Clarice Bush Aycock

Daughter of PIONEER Banker Dies Clarice Bush Aycock, 96, died of natural causes in her home in Prague, Oklahoma, on Tuesday January 9, 2007. She leaves a daughter, Mary Roberts. Aycock?s parents settled in Prague in 1906. Her father, Charles, purchased the Lincoln County Bank and converted it to the Prague National Bank. The bank was noted for its bilingual services?tellers spoke Czech, Slovak and Polish dialects as well as English. He and Clarice?s mother, Mary Olive McCall, were from Nocona, Texas where he owned a hardware store and was a retired working cowboy who drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail during the huge trail drives across Oklahoma Territory. Clarice Aycock was born December 30, 1910. She graduated from Prague High School with the class of 1929 and attended the University of Oklahoma for two years. In later years, she served on the board of directors of Prague National for 40 years. In the 1930s, she and her husband, George, worked a cattle company in Texoma, Oklahoma. During the Dust Bowl, the couple served as a field team for the Federal Land Bank helping several hundred western Oklahoma farmers restructure millions of dollars in debts to save their drought ravaged farms. At the beginning of World War II, George was graduated from flight school and assigned by the U.S. Army Air Corps to fly supplies over the Himalayas from India to Chinese troops fighting the Japanese. She spent the war years producing bandages for battlefield hospitals. In 1945, the couple returned to the Oklahoma Panhandle and began operating a successful home construction company in Guymon. In 1970, they sold their housing company, formed an oil and gas investment firm and moved to Norman to facilitate their daughter, Mary, attending Norman High School and the University of Oklahoma. Clarice and her family moved back to Prague in 1980. She became an active member of the PEO Sisterhood and served as president of Prague Chapter AF twice. She is preceded in death by her husband, George L. Aycock, Jr.; her parents, Charles Columbus and Mary Olive McCall Bush; three brothers, Will, Duvern and Charles; sister, Loydale Bush Hinson; two nephews, Ted Hinson of Prague and Dale Hinson of Washington, DC; and one niece, Marilyn Bush.