Dr. Charles Erwin Hurlburt

Dr. Charles Erwin Hurlburt, 73, was raised in Africa where his parents were missionaries. His wife, Anna Jean, 67, grew up in Texas. At the time of their deaths, he was a retired professor of dental radiology at the University of Oklahoma, and she had worked as a licensed practical nurse at Deaconess Hospital for 22 years. The couple met and married as they were attending Wheaton College in Illinois, son-in-law Michael Palmer said. The Hurlburts went to Africa as medical missionaries for five years before settling in Oklahoma. They were longtime members of the Metropolitan Baptist Church. “They were genuinely uncommon people. Some of the things they had going for them was a zest for their relationship with the Lord, music, and they laughed a lot. Those are some of the gifts they left us,” Palmer said. The two apparently had gone to the Social Security Administration office to follow up on paperwork, Palmer said. Their trip was not discovered until the day after the explosion when a daughter, also a nurse at Deaconess, found Social Security documents near a phone at the couple’s Oklahoma City home. The Hurlburts had four daughters and sons-in-law at the time of their deaths, Barbie and Ronnie Trent, Oklahoma City; Sherry and Kent Elliott, Temple, TX; Dawn and Jonathon Barber, Birmingham, AL; and Betty and Michael Palmer, Birmingham, AL. They also had nine grandchildren.