Byron Glen Harp was born on Sunday, December 22, 1957 in Union City, Tennessee to Herman and Glena (Slayton) Harp. He died on Tuesday, January 1, 2013 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma at the age of 55. Byron was raised in a military family and lived in several areas before his family settled at Lawton in 1970. He attended Thompson Junior High and then Lawton High School where he excelled in sports, playing on a city champion football team that went to state, and then as a member of the Cameron University football team after graduation from high school in 1977. Byron married Gloria Ann Turner in 1977, and after an injury forced him to give up football as well as a pending contract to play for the Dallas Cowboys, went to work in the oil field. He later was employed at the Goodyear plant and eventually opened his own landscape business which he operated for a number of years. He married Yvondee Copeland on April 14, 2006 in Lawton. Landscaping and gardening were as much a hobby to Byron as a job. He also enjoyed fishing, watching any sport on television, and enthusiastically followed the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia 76?rs. He was a member of Galilee Missionary Baptist Church. Byron was preceded in death by his father, first wife Gloria, and brothers, Roderick Sr. and Dwight Harp.
Survivors include his wife Yvondee of Pinon, AZ; daughters, Tinesha Harp, her boyfriend Ahmad Salam, and her daughter Tierra of Puyallup, WA, and Roxanne Harp of Lakewood, WA; Yvondee?s daughters, Charmaine Crutcher of Monroe, LA and Christina Almore of Irving, TX; his mother, Glena Harp of Okmulgee, OK; a brother, Herman Harp, Jr. of Dallas; a niece, Cheynne Harp of Lancaster, TX; 5 nephews, Malcolm Harp of Lancaster, Herman E. Harp and his mother Johanna Thompson of Tacoma, WA, Roderick Harp and wife Chandis, Maurice Tunley and wife Kari, and Rodney Harp, all of Okmulgee, OK; 3 sister in laws, Edwina Brown of Lancaster, Martha Wright of Dallas, and Gwen Cooks of Okmulgee, OK, as well as many extended family members and friends.