A farm wife despondent over her family's mounting financial woes committed suicide Wednesday by climbing atop a barrel of burning garbage and asphyxiating herself.
The suicide of Katherine Copeland, whose family had plowed the fields of southwestern Oklahoma since 1910, came the day after the wheat crop was harvested.
She hated the idea of losing the farm, said her eldest son, Robert. ''She felt that she had failed her parents and failed her children,'' he said.
Mrs. Copeland, who would have been 55 years old today, was overcome by smoke from the trash barrel at the family home, said Undersheriff Steve Overstreet. Her body was found by her husband, Eugene.
The 1,280-acre farm had not been formally presented with a foreclosure notice from the Farmers Home Administration, but Mr. Copeland said the agency had told him that foreclosure action might be taken.
Mr. Copeland said the family's production costs had risen sharply but they were selling crops at the same prices of a generation ago. He also said they owed some bills a year old, and his wife had recently talked about having the electricity cut off and the telephone removed.