Top aide: Stigler resident wins statewide award

By Doug Russell, News Editor

Aug. 27 — Clara Broyles didn't really know what to expect when her employers at San Bois Home Health asked her to go along for the meeting in Oklahoma City. "I thought it was just a meeting," she said. "Was I ever surprised.

"They knew, but they didn't tell me, so it was really a shock."

Broyles was presented Oklahoma state's Outstanding Personal Care Aide of the Year award during the Personal Care Assistant Conference. It's an award that is given to one PCA in the state each year and, for Broyles, an award that has been a long time in coming.

"I'd started out with the welfare department as a provider, then later on moved to home health," Broyles recalled. "Forty-two, going on 43 years now. It's been a long time."

Times were hard for Broyles in 1966. Every day, the widowed mother of four would walk to work at a nearby motel, where she'd clean rooms for 35 to 45 cents each, then walk home again. Sometimes there weren't but one or two rooms to clean, sometimes not even that many. People traveling along Oklahoma 9 generally weren't going far enough they needed to stop for the night and, even if they were, many just didn't have the money to rent a motel room.

Then her luck changed for the better.

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