Voices of Oklahoma

Judge Lee Roy West 1929 - 2020 Lee Roy West has made several thousand friends in over 40 years of public service as a law teacher, state court judge, member of the Civil Aeronautics Board, federal judge and breeder and trainer of national champion bird dogs. Born in Clayton, Oklahoma, Judge West graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree and a law degree. He was a Marine Co...

Gathering Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is an award-winning 100-acre park located on the banks of the Arkansas River. After years of planning, the park broke ground in September 2014 and the first 66.5 acres opened in September 2018. The main attractions are the Chapman Adventure Playground, the Williams Lodge, a boathouse, splash playground, great lawn, outdoor sports courts, a skate park, a wetland...

The month of April is always a nice milestone for Voices of Oklahoma for it is the anniversary month of recording the oral histories of many Oklahomans. It was April 10th, 2010 that we launched our website with the oral history of Wilma Mankiller. Wilma passed away on April 6th, 2010. We were in the finishing stages of building our website, so we scrambled to make her our first storyteller. We con...

The first woman elected as Chief of the Cherokee Nation was Wilma Pearl Mankiller. She was born November 18, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her father was a full-blood Cherokee and her mother was of Dutch and Irish ancestry. Wilma served as Principal Chief from December 1985 – 1995. Wilma Mankiller was motivated to become active in Cherokee tribal affairs due to several life events that she discusse...

This month of April we observe the 25th anniversary of the OKC bombing, which took place April 19, 1995. You, no doubt, remember where you were when you heard of the bombing. Former Governor Frank Keating had been in office for just three months when the attack took place. I asked Frank to visit with us here on Stories behind the Voices to get his reflection on that day. And to talk to him about t...

With Coronavirus bearing down on our population and occupying so much of our minds, I am reminded of another contagious disease the world faced many years ago. Polio frightened humanity and carried with it much the same symptoms as COVID-19. Leading to death and paralysis in so many, the spread of Polio caused the world to upend their everyday lives in hopes of avoiding the illness. In our library...

Today we are introducing a new feature to our ongoing Voices of Oklahoma podcast. An addition to our regular interviews, Stories Behind the Voices will be unique episodes crafted to share with you interesting insights about the people who have recorded their history for our collection. By sharing these details not available in the main interview, our goal is to help you discover our great storytel...

Charles W. Ward is an award-winning architect who received the inspiration for his profession as a soldier in WWII while viewing the Reims Cathedral from a window in an attic. As an infantry officer with the 5th Division, he infiltrated the German-occupied city of Reims to confirm rumors that the enemy was evacuating. After the war, he received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Universi...

Sister Mary Therese Gottschalk was born in 1931, in a tiny village in Bavaria, Germany, the second of 14 children. Sister Therese entered the Order of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother in 1952 and came to the United States the following year to finish her religious education at the Motherhouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1960, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from Creighton University...

Judge Stephanie Kulp Seymour, who joined a historic class of women judges in 1979 when she was appointed to the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, was encouraged early on by her parents to be an independent thinker. While a youngster, she and her sister received the same encouragement as their two brothers. Seymour attended integrated public schools in Battle Creek, Michigan, but was home-school...

During the civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, Dr. G. Calvin McCutchen established himself as a leader among black pastors, coordinating efforts locally in the push for desegregation. Along with the late Rev. B.S. Roberts, he helped organize youths for sit-in demonstrations at whites-only restaurants, including Borden’s Cafeteria in north Tulsa and Piccadilly’s downtown. Dr. McCutchen served i...

Ed Taylor grew up in Camden, N.J., the son of an RCA executive making the Taylor Family the first on the block to have television. After Taylor graduated from high school, he enrolled in Lehigh University where he majored in civil engineering. When he finished his degree, AT&T Corp. offered him a job in its management training program. Ed spent the next 16 years of his life working for AT&T. It wo...

From surviving the Great Depression and Dust Bowl eras to driving a Model A Ford, hearing and watching news footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and serving in the Korean War, Ted Owens’ life is full of stories in and out of sports. In 1956, Ted Owens got his start in coaching basketball at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma, where he also helped lead the baseball program to a national t...

Oklahoma University Regent Tom Clark was appointed by Governor Frank Keating in March 2001 for a seven-year term and was reappointed by Governor Brad Henry in March 2008. Clark graduated from Tulsa’s Edison High School in 1959 and from The University of Oklahoma in 1963 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. He served as a flight instructor for five years in the U.S. Air Force, where h...

Doug Campbell was born in Galveston, Texas, but moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of five with his family in 1952. The Campbells remained in the area and Doug graduated from Edison High School, after which he attended Oklahoma State University and earned a degree in interior design. After college graduation, he immediately found employment in his chosen field in Tulsa. In 1977, he began Campbel...

Joan Agnes “Johnnie” Coe lived her whole life in Tulsa, Oklahoma, graduating from Central High School and the University of Tulsa. Her parents lived in the downtown area and she would ride the streetcar to TU. While at TU she joined the Phi Mu Sorority and was active in the local alumni group until her death. Upon graduation, Johnnie began her career with Stanolind Oil and Gas Company. This compan...

H.E. (Gene) Rainbolt acquired his first bank, the First American Bank in Purcell in 1962. In 1965 he acquired Federal National Bank in Shawnee, and two years later he and a group of investors began acquiring banks in Oklahoma, which led in 1985 to the formation of United Community Corporation, the State’s first multi-bank holding company. In 1989 BancFirst was founded, which is now the largest sta...

For fifty-five years George Matson answered the phone at Southern Hills Country Club as “Golf Shop George”. George painted houses in Ireland until 1955, by which time he had saved $400, enough for passage on the SS America to New York City and a train ticket to Tulsa, where an aunt had previously immigrated. After placing a small ad in the Tulsa World he received a call from Southern Hills Country...

Tulsa native Henry R. Kravis co-founded the global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and is the Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer. The firm pioneered the development of the management buyout. The Kravis name is embedded in Tulsa, Oklahoma history. Philbrook Museum of Art’s Kravis Wing was named in honor of Henry’s father, Raymond F. Kravis, and Gilcrease Museum houses the Kravis Dis...

Wanda Jackson was only halfway through high school when, in 1954, country singer Hank Thompson heard her on an Oklahoma City radio show and asked her to record with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. By the end of the decade, Jackson had become one of America’s first major female country and rockabilly singers. Jackson was born in Maud, Oklahoma, but her father Tom – himself a country singer who qu...

Hard work, intuition and the nerve to take a chance describe T. Boone Pickens. A household name to the nation, Pickens is first an Oklahoman. His story ranges from earning a penny a paper as a young boy to making millions, and then billions. And then major losses. Many counted him out. But Pickens was far from out. His modest upbringing provided the background for a work ethic that turned his rema...

Dr. Bruce Howell’s career as an educator began in a one room country school in Southwest Iowa when he was 18 years old. Over the next forty-two years he was a teacher, coach, Superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools twice, and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Tulsa. During his first term at TPS from 1973-1976, he played a role in desegregation and developed magnet programs. Duri...

The only full blood American Indian to serve in the Oklahoma Legislature, Enoch Kelly Haney was elected as a state legislator and a senator. He became the Vice Chair of Appropriations his second term in the House before becoming the Chairman of the Appropriations committee in the Oklahoma State Senate. After over twenty years in the state legislature from 1980 to 2002, Kelly became the Principal C...

Congressman Wes Watkins was raised on a small cattle and peanut farm near Bennington in southeast Oklahoma. As a young boy, Watkins was involved in 4-H and FFA and later became state FFA president. Wes found time for leadership positions in school despite working three part-time jobs, playing basketball and baseball, and earning the title of salutatorian of his graduating class. Wes’s determinatio...

Wessley Hubert “Wess” Young Sr., was a Tulsa Race Massacre survivor, World War II veteran and longtime Tulsa activist. Wess was four years old in 1921, when he, his mother and older sister were told to run for cover during the devastation. His family lost everything in the Tulsa Race Massacre and lived in a camp at the fairgrounds for months. Since Wess was so young in May and June of 1921, his me...