Mariana Williams Graham

Mariana Williams Graham was born November 14, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri and died on November 28, 2021 at the age of 93. Adopted and dearly loved by her parents Tom Frank Williams and Frances Marie (Sill) Williams, she grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with her younger brother Dick. She met her future husband, Lucien Perlingiere, at a USO dance at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. They were married in 1946 after she graduated from high school and he returned from service in Europe. Together they had three sons. Sometime after that marriage ended, she met John Graham when he was directing choir at First Christian Church, Fort Smith, Arkansas. After marriage, they moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where she lived until retirement. During that time, she was the office manager of the Dietetics Department at the UK Med Center and later worked for ten years at the Lexington Public Library. She became a lifelong Kentucky Wildcats basketball fan and could talk basketball all day long. Mariana also raised award-winning cats and enjoyed traveling with her friends to cat shows around the country. Upon retirement, she moved to Owasso, Oklahoma to be close to her family. A voracious reader all of her life, she volunteered at Barnes Elementary School library and then for 10 years at the Owasso library. She was a lifelong member of Disciples of Christ and was an elder in her local church, Disciples Christian Church. An Anglophile, one of her most memorable experiences was a trip to England where she was asked to “be mother” at tea-time. She also loved Brazil, where son Tom lives with his family, and was able to attend her grandson's wedding there in 2014. Mariana dearly loved the Arkansas Ozarks, Dauphin Island, Alabama, and was a lifelong bird lover like her father. But her favorite role of all was being “Nana” to her six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. She loved them all dearly and they already miss her loving presence. One of them said, “She was wise, funny, kind, opinionated, and strong”; so, so true. She is survived by her three sons, Alan (Cathy) Perlingiere, James (Julie) Perlingiere, and Tom (Lucia Chuery) Perlingiere; six grandchildren, Angela (Joy) Bice of Los Angeles, William (Autumn) Perlingiere of Broken Arrow, Danielle (Rawlyn) Brown of Edmond, Christian (Carolina) Perlingiere of Rio de Janeiro, Juliana Perlingiere of Sao Paulo, and Alex Perlingiere of Sao Jose dos Campos; and seven great-grandchildren, Evan, Madison, Noah, Maya, Zara, Zoey and Zyla Marianne. A private memorial service will be held this Sunday. December 5, 2021. In lieu of flowers, the family would prefer donations in her memory be made to the ASPCA at www.aspca.org.