Carolyn Rexroat Warner was born to Uriah Thomas Rexroat (1876-1932) and Mary Wilma (Tullis) Rexroat (1903-1991) in Ardmore, Oklahoma on August 2, 1930. After her father's death she was raised by her widowed mother, who taught in the winter and attended school in the summer, earning her Masters Degree in 1938. While her mother was in school Carolyn Rexroat lived with her grandparents, where she picked cotton and plowed fields in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. She attended the University of Oklahoma, dropping out in 1950 to marry Ron Warner. The couple lived briefly in southern Illinois before coming to Arizona in 1953. Here, they operated a successful interior and design business in addition to raising six children. Carolyn Warner later earned her B.A. from Stephens College in Missouri. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Northern Arizona University in 1998.
As her children grew, Warner became involved with their schools and was eventually asked to run for a seat on the board of the Phoenix Union High School District. She served with this body for five years. Warner was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1974 and won reelection in 1978 and 1982. She also served on the Arizona Board of Regents, the State Board of Education, and the State Community College Board and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1976 and for Governor of Arizona in 1986. Warner was active in the effort to recall Governor Evan Mecham, but the recall election was cancelled when Mecham was impeached by the Arizona House of Representatives, convicted by the Arizona State Senate, and removed from office. In the 1990s, she served as a Congressional appointee to the National Skills Standards Board (NSSB) and as a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business. Warner later founded Corporate Education Consulting Inc., which offers advertising, speaking, seminar, and training services focusing on the areas of workplace issues, women's issues, education, leadership, and public/private partnerships. Warner has also written four books, The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992), Promoting Your School: Going Beyond PR (1994), Everybody's House-The Schoolhouse (1997), and The Words of Extraordinary Women (2010).
From the guide to the Preliminary Inventory of the Carolyn Warner Papers, 1951-2007, (Arizona State University Libraries Arizona Collection)
