Born 19 Oct 1934 in Byng, about four miles north of Ada, Pontotoc, OK USA, Frankie Lou was the 3rd daughter of Irven and Beulah Elmore who lived with Beulah's parents, Frank and Ella Correll Colbert. Frank operated a small grocery store/gas station which had housing attached to the back. Irven Elmore owned and operated three dump trucks with his brothers during the Great Depression and helped build Wintersmith Park among other WPA projects while raising three daughters. A mentor taught Irven to weld with acetylene and put him to work in the booming oil field of nearby Fittstown. About 1938, the Elmores moved to 805 E. Gardena Street in Ada. Soon, Irven purchased an adjacent lot and skidded a three-room house onto it for the Colberts. Lou remembered the storm cellar and water well in the back yard. Every time a tornado threatened, Irven and Beulah took the family to the storm cellar. Irven built a 'vegetable canning kitchen' on the concrete roof of the cellar with cabinet, sink, and running water and Lou helped her mother and sisters harvest the garden. There was a barn on the back lot with horses, chickens, cows, and hogs. The family butchered and preserved a hog each winter, churned milk into butter and made cottage cheese. They sold eggs and garden vegetables to pay for school supplies and lunch money. Lou's older sisters, Irvena Jo (aka Tootles) and (Oleta) Sue rode a bus to Byng schools for one year but graduated high school in Ada.

Lou recalled how fond her mother Beulah was of her 'Paw Paw' Frank. Frankie Lou had a special relationship with her namesake, a gentle hardworking man who prepared neighbors' gardens with a horse and plow. He always grew a large garden on his property. He taught Frankie Lou to ride a bike, climb trees, ride a horse, and roller skate. He whittled little puppets and made them dance and dangle. 'Granny' Colbert loved to play checkers and prided herself on being the family's champion competitor.

In addition to her siblings, Lou had a lifelong friendship with Shirley Pylant nee Scarbrough that began at age four in Ada on Gardena Street. Lou remained close to her favorite cousin, Sherry Lou Gall nee Lee. Lou attended school at Horace Mann Elementary and then Ada Jr High. Beulah sewed most of her daughters' dresses. She insisted they attend Sunday School at Trinity Baptist Church where they were baptized early. Lou's most enjoyable hobbies were piano (which her mother sacrificed to purchase for $150), reading, playing Monopoly, and attending Falls Creek Baptist Assembly Church Camp every summer as a teenager.

In 1947, a baby brother (Roy Ellard Elmore) was born at Valley View Hospital Ada. The family moved to Union Valley, Pontotoc, OK, when Lou was in the 8th grade at Ada Jr High school. She resented being uprooted at 13 years old to attend Stonewall schools. Sisters Tootles and Sue married early. Lou attended high school, riding the school bus, and helping care for her baby brother. Roy began school the year she graduated in 1952. Thanks to a good foundation in business courses, i.e., typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping, Lou was equipped to begin working as a secretary for Fleet Drilling Co. then at a law practice in Ada. Her first car was a 1949 Ford, then she purchased a new 1955 blue and white Chevrolet Bel Aire hardtop.

In April 1956, Lou and James Denton "Jim" Greenlee renewed an old friendship as soon as he was discharged from the U.S. Army after serving three years in Germany and returned to his Greenlee-Gibson roots at Stonewall, OK. They married six months later, 06 Oct 1956, in Ada. Jim enrolled at East Central State College in Ada on the GI bill while Lou continued to work for the attorneys. After one year, Jim transferred to Tulsa University. Lou was employed by a law firm in downtown Tulsa. When she became pregnant, they returned to Ada, and she bore two sons at Ada's Valley View Hospital. James II was born in 1958, Kelly Joe in 1962.

Early in her pregnancy with Kelly, a pleasant trip was engineered by Jim's father, Bob Greenlee, and his wife Thelma. They had lived in Stonewall until ~1953 when Thelma accepted a Junior High teaching position in Lovington NM, where the dry conditions were anticipated to alleviate the symptoms of Bob's emphysema. Her aging parents (Roan) lived in Stonewall and Thelma returned often to care for them. In the summer of 1961, Lou and son Jamie, sister-in-law Jane Greenlee Shoemake and her daughter Phyllis, joined Bob and Thelma Greenlee and their son Bobby with Kitty Pooh, his beloved cat, to drive from Ada to Lovington, NM, via Houston and Galveston, TX. They toured the Battleship Texas and San Jacinto Monument, stayed in motels, and ate out for several days. This was Lou's first trip out of Oklahoma. She contributed $25 for the trip because Thelma accepted responsibility for the expenses. Later, they went to Carlsbad Caverns. Jane, Phyllis, Lou, and Jamie left Hobbs, NM, on a Greyhound bus back to Ada after an enjoyable trip.

In 1964, the family transported the Chevrolet in a moving van and moved back to Tulsa for Jim to continue college. He eventually worked in the defense industry. In 1965, the family purchased a house in Broken Arrow, OK. Lou began work for CITGO Petroleum as a secretary/administrative assistant. With assistance from Jim, Lou put her children through college but took credit for rearing two 'good boys' in Jim's absence. He was in the Air National Guard and regularly flew extended missions during the Viet Nam War and construction of the Distant Early Warning radar network as loadmaster on the C124 and C130 airplanes.

Vacations were few, but Jim purchased a canoe when the boys were 9 and 5 and rented cabins on the Illinois River close to Tahlequah, OK, for a few summers. Lou canoed down the cold river a few times. It was fun keeping the canoe upright and she watched the kids swing from a tree at the edge of the river into deeper water.

Lou's first flight was with Jim to Hawaii on their 25th wedding anniversary. They were accompanied by friends Melvin and Bea Smith (Jim and Mel were Boy Scoutmasters). She visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial, the battleship USS Missouri, and attended the 4th of July fireworks at Schofield Barracks, etc.

Jim and Lou divorced in 12 Nov 1985. She developed breast cancer in 1986 and survived without chemotherapy. Son, James, and his wife, Janet, arranged Lou's flight to Houston for extended care until she was able to return to Broken Arrow to continue employment at CITGO.

Son Kelly was employed by American Airlines and made it possible for Lou to take several nice trips. She traveled to Dallas to visit her 'oldest' friend, Shirley Pylant. They remained in contact for over seven decades. In 1992, Shirley and Lou toured on a Trafalgar bus through England, Scotland, and Wales.

On another occasion, Lou flew to Montgomery, AL, to visit her favorite Aunt Opal Lee (Sherry Gall's mother). They were joined by David and Sherry Gall from Birmingham, AL, on a road trip to Nashville, TN, to tour Opryland and attend Grand Ole Opry (she attended a concert by singer George Jones), as well as a cruise on the showboat "Andrew Jackson."

She and friends from Tulsa cruised on "The Big Red Boat" from Ft. Lauderdale, FL, to the Bahamas, and visited Disney World at Orlando, FL, just before boarding the Christian cruise group sponsored by First Baptist Church of Atlanta (Charles Stanley, pastor). From Birmingham, AL, she flew to Atlanta, GA, to visit friend Darla Deming and was honored to attend FBC-Atlanta that Sunday.

On another trip to Birmingham, AL, Sherry Gall, Aunt Opal Lee, and Sherry's daughter Becky, drove to Panama City, FL, for fun in the Atlantic Ocean and beach after lodging in Sherry's son, Craig's, townhouse.

Lou was invited to visit retired colleagues, Ralph and Nancy Timmerman, in Baltimore MD. Nancy served as an excellent tour guide into Washington, DC, and the Smithsonian, etc.

Lou and her sisters took several trips to Branson, MO, attending various music shows and shopping. In 2002, Nephew Danny Alford drove "The Sisters" through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to Las Vegas NV. They visited their cousins, Sherry and Bobby Johnston, in Gilbert, AZ, where Sherry was reared by her Uncle Ellard and Aunt Beulah Elmore. Lou's sister Sue remembered many years ago when Uncle Ellard and Aunt Beulah with their five children packed up and headed to Globe, AZ, in a dump truck to work in the mines. They never returned to Oklahoma, but Sherry and Bobby visited Ada.

In Dec 1988, Lou sang in the Gracemont Baptist Church's Christmas Pageant. It aired on local Tulsa TV on Christmas Day and was a smashing success.

In 1989, Lou retired from CITGO and soon moved 'home' to Ada, OK, to be close to her sisters and brother, residing in a townhouse at 915 Railhead Drive. Her favorite entertainment, The McSwain Theater, provided excellent talent. The theater was purchased and renovated by Lou's cousin by marriage, Paul Alford, and managed by his niece, J. L. Stilwell and her cousin, Debbie Allen before it was purchased by the Chickasaw Nation. The sisters enjoyed country music at Mary McDonald's Music Barn in Stonewall and shows at the American Legion in Stratford, OK.

From 2011-2014, Lou withstood knee surgery four times on the right knee before surgeons finally got it right. Finally, an orthopedic surgeon at Oklahoma City recognized the problem and corrected the previous surgeries.

Lou enjoyed living in the Chickasaw Nation as a senior adult. Her activities varied from teaching Sunday School at Morris Memorial Baptist Church to swimming and aerobics at the Wellness Center, and social activities at the Chickasaw Senior Site where she participated in games, food, and seasonal parties. She made new friends and traveled occasionally on the 1st class "Unconquerable and Unconquered" Chickasaw tour bus. She relaxed watching cable TV, streaming music and bible studies on YouTube, playing piano, and emailing friends and family from her home computer.

In 2016, Lou moved into the independent living center Baptist Village in Ada where she quickly extended her sphere of influence to include many of the residents there. After a series of health events, she moved to assisted living down the hall. She recovered most of her health and survived the COVID-19 pandemic unscathed. At 84, she and her sister Sue went to visit Kelly and Judy in Ardmore to see a new litter of piglets, Sicilian donkeys "Frankie" and "Lou", and the rest of their menagerie. Socially distanced to avoid COVID, her 86th birthday was celebrated by her guests in the yard outside of her window while she entertained everyone on her piano. She continued to communicate regularly with friends and family by telephone and video conferencing, streamed bible lessons, played piano, and watched pictures of her extended family scroll on her digital picture frame. In 2020, she moved to Canoe Brook of Ardmore assisted living center to be closer to Kelly and Judy. In 2021, Lou moved to Elm Brook Home in Ardmore.

"All in all, GOD has blessed me with good health, friends and family, and I lead a very laid-back, calm, and peaceful life."

She passed away 10 January 2023 and rests now with others of her Elmore clan at Rosedale Cemetery in Ada, Pontotoc, OK USA.

Lou's parents, sister Tootles Alford, and grandson Matthew Greenlee predeceased her. Lou is survived by her children James of Cypress, TX, and Kelly Joe of Ardmore, OK, daughters-in-law Janet and Judy, three grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Her sister Sue Ross of Ada, brother Roy and sister-in-law Billie of Stonewall, and many nieces and nephews survive her as well.