Lynda Watkins, 1944-2020

Feb 1, 2021

Lynda Carol Watkins, who worked at her family’s newspaper in Cordell, Oklahoma, for many years, died Nov. 28, 2020. She was 76 years old.

Watkins was born Aug. 16, 1944. She graduated from East Central University with a teaching degree in education and received a master’s degree from Wichita State University before embarking on a 35-year teaching career in southwest Kansas and western Oklahoma.

She moved to Cordell in 1979 and spent several years helping run the family newspaper business as an advertising manager at the Cordell Beacon.

Watkins was preceded in death by husband, Kenny Watkins; father, Charles Edgar Burchfiel, and mother, Donna Maxine Burchfiel. She is survived by two sons, Bill Hess of Pueblo, Colorado, and Robert Hess of Lake Forest, Illinois; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.