Death Notice: Rebecca Ann "Becky" Mayo

“Becky” Mayo, who was active in many phases of the Sequoyah County Times operation, died Jan. 14, 2021. She was 79. A private family service will be held at a later date.

Rebecca “Becky” Ann Boen Mayo was born Dec. 30, 1941, in Muskogee. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics at the University of Oklahoma in 1964.

Mayo moved to Sallisaw in December 1967. In the early 1970s, she served as educational services director and business manager at the Sequoyah County Times. She retired in 2016.

In 2002, she and her husband, Jim, received the Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation’s Beachy Musselman Award for outstanding contributions to newspaper journalism.

Becky Mayo was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2003.

In 1992, Mayo pioneered a comprehensive Newspaper in Education (NIE) program for the Sequoyah County Times and other small newspapers to provide newspapers, tours and youth career counseling to students. She was first chairperson of the Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation committee on NIE.

She was part owner of Cookson Hills Publishers, Inc.

Survivors include her two sons, John Robert (Jack) Mayo and wife Jennifer of Duvall, Wash., and Jeffrey William Mayo and wife Beth of Sallisaw; brother Bob Boen of San Carlos, Calif.; six grandchildren and the current and former staffs of the Sequoyah County Times.