Guymon remembers longtime school bus driver Birdie Hayworth at 92

Birdie Hayworth was one of the familiar names and faces behind Guymon’s school day for years. The longtime Guymon resident, LaVerda Rose “Birdie” Hayworth, died Friday evening, June 12, 2026, at Memorial Hospital of Texas County in Guymon at age 92, leaving behind a life closely tied to the city’s classrooms, cafeterias and bus routes.

Her obituary traces a path through Oklahoma communities that helped shape the Panhandle itself. Born Feb. 11, 1934, in Barnsdall to Rufus and Maude (Tally) Deen, she grew up there and graduated from Barnsdall High School with the Class of 1952. She later moved to Guymon in 1965 from the Felt community, bringing her family life and work life into a county where schools and local institutions anchor daily routines.

That service became part of her legacy. Hayworth worked as a bus driver and in the cafeteria for Guymon schools, a role that put her in contact with students from the start of the school day to the lunch line. In a district that describes itself as a K-12 system in the heart of the Oklahoma Panhandle, transportation and nutrition services remain essential to how Guymon Public Schools operates, and Hayworth was among the people who made those services function quietly and reliably.

Her life also reflected the small-town connections that define Texas County. She and Jerry Hayworth were married April 26, 1983, in Stratford, Texas. Jerry Hayworth died Oct. 8, 2020. The obituary notes that Birdie had four children, adding to a family story that spanned Barnsdall, Felt, Guymon and the communities in between.

Hayworth’s death took place at Memorial Hospital of Texas County, the county-owned, level IV critical access hospital that serves Texas County and surrounding counties in the Oklahoma Panhandle and also operates High Plains Clinic in Guymon. In a county of 21,384 people counted in the 2020 census, with an estimated population of 20,322 in July 2025, figures that small help explain why the people who work in schools, clinics and public services are often known by name.

Guymon’s own history has long been tied to agriculture and to the resilience of the Dust Bowl era, with the school system dating to 1902 to 1903 and the Black Sunday storm of April 14, 1935, still part of the city’s story. Hayworth’s life fit that same pattern of endurance, shaped not by public office or headlines, but by years of daily service to children, families and the institutions that hold Guymon together.