Floyd Wesley Emanuel, Phd

August 29, 1931-December 9, 2019

Floyd Wesley Emanuel died on December 8, 2019. He was born on August 29, 1931 in Tulsa, OK. Floyd is preceded in death by his wife of 67 years Greta, mother Florence, and father Reed. He attended Tulsa Central High School where he met the love of his life in geometry class. “I knew Greta was the one because she had all the right angles,” he liked to say. After graduating in 1949, Floyd attended the University of New Mexico where he earned his B.A. and M.A. in Speech Pathology. Floyd served in the US Navy as a communications officer on the USS Hamner, deployed to the Pacific. Floyd returned to Oklahoma where he earned his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma in Communication Disorders.

In 1967, Floyd became the first full-time coordinator of a multidisciplinary Cleft Palate Clinic at the University Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. During his career, he developed a national reputation for his clinical and research activities. He directed eighteen Ph.D. students in their dissertation research and guided the academic work, clinical training, and research of countless M.A. students. One of several lasting contributions Floyd made to the OUHSC was the creation of a speech science laboratory within his academic department designed to facilitate both faculty and student research. Floyd was inducted into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame in 2009.

Floyd is survived by his brother Garvin of Tulsa, OK; daughter Elaine and her husband Lyndell Busch, of Edmond, OK; son, Jeff Emanuel and his wife Jill, of Mesa, AZ; granddaughter Christy and her husband Hiroki; granddaughter Rebecca and her husband Stefan; and three great-grandchildren Emma, Kai, and Nicolae.

Floyd will always be remembered as a devoted husband and his family is happy knowing he is at home with Greta. Floyd and Greta will be interred together at Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa in a private service. Celebrate Floyd’s life by donating to the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association https://acpa-cpf.org/.