess pieces, teaching his grandkids how to bait a hook or set a fish on that hook, or orienting a new salesman or technician at work, he was instructive and infinitely patient. He enjoyed cooking and will be remembered for many memorable meals served to family and friends. Paul loved his family, woodturning, good food and fine wines, fishing and a smoky single malt Scotch whiskey.

Paul was preceded in death by his parents, his two brothers-in-law, Thomas E. Petty and John E. Wallis, & his sister-in-law Tima Bilbrey Petty. He is survived by his wife, Ellen Petty Gilbert, his children, Ryan Paul Gilbert (Deet) and Emily Joyce Gilbert Myhre (Nick), his grandchildren, Luke Harlan Myhre and Rachel Joyce Myhre, his brother, Mark B. Gilbert (Era) and his sister-in-law, Mary Alice Petty Wallis. He is also survived by his nieces, Dru Gilbert Ubben (Ted) and Teri Gilbert Lathrop (Dan), his grandnieces and grandnephews, Brock and Caelin Lathrop and Ashley, Jett, Cash and Baron Ubben, as well as a number of Blickenstaff and Gilbert cousins.

Memorial services will be held on Tuesday, July 2nd, at 2 o’clock (CDST) in the afternoon in the McCoy Chapel at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 5871 Virginia Parkway, McKinney, TX 75071. The service will be livestreamed at tpcmckinney.online.church for those who cannot attend in person. A reception will be held immediately following the service.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to your local Humane Society or to another charity of your choice.