This Town OKC

Way before Mary Frates knew that one day she would coordinate the first Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, she was a Ponca City High School grad attending a small college in the nation's capital. There she met Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Richard Nixon among others. A classmate was Nancy Pelosi. Because only cultural and political events were exempted by the early curfew, Mary did both, atten...

Before he owned restaurants in This Town, Sean Cummings had a couple in Kansas City. Plus he spent a year on the circuit as a standup comic! Sean also admits that his courtship and marriage to the late dynamo, Cathy, was the least romantic one in history. How they ended up in This Town is quite interesting, though, as is how he and Cathy got involved in politics. This restauranteur-turned-politica...

As a  fresh graduate with two degrees in architecture from the University of Manchester, Anthony McDermid came to the U.S. to look for work. His first job interview lasted all of five minutes. Before long, he formed his own firm, TAP, with a partner. He's now "tapering off" after 40 years, but only after designing and building hundreds of projects all over the country. Anthony talks about rugby, h...

Show business entertainers who can dance, sing, and act are called "triple threats." Before Oklahoma City University created it in 1980, there was no university in the USA that taught students how to succeed in the industry. Lots of schools had wonderful programs to create dancers or singers or actors, but it was Jo Rowan and her husband John Bedford who put it all together, along with the busines...

With the unique style that Galen Culver has used to spotlight interesting Oklahomans for 35 years on KFOR, you'd think he was a native Okie, but you'd be wrong. He hails from Salem, Oregon! After school at the University of Washington, he took the first broadcast job he was offered, in Ft. Smith, where he met a young Kevin Ogle who convinced him to move to This Town. After a few years of working a...

She's a self-described "Route 66 Kid" having grown up near Tally's Cafe in Tulsa. An Art History course changed the course of her life that eventually led her back to OU to get her MA. A 3-month residency in Mexico to study Aztec art turned into a 3-year stay. In 2006, Amber became the Visual Arts Director at the Oklahoma Arts Council where her first task was to create a 4400 sq. ft. gallery in th...

Not many architects get the opportunity to design an art museum. But Allen Brown did. Not only did he design This Town's flagship cultural institution, he changed the face of downtown. The Oklahoma City Museum of Art was in the original Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) plan that revitalized downtown OKC - until the virtual last minute. Allen was in the thick of it and tells the fascinating story...

Few women in This Town have had such a positive impact as Rhonda Hooper. As President and CEO of Jordan Associates, she has guided major advertising campaigns that have celebrated our state and city. We discovered in this interview a common, long-ago project on which we both worked, the anti-litter Don't Lay That Trash on Oklahoma campaign! But before she rose to her current position, she earned h...

Daniel Lapham wishes he didn't have his national EMMY Award. He's proud of the work he and the team did to earn it by spending a year in Uvalde, Texas following the horrific school shooting there, but nonetheless, he'd be satisfied with the regional EMMY he won while working at OETA.  A fifth-generation Oklahoman, his great-grandfather was William Couch, the first mayor of This Town, and Daniel ha...

She created Oklahoma Children's Theatre out of necessity. Having moved to Oklahoma from her native Australia in 1980 to attend OU, Lyn Adams was working at Stage Center where she had created a children's program when the place closed. She moved the program to OKC Community College and formed a nonprofit organization. Later Oklahoma Children's Theatre moved to Fair Park and eventually to Oklahoma C...

As the VP of Broadcasting for the OKC Thunder, Dan Mahoney oversees 70 major productions per year. His career took a circuitous route starting as the son of the DJ who introduced rock and roll to Philadelphia. So one might say that he was born into the business. Following a then-girlfriend to This Town in 1984, Dan continued his career in News at KEBC-FM. He returned to TV News at KWTV for several...

Her career is Oklahoma City. Starting at the Journal Record, then moving to the OKC Chamber of Commerce and now running Allied Arts, Sunny Cearly promotes This Town. From her small town upbringing in Gresham, Texas (look it up), she learned the value of community service. The rabbit-hole story of how she chose OKC is quite the fascinating sidebar of her education that includes Baylor and the Unive...

Not many people get excited at the thought of stuffing envelopes, but Court Jeske did. As a sophomore, sports-loving business major at OU, Court badgered athletic director Joe C. until he relented. That led to a paid position of stuffing envelopes and much more. Starting his career with the Kansas City Wizards MLS soccer team, Court doubled his pay to stuff envelopes, and again, much more. Moving...

Marnie Taylor is the President & CEO of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits, an organization founded many years ago by a formidable force of nature, Pat Potts. Marnie and I share our deep appreciation for Pat. Mine comes from her support of me in the classes I took at the Center when first starting to renovate the post-war warehouse that became the forever home of Carpenter Square Theatre. With...

The conversation with Lucas Ross continues following the Muppets' 50th Anniversary TV special where he provided the banjo music for Kermit the Frog. Lucas tells some stories about that before getting into how he broke into the business including his Donnie character in the Ferguson car spots, being a celebrity, working at KFOR & KAUT, and how that opened the door for him at the world's only ba...

These days Julia Kirt is known as a politician - the Oklahoma Senate Minority Leader, but her career started in the arts. She worked at a couple of important museums before becoming the first paid director of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. From there she moved over to run Oklahomans for the Arts. Then came the calling to run for office. Reelected once and up for reelection for one term, Sen....

He's already made a name for himself as a proven leader, but as they say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Dr. Carlos Robinson  is now the President & CEO of the OKC Black Chamber of Commerce, a job he's most suited for with a history of recruitment, outreach, and workforce development. Carlos is the first to admit that it was hip-hop dancing that helped him survive "the streets." He says that da...

Before Meg Salyer moved to This Town, she had already spent time in Europe, New York City, and much of the West Coast including Hawaii. Her up-close view of the Penn Square Bank debacle motivated her to leave banking as a career. Once permanently relocated here, she became quite the entrepreneur and even had plans to open a business at NW 7 & Broadway on May 1, 1995. Of course the Murrah Build...

Civil Engineer David Todd has run the MAPS office for the City of Oklahoma City since 2012. MAPS is the acronym for Metropolitan Area Projects that voters first approved in 1993. It was a series of capital improvements that began the renaissance of This Town with a one-cent sales tax. We're now in the MAPS 4 era that includes nearly a billion dollars worth of a wide variety of projects.  While he...

Her roots in philanthropy and community support go back 100 years. Mary Blankenship Pointer was destined for a career in banking when her grandfather put a hundred-dollar bill into her infant hand. In her first banking job after college, Liberty Bank offered greatly discounted season tickets to employees from their sponsorships of cultural events. That led to a lifetime of supporting local arts or...

He’s visible on TV and films in a variety of roles: morning show co-host, doofus Donnie in car spots, and even as a banjo player in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And you’ve probably heard his banjo playing without realizing who was behind the amphibious performer. Lucas Ross now supplies the music when Kermit the Frog plays. It’s a fascinating story how it came to be from a youngster first hearing...

If anyone was ever destined for their career, it’s Shoshana Wasserman, Deputy Director of the First Americans Museum. Her degrees and early professional life running a Native American dance company that traveled the world, with a couple important stops along the way, prepared her well for her current position. As did her personal connection to Enoch Kelly Haney who was instrumental in creating the...

Normally, This Town OKC highlights the people with decades of experience behind the cultures. This guest, however, barely has two decades of existence on Earth. He’s here because of his potential to enhance the culture of This Town. Jackson Gifford is one of those people who knew at an early age what they wanted to do with their life, and that is running a professional theatre. Precocious and auda...

It’s safe to say that one man is responsible for bringing international recognition to This Town’s river sports, and that man is Mike Knopp. Of course, he had help along the way, but from first seeing the U.S. Navy rowing team on Chesapeake Bay to finding a crew at Oklahoma State University to starting rowing teams at both Oklahoma City University and the University of Oklahoma, Mike has had a vis...

In theatre, the story is told in terms of acts. Legacy plays were all mostly written using the three-act structure; today’s plays have two at best. If one were writing the story of Roberta Sloan’s life, it would take at least five, if not six, acts. Known locally these days as the founding artistic director of Jewish Theatre of Oklahoma, Roberta was raised and educated in Chicago and eventually ea...