Mary Toncie Florence Bowen Young

Services for Mary Florence "Toncie" Bowen Young, 91, a West Bell County native, will be at 10 a.m. Friday at First United Methodist Church in Killeen with the Rev. Skip Blancett officiating. Pallbearers will be Dick Thomas, Tom Buckley, Rick Ray, Dr. Brad Buckley, Tom Ray and Dr. Thomas Young.

Mrs. Young died Feb. 15, 2010, at a Temple hospital. She was born Dec. 4, 1918, in the Palo Alto community, now part of Fort Hood, to Charlie and Annie Hall Bowen.

Mrs. Young's death occurred almost exactly four years after the death of her husband, Woodrow Wilson Young, who died Feb. 12, 2006.

A 1937 graduate of old Killeen High School, now Killeen's City Hall, the late Valta (Mrs. Roy) Reynolds remembered the Bowen sisters as "the prettiest little girls you ever saw."

After attending Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos (now Texas State University) and Baylor University, Mrs. Young assumed a teaching position in Schwertner, a small farming community in north Williamson County. Most of her third- and fourth-grade students came from Catholic farming families, and most were related, she recalled in an interview in 2009. School population totaled about 35 in a three-story building, heated by pot-bellied stoves, she remembered.

On June 8, 1941, she married Woodrow Young, who had been her history teacher in high school. Attendants were her sister, Annie Roe Buckley and her husband, Leo Buckley. Her son, David, was born Aug. 1, 1948.

After the beginning of World War II, Mrs. Young worked at Camp Hood for four contractors whose firms built the facility from April 1942 until September 1942, and then continued to work in Fort Hood's Office of Personnel until her retirement in 1972.

A lifelong member of Killeen's First United Methodist Church, Mrs. Young was a member of FUMC's Rachel Circle and served on the church's administrative board. She served as president of the Modern Study Club and was a member of the 1982 Killeen Centennial Committee, the 1986 Texas Sesquicentennial Committee, the Community Development Advisory Committee, the Metroplex Hospital Auxiliary, Toastmasters and the Vive Les Arts Societe.

She and her husband were charter members of the Killeen Area Heritage Association, for which she served as parliamentarian. In December, she received recognition for 40 years of service to the Ensign Thomas Huling Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.

Survivors include her son, David, and daughter-in-law, Dr. Lynn Young, of DeSoto; two sisters, Annie Roe Bowen Buckley of Killeen and Jean Bowen Ray of Georgetown; a granddaughter, Allison Young Vaughn and her husband, Gabriel Vaughn, of Austin; grandson, Christopher Young of Dallas and numerous nieces and nephews.

Friends can share memories at www.mem.com. Memorials may be made to Peacable Kingdom, 19051 FM 2484 Killeen. TX 76542.

Visitation is from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home in Killeen, which is in charge of arrangements.