Grace Gail Malone, former Tulsa Tribune reporter and copy editor, accomplished explorer and raconteur, left this life on January 31, 2026, at the age of 77.

She is assuredly on to even greater adventures than she managed on this Earth.

A loyal friend, Gail was quick-minded, wry and a hoot to boot. She could be stubborn but was calm and kind to anyone who needed an encouraging word.

She was a Tulsa girl, graduating from McLain High School and the University of Tulsa with a degree in journalism, before embarking on her first big adventure out of the city — graduate school at the University of Florida. From there in the 1970s she ventured to a job at King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where, among other things, she wrote pamphlets explaining to the large Bedouin families who accompanied sick relatives to the hospital how to use modern bathroom facilities as they camped and cooked at the hospital. She traveled the Middle East with friends until she returned to Tulsa to work as a feature writer in what she dubbed "The Wimmen's Department" at the Tribune. She often went "all in" to discover the subjects she wrote about – as when a story on the local windsurfing scene led to an obsession with the hobby. For several summers, she badgered friends to learn the sport with her and spent most of her off-hours flying across the waters of Keystone Lake. Eventually she worked on the Tribune copy desk where her keen wit made her a whiz at writing beautifully descriptive and often hilarious headlines. This was in the days when headline writing was HARD, before software did the work to make the characters, spaces and punctuation fit into the allotted space.

Always searching for a new undertaking, she left The Tribune and moved to a log cabin in rural Arkansas where she took off on the arts and crafts festival circuit to sell her whimsical ideas turned into treasured jewelry and gifts: A Christmas ornament named "AWreatha" with sparkling green Afro and bedazzled sunglasses or "Poinsetter" a red flower with a panting dog head in the middle. She later went to work "on the line" at a poultry packing plant. She quickly rose to an administrative position in Human Resources for Tyson, working in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. She had little patience for foolishness and none for pretense. She took some abuse from old-school workers who didn't "cotton to" a female supervisor but usually won them over as she championed their rights when they got the short end of the stick in the workplace. These experiences inspired "Big Chicken," the satirical and zany crime novel she wrote under the assumed name Sijin Belle.

She moved to Key Largo where she loved to hear sea tales from Captain Steve and other neighbors as vivid as the sunsets. Next stop: Alaskan summers, where she lived in a "dry cabin" (no facilities), processing paperwork for seasonal workers at the Denali Princess Hotel.

Last working stop: HR for the Tulsa District Attorney's Office, where she once told an attorney whining about job conditions: "You want to see bad working conditions? Try being a butthole checker for Tyson. Yes. That's an actual job."

Gail spent her last years at The Gardens in Sapulpa. Even as she struggled with a Parkinson-like disease, she kept her caring workers smiling with vintage Gail quips and requests for tattoos, pizza and chocolate.

No services are planned. Gail loved many, many dogs, so if you would like to honor her with a charitable donation, please consider a pet rescue organization.