Mary Randall
Regardless of whom Mary Randall is working with, her zest seems to magnetically attract others to the cause she advocates.
Thankfully, for 26 years that cause has been vocational education. She infects everyone with whom she comes in contact with enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
Since her birth in 1928 in the small Oklahoma town of Hennessey to a farming family, this bundle of pure sunshine has been making things happen and making a difference in the lives of others. After graduating from Hennessey High School, she graduated from St. Anthony’s School of Nursing and St. Mary College.
After 17 years as a military wife and mother, and working at a variety of nursing positions, she joined the vo-tech family in 1969 as the director of the Norman School of Practical Nursing, which was eventually absorbed into Moore-Norman Technology Center.
In 1976, she moved to the Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education as the assistant supervisor of the Health Occupations Education Division where she began putting her imprint on Oklahoma’s statewide vocational health occupations education programs.
She became supervisor of the division in 1980. For the next 10 years, all of those connected with Oklahoma’s Health Occupations Education had to sit back, strap themselves in, and hang on as health occupations education came into its own.
In that 10-year span, Mary led in the development of an organization for HOE students called the Health Occupations Students of America. She was a member of HOSA’s first national board of directors, serving as chair in 1980.
In 1987, she was elected as vice president of the Health Occupations Education division of the American Vocational Association, serving three years on the board of directors. She was later named as recipient of the HOE division’s Outstanding Service Award.
Ms. Randall was inducted to the CareerTech Hall of Fame in 1995.
