Obituary for Ora Hiskett

Ponca City Now - August 3, 2014 12:00 am

Ora Grant Hiskett peacefully left this life on Friday, August 1st at the Blackwell Integris Regional Hospital.

Ora was 96 years old and he had been a lifelong resident of Ponca City. Ora lived his entire life on the family homestead, which his grandfather won shortly after the Oklahoma Land Run.

Ora was born on January 8, 1918 in his grandparents farm house, which stood where Lake Ponca now exists, to his parents Mollie Pauline Zerger Hiskett and Clyde L. Hiskett.

Ora was educated at the rural Pleasant View School and remembered fondly riding on horseback to school. He later graduated from Ponca City High School.

As a young adult, Ora played in what became the precursor to Triple A Baseball. Ora worked the family meat packing business plus farming and ranching.

Ora served briefly in the Army Air Corps, and was stationed in Victoria, TX and later at Fort Hays in Kansas. The federal government then returned him to his life of farming/ranching, this was necessary; he was told, to further the war effort, feeding soldiers and the civilian population alike.

In December of 1951 he married the love of his life, Helen Edith Davis Allen of Ponca City. Together the couple raised four children.

Ora served on the Pleasant View School Board for 15 years, was a lifelong member of First United Methodist Church, and was a 32nd degree Mason in the Masonic Lodge. He passionately loved working the land and raising cattle. He retired at the age of 93.

Ora and Helen had a large extended family, which would meet, at the farm over the years to share holidays and life stories, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandchildren.

Source: Trout Funeral Home