Ponca City, We love you

Obama's Mother, Grandparents lived in Oklahoma before Hawaii

Barack Obama's Mother lived in Ponca City for Two Years

by Hugh Pickens, February 6, 2009

Caption: Barack Obama with his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham in the early 1980s when Mr. Obama was a student at Columbia University. Barack Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham, grandmother Madelyn Dunham, and mother Stanley Ann Dunham lived in Ponca City from 1948 until 1951.  Click on the photo to enlarge it. Photo:  Obama for America

Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas in 1942 and lived in Ponca City for two years while she was a child.  An article in the Washington Post says that "she and her parents lived in Berkeley, Calif., for two years, Ponca City, Okla., for two years, and Wichita Falls, Tex., for three years before they ventured to the Seattle area". Wikipedia says that her "family moved to Mercer Island, Washington in 1956" so Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham lived in Ponca City for two years starting in 1948 when she was six years old and she attended first, second and third grades in Ponca City. Beverly Bryant reported in the Ponca City News that Ponca City school records confirm that the family arrived in Ponca City in 1948 and lived in Ponca City from 1948 to 1951 and that Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, attended first and second grade at old Jefferson Elementary School and third grade at Roosevelt Elementary School in Ponca City.

In Barack Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," he describes his grandparents as "stern Methodist parents who did not believe in drinking, playing cards or dancing." The Dunham family was known to be a churchgoing family so we conjecture that the family may have attended First Methodist Church while in Ponca City although this has not been confirmed. The Dunham family would have been a young married couple, she in her mid twenties and he in his early thirties, who had been married for eight years in 1948 with a daughter named Stanley Ann six years old.

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Barack Obama's Grandfather Stanley Dunham

Caption:  Barack Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham a year or two after he and his wife left Ponca City. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Barack Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham managed a furniture store in El Dorado Kansas before the war and after he left Ponca City Stanley Dunham worked in Standard-Grunbaum Furniture, a large store in Washington State. While living in Ponca City Stanley Dunham worked as a salesman for Jay Paris. Described as "gregarious, friendly, impetuous, challenging and loud," Barack Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham "could charm the legs off a couch" the New York Times reported.

Stanley Dunham was 30 years old in 1948 when he was living in Ponca City working as a salesman at Jay Paris Furniture. Before coming to Ponca City, Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham had been in the army, volunteering the day after Pearl Harbor and spending the war overseas as an infantryman attached to Patton's tank corps. While Stanley was fighting in Europe, his wife Madelyn Dunham worked on a Boeing B-29 assembly line in Wichita as a quality control inspector.

One man who knew Stanley Dunham well and recognized Stanley's photo as soon as he saw it was former Ponca City resident Bob Casey who worked with Stanley Dunham at Jay Paris' Furniture Store in Ponca City in the early 1950's.  Mr. Casey says that Stanley arrived in Ponca City in 1949 and stayed in Ponca City with his family for "more than a year."  Mr. Casey says Stanley was a very smart guy with a long face and large shoulders who knew a lot about the furniture business and was one of Jay Paris' top salesmen at a time when the furniture company probably had 6 or 7 salesman. 

Mr. Casey, now living in Cranes Mill Texas, says that Stanley knew the technology of furniture, could analyze customers, and was one of the first salesmen to sell furniture as a full concept instead of by the item. "He could sell you a room full of furniture," says Casey. "And he could help you decorate it."  Mr. Casey remembers a trip to Wichita with Stanley where they attended one of the first decorating seminars in the area. "Stanley was always working to improve himself" said Mr. Casey adding jokingly that Stanley "was a smart guy who liked to tell you how smart he was." Mr. Casey says he and Stanley Dunham used to joke around together and Stanley once made a bet that Casey couldn't do a specified number of push-ups. "I did the push-ups and surprised Stanley," says Mr. Casey.

Mr. Casey doesn't know exactly when Stanley Dunham and his family left Ponca City because shortly thereafter Mr. Casey went away to attend college at Oklahoma State University. Mr. Casey added that although he knew Stanley Dunham well, he never met Stanley's wife or daughter.  "In those days the employees at Jay Paris' didn't really socialize much outside the job."

Longtime Ponca City resident Pat Moore also remembers Stanley Dunham and remembers that the Dunham family lived in an apartment in Ponca City. Beverly Bryant reported in the Ponca City News that the Dunham family lived in homes on West Central and later on North 13th street while they were in Ponca City. Moore remembers that Stanley Dunham was in Ponca City when she and her husband got married in 1950 and remembers that Stanley had a good sense of humor because even after almost 60 years Moore can still remember a funny story with some humorous marital advice that Stanley gave Moore in 1950 before Moore and her husband got married.

Stanley Dunham and his wife Madelyn helped raise their grandson Barack Obama during his high school years, when his mother was living in Indonesia. Barack Obama loved his grandfather who died in 1992 at age 74. In 2008 Obama visited Punchbowl National Cemetery in Hawaii, to pay homage to his grandfather Stanley Dunham.

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Barack Obama's Grandmother Madelyn Dunham

Caption:  Barack Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham a year or two after she left Ponca City. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Stephen Mansfield writes in his book "The Faith of Barack Obama" that Stanley Dunham and Madelyn fell in love in Kansas and later married on the night of a junior/senior prom just weeks before her high school graduation in 1940. "Madelyn was frequently described by neighbors as different," writes Mansfield. "a gentle word for her eccentricities, and few were likely surprised when she met, and then secretly married furniture salesman Stanley Dunham." Stanley Dunham was notoriously loud and gregarious while Madelyn was bookish and sensitive. Stanley Dunham was Baptist and from a blue collar world, while Madelyn was a Methodist who was solidly middle class.

Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who died in Hawaii the day before Barack Obama's election to the Presidency in November 2008, was a powerful figure in Obama's life. Obama has frequently invoked his grandmother in his speeches and she appears prominently in his memoir. “She’s the one who taught me about hard work,” Mr. Obama said in that speech in Denver. “She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she’s watching tonight and that tonight is her night as well.”

Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was 26 years old in 1948 when she arrived in Ponca City.  It is not yet known if Madelyn Dunham worked outside the home but it is documented that in other places she lived like Wichita, Seattle, and Honolulu, Madelyn worked outside the house so it is very possible that with her daughter Stanley Ann in school, Madelyn Dunham had a job outside the house while she was living in Ponca City. 

If Madelyn Dunham did have a job while her husband worked at Jay Paris Furniture and her daughter attended elementary school, no one has yet come forward who knew her or remembered her working outside the house.  Madelyn Dunham had strong administrative skills as evidenced by her work during the war when she worked as a quality control inspector for an assembly line building B-29's in Wichita.

Here is what we can conjecture about Madelyn Dunham's employment in Ponca City. Later on in her life Madelyn Dunham worked as an escrow officer at a bank and was later vice-president of a bank in Washington State, so if she worked outside the home while she was living in Ponca City, it is possible that she may have been at a bank. Banks that were open in Ponca City at that time would include the First National Bank, the First Security Bank, and Ponca City Savings and Loan, so we conjecture that with her daughter in school, Madelyn Dunham may have worked at one of these banks.

Some say it is possible that with her experience as a quality control inspector during the war, she may have found work at Continental Oil Company or Cities Service while she lived in Ponca City.  Others say that as a woman without a college education in the late 1940's, many doors were closed to her that might be open today. Anyone who may have known or worked with Madelyn Dunham in the late 1940's or early 1950's at any of these locations, please contact us at 580-765-6125 so we can update this story.

In any case, after leaving Ponca City Madelyn Dunham and her husband lived in Washington State and later in Hawaii.  Madelyn Dunham and her husband also helped raise their grandson Barack Obama - whom she called “Bar” - during his high school years, when his mother was living in Indonesia. Madelyn is known to her family as “Toot,” from “tutu,” the Hawaiian word for grandmother.

In 2008 Madelyn Dunham died at age 86 after a battle with cancer.  Madelyn died on November 2, 2008, the day before Barack Obama's election as President. "She died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side, so there’s great joy instead of tears," said Barack Obama. "She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America. They’re not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard."

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Barack Obama's Mother Stanley Ann Dunham

Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham a year or two after she left Ponca City. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Beatrice Gormley writes in "Barack Obama" that Stanley Ann was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1942 while Stanley was in the army waiting to be shipped off to France to fight under General Patton. Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham had the unusual male first name of Stanley.  Stanley Ann had been named after her father because he had wanted a boy.  Time Magazine says that Obama's mother "endured the expected teasing over this indignity, but dutifully lugged the name through high school, apologizing for it each time she introduced herself in a new town." However, the article continued, "By college, she had started introducing herself as Ann".

When Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham arrived in Ponca City she was six years old in 1948 and went to second and third grade in the Ponca City School System. Beverly Bryant reported in the Ponca City News that Stanley Ann Dunham attended first and second grade at old Jefferson Elementary School and transferred and attended third grade at Roosevelt Elementary School.

Stanley Ann's life after she left Ponca City and went to live with her parents in Seattle where her father worked in the post-war boom selling furniture was far different than her childhood in the mid-west.  "She was not a standard-issue girl. You don't start out life as a girl with a name like Stanley without some sense you are not ordinary," said former Seattle classmate Chip Wall who knew Stanley Ann in the early 1960's. "Her life showed a deep respect for intellectual rigor and perhaps an uncommon sense of learning," said Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who lives in Hawaii.

Stanley Ann met a Kenyan student named Barack Obama at the University of Hawaii and married him in 1960 giving birth to Barack Obama Jr. in August 1961. "We could see Stanley, with her good grades and intelligence, going to college, but not marrying and having a baby right away," said Maxine Box, her best friend at the time and now a retired teacher in Bellevue, Washington. "I can't think of anything she said or did that would lead to such a radical thing. At that time, you practically crossed the street if you saw a black man and a white woman. Black and white didn't go together at that time."

"The marriage was brief," wrote Jonathon Martin in the Seattle Times.  "By 1962, Dunham had returned to Seattle as a single mother, enrolling in the UW for spring quarter and living in an apartment on Capitol Hill [in Washington State]. But friends said she got overwhelmed and returned to her family in Hawaii, and formally divorced Obama Sr. in 1964." 

Two-year-old Barack Hussein Obama, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1963. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was the white daughter of a Kansas furniture and insurance salesman who moved his family to Hawaii on the eve of statehood. There, she met and married Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the first African student to enroll at the University of Hawaii. Photo: Polaris

Stanley Ann Dunham met an Indonesian student, Lolo Soetoro, at the East-West Center on the University of Hawaii campus. They married in 1966 or 1967 and moved with six-year-old Barack to Jakarta, Indonesia, after the unrest surrounding the ascent of Suharto, where Soetoro worked as a government relations consultant with Mobil Corporation, the US-based international petroleum company. Soetoro and Stanley Ann Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro, on August 15, 1970.

In Indonesia, Stanley An Dunham enriched her son's education with correspondence courses in English, recordings of Mahalia Jackson, and speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She sent the young Obama back to Hawaii rather than having him stay in Asia with her, though the decision was painful for her. Madelyn Dunham's job as a vice-president at the Bank of Hawaii helped pay the steep tuition at Punahou School, with some assistance from a scholarship.

In the 1970s, Stanley Ann Dunham wished to return to work, but Soetoro wanted more children. She once said that he became more American as she became more Javanese. Stanley Ann Dunham left Soetoro in 1972, returning to Hawaii and reuniting with her son Barack for several years. Soetoro and Stanley Ann Dunham saw each other periodically in the 1970s when Stanley Ann Dunham returned to Indonesia for her fieldwork but did not live together again. They divorced in 1980, at which time she began using the name Ann Dunham Sutoro, with a modern spelling of her former husband's surname.

Stanley Ann Dunham was not estranged from either ex-husband, and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. She returned to graduate school in Honolulu in 1974, while raising Barack and Maya. When Stanley Ann Dunham returned to Indonesia for field work in 1977 with Maya, her teenage son Barack Obama chose not to go, preferring to finish high school in the United States, living with Stanley Ann's mother Madelyn Dunham and her father Stanley Dunham who raised Barack Obama in her absence.

Caption: In 1992 Stanley Ann Dunham's son Barack Obama web Michelle Robinson on October 18, 1992, with Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, at left, and Barack’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham attended the ceremony. Barack Obama's grandfather Stanley Dunham did not live to see his grandson Barack Obama marry Michelle Robinson having died nine month earlier in February 1992. Photo: From Polaris.

Having been a weaver, Stanley Ann Dunham was interested in village industries, therefore moved to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts. In 1992 she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, under the supervision of Prof. Alice Dewey, with a dissertation titled Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds.

Stanley Ann Dunham pursued a career in rural development championing women’s work and microcredit for the world’s poor, with Indonesia’s oldest bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Banking, and as a consultant in Pakistan.

In 1995 Stanley Ann died tragically of ovarian cancer at age 52 after a career as an anthropologist working in Indonesia, Pakistan, and all around the world. "The life that Stanley chose to live after she left is indicative of the fact that Stanley thought about what else was out there," said Iona Stenhouse, a classmate in Washington State. "She was ready for having different experiences."

“My grandparents held on to a simple dream: that they would raise my mother in a land of boundless dreams,” Barack Obama said. “I am standing here today because that dream was realized.”

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Help Add to the Story

Caption: Ann Dunham with her two-year-old son, Barack, in 1963. “She was sort of unflinchingly and unwaveringly empathetic,” says Barack’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. “She was always very good at finding a language that the other person would understand, regardless of where they were from, or their socio-economic background. And I think that’s … a major gift that’s bestowed on us.” Photo:  Polaris.

More information from people in Ponca City who may have known the Dunham family or gone to grade school with Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham in the early 1950's would be appreciated from first hand sources who knew or remember the Dunham family. If anybody remembers the Dunham's from the early 1950's or went to grade school with Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, at old Jefferson School or Roosevelt School leave a message below or contact me at: hughpickens AT gmail DOT com

Alternately, if you know my mother Deloris Pickens give her a call at 580-765-6125 with any information you have on the Dunham family. She and my father Dale Pickens were both living here in Ponca City when the events in this article took place. Here is my link to the permanent article I am writing about Barack Obama's mother's life in Ponca City in the early 1950's. I'll keep this story updated with the latest information I find out about Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham and her two years living in Ponca City in the early 1950's.

Thanks to everyone who has helped research this story with special thanks to Deloris Pickens, Beverly Bryant, Pat Moore, Bob Casey, and Dale Smith.

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Photo Credits

1. Photo of Barack Obama with his grandparents Madelyn Dunham and Stanley Dunham in the early 1980's while Obama was attending Columbia Law School.  Photo: Obama for America.

2  Stanley Dunham in the early 1950's. Photo:  Wikipedia

3. Madelyn Dunham in the early 1950's. Photo:  Wikipedia

4. Stanley Ann Dunham in the early 1950's. Photo:  Wikipedia

5. Stanley Ann Dunham in the mid 1950's. Photo:  Wikipedia

5. Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960 about eight years after she left Ponca City. Photo:  The Seattle Times

6. Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham in 1959 about seven years after she left Ponca City.  Up until high school, signed her name "Stanley." While living in Ponca City she would have been known as Stanley Dunham or Stanley Ann Dunham and been in second grade at old Jefferson Elementary School and third grade at Roosevelt School in Ponca City. Photo: Wikipedia

7. The Dunham family a few years after leaving Ponca City. Barack Obama's mother Stanley Ann Dunham (left) appears to be ten to twelve years old in this photo. Photo: Wikipedia

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References:

1.  Washington Post. "Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible" by David Marannis  August 22, 2008.

2. New York Times.  "Obama Takes Time for a Woman Dear to Him" by Julie Bosman

3.  1988 Po-Hi graduate Dale Smith was the first to notice the Washington Post article that supplied the Obama/Ponca City connection in a post on his blog Faith in Honest Doubt: a personal blog by Dale Smith. "Ponca City Makes the WaPo!" on August 24, 2008

4.  Wikipedia. "Ann Dunham" Note.  Wikipedia was used to provide a basic framework for the life of Stanley Ann Dunham.  The entire section on Dunham's life after her divorce from Brack Obama's father is excerpted verbatim from the Wikipedia article on "Ann Dunham" under a Creative Commons Attribution-Commercial license.

5.  Wikipedia.  "Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham"

6.  Wikipedia.  "Stanley Armour Dunham"

7.  Interviews by Deloris Pickens

8.  Background on life in Ponca City in the period 1948 to 1951 from Deloris Pickens

9.  "Dreams from my Father" by Barack Obama. Published by Random House, Inc., 2007. ISBN 0307383415, 9780307383419. 442 pages

10. "The Faith of Barack Obama" by Stephen Mansfield.  Published by Thomas Nelson Inc, 2008.  SBN 1595552502, 9781595552501 192 pages

11.  The Seattle Times.  "Obama's mother known here as "uncommon" by Jonathan Martin.  April 8, 2008.

12.  Interview with Bob Casey by Hugh Pickens.  February 6, 2009.

13. "Barack Obama"  by Beatrice Gormley . Published by Simon and Schuster, 2008. ISBN 1416971181, 9781416971184. 176 pages

14. New York Times.  "Obama Makes Visit to a Most Beloved Supporter" by Jeff Seleny.  October 24, 2008.

15. New York Times "Obama Briefly Leaving Trail to See Ill Grandmother" by Michael Powell.  October 20, 2008.

16. New York Times.  "Barack Obama: To His Grandmother’s Bedside" by the Editorial Board.  October 24, 2008.

17. Interview with Pat Moore by Hugh Pickens.  February 6, 2009.

18.  The Ponca City News.  Article by Beverly Bryant.  February 8, 2009.

19. Vanity Fair.  "Raising Obama" by Todd Purdum.  March 2008. The captions used for the three Polaris photos used in this article are taken from the Vanity Fair article.

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Copyright

Hugh Pickens - All Rights Reserved

Use of material from this article must include an attribution to Hugh Pickens and a link to the web site Ponca City, We Love You.

My Wife and I attend Barack Obama's Inauguration in Washington DC

My wife and I attended Obama's inauguration last week and I put together a photo essay about members of the Peace Corps community who marched in President Obama's Inaugural parade. How did I get these terrific pictures?  While my wife and I spent all day at the inaugural event itself, I had my DVR set to record the entire event. When we got back to Baltimore, we reviewed the tape to see things we'd missed and the participation of the Peace Corps community in the inaugural parade is something that meant a lot to me.  Here's more information about the parade taken from an Obama campaign press release.

Organized by the National Peace Corps Association and the Washington DC Returned Volunteers, members of the Peace Corps community marched in President Obama's Inaugural Parade.President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's Inaugural Committee officially extended an offer to the Peace Corps Community and AmeriCorps Alums to march in the 56th Inaugural Parade.

In keeping with its commitment to hold inaugural events that celebrate our common values and reflect our nation's history of community service, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's Inaugural Committee officially extended an offer to the Peace Corps Community and AmeriCorps Alums to march in the 56th Inaugural Parade. Members of these service organizations will join representatives from across the country and our Armed Forces in the historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue following President-elect Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. "These organizations embody the best of our nation's history, diversity and commitment to service," said President-elect Obama. "Vice President-elect Biden and I are proud to have them join us in the parade."

Members of these service organizations joined representatives from across the country and our Armed Forces in the historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue following President-elect Obama's swearing-in ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. The Peace Corps Community included members who served with the corps in the 1960s to the present. Marchers carried the flags of the countries that Peace Corps have served over the years. AmeriCorps Alums will include some of the millions of alumni of national service in this country since John F. Kennedy's call to service and the conception of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) in 1961.

By the way, special thanks to Alex Browning in Congressman Frank Lucas' office for getting tickets for my wife and I to attend the inauguration and having the honor of being able to represent the citizens of Ponca City at Barack Obama's inauguration. 

It was something we would not have missed, to stand in the crowd with men and women who came from all over the United States to see the inauguration and bear witness to history being made.  My wife says there was the same electricity in the air as at Lincoln Memorial 46 years ago when she listened to Martin Luther King give his "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

Thanks again to everybody who sent us their best wishes for the inauguration.

My Favorite Christmas (1960)

I wrote a short essay a few days ago for my family and especially for my children about me and about my family and about the nature of the past and truth and memory.  Here's how I remember December 25, 1960, the year of my favorite Christmas:

"Three complete generations of my family were all together in Boswell, Oklahoma the third week of December, 1960 – my grandmother and grandfather; my mother, father, and sister; Aunt Lelda and Uncle Bill and my cousin Betsy; Uncle Gene and Aunt Joyce and my cousins Brady, Craig, and Jerry Dale; and my Aunt Shirley and Uncle Bill."

"That’s the Christmas that I remember best with my whole family in Boswell. I remember sitting in the living room around the Christmas tree with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. I remember my grandfather, my father and my three uncles putting their hunting clothes on and going out with their shotguns to hunt and then returning to the house to drink hot coffee and play dominoes for hours. I remember opening the Christmas gifts on Christmas morning with my cousins. I remember my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts in the kitchen cooking up a big Christmas turkey with home-made stuffing and the whole family sitting at the table eating Christmas dinner."

Read the entire story here.

Merry Christmas.

My Interview with the Head of the Peace Corps

Not too many people in Ponca City know that I served as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years almost 40 years ago. I am certainly proud to be one of the 195,000 Americans who served in the Peace Corps and I remember to this day watching John F. Kennedy's inaugural address in 1961 and his famous words "Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country" that inspired me and thousands of others to spend two years living and working overseas to meet the three goals of the Peace Corps.

There is a saying that there is no such thing as an ex-Peace Corps volunteer - once you volunteer, you are a volunteer for life and I know that I consider the time I spend running my web site at Peace Corps Online a continuation of my service as a volunteer.  My web site gets over 500,000 visitors every month so I think I may be doing some good spreading the word about what the Peace Corps is doing and about the continuing service of volunteers.

It was particularly pleasant experience once my wife and I arrived in Baltimore to interview Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC last week.  It takes a lot of work to prepare for an interview with the Director and I have spent almost the last week doing the interview, transcribing the interview, laying out the story, and publishing it and there is some real breaking news in my interview so I am glad to get it out to the returned volunteer community.

Another nice thing happened last week.  I knew my wife and I were going to be on the East coast so after Obama was elected over a month ago I called up Congressman Frank Lucas' office about the possibility of getting tickets for the 2009 Presidential Inauguration and I just heard back that my wife and I will be receiving tickets.  We are really looking forward to that.  It kind of brings things full circle for me.  JFK's inaugural address in 1960 started the wheels turning that changed my life and sent me out into the world as a Peace Corps volunteer, and now 47 years later, I am interviewing the Director of the Peace Corps and getting ready to attend the inauguration of a man who has promised to double the size of the Peace Corps and increase the commitment to service and volunteerism across the nation.

Anyway, read my interview with Ron Tschetter, the director of the United States Peace Corps on my web site, Peace Corps Online.

Ponca City needs to go ahead with two big projects

Vision, Tenacity, Character.

Those are the three words that characterize Burton Barnes, the founder and first mayor of Ponca City. Barnes had a big idea - to start a new city from scratch - and he made that idea come true.

The big idea now is to keep our economy alive in Ponca City as we transition from a "company town" to a small town with a diverse economic base.  The big idea is to keep this city nice so that people want to live in Ponca City and more people want to come live and work in Ponca City.

There are two big projects that are coming up for consideration in the next few days for the future of Ponca City.  The first one is the vote tomorrow on the extension to the one-half cent sales tax for the construction of a recreation and aquatic center to be operated by the YMCA as it was originally planned. The other project is for the City Council to approve a four story senior center east of Pecan Road which is now under consideration by the Ponca City City Council.

I agree with the approval of both these projects because they will benefit the city of Ponca City economically, make Ponca City a better place to live in, and bring more jobs and more people to live in Ponca City. The housing shortage has been one of the things slowing growth in Ponca City and construction of the senior center will free up housing in Ponca City for new jobs and employees. I hope the citizens of Ponca City vote yes on Tuesday to approve the full construction of the new YMCA.  I hope people call their city council representatives and mayor and ask them to approve the construction of the new senior center.

Both projects will be good for Ponca City.

The Last Fall Poncan Opry and the Long Drive East

My wife and I left on our long drive east almost 6 weeks later than our trip last year and we were really worried about getting hit by snow during the trip.  We had been planning to come to Baltimore a week ago but we decided to postpone our trip after the announcement of the dedication of the Fluke Plaza two weeks ago.  Since we like to make our trip on a weekend we decided to stay and see the last performance of the Poncan Opry this fall which fell on Saturday night and then make our trip starting Sunday afternoon.

We are glad we stayed. The third Poncan Opry on November 22 was the best one yet. Highlights included Gary Owen's hilarious performance as "Skinny Elvis" at the beginning of the show then his performance at the end of the show when he brought about a dozen members of the audience up on stage and had each of them in turn talking, telling jokes, and doing imitations until the audience had laughed themselves silly.  Owen's performance was on par with the funniest routines we saw Terry Fator put on for us in Ponca City in May of last year.

Dale Eisenhauer and Bucky Fowler had their Poncan Opry backup band with all the regulars with the exception of a replacement bass player because the regular (Eisenhauer's son-in-law) and his wife had just had a new baby making Eisenhauer a grandfather. All the musical performances were good but highlights of the show included Kurt Graber in an outstanding performance on steel guitar, three of Bucky's daughters singing a trio, and daughter Kristine singing another classic song originally done by Tammy Wynette. The performance of the "Harper Valley PTA" was good and the young blues guitar player in the sunglasses demonstrated a lot of talent and potential.

We talked to Dale Eisenhauer, Bucky Fowler, and Gary Owen after the show and all three want to see the series continue next year. I think that with the response we saw from the audience on Saturday night, enough audience members and enough sponsors will come forward to make it financially feasible for the Poncan Opry to continue. We hope to see the Poncan Opry in a few months perhaps as early as March.  In the meantime here are some photos I took from the Opry on November 22.

I have just posted an interesting set of photos from our 1,350 mile trip pulling a trailer from Ponca City to Baltimore, Maryland.  I mentioned a few posts back that my wife got me a new camera for my birthday that has a lot of new features I have been wanting to try.  I took a course in scientific photography in college and since then I have always been interested in time lapse photography.  My new camera has an attachment that controls the camera so the camera will take photos automatically at discrete intervals.

Starting at Blackwell I set up my camera on a tripod in the back seat and had it take photos out the front window of our Navigator as we drove up I-35.  We started driving at 3 pm and drove 145 miles up I-35 to the toll gate at Emporia, Kansas before it got too dark to continue.  I had my camera set to take photos once every minute.  I enjoy taking photos that show a process and already did an experiment a few weeks ago of time lapse photography of mowing the lawn in part of my back yard. I enjoy flipping through the time lapse photos I took on I-35 rapidly and identifying parts of the road I am familiar with from having driven it a few times. 

The most interesting thing about the photos is that even though the interval between photos is one minute and hence the photos are taken a little more than one mile apart, it is almost impossible to see any continuity between the photos when you go through them in sequence.  If I try the experiment again, I will shoot the photos with shorter intervals between them. I also want to get a more steady setup, figure out a way to anchor the camera farther forward so it is getting more of the landscape and less of the inside of the car, and finally take a series of photos driving through the Appalachians of Western Maryland and West Virginia through some mountains or make a trip down Skyline drive through the Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge mountains for some really spectacular scenery.

Our trip took a little longer than usual this time.  We always drive the trip straight through and it usually takes from 22 to 24 hours.  This year we were worried about snow on the road but didn't see substantial snow until we got into Western Maryland - and all of that was in the fields - none of the road.  What we did have was torrential rain.  It started raining when we hit Ohio and didn't let up until ten miles out of Baltimore.  Pulling a trailer, I really have to be mindful of even a small skid so we slowed way down for the last half of the trip and ended up driving 27 hours before we arrived we Baltimore.

Police Cars to Transmit Real Time Video with new Wireless Mesh

I publish a lot of stories on Slashdot but here's one I was especially proud to get published because it's about something that took place in my hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma and I enjoy helping promote our city with good publicity:  Anyway, here is the story:

I submitted a story to Slashdot, the premier technical discussion board in the world with over 5 million visitors every month, about the deployment of the wireless mesh in Ponca City and they picked it up this morning.  The hook that I used for the story was that the new system is the first in the country to allow real time transmission of video from police cars.  The story as I submitted it follows or you can read it on slashdot:

In the first system deployed in the country, police vehicles in Ponca City, Oklahoma will have wireless video cameras installed so precinct dispatchers and supervisors can monitor activities during traffic stops in real time, and quickly deploy additional officers and resources if necessary. The system to provide an added level of monitoring and protection for its force is part of a broadband mesh network comprised of more than 490 wireless nodes and gateways connected to 120 miles of fiber backbone that will provide coverage for approximately 30 square miles of the city. The network will provide field communications for city services including police, fire and emergency, parks and recreation, public works and energy but will also be used to provide free wireless internet access for all residents of the city. "The testing of this network showed that it was robust enough to handle not only municipal traffic, but also citizens’ traffic.” said Mayor Homer Nicholson. “So the Ponca City Board of Commissioners voted to allow the extra internet access to be given to the citizens of Ponca City for free."

The second phase of the project will expand the network and wireless coverage to more than 430 square miles surrounding the city with an estimated annual cost savings of over $1 million for city residents who can discontinue their existing internet service. “Our goal is to be one of the most mobile communities in America, and this is a significant step in that direction,“ said Nicholson.

Some more of my photos from the presentation on November 10 are available here.

Dedication of the Fluke Plaza

I don't have time to write a long post about the dedication of the Fluke Plaza right now but I did upload my photos of the event to Flickr and I told folks they would be available to view so here is the link to the photos I have put on the web. Check back on Monday and I will have some more photos and commentary from this very important and successful event held today at Marland's Grand Home. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Pictured above are four of the main people who made the Fluke Plaza happen:  David Keathly, T. L. Walker, Larry Buck, and Rich Cantillon.

Les Gilliam performs with Riders in the Sky

We had a real treat on Friday as local artist Les Gilliam performed with "Riders in the Sky" at the Poncan Theatre.  Les is just back from a forty-five show engagement at "Silver Dollar City" in Branson where he and his trio, the Silver Lake Band, performed three shows a day for three weeks.

Riders in the Sky was returning to Ponca City a year after their engagement in October, 2007 that I profiled here. Les did a solo set at the beginning of the show where he performed songs by Woody Guthrie, Gene Autry, and Dale Evans and joined Riders in the Sky at then end of the show for their encore.

Last time Riders was in Ponca City, I used a wide-angle lens and took a lot of group shots. This time I used my telephoto lens to take some great close-ups of Les and the band that I have already added to their Wikipedia biography.  

All in all, it was a terrific performance.  I would say there were about 500 in the theatre.  The balcony was pretty full.  A lot of the season ticketholders must have been out of town however, because several rows hear from front seemed almost empty.

This Thursday coming up, Ponca Playhouse will be performing "Steel Magnolias" directed by Jo Ann Muchmore and we are looking forward to seeing the play before we start back to Baltimore.

A Dream Renewed

I am so proud of America on the day after the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  The arc of American history is a movement towards greater freedom, greater definition of the rights of our citizens, and a more democratic government that is more representative of the people.  This is what we struggled for in the 1960's when members of my generation marched for equal rights of all Americans, what we worked for as we joined the Peace Corps to serve our country, and what we hoped for as we listened to Martin Luther King speak: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today."

America truly is a "shining city on a hill" as Ronald Reagan said.  It is not a nation built on ethnicity or geographical location - it is a nation built on the ideas espoused in the Declaration of Independence.  As each generation re-interprets those ideas and extends them, we form "our more perfect union." As Obama said "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

The next few years will not be easy.  The challenges facing our nation are daunting. But at least now we can begin to address them. As Jack Kennedy said "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Photos:  American Flag  Flickr Creative Commons by Billie / PartsnPieces Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Obama Flickr Creative Commons by BohPhoto Attribution 2.0 Generic

Rachel Barger Dances Lead to "Estória Cega"

My sister, Gail Pickens, was born in Ponca City exactly ten years and one day after I was and she went through the Ponca City School System, graduated from OSU with a degree in geography, and went to work at the Research and Development Center at Conoco in Ponca City in the early 1980's.  In 1984 she married Steve Barger and lived for several years right across the street from where I now live on Donner Ave, and her two oldest daughters, Amber and Rachel, were born here in Ponca.  After Dupont bought Conoco, she and her husband, were transferred to Victoria, Texas and they eventually ended up in Port Neches, Texas where they reside today along with their son, Derek, and a new daughter Grace.

Gail's oldest daughter Amber graduated from the University of Texas last year with a degree in Business and Marketing and I am so proud of her because she followed in my footsteps and joined the Peace Corps and is now serving as a volunteer in Mongolia.  She writes a wonderful blog of her experiences there  and I would encourage everyone to read about how this daughter of Ponca City is living and serving in one of the most isolated places on earth.

But I am equally proud of Gail's second daughter, Rachel.  From an early age, Rachel took an intense interest in both ballet and modern dance and she was so dedicated and talented that she won a full scholarship to the University of Iowa's prestigious dance program.

This last weekend my wife and I were able to make the 600 mile drive up to Iowa City and watch Rachel dance the lead in the University's presentation of "Estória Cega," an original dance production choreographed by Armando Duarte, based on the Brazilian documentary, "A Pessoa é para o que nasce" (Born to be Blind), about the lives of three blind sisters who earn their living by singing in the streets of northeastern Brazil. 

Duarte, a native Brazilian,  is a founding member of the internationally known Cisne Negro (Black Swan) Dance Company from São Paulo, Brazil, where he worked for 14 years,  received a Best New Choreographer award from the São Paulo Association of Arts Reviewers, and in 1989 was one of the international guest choreographers at the American Dance Festival. He has choreographed 45 original dance pieces and is the Artistic Director of the Duarte Dance Company based in Iowa City.

My wife and I drove up to Iowa City on Thursday and arrived in time to see the premier performance of the work on Thursday night.  But we stayed over because we were so impressed we had to see the performance again on Friday night.

On Friday we had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Duarte and told how impressed we were with his work and how sorry that we were unable to photograph it during the performance.  Photography had been prohibited during the performance, because with an audience of hundreds of people, if you had let one person take pictures, everyone would have wanted to and the flash photography would have been too distracting to the dancers.

Mr. Duarte had an idea however.  The troupe was doing a rehearsal of the dance on Saturday afternoon and he offered us the opportunity to attend the rehearsal and photograph it.  We immediately accepted and changed our plans to stay one extra day to photograph the performance.  I took over 1,000 photos during the performance and have posted a selection of the best photos on Flickr. 

A Musical Weekend

Just wanted to leave a short note with a link to the photos I took at the Ponca Opry on Saturday night and the photos I took of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra at their performance at Hesston College in Hesston, Kansas on Sunday.

My favorite type of photo is portraiture at a live musical performance but I have been hampered by the low sensitivity of my Canon Rebel 350D which has an ASA that goes up to 1600.  I like to take photos with available light because I don't like to annoy the performers by using a flash. I discovered a few years ago that the secret of taking great photos is to take lots of photos and to throw away the bad ones so I like to take several hundred shots during a performance and a flash will run the camera's battery down too quickly.  I bought my first SLR in 1970 - a Kowa SETR and went digital in 2003 with a Canon Rebel 300D but I have been waiting for several years now for a single lens reflex camera to come on the market that had the sensitivity that I needed and was in an affordable price range.  Finally the new Canon 50D came out a month ago and I saw one in Tulsa and was amazed by its increased sensitivity - almost a ten fold increase over my Rebel XT.  That was the present that my wife got me for my birthday two weeks ago. 

All my Canon lenses work with the new camera body and the camera has lots of new features but the feature that I have been waiting for is that the ASA goes up to 12,800 which lets me take all my photos with available light with an exposure of about 1/200 second which eliminates the blurring I was seeing with my Canon Rebel when I was up at the limit of its sensitivity and had to take exposures of 1/15 to 1/30 of a second.  I used my new camera for the first time at the Opry on Saturday night and the results were spectacular.

On Sunday, my wife, my mother and I went up to Hesston College in Kansas and attended a performance of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra.  I had photographed the orchestra when they appeared in Ponca City two weeks ago and Rick Benjamin, the conductor of the orchestra, liked my photos so well that he invited me to come up to their performance and to attend their sound check two hours before the performance and take photos of members of the orchestra durings rehearsal.  I took over 1,000 photos with my new camera and some of the shots are breath-taking.  It's some of the best portrait photography I have ever done.  Here are some of the best photos of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's performance.

Ranch Sorting at the Play Pen Arena

Once again Ponca City proves that a city of 25,000 has more things going on over a weekend that any one person can keep up with.  Last weekend my wife and I attended the Octoberfest at Marland Mansion and enjoyed eating German pastries, listening to outdoor music, a looking at home crafted jewelry but this weekend we have already had an indoor rodeo, a new exhibition and reception at the Soldani Mansion Art Center, a showing of Buston Keaton's masterpeice, "The General," at the Poncan Theatre with live music by musician Dennis James - and there are more activities on Saturday Night and on Sunday.

I have driven past the "Play Pen Arena" hundreds of times.  The "Play Pen" is located on Highway 60 in Osage County about a mile east of the bridge that crosses the Arkansas River  - it is right across the highway from the new "Osage Casino."  On Thursday I read in the "Ponca City News" that there was going to be a four day indoor rodeo at the "Play Pen," that was open to the public so I decided to go and see was going on.

I have attended the annual Cherokee Strip rodeo before but I have never really enjoyed it too much because all the action seemed to take place so far away.  The indoor rodeo competition was totally different, easy to understand, and very engaging.  The competition that I watched for several hours on Friday morning was called "Ranch Sorting."

In Ranch Sorting the activities all take place indoors and the spectators are seated right next to the pens so you have a terrific view of all the action. There are two pens that are fifty feet long with a twelve foot opening between them.  At the beginning, there are eleven calves bunched up at the end of one of the pens with numbers on their sides for identification.  The judge raises the flag and when the riders cross the gap between the two pens the clock starts and the competition begins. The team of two riders have to move the cattle one at a time from one pen to the other in numerical order, starting with a random number that the judge yells out. The fastest time to get the eleven calves from one pen to the other wins.  If a calf gets from one pen to the other out of order, then the team is disqualified.

The level of horsemanship and the level of teamwork between the two horseman is really extraordinary.  There were over one hundred teams competing but the action is fast because the competitive range for winning is about sixty seconds.  There are two sets of pens set up in parallel so that when the competition on one side ends, another team on the other side starts almost immediately.  All in all, I had a great time watching ranch sorting for a few hours and will probably take my wife and go out this afternoon for another few hours.

Here are a series of photos from one competition.

Interestingly enough I posted a story on Slashdot just last week about how Virtual Fence Could Modernize the Old West: For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. Now animal science researchers with the Department of Agriculture, is working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer. Dean Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, NM., has built radios that attach to an animal's head that allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to. Anderson says it would cost $900 today to put a radio device on one head of cattle, but he says costs will fall and the entire herd wouldn't have to be outfitted, just the "leaders." Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow.

This evening there is a movie at the Poncan Theatre of the 1947 movie "Where the Red Fern Grows" that was filmed in Oklahoma and Sunday there is an organ concert at the First Methodist Church we may go to.

Rick Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra

Another great show at the Poncan Theatre - this time Rick Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra playing orchestrial accompaniment to Douglas Fairbanks 1920 movie the "Mark of Zorro."  I talked to Mr. Benjamin before the show and asked him if he had a Wikipedia article about the orchestra and he told me there was an entry but that it was pretty bad.  I told him that I wanted to take some photos of the orchestra after the show and expand his article as I had done for Dennis James when Dennis came to the Poncan Theatre last year and he thought that was fine.

I always enjoy researching and writing an article about artists that I enjoy and here is the one that I wrote today about Rick Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra:

Rick Benjamin is the director and founder of the world renowned Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, formed and dedicated to the exploration and preservation of American popular styles. Benjamin has an active career as a pianist and tuboist as well as an arranger.
Contents

Early Interest in Ragtime Music

Benjamin's interest in ragtime music began in ther 1970's when he was eight years old. Benjamin was visiting his grandparents and wandered out to the garage and discovered an old 1917 Victorola with ragtime music from the turn of the century. "As music poured out of the dusty ancient machine, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of complete wonder: A new world, glowing with life, was calling out to me from another time," Benjamin says. "The sounds were somehow much more meaningful to me than the current pop music of the Gerald Ford era. ...I knew in my bones that these performers and their composers were expressing their sheer joy in life through their music."

Benjamin says he learned that ragtime was the first authentic American music. "Until ragtime came along, all our pop music here was imported from Germany or England," Benjamin says. "Suddenly, with this new ragtime music -- from the Midwest, from Chicago and St. Louis -- was America's first homegrown music product."

Formation of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra

Discovery of the Music of Arthur Pryor

Benjamin studied at Juilliard and intended to become a professional tuba player. While a student at Juilliard in 1985, had a "dental accident" while he was having a tooth extracted by a dentist that shattered his teeth. As a result, Benjamin was unable to play the tuba after his jaw was wired up. "I couldn't play, couldn't open my mouth any wider than a straw," says Benjamin. Unable to play, Benjamin was assigned a research paper on Arthur Pryor, an 1890s conductor and music director. In his search Benjamin found that Pryor's personal collection of over 4,000 pieces was in an old theater in Asbury, New Jersey that was about to be torn down. Benjamin was given the collection free for the hauling off and it rook him three days to cart it off.

The collection included rare musical scores and manuscripts. Even at the conclusion of this, I wasn't sure what I had," Benjamin said. Then he found signatures on compositions from Scott Joplin, W.C. Handy and Sousa. "I had pieces no one had ever heard of before." The manuscripts turned out to belong to the library of Arthur Pryor, a conductor, composer and arranger who led a touring band and a recording orchestra. The collection contained thousands of works from the 1920's by composers including Scott Joplin, Edward MacDowell, W.C. Handy, Victor Herbert, and Jerome Kern. Pryor had been first conductor for the Victor Talking Machine Co and as conductor, got to decide what was recorded to play on the new fangled Victrolas. "Anybody who was anybody in that era would send their scores to Mr. Pryor in hopes that they would be recorded," Benjamin said. The collection had been thought to have been destroyed in a fire.

Controversy over Initial Concert at Juilliard

In 1986 Benjamin decided to form a 14-piece orchestra of fellow Juilliard students to perform the music using authentic period arrangements of a similar ensembles from the ragtime era.

Benjamin had originally made a request to Juilliard to perform a concert of turn-of-the-20th-century American composers which was rejected by Juilliard's dean. "Absolutely not, we do Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, not W.C. Handy," said Juilliard's Dean. Benjamin skirted Juilliard's rule against performing ragtime music under the guise of presenting a Mozart program at a concert hall. "I was a rebel, you see," says Benjamin and left the doors to the concert hall open to attract passerbys. Benjamin presented the inaugural performance to a packed house at Juilliard's Recital Hall. The program of their initial performance included the 1912 score of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues," selections by Irving Berlin and Victor Herbert, and a manuscript orchestration of Joplin's "Peacherine Two-Step." After the performance Juilliard professor Vincent Persichetti told Benjamin that he should make musical preservation of "America's original music" his life's work.

Benjamin was put on probation for producing a concert of ragtime over the dean's objections. However someone in the audience recorded Benjamin's first concert on a walkman and the recording came to the attention of Columbia Records executive Thomas Frost, who loved the music. Frost produced the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra's first recording. "Suddenly we went from nobodyhood to having this nine-time Grammywinning guy producing us," Benjamin said. Benjamin quit Juilliard and has been leading the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra ever since. "I became so engrossed developing my orchestra full time and curating the thousands of historic orchestrations I had found that one day I cleaned out my locker and left [Juilliard] without a word," says Benjamin.

 Lincoln Center Debut

Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra made their New York debut at the Alice Tully Hall in March 1988. In their debut they performed twenty-one pieces composed between 1905 and 1920 and a medley of tunes from the 1890's. In their debut the orchestra performed in a variety of styles including "a concert waltz, a maxixe, one-steps, two-steps, foxtrots and blues, and, of course, numerous rags, some quite picturesque." Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times that their performance "came off not as a dry musicological dig, but as an evening of superannuated but abidingly energetic fun." The performance by Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra was the first of its kind at the Lincoln Center by a professional ragtime ensemble.

Musical Activities

Oh, You Kid!

In February 1999, Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra premiered Oh, You Kid! at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Oh, You Kid! is a collaboration between the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Rick Benjamin's Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and was commissioned by the Kennedy Center and the American Dance Festival as part of the Doris Duke Millennium Awards for Modern Dance and Jazz Music. The commission pairs modern jazz companies with jazz composers and performers for works that feature live music. Anna Kisselgoff wrote in the New York Times that the show was "exuberant romp to ragtime music."

Treemonisha

In June 2003 Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra premiered their version of Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha Stern Grove Festival. Treemonisha had originally premiered with full professional staging by the Houston Grand Opera in 1975. However Benjamin thought that the Houston staging was "too heavy, too Verdiesque" and spent five years reconstructing the opera score for a 12-piece theater pit orchestra of the kind Joplin and his peers wrote for and performed with. "We want to do it exactly as we think he would have done it in 1911 on tour, " said Benjamin. "The train would arrive at some town in Iowa, and the cast and chorus would take a buggy, or maybe walk, down to the theater with their simple properties - - maybe a couple of canvas backgrounds -- set it up and give this show with the local pit orchestra."

Benjamin says that Joplin "understood the power of the operatic medium to deliver a message. As a black man at the time, he probably wasn't allowed to go to the opera." Benjamin hopes his new orchestration will encourage musical groups to perform Treemonisha "with a small orchestra, of modest needs, and still convey this wonderful message. Joplin would be beaming from some place, because his work is being performed." "I see Treemonisha as "opera" in name only," writes Benjamin. "It is much more an amalgamation of the well-established American traditions of vaudeville, tab-show, melodrama, and minstrelsy, all held together by Joplin's marvelous music. For this, the ideal accompaniment should be provided by the regulation twelve-piece theatre orchestra of that era."

Silent Movie Performances

Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra are well known for their recreation of playing original scores to silent films while the silent movies are simultaneously projected on screen. Silent movies for which they perform the score include Buster Keaton's Cops, Harold Lloyd's Never Weaken, and Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant. "It's like going to the movies with the extra benefit of live music," says Carol Woodruff, director of Cultural Outreach at East Carolina University. "This is a really cool show. The musicians get really pumped and put their whole lives into their performance," says Mary Ruth Helms. Benjamin says he is surprised by the response from younger listeners. "Surprisingly, our audience demographics seem to indicate the audience is younger, Generation X, and not the seasoned citizens, as they are known. It surprises us," says Benjamin. "I think a lot of younger people ... move away from some of the commercial stuff that's crammed down their throats."

Benjamin has a collection of nearly a thousand period cinema-orchestra scores.

Other Musical Activities

In addition to touring, Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra performs on radio programs for the New York Times' WQXR, National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Voice of America networks.

Benjamin has conducted the the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra (Denmark), the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Olympia Symphony in Washington State, the New Jersey Symphony, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Performing Arts Society, the Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria.

Benjamin has written articles on popular music that have appeared in several periodicals.

Benjamin performs lecture tours on late 19th and early 20th Century American music at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Benjamin is at work on two books: The American Theater Orchestra and Encyclopedia of Arrangers & Orchestrators: 1875-1925.

In addition to curating the collection of Arthur Prior, Benjamin also curates the collection of Simone Mantia, B.F. Alart, and Frank H. Wells theatre orchestra collections. Benjamin's collection totals about 10,000 fully-orchestrated selections from the 1890s – 1920s.

Awards and Honors

Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra were selected to be America's "Ambassador of Goodwill" at the World's Fair in Seville, Spain.

Personal Life

Benjamin was greatly encouraged in his musical career by his grandfather, J. Edward Smith, who played violin, clarinet & piano, among other instruments, throughout his life, and was a musician with the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra, in Monmouth County, NJ, for many years until his death. Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra continue to perform regularly in Monmouth County, NJ venues, where both grandfather and grandson lived.

Benjamin lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and lectures at Bucknell University.

Discography
Rick Benjamin and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra have recorded eleven CD's and produced two DVD's of their music accompanying silent movies.

References

   1. New York Times. "MUSIC; Practice Session Offers a Behind-the-Scene Look" by Robert Sherman. January 9, 1994.

   2. Wall Street Journal. "Benjamin's Ragtime Band Captures the Real Cohan" by Barrymore Laurence Scherer. July 2, 2008

   3. Decator Herald and Review. "Strange circumstances lead to Ragtime Orchestra's genesis" by David Burke. September 19, 1997.

   4. New York Times. "Review/Ragtime; From a Trove Of Rediscovered Joplin et al." by Allan Kozinn. March 24, 1988.

   5. The East Carolinian. "Paragon Ragtime comes to ECU" by Laura Pekarek. March 11, 2004.

   6. New World Classics. "Why a New Version of Treemonish?" by Rick Benjamin.

   7. New York Times. "Outdoors, Concert Fare That's Serious And Rare" by Allan Kozinn. July 20, 1990.

   8. San Fransisco Chronicle. "How Joplin heard America singing" by Jesse Hamlin. June 21, 2003.

   9. Stamford Advocate. "Orchestra performs soundtrack to Buster Keaton films" by Nadia Lerner. January 4, 2007.

  10. New York Times. "Footlights" by Lawrence Van Gelder. February 17, 1999.

  11. New York Times. " DANCE REVIEW; Fast and Loose in the Age of Ragtime" by Anna Kisselgoff. February 22, 1999.

  12. Rick Benjamin's Paragon Orchestra

Here are additional photos that I took of the performance.

Poncan Opry was a Big Success

I am not a big fan of amateur talent contests, so my expectations were not high as my wife and I attended the debut of the Poncan Opry last night, but the "Opry," patterned after similar shows in Branson and Nashville, made a believer out of me with a terrific show that kept our attention for two and a half hours and had the crowd on their feet at the end of the show.  Kudos to Roy Sullivan, owner of Sullivan Trucking, for the idea of a monthly opry show in Ponca City and to Dave May, Dale Eisenhauer, Gary Owen, and Bucky Fowler who made the show happen.

 One of the main things that made the show such a success was a ten-member house band of professional musicians.  Dave May contacted Dale Eisenhauer in April to put together a house band for the opry.  Dale is from Newkirk and had worked in a country dance band and had been part of Bill Brown's Oklahoma Jubilee in Shidler. Dale plays rhythmn guitar and got his son-in-law Bill Brown, Jr. on bass and drummer Chuck Case to join the band.  Then Dale approached Bucky Fowler to play lead guitar and to be the musical leader of the group. 

Bucky brought in Kurt Graber on steel guitar and his wife and two daughters provided vocal backups.  The only thing missing was a keyboardist and the group auditioned keyboard players until they found Ronnie Jean from Tulsa. Everyone in the band has had years of opry-type experience and the group's professionalism made all the difference in the world as they provided backing for local talent from Newkirk, Ponca City, and Enid. It's a lot easier to sound good when you have professional musicians backing you up and that is what we saw on Saturday night.

Another great idea was to bring in Gary Owen from Oklahoma City to screen the local talent and to be the MC for the show. Gary is the announcer for OETA, Frontier City, and does a lot of radio and television commercials. Gary has produced and directed for a variety of broadcast and theatrical productions who has been featured on Good Morning America and in Time Magazine. In addition to being Master of Ceremonies for the show, Gary performed for the audience.  Gary kept the show moving with his "corny" jokes and but the real surprise was when he did two short ventriloquism segments.  Gary's talking duck and a Country and Western singing cowboy reminded us of Terry Fator who we had just seen at the Poncan a few months ago.

There were about 500 people in the audience and we are sure that as soon as word of mouth gets around town, there will be a full house of 800 for their next show on October 25.  If all their shows are going to be as good as this one, we'd like to see the "Poncan Opry" become a monthly event year round.

Of course, our dream is to see live entertainment at the Poncan - either an opry, a tribute band, a community concert, community theater, or a silent film with live music - every Friday and Saturday night so that Ponca City can become a destination for entertainment tourism, like Branson on a smaller scale.

Take a look at some of some photos I took of the show.  I have at least one photo of every performer.  Just click on the individual photos to see an enlargement.

50th Anniversary of Ponca Playhouse

 There are over 7,000 community theater groups in the United States but less than 200 of them of have been in continuous existence for more than fifty years and last night my wife and I went to the gala celebrating the induction of Ponca Playhouse into this select group.

Founded in 1959 Ponca Playhouse has produced 231 regular and off-season projects and children’s productions.

Ponca Playhouse will be opening this season with “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker” which was the first production ever staged by the playhouse.  “The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker” was produced in the Ponca City High School auditorium and played to a total audience of 383 theatergoers. Over the years, the playhouse moved from the High School auditorium, to the Civic Center, where they paid the city $1 a year for use of the facility, and finally to the Poncan Theater where they are today.  In 1996 Ponca Playhouse was able to buy their own facility on South 1st street where they have their rehearsals and put together their sets and costumes.  I understand that they are adding some modifications to the South 1st facility to bring it up to code for live performances and may start doing dinner theater there in a year or two.

In honor of the playhouse's anniversary, Ponca Playhouse's five productions this year will include a reprise of one play from each decade of the playhouse's history and will include "Steel Magnolias,"  "The Odd Couple," "Bus Stop," and "Fiddler on the Roof."

Last night was the gala in honor of the anniversary and about 100 people attended a reception and live performance of some of the greatest musical hits of the playhouse over the years.  We had a terrific time.

 I have a personal connection to the Ponca Playhouse because I was 15 years old when I saw my first play - "The Seven Year Itch" produced by the playhouse in 1966.  Charles Clapp, the youth director for the First Methodist Church, was an active member of the playhouse and he gave me a ticket to attend the performance. I was dazzled.  I had never seen live theater produced before and I remember the production and the excitement I felt watching it to this day.

As an aside, I remember someone telling me that the play, about a man who contemplated having an extra-marital affair after seven years of marriage, scandalized Ponca City at the time and that some members of the audience resigned their membership when the playhouse produced the play.

I was so intrigued by seeing my first theatrical production that when auditions were held for the next playhouse presentation, W. Somerset Maughn's "The Circle," I came down to the theater for an audition and Director Ralph Meader, who worked as a chemist down at Conoco,  selected me to play the butler, a small part with three or four lines.  It was really a different world from High School and the chance to work with adults in an atmosphere of camaraderie really had a big effect on how I thought about life and gave me a lifelong interest in art and theater.

Later that year, I had the opportunity along with Carl Schaeffer and Tom Patten from the senior class at Ponca City High School to audition for Director JoAnn Muchmore for one of the main characters, George Mead, in "Our Town" and although I wasn't selected for that part, I did get to play the "Man in Auditorium" in the first act and the "Dead Man" in the cemetery in the third act.

Over the years my wife and I have enjoyed being members of Baltimore's "Center Stage," one of the country's finest regional theaters, and we go up to New York a few times a year to see Broadway productions, but I remember with real affection how my interest in live theater got its start at Ponca Playhouse forty years ago.

Take a look at some of my photos from the gala last night.

Fourth of July Fountain Lights/Son of a Sailor

We had a nice fourth of July weekend.  On Friday night Ponca City put on its annual fireworks show out at Lake Ponca.  Last year I found a good place to watch the fireworks and took a great series of photos of them.  The view was so good that this year I convinced my wife to come with me even though she doesn't really like the outdoors and by the end of the evening she was glad she came with me.

We set up our folding chairs right next to the bridge that separates the East Lake from the West Lake.  There isn't any parking there so you have to walk but the big advantage is that since there is no parking very few people come to that spot.  Last year I was the only person along a 50 yard stretch of the shore.  This year there were about a dozen people but it was still felt quiet and secluded like the fireworks was a private show just for us.  I dropped my wife off at the bridge, parked the car, and walked about a quarter mile to come back.

I set up my camera, but as soon as the show started I quit taking photos.  I realized that the photos weren't going to be any different that what I took last year and I decided to just sit there with my wife, holding her hand, and enjoy the spectacle.  We were so close the fireworks filled our entire field of vision.  The show lasted 20 minutes but it felt like time had stopped while we enjoyed the lights.

Afterwards we were feeling mellow so we drove around a while.  We went down to another one of our other favorite places in Ponca City, the fountain in front of the Civic Center and watched the lights change in the fountain for a while.  I got out my camera and took a series of the lights changing in the fountain.

Saturday night at the Poncan Theatre we saw a Jimmy Buffett tribute band called "Son of a Sailor." We enjoyed the show and I got some good photos. It was nice but it didn't move me like the 1964 Beatles tribute we watched a few weeks ago.  I think one of the problems may have been that while I know all the Beatles songs by heart and could appreciate the artistry that went into creating the illusion of a Beatles concert, I'm not really that big a fan of Jimmy Buffett and don't know his songs well enough to evaluate whether the tribute was a good facsimile of the original or not.

Another problem was that while the Fourth of July may sound like a good date to put on a show, a lot of people were out of town so the theatre was only about half full.  The audience was enthusiastic but it really makes a big difference if you have a full house like we did for 1964 and Terry Fator.

I think the next tribute show on August 22 is going to be a good one - "Hotel California" doing an Eagles tribute.  I am expecting a full house for that one.  Even my mother at 80 years of age was asking me if there were still tickets.  My dad was a big Eagles fan.

One minor technical complaint.  The lead singer, Johnny Rio, was having a lot of problems with his microphone.   "Jimmy" was complaining that he couldn't hear himself on his monitor speaker and he kept motioning for the sound guy to raise the volume on his vocals.  However, whenever they raised the levels, you started hearing feedback.  Six or seven times during the show "Jimmy" interrupted the proceedings to complain about the levels.  It was quite distracting and really broke the spell of the show.

Note to the band:  Aren't you guys supposed to do a sound check and get these problems ironed out before you perform?

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Take a look at the series of photos I took for Son of Sailor and for the Fourth of July Fountain Lights.

Here are my photos of the fireworks from last year's Fourth of July.

The History of a Community Defines its Identity

I attended a couple of meetings this week of the team that is putting together the new strategic plan for the city of Ponca City.  At one of the meetings I had the chance to talk about how Ponca City's identity is linked to it's history first as a Land Rush Frontier Town, then as a Boom Town in the early twentieth century, and finally as the Company Town that I grew up in during the 1960's when Ponca City was the headquarters for a huge company and there were several hundred Ph.D's working at Conoco's R&D facility.

A community is like a person. A community has an identity, a community has a personality, and a community has traits that are defined by it's history. How Ponca City's identity has been affected by these three eras (and by the transitions between the eras) is something I have been thinking about for a long time and I am working on an essay to expand my thoughts that I expect to publish soon.

The most interesting thing to me is that different traits of Ponca City's character came out of each of the three eras:

• A focus on science, technology and education came out of the Company Town era,
• A love of art, architecture and music came out of the "roaring twenties" Boom Town era, and
• An emphasis on entrepreneurship and enterprise was here from the beginning that comes from the Frontier era.

I think that Ponca City is still a work in progress.  Communities can suffer traumatic loss just like individuals can. When Marland lost his fortune and his company in 1928, it took something out of the soul of Ponca City and it took many years for people to come to terms with the loss.  When I was growing up in the 1960's nobody talked about Marland.  It was like the community had suffered mass amnesia.  His statue was down on the plaza but nobody my age knew who he was or talked about what he had done.  This was 20 years after Marland died. It took a generation to pass before people in Ponca City could talk about Marland again. I know this is true because I have talked to other people of my generation and many of them had the same experience.

When DuPont bought Conoco in the 1980's it was another traumatic experience that took something from the soul of the community and it has taken another twenty years for the community to understand the loss. I think we are now at the point where we have come to terms with the fact that the days of Conoco as the dominant force in the community are gone and will never be coming back. Our community is now ready to define and enter a new era.

I  am very hopeful for the future that I think we are in the process of defining now. The past eras have been defined in terms of what the majority population has done and wanted. Now we need a new synthesis that respects and includes contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans to our community. Standing Bear was here before the Land Rush.

If Ponca City can combine the best characteristics from the three eras and is able to come together as a community and create something new then we will really have something.

To be continued...

Blackfoot perform at the Poncan Theatre

I had never even heard of the group "Blackfoot" before a few weeks ago and  wasn't planning to attend their concert at the Poncan Theatre last night.  But my wife and I like to support the theatre so I bought tickets on Friday and really enjoyed the show. The performance wasn't too well attended - I would estimate it at about 100 people but that's all right - those who came got a terrific private show.  A lot of people came from out of town and you could see that a lot of them were long time fans.

The group has been together for 40 years now.  They are based out of Jacksonville, Florida and play southern rock.  The group has been through various incarnations sometimes trading members with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Take a look at the photo essay I made of the show. 

One comment - the music was LOUD!  My wife and I always carry ear plugs with us in my camera bag and use them when we go to live performances and when we fly.  I don't really see how you can enjoy the music when the levels are at the threshold of pain.  I wonder if people realize that they are putting their future hearing at risk if they listen without protection. Ask wikipedia says:

Most people in the United States are unaware of the presence of environmental sound at damaging levels, or of the level at which sound becomes harmful. Common sources of damaging noise levels include car stereos, children's toys, transportation, crowds, lawn and maintenance equipment, power tools, gun use, and even hair dryers. Noise damage is cumulative; all sources of damage must be considered to assess risk. If one is exposed to loud sound (including music) at high levels or for extended durations (85 dB A or greater), then hearing impairment will occur. Sound levels increase with proximity; as the source is brought closer to the ear, the sound level increases. This is why music is more likely to cause damage at the same output when listened to through headphones, as the headphones are in closer proximity to the ear drum than a loudspeaker. With the invention of in-ear headphones, these dangers are increased.

With earplugs, you can push them in and get just the right level to enjoy the music.  If your ears ring after a show, then you are damaging your hearing.  You know it might be nice if the theatre would offer earplugs for sale at their concession stand - they are not expensive.

1964 the Tribute

Nice show last night at the Poncan Theatre with "1964, the Tribute" whose mission is to recreate what it was like to hear the Beatles in the early 1960's.  The group, who are originally from Akron, Ohio, have been performing their show for 24 years now and take special care in using the same style of clothes, the same musical instruments, and even the Liverpool accents of the originals.   Gary Grimes, who portrays Paul McCartney, even plays the Höfner bass left-handed just like Paul did.

There is an interesting story behind Paul's bass that not too many people know:  In 1961, the Beatles' original bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe who had used a Höfner 500/5 bass (similar to the later 'President'), left the band to resume his art studies. The Beatles were without a bass player, and none of them wanted to start playing one, but the job fell on Paul McCartney (who had been playing rhythm guitar and piano) over George Harrison (their settled lead guitarist) and John Lennon (who had just bought a new Rickenbacker 325 guitar and refused to switch). In the British vernacular of the time, McCartney referred to it as being "lumbered" ("stuck") with the job. Stuart Sutcliffe initially lent his Höfner 500/5 bass to Paul McCartney. McCartney had seen another guitarist in Hamburg using a violin shaped bass, and when he saw one in the window of a Hamburg music store, he investigated it. Because of the instrument's symmetricality, McCartney could play left-handed without the bass "looking daft" as he put it. 

Anyway I took some great photos during the show and had the opportunity to visit the group in their dressing room.  I told them I had taken a look at their page on Wikipedia and that there was no photo and that I would upload a couple of my best shots to the Wikipedia site and the group was extremely cooperative.

While I was working on their Wikipedia article I discovered some interesting information on their show that I added to the article on how their performance differs from the original.  Although the group strives for authenticity in their portrayal of the Beatles, not everything they do is the same.

Two areas that differ between the tribute show and the original Beatles performances are sound quality and set length. Mark Benson, who portrays John Lennon in the band, says that in the original Beatles live performances in the 1960's the fans were lucky to hear the band. "You have to credit the Beatles with revolutionizing the sound-reinforcement industry," says Benson. "Back then they had these little speakers that you couldn't hear anything out of. The way concerts were amplified had to be changed." Benson says that fans who saw the original shows notice the difference. "People will come up to us and say, 'I saw the Beatles in '64 and the only difference is I can hear you,'" says Benson.

Another difference is the set length. The Beatles did two 30 minute sets in their early shows and never did encores while 1964 the Tribute performs two 45-minute sets. "We tried the half-hour show initially, but it didn't go over well," says Benson.

Take a look a the photos of the show that I uploaded to Flickr.

Death Be Not Proud

Peter Militch was probably the best engineer I ever worked with in my life and he was also one of my best friends.  Peter was born in Australia.  Peter's father had served in Yugoslavia in WWII and ended up interned in Australia where he  became a permanent resident of the country after the war and worked in mining in the outback in Australia.

Peter was born in Leigh Creek, a town of 900 people that was about 200 miles from the next town and 400 miles from the nearest real city. Leigh Creek was a government owned town - the government owned all the houses, "even the pub," said Peter. "There was no television, no radio, and only a couple of phones in the town. A couple of years ago the government figured out that the town lay right over the biggest seam of coal in Australia and bulldozed the town and built a new town for the inhabitants," Peter added. "So the town where I grew up is now a hole in the ground, 3 miles long and half a mile wide."

When Peter was 12 he and his mother and brother moved to Adelaide and lived just a short walk from the beach. Peter learned mechanics and he and his brother and friends loved to soup up go-carts and race them around the streets of the city eluding the police. After Peter graduated from college with a degree in Electrical Engineering he went to work on the Deep Space Network in Canberra, Australia.  In 1982, Peter came to the United States after he married Donna and went to work at Bendix Field Engineering as a field engineer supporting NASA's worldwide Ground Network.

I first met Peter in 1985 and over the years he and I worked together on a number of projects. In 1992 NOAA's GOES weather satellites were at the end of their useful lives and could have failed at any time so NOAA made an agreement with the government of Germany to borrow a Meteosat Weather Satellite as a backup and drift it over from Europe to provide weather coverage for the US's Eastern seaboard.  The only problem was that Meteosat was a pretty dumb satellite and had to be in constant contact with a Ground Station to operate so NOAA started a crash program to implement a Meteosat Ground Terminal at Wallops Island Virginia in six months.  Peter and I wrote a proposal to build the ground terminal over the Christmas holidays in 1992 and won the job.  It was BFEC's first fixed price engineering contract and the project was basically run as a two man project with Peter handling the design and systems integration while I handled the scheduling, budgeting, logistics, and subcontractor management bringing in temporary technicians and installers as we needed them.  The key to the project's success was our decision to subcontract the one custom piece of equipment, a KA-Band triplexer to two different waveguide companies. We needed four couplers in all so we awarded a contract for one each to MDL and to M/A-Com with the carrot that we would award the contract for the other two to the first company to finish.  Our strategy worked. At the end of the project, we had completed the Meteosat Ground System on schedule and on budget and made 15% profit on BFEC's first fixed price contract.

In the early 1990's the tape recorder for NASA's $450 million Gamma Ray Observatory failed and the spacecraft's capabilities were severely degraded because the quality of the data depended on getting hours long runs of data relayed through TDRS which was impossible because the spacecraft passed through the "zone of exclusion" on the other side of the earth at least twice a day.  NASA came up with a radical solution of solving the problem by building a TDRS Ground Terminal in Australia and came to Bendix to help implement it. The TDRS Ground Terminal in White Sands had cost $600 million and took ten years to build but NASA asked us to build a stripped down Ground Terminal, co-locate it at the DSN Station in Camberra Australia and build it in 13 months.  The station had be be remote controllable from White Sands and Peter conceptualized and designed the remote control subsystem. We came in on schedule and on budget with a TDRS system that cost $12 million.

I think Peter's biggest technical challenge was designing and building five radio transceivers to go aboard FAISAT's 2v telecommunications satellite. Each transceiver weighed just over 5 pounds and was the size of a couple of paperback books. "They look for very low level signals coming from the ground at any of the several thousand frequencies, and then process them, decode them, and send them on to the spacecraft computer - all in a matter of milliseconds," said Peter. Each radio unit had three computers executing a total of twelve thousand lines of code in 256 bytes of RAM.  Peter led a team that designed and built the radios with less than half a dozen engineers.

But the project that would pay the biggest dividends is one that Peter had dreamed about for ten years - building a fully  autonomous satellite ground station that would operate for extended periods of time with little or no human intervention.  The station Peter and Mike Anderson built for NOAA at their Fairbanks ground station had a front end with three 13-meter satellite tracking systems operating at L-Band, S-Band and X-Band frequencies. The station included a robust scheduler that permitted remote users to request pass activities for supported missions, built a human-readable control script that tracked spacecraft, received telemetry data, and archived it for post-processing activities. The system Peter designed and installed in Fairbanks became the prototype for a far larger system that would be built later for the DOD.

I once asked Peter if he would ever retire as an engineer and he told me he wasn't sure but he didn't think so.  "Working as an engineer is like getting paid for your hobby," Peter said.  "Maybe I'll leave the company when I complete my thirty years and do something else in engineering.  Maybe I'll go to work for a startup - that would be fun."

But Peter wasn't just interested in engineering. Peter was a voracious reader, going through a book a day and he could discuss any subject intelligently from computer design to history, to cognitive science. His hobbies included riding his motorcycle on cross country trips he made every few years and building an airplane in his spare time - a Cozy Mark IV #740 that he had spent three years on, completing the nose, spars, and beginning the wings.

A lot of people don't know that in the 1990's Peter played a large part in mobilizing the citizens of Laurel to prevent Jack Kent Cooke from building a football stadium for his NFL team in the city. "Peter and his group analyzed maps, data and traffic patterns. We often sat until 1 or 2 a.m. preparing a case that amazed even the most cynical developer representatives," wrote Jeanne Mignon. "Peter never complained about the long hours; in fact, as we ate pizza and talked, he seemed quite in his element. Peter is an engineer. He is precise and communicates clearly. He is also wily and determined. His ideas for stymieing our opponents often bordered on brilliance. He foresaw their strategies, their weaknesses and their arrogance."

When I talked to Peter at his home a few weeks ago, I asked Peter what he thought his legacy would be.  "I think it will be my daughters.  I am really proud of them," Peter said.  "You know they are very kind and I think that kindness is about the most important human attribute."

I think Peter had kindness in him. In the years I worked with him I never once heard him raise his voice or lose his temper. Peter always believed that the facts would speak for themselves and it wasn't necessary to present emotional arguments to support a position. When Peter discovered he had cancer he approached the problem like any other.  "A weaker individual would have succumbed to self-pity," wrote Jeanne Mignon. "Peter, true to form, researched and advocated for every possible avenue for cure, remission or delay of the tumor engulfing his system." Peter had a quiet dignity as he faced his condition philosophically. There was a strength in Peter that bordered on divine - you could feel it in his presence.

After his long struggle with cancer Peter died at his home in Laurel, Maryland on May 15 in the arms of his wife Donna who was devoted to Peter's care.  Peter is survived by his wife and two daughters and by his mother, father, and brother in Australia.

Peter was 52 years old. 

I will miss Peter and think about him every day for the rest of my life.

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Click on the photos above to enlarge them.  Captions for photos: 

(Top left) Peter at work.

(Top right) The three 13-meter antennas that Peter installed at NOAA's Fairbanks station. Take a good look - those tiny objects at the base of the antennas are pickup trucks.

(Bottom left) Peter tests his spacecraft transceiver in a chamber at Teterboro in 1997.

(Bottom right) A photo my wife took of Peter and me at his house in October 2007 before Peter underwent his last course of chemotherapy. Donna is sitting in the background.

Terry Fator at the Poncan Theater

My wife and I had a great time last night when impressionist and ventriliquist Terry Fator appeared at the Poncan Theater.  We bought tickets as soon as they went up for sale and were lucky enough to get our favorite seats in the middle of the front row.  We just knew that since it was going to be a one man show, the closer to the front the better.

Fator said at the beginning of the show that there were "no rules" and that he had no objection to anyone taking photos during the performance so I snapped away with available light during the entire performance.  Once again my motto "The way to get great photos is to take lots of photos and throw away the bad ones" worked out.  I went through my photos and uploaded 50 of the best to Flickr.

I also went to Wikipedia today and made a major expansion of the article on Fator and added photos that I took from the show.  Here are some interesting things that I found out about Fator as I was expanding the article  Fator is 42 years old and has been in show business for over 20 years. Fator was the lead singer of a show band called 'Texas the Band' when he was 20, and incorporated his puppet Walter T. Airedale into his shows. Fator's band at one point was about to sign with a major record label and one of the label's representatives came to hear the band. Fator sang the songs impersonating the original vocalists. "He told me 'you gotta stop doing those impressions,' and wanted me to sing in my own voice," Fator says. "I tried it for a few weeks, and absolutely hated, it. We told the record company 'no thanks.' "

Fator left the band and did a solo act combining comedy and ventriloquism but for many years had little success. "Fairs would stick me on a little stage in the back of fair and have me do three shows in the hottest part of the afternoon," says Fator. "I had heat stroke a couple of times, almost passed out."  In May 2007, before appearing on America's Got Talent, Fator was performing at a fair near Houston, Texas and only one 12 year old boy was in the audience. Discouraged, Fator contemplated pursuing another career, but his family encouraged him to hang in there. Terry entered the America's Got Talent competition with the hope that the exposure if he made it to the Top 20 might help his career and cause people to want to attend his shows.

Fator's success stems from combining singing and ventriloquism and it wasn't even his idea. Fator had been the lead singer in a band and often did impersonations of singers like Garth Brooks, Etta James, James Taylor and Dean Martin while ventriloquism was just a comic side gig for Fator. Per the suggestion of his manager, Fator decided to join his two talents, ventriloquism and impersonations. "I had one of my characters sing Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places and the audience went bananas," Fator says. "Boy, that was where my life changed." After his initial success Fator revamped his act. "It took me six months and I completely rewrote the show," says Fator. "It was then that people really noticed and I started getting standing ovations at the end of every show."

Fator has fought to be taken seriously as a ventriloquist. "There have been so few good, successful ventriloquists - Edgar Bergen in the 1940s and Paul Winchell in the 1960s were respected and successful," says Fator. "And in the 1970s, I used to watch Willie Tyler and his Lester as well as Jay Johnson and Bob. But over the years, there have been so many bad ventriloquists - and most of them doing corny shows for children - that people began to think of us as a bad joke."

Fator says that ventriloquists get a bad reputation because of all the ones who perform for kids. "They assume it's only for children and they don't need to be good, and they write stupid stuff the kids will like. You are really underestimating children when you do that," says Fator. "My show is written for adults, for the adult intellect. It's like a Pixar movie. It's appropriate for children, but the adults will enjoy it more than the kids do."

Fator says that he is an illusionist with his cast of seven original puppet characters. "I look at myself as a talk show host and the characters are my guests," says Fator. "I can guarantee anyone who comes to my show, within a second or two, will feel that the puppet is the real entity. I love creating life out of wood and felt." "I feel like I am the poster boy of the American dream, but it's not like winning the lottery - I earned it," says Fator. "I spent years and years honing my craft, working on it and learning to do it as well as I possibly could. I'm so gratified."

All I have to add is that Dave May is doing a great job promoting the Poncan Theater.  There was a sold out crowd last night and I was told that there were over 200 who were turned away at the door.  The Poncan is really becoming well known as a venue for live music.  And success builds on success.  With a great show like last night, now more people are going to want to come see the Tribute series with "1964," the Beatles Tribute, appearing on June 4, the Jimmy Buffet Tribute on July 5, and the Eagles Tribute on August 22.

Take a look at my photo series from Terry Fator's show last night.

Bobwhite Quail

My father used to love to hunt Bobwhite Quail. 

My father always had one or two hunting dogs when we lived at the house he bought in 1949 at 437 Fairview right next to Speck's trailer court and I loved to play with our weirmeraner Ajax and our brittany Ginger but what I remember best of all is my father getting up early on Saturday mornings back in the mid-1950's and going out with his hunting buddies to spend a day in the fields around Ponca City hunting quail while I would stay at home and watch my favorite tv shows with my neighborhood buddies, Mike Eaton, Jay Holmes, Greg Lukehart, and Tom and Bob Monger. We were the first family on Fairview Street to own a television set and everyone would come over to watch Sky King, Roy Rodgers, and 3-D Danny on "Satellite 4."

One of my interests in Wikipedia has been helping write and maintain the biographies of various well known Oklahomans and this weekend I was doing some work on T. Boone Pickens' article and discovered that my father wasn't the only Pickens who loved quail hunting. Here's a paragraph I added to T. Boone's article:

T. Boone Pickens has been interested in hunting quail and in keeping hunting dogs since he was a boy growing up in Holdenville, Oklahoma where his father always kept two dogs. Pickens bought 2,900 acres of overgrazed pasture near the Canadian River in 1971 and Pickens would drive 100 miles from Amarillo to hunt all day with his hunting buddies. Pickens soon began creating artificial creeks on the property to benefit the quail and other wildlife. "As any experienced quail hunter knows, the best hunting is along creek drainages," says Pickens. "We had some good creek drainages on the ranch, but I got the idea of creating artificial creeks." Pickens created artificial creeks by burying PVC pipe and pumping water through the buried water system where the water bubbled to the surface every 1,000 feet to create waterholes for the quail. Pickens added quail feeders for a winter food supply and placed the feeders in plum thickets for overhead protection from hawks. "The system worked pretty well," Pickens says. "We noticed better hunting wherever we put the water lines. Abundant water creates abundant insects, and insects are important food for quail chicks. Even when it doesn't rain, I think the quail dampen their feathers in the waterhole and return to the nest. Pickens' ranch, called Mesa Vista, has now expanded to 68,000 acres with more than 24 miles of frontage on the Canadian River. "A lot of experienced hunters have said that Mesa Vista is the world's best quail hunting," Pickens said. "I don't know if it's the world's best, but I'm convinced it's the best that my team could make it.

My father Dale Pickens grew up on a farm and he was taught to hunt as a boy growing up in Boswell, Oklahoma from my grandfather, Hugh, who was said to be able to hit a squirrel in the eye with a .22 from a hundred yards.  I had a bb gun when I was a child and my friends and I used to go on hiking expeditions north of Ponca City to shoot pop bottles and targets on trees by the railroad tracks but after I was a teenager I never really took much of an interest in hunting and I don't remember going hunting with my father more than a couple of times before I went away to college. 

It's been ten years now since he died and I would give anything in the world to spend a day with my father again hunting Bobwhite quail.

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Top Photo: Mr. Bob White sitting on his fencepost near Litle Sahara state park in North Central Oklahoma by Topato.  Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Bottom Photo:  Dad and I going hunting in 1971.

Jack Vaughn: Peace Corps Legend

Jack Vaughn: Peace Corps Legend
Last week I finished a piece that I have been working on for several months: a biography of Jack Vaughn, the second director of the Peace Corps.  Vaughn, a lifelong Republican, was appointed the second Director of the Peace Corps in 1966 by Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson and led the Peace Corps on a non-partisan basis for three years through some of the agency's most challenging times.

Before joining the State Department Vaughn fought professionally under the name of "Johnny Hood." "I was bumming around Mexico one summer when I ran out of money," Vaughn said. "I decided I would take my boxing and turn pro, but I didn't know enough Spanish at the time to tell whether the agent said I would get 60 pesos for four rounds or four pesos for 60 rounds. You can guess which figure was correct." Vaughn fought 26 featherweight bouts as a professional. Vaughn tells the story that the first time he fought professionally in Mexico, the fans cheered enthusiastically but he couldn't make out what they were saying and he thought they were cheering him on. It was only later that he learned that what the fans were shouting was "Kill the Gringo!" Mata al Gringo! later became the title for Vaughn's unpublished memoirs.

Vaughn was appointed Peace Corps Director on February 16, 1966. Vaughn was in a bar at 12:30 on M Street in Georgetown when the bar telephone rang and the bartender asked, "Is there a Mr. Jack Vaughn here?" Vaughn answered yes the bartender says, "it's someone who says he's the president of the United States." "Let me finish this drink," replied Vaughn taking his time before picking up the phone and saying hello. On the line was President Lyndon Baines Johnson himself. "Vaughn," said LBJ. "How would you like to be the director of the Peace Corps?" "Mr. President," Vaughn replied calmly, "I thought you'd never ask."

When Richard Nixon became president in 1969, Vaughn found himself out of a job. One report says that Vaughn was asked by Nixon's Secretary of State William P. Rogers to stay on as Peace Corps director to emphasize the nonpolitical nature of the Peace Corps. Instead, Vaughn was informed in March, 1969, that he would be replaced after all and reports that Vaughn had been asked to stay on as Peace Corps Director in the Nixon administration were reported in the media to be untrue. "I was the first bureaucrat Nixon fired when he took office," Vaughn said. "But when he found out I was a Republican, he asked me if I'd be his ambassador to Colombia." 

Vaughn opposed George W. Bush's nomination of Gaddi Vasquez to become Peace Corps Director in 2001. "As they say on the racing tout sheet for a horse that is not in the running: 'Nothing to recommend,'" Vaughn said. "He has little experience . . . and little to indicate that he understands how to run the Peace Corps or any international organization. It's clearly a political payoff, and it would be a shame to see him approved." As a Republican it pained Vaughn to have to oppose a nominee by a Republican President, but Vaughn came to Washington on his own and appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to speak out against the appointment of Vasquez. However Vasquez cleared the United States Senate Foreign Relations committee by a vote of 14-4, and was accepted in the full Senate on a voice vote.

Read the story as I published it on Peace Corps Online or read the scholarly version with citations on Wikipedia.

Top Photo:  Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn meets with reporters and answers questions in fluent Spanish in Honduras in February 1969. From the Peace Corps Volunteer magazine May, 1969.

Bottom Photo: Caption: Jack Vaughn, the second Director of the Peace Corps, (center) with C. Payne Lucas, President Emeritus of Africare (left), and Hugh Pickens, Publisher and Co-editor of Peace Corps Online. The photo was taken in 2007.  Photo cannot be not be used without permission.

Classic Rock Concerts Announced for Summer

We had a nice turnout last summer for "Bruce in the USA" and lots of people told me and my wife how much they enjoyed the show so this year we thought we would go one better and work with Dave May and the Poncan Theater to help put on a summer series of classic rock with three great shows in the "Second Annual Classic Rock Summer Tribute Series" at the Poncan Theater in Ponca City. 

Larry Murphy, my high school classmate from Po-Hi '67 and his brother Bill Murphy of I-Deal Auto Sales have joined with me and my wife to co-sponsor the series. We're going to have three top tribute bands:  "1964" doing a tribute concert to the 1964 Beatles, "Bruce in the USA" reprising their 2007 appearance in Ponca City with a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tribute, and "Hotel California" with a tribute to the Eagles. "1964" will be appearing on June 6 in conjunction with "Dragging Grand." "Bruce in the USA" will be here for 4th of July weekend appearing on Saturday July 5, 2008.  "Hotel California" will be appearing August 22.

I love a good tribute band, the operative word being "good."  I don't have the cash, the contacts, or the patience to get a front row seat to the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin when they tour and the truth is that I don't really enjoy "arena rock" at my age.  I love music in a club setting or a small theater as long as the band has excellent musicians who know and love the music. I'd rather have front row seats to see a good tribute band that can bring me back to the music of the 60's and 70's than see a "name band" from thirty-four rows back in a stadium.

Of the three bands that are coming, I have seen 1964 play twice at Ram's Head in Annapolis and they played in Ponca City two years ago. I have seen "Bruce in the USA" about five times now at Annapolis, the Recher Theater in Baltimore (where I took the pictures above) and in Ponca City last year.  I haven't seen "Hotel California" yet but Bill Ware saw them play in Dallas and if Bill says they are good, that is enough for me.

Here's hoping that the series this summer is a success and we can make this an annual event. Call Dave May at the Poncan Theater at 580-765-0943 and reserve your tickets for the three concert series today.

 

Muslim Country-Western Singer is from Ponca City

I was reading an interesting story in the New York Times earlier this week on the first Muslim country-western singer, Kareem Salama, when I came to the following sentence and did a double take: He was born about 95 miles northwest of Tulsa in Ponca City, Okla., a town with just one other Muslim family. “They are more redneck than I am, I mean good old boys,” he said, the twang unmistakable. “They go hunting every weekend and drive big old trucks.”  Mr. Salama highlights universal themes about love, home and family values. His songs are spiritual without being overtly religious. One inspired by the writings of an eighth-century Islamic scholar, Imam Muhammed Al-Shafi’ee, endorses the idea of tolerance and avoiding violence: “Gentleman, I’m like incense, the more you burn me, the more fragrant I get.”

I went over to Kareem's web site for more details:  "I was born and raised in Ponca City, a small town at the edge of Green Country in Oklahoma, but my parents were born and raised in Egypt.  When I was young I loved water painting but I was also an amateur boxer for years. I enjoy classical Western poetry but I enjoy classical Arabic poetry as well. I have a degree in Chemical Engineering but now I’m finishing my last year in law school. I like country and blue grass music but I appreciate good R&B music as well.  Oklahoma, like me, is a place where cultures meet and dance.  Oklahoma is a hybrid of Southern, Western and Native American culture and thanks to my mother’s insatiable desire to learn and experience new things she made sure that I and everyone in my family was immersed in all of it. As a child, I went to Indian Tribal Powwows, heard country music artists at the county fair and watched my favorite cowboys at the rodeo every year."

I emailed Mr. Salama to congratulate him for his success and when he replied it turned out that he and my daughter Carolina attended Washington School at the same time. His family is now living in Richmond, Texas and he may be going on tour soon if he decides to accept an offer to record for a label in Tennessee.  I hope to see him in concert soon and wouldn't it be great if the Ponca Theatre could bring him to town for a show? “We hope to establish an American Muslim identity,” said an admirer of Mr. Salama's music, “and what is more American than country music?”

Writing for Wikipedia

One of the activities that I really enjoy is writing for Wikipedia.  I have learned a lot about how Wikipedia works since I got actively involved as a writer about 6 months ago.  Wikipedia is a village and there are as many different roles in Wikipedia as there are tasks in a village.  Some people fact check.  Some people control vandalism.  Some people correct spelling and punctuation.  What I enjoy doing is in-depth research on one person.  I like to find someone, an artist, a politician, a former Peace Corps Director, or an Oklahoman, that I like and am interested in learning more about and write their biography from scratch. 

First I think of someone I would like to write about, then I go to Wikipedia and see if there is a story started about them already but a story that is incomplete.  What I like is to find a story that is just getting started.  When I go to an article on Wikipedia about someone known best by a small group, and I find only a few sentences written down, then I know I have struck gold.  That's the story I want to write.

But finding the right article to write is only a start.  To actually write an article I have a process that includes going onto Google, finding out everything I can about a person and putting it all in a database, letting the narrative structure emerge, writing an outline, and filling in the story with information and citations as I go.  It's a methodology that can be followed iteratively to construct a narrative. I call it structured history or structured narrative, it's the same thing really.

Last Thursday night I found out that being a Wikipedia biographer has its perks.  A few months ago, I decided to write the biography of one of my favorite singers, Marie Daulne of Zap Mama. Here is what her Wikipedia article looked like when I started working on it.  I finished the bio and the only thing I was really missing was a good photo to go with the bio.  Of course on Wikipedia, you are not allowed to use copyrighted photos so the best bet is to go to Flickr and see if there is a good photo someone has taken and put into the Creative Commons.  Failing that the only other alternative is to wait until you see the artist next time in concert and take a photo yourself and put it into the creative commons.

On November 1, Marie Daulne came to Baltimore and appeared at the 8x10 club, so my wife and I attended the show, had a great time, and took some great photos of her and the group to use with the Wikipedia article about her.  After the show we went backstage and introduced ourselves to Daulne.  I told her that I was at least partially her biographer.  "How so," she asked. I asked her if she ever surfed the internet and she said yes.  I asked her if she knew what Wikipedia was and she said yes.   "Well, I am the person who has written a lot of your biography on Wikipedia," I said. 

She was quite pleased to meet me because she knew that the article had recently been improved and here is how it looks after I worked on it. She was very appreciative of the work on Wikipedia for both her own biography and the group bio for Zap Mama.  She said that a lot of people go to Wikipedia to find out more about her and that Wikipedia generates a lot of sales for her music and that she appreciates having something on Wikipedia that reflects well on her work.

I asked if we could take a photo together (not for Wikipedia but for my personal blog) and we took several with me and several more with my wife. She asked for my email address and said that she would have her manager be in touch with me after she finishes her tour to provide me with some additional print material that has not appeared on the internet to consider incorporating into her article. She is also going to consider having one or more of her press photos added to the Creative Commons so it can be used on web sites like Wikipedia without running into copyright problems.  She knew all about intellectual property laws and how they affect the way she makes a living as a musician.  I guess every artist does these days.  Good for them. What an exciting encounter. Here are some additional photos I took of Zap Mama at their show in Baltimore that I am putting into the Creative Commons for non-commercial use.

She is going to be appearing tonight in DC at the 930, a nice club in a refurbished warehouse in DC.  Anyway it was fun to talk to Marie Daulne, realize that she is very aware of the internet in her business model, and it was a nice feeling to know that the work that people do on an article in Wikipedia is often appreciated by the person it was written about.

A Cross Country Marathon

My wife and I are back in Baltimore after a 26 hour drive straight through from Ponca City.  We had been postponing our trip for several weeks because there were two big events in Ponca City last weekend that we wanted to see.

On Saturday morning, the Museum at Standing Bear Park was dedicated.  A number of speakers got up to talk about the Museum including Carl Renfro, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating, Congressman Tom Cole who is a member of the Chickisaw Nation, Jim Gray from the Osage Nation and Charles Moncooyea of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe who had some very provocative remarks, but the highlight of the event for us was the flag ceremony with children of the tribes represented in the museum.  After the flag ceremony, we photographed four of the lovely princesses of the Native American Nations who happened to be walking up the sidewalk from the museum flanked on either side by the Native American Flags.  Take a look at the photo essay we made for the Standing Bear Dedication Ceremony.

Some people ask my wife and I why we make the 1300 mile trip between Baltimore and Ponca City several times a year by land instead of flying.  The main answer is that we don't like taking our shoes off.  Air travel has become so inconvenient and unpleasant, that we will do just about anything to avoid it.  It is much more convenient to pack up as much as we want in our trailor, leave when we feel like it and stop when we want to, than to drive over to Tulsa, catch a plane, be stuck in airports, and have to rent a car when we arrive. In addition, aside from the convenience and independence driving affords us, we spend half as much on gasoline as it would cost for two round trip airline tickets.

Long distance driving is really more like an athletic event than anything else - a marathon if you will.  It is not the physical demands of the trip that wear you down but the mental strain so we do everything we can to keep the trip stress free and to mentally prepare ourselves for the trip for several days in advance.

Of course, the most important thing is to be well rested.  On the day before our trip, we make sure and get a good night's sleep.  Most people assume that on the day of the trip, we would be up at dawn to travel but nothing could we further from the truth.  We have found that the optimum time of day to begin the trip is between 4 and 6 pm.  You are going to have to drive through a night to make a 26 hour trip, so you want to schedule your trip so you get your night driving out of the way at the beginning of the trip when you are at your best. 

I like to take a nap just before we leave and then drive straight through the night.  We usually stop at about 6 am and I take another one hour nap in the car to keep me going all day.  The only really difficult part of the trip is the last hour when we are coming into Baltimore and have to completely change our style of driving to keep up with the high-speed rush hour traffic.

I mentioned that there were two events we wanted to see before we left and the other was the appearance of "Riders in the Sky" at the Poncan Theatre on Friday night.  "Riders In The Sky is a Western music and comedy group which began performing 1977. They have won two Grammy Awards and have done music for major motion pictures, including Toy Story 2's "Woody's Roundup" and Pixar's short film, "For the Birds".

The group includes Ranger Doug ("The Idol of American Youth"), Woody Paul Chisman ("King of the Cowboy Fiddlers"), Too Slim ("a Righteous Tater"/"The Man of a Thousand Hats"), and Joey ("the Cowpolka King")."  I was most surprised when I went to their Wikipedia entry to find out that Chisman has a PhD in Nuclear Physics.

The group played a special concert in honor of the hundredth anniversary of Gene Autry's birth.  They were traveling to the city of Gene Autry on Saturday to play at the actual 100th anniversary celebrations so it was a tremndous honor to be able to host them on the eve of this special date.  Gene Autry set a special record on the Hollywood "Walk of Fame."  Stars on the walk are given in five categories:  motion pictures, radio, recording, television, and live theatre.  Gene Autry is the only celebrity to have a star in all five categories. Take a look at our photo essay for "Riders in the Sky" at the Poncan.

Annual Chili Cookoff at Lake Ponca

Take a look at our photo essay on the Annual Chili Cookoff at Lake Ponca.

Three Big Events last weekend

There is a lot to do around Ponca City.  We had three big events last weekend.  We started out at the Centennial Celebration in front of the Civic Center on Friday evening, then went to the Annual Arts Festival on Saturday.  We had enjoyed silent movie  organist Dennis James so much the previous week that we looked up his schedule on the internet and drove over to Miami, Oklahoma to catch him at another show on Sunday.  And I almost forgot that on Friday night at the same time as the Centennial Celebration, the Community Concert series had their first event of the season at the Poncan Theater.  After the Centennial Celebration, we drove down to the Poncan and snuck into the balcony and caught the last few numbers.

On Saturday my wife and I went to the annual Arts Festival at Soldani Mansion.  There were about 60 artists selling their work. Dave May led an auction for the pieces that had been produced during the quick draw event at the Fine Arts Festival. 

My wife and I finally had a chance to meet Native American Artist Jeanne Rorex Bridges, an award-winning artist of Cherokee ancestry. We have admired her work at the Gilcrease Museum for several years and it was a real treat to meet her at the Festival. She lives on a hill in rural eastern Oklahoma, part of the farm and ranch land where she was raised. Here she paints and runs her successful art business with her husband James. Jeanne’s work has become nationally known, winning many awards in Native American art shows. For several years, she has incorporated paintings depicting the shared history of Southeastern Indians and African Americans with her Native American work. The story of Crossing Bok Chitto was a perfect fit for her first illustrated book." 

On Friday evening we brought out our lawn chairs and sat down right in front for the Oklahoma Centennial Celebration in front of the Civic Center in Ponca City.  Highlights of the program were an hour of music by Les Gilliam and Cordelia Clapp signing "Oklahoma Rising." The show was put on my Ponca City Main Street and featured Mayor Homer Nicholson, Larry Buck talking about Centennial Plaza, and the President of Ponca City Main Street, Phil Bandy.

"Les Gilliam's concerts of cowboy, western swing, country and/or gospel music include fascinating stories about the songs and the artists who performed them. His country dances feature great western swing music and fun activities for the audience. He always includes original songs and humorous material, adding a touch of nostalgia and good ole fashion patriotism." 

I especially enjoyed Les' stories about Woody Guthrie, Patti Page and the Page Milk Company, and Gene Autry's five stars on Hollywood's walk of fame. Les was born in Gene Autry, Oklahoma and had just returned from a celebration in California of the 100th anniversary of Autry's birth.

We really liked seeing Cordelia Clapp at last years Centennial Program when she signed a thrilling version of "God Bless America" with the musical accompaniment of Celine Dion. This year she presented her interpretation of "Oklahoma Rising" in Native American sign language.  Clapp is a registered nurse who was born in Sells, Arizona, to a full-blooded Pawnee Indian mother and a full-blooded Spanish father.  Growing up Clapp had the chance to live on numerous reservations in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. She taught herself the Native signing of “God Bless America” after 9/11 in hopes that sharing the Native American culture with others would help heal the hearts of Americans. She has opened numerous conferences nationwide with her signing, dressed in full Native American regalia. 

On Sunday we made a day trip to Miami Oklahoma to see Dennis James perform on the Mighty Wurlitzer in the Coleman Theater which is even more beautiful than the Poncan Theater. We drove over to the Gilcrease Museum for their wonderful brunch, then up to Miami for a 230 pm show. The show we saw at the Coleman was "It" with Clara Bow.  Dennis James the organist got up and explained that "it" was a term  coined by English romance novelist and screenwriter Elinor Glyn to describe actress Clara Bow.  Glyn had written a best-seller of the day that popularized the word "it" as a euphemism for sex-appeal. The story revolved around Bow as a salesgirl in a department story and her romance with the boss's son. The movie was very entertaining.  After Dennis' show, the manager of the theater gave us a private two hour tour of the theater.  What a treat.

The Coleman Theatre was built by George L. Coleman Sr., a magnate who made his fortune in zinc around the turn of the century. Coleman wanted to give something back to the community of Miami so in 1929 he had the theatre built for $600,000. Some say his motives might not have been completely altruistic since by providing entertainment for his workers he kept them out of bars. The exterior architecture of the theatre is Spanish Mission Revival. There are Terra cotta gargoyles and other hand-carved figures on the exterior of the building. The interior of the theatre is in Louis XV style and includes gold leaf trim, silk damask panels, stained glass panels, a carved mahogany staircase and decorative plaster moldings and railings.

The community of Miami raised $85,000 to bring "The Mighty Wurlitzer" home to the Coleman in 1996. The organ was restored by the J.T. Peterson Organ Company of Fort Worth, Texas who restored, refurbished, enhanced and completed the reinstallation of the organ.  We absolutely loved the sound that came out of a true pipe organ. The sound from the deepest registered shook your bones. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the community of Ponca City could get together to bring a pipe organ to the Ponca Theatre?

After the theatre tour we drove back to Tulsa for dinner at P.F. Chang's and then drove back back to Ponca City arriving about midnight.   What a nice day. Look at the photos we took at the Art Festival, the Centennial Celebration, and at the Coleman Theatre in Miami.

This weekend coming up we plan to go see "Annie get Your Gun" at Ponca Playhouse and go to the Annual Chili Cookoff out at Lake Ponca on Saturday.  The following weekend is the opening of the "Standing Bear Museum" and "Riders in the Sky" will be coming to Ponca City.

Whoever says there is nothing to do in a town of 25,000 is dead wrong.  There is so much to do, that you never get a chance to catch your breath.

Dennis James plays Tumbleweeds

Dennis James plays Tumbleweeds
Last night I saw an exciting art form that I never knew existed before.   My wife and I went to the Ponca Theatre, a movie theatre in Ponca City that was constructed in 1923 during the silent movie era when vaudville was still at its height and we watched the silent movie "Tumbleweeds" starring William S. Hart.  The movie is an epic Western that depicts the opening of the Cherokee Strip and the land rush  in 1893  that resulted in the opening of  120,000 square miles to homesteaders and the founding  of  Ponca City.

I was astonished.  I had never seen a silent movie on the big screen before and certainly never with live music.  Dennis James, a silent film musician, played the accompaniment to the movie and it was terrific. 

I expanded the Wikipedia entry for "Tumbleweeds" and I expanded the Wikipedia entry for Dennis James and added two of my photos.  This is what Dennis James Wikipedia entry looked like before I made the changes to it and here is what it looks like now.

Tumbleweeds (1925 film)
Tumbleweeds is a 1925 film produced, co-directed and starred by William S. Hart that depicts the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893.

Background
In the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma during the 1880's and early 1890's, the government lands that were leased to cattlemen were opened to settlement by homesteaders. To allow a fair chance for everyone, the prospective homesteaders were required to register and registrants were prohibited from entering into the Strip before the appointed time. Those who tried to get there beforehand were called Sooners, hence the nickname of Oklahoma as the Sooner State. When the cannon shot signaled the start of the land rush, the race was on as a hundred thousand men and women tried to stake their claims.

Plot
The movie features cowboy Don Carver (Hart) as a "tumbleweed" (i.e., a drifter) that decides to settle down after falling in love with Molly Lassiter (played by Barbara Bedford). Carver decides to get in on the Cherokee Strip land rush but when he's arrested and parted from his new love, he's in danger of missing the big race.

The climax called the "biggest stampede in American history" features the some of the most spectacular Western action scenes ever filmed.[1]

William S. Hart
William S. Hart was a successful Shakespearian actor on Broadway who had worked with Margaret Mather and other stars, William S. Hart went on to become one of the first great stars of the motion picture western. Hart appeared in original 1899 stage production of Ben Hur. Hart entered films in 1914 where, after playing supporting roles in two short films, he achieved stardom as the lead in the feature, The Bargain.

Hart was particularly interested in making realistic western films. His films are noted for their authentic costumes and props, as well as Hart's extraordinary acting ability, honed on Shakespearian theatre stages in the US and England. In 1917, he accepted a lucrative offer from Adolph Zukor to join Famous Players-Laskey. In 1925, he starred in King Baggot's film Tumbleweeds which was his last and probably most famous for United Artists.

Hart loathed the contrivances and artificiality of typical Hollywood westerns. He insisted on stark realism, with sets that carefully evoked a vision of the West that Hart knew first hand from growing up. However, by 1925, the year of Tumbleweeds release, Hart was 60 years old. Tumbleweeds would be Hart's last movie. By this time, the epic Western was in vogue, so with his audiences disappearing, Hart conceded to the current fashion and created his own epic Western.[2]

Revival
Caption: Silent Film organist Dennis James at the Ponca Theatre for his special commission of the 1925 Silent Film "Tumbleweeds" about the Cherokee Strip land rush as part of a celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Oklahoma statehood.

On September 14, 2007, Dennis James, a silent film musician who, according to Carl Bennett, has played "a pivotal role in the international revival of silent films presented with live music."[3] performed the score to Tumbleweeds in a live performance at the Poncan Theater in Ponca City, Oklahoma as a special commission as part of a celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Oklahoma Statehood.[1]

Stephen Salmons, Artistic director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival said of James: "Dennis James is a musician of tremendous artistic scope and range, and a scholar who strives to preserve and restore this unique 20th century musical practice. To witness a contemporary audience experience the beauty and power of silent film through the overwhelming symphonic dynamism that Dennis James unleashes with unerring skill on the theatre organ is an absolute revalation."[2]

Reviews
Photoplay Magazine said that "Bill Hart returns to the screen in a story laid in the time when the Indian territory was turned over to the homesteaders. the scene in which the prospective land owners, waiting for the cannon's boom which would send them racing in to stake their claims, furnished a brand new thrill...It is good entertainment." [4]

Set in Caldwell, Kansas on the Kansas-Oklahoma border, this movie is arguably the first to take place during the Land Run of 1889. Its depiction is said to have influenced Oscar-winning 1931 western Cimarron.

Take a look at my photos from the show.

The Murals of Alva Oklahoma

The Murals of Alva Oklahoma
My wife and I like to take day trips around Northern Oklahoma.  So far we have visited Bartlesville, Woolaroc, Pawhuska, Kaw City, Blackwell, Stillwater, Morrison, Pawnee, Cleveland, Hominy, Ralston, Burbank, and Shidler among others and now we are starting to head out towards the western part of the state.  Isn't it true that if you go to a city to visit, you see things that local residents may not have seen or noticed even though they have lived there all their lives?

Last week we went to Alva.  I worked in Alva in 1968.  My father was a telegrapher for the Rock Island Railroad in Ponca City and he helped me get a job working on the railroad during the summers while I attended Oklahoma State University during the school year.  The work was interesting and the main advantage was that it paid well.  Everybody got union scale and during the harvest season, I would get called out on weekends to Billings and Garber to write waybills for grain shipments and would get time and a half on a minimum of three hours according to union rules so I could earn enough working all summer to pay my college tuition, room and board, and books during the school year.

The hardest part was writing train orders. I had to drive down to El Reno every Saturday for 12 weeks and spend all day in class learning to write waybills and train orders. Back in those days, the network of trains wasn't automated so if you had two trains coming down the same track in different directions, you had to have some way of making sure they didn't run into each other.  A system was developed and perfected over the preceding 100 years for controlling the trains.  You don't just tell a train to "stop at siding 831 and wait there until Train 534 passes by." You write "trains orders" in a special language using special words in special syntax and read and confirm them in special way to ensure that there was absolutely no ambiguity about what the trains were supposed to do.

There is a good article on train orders on Wikipedia that explains: "They were conveyed to telegraph operators at outlying stations along the railroad via Morse telegraph or telephone; the receiving operators would copy the order onto onionskin forms designed for that purpose and would repeat the order back to the dispatcher so the dispatcher and other operators concerned could confirm correctness. As each operator repeated the order correctly, the dispatcher would give a complete time, along with the initials of the designated railroad official for that territory. After the order was completed, it was delivered by the operator to the concerned trains as they arrived or passed the delivery point. The operating time table indicated locations at which train crews could expect to receive train orders."

My job was to work at one of the small railroad stations as Station Master and write waybills and train orders.  I was working the vacations of the full time railroad employees so I would only stay two or three weeks in each town.  I worked at Ponca City, Enid, Garber, and Billings in Oklahoma and Elbing, Peabody, and Whitewater in Kansas.  But I also spent three weeks in 1968 in Alva, Oklahoma.

Last week my wife and drove to Alva to see what I remembered after almost 40 years.  As Wikipedia states: "Alva is a city in Woods County, Oklahoma, along the Salt Fork Arkansas River. The population was 5,288 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Woods County. Alva was established in 1893 as a land office for the Cherokee Outlet land run, the largest of the land rushes that settled western and central Oklahoma. The site was chosen for its location on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and likely named for a railroad attorney, Alva Adams, who had become governor of Colorado.  Today, the city council is actively soliciting murals -- one of the most recent is of the storied Castle -- and trying to attract businesses and tourists to keep people in town, important as the population of Woods County has been dropping since the 1930s. Alva lost 200 people between 1990 and 2000 according to official census figures."

I am always interested in seeing what other small towns and cities in Oklahoma are doing to retain their character, history, and identity.  Alva is using art in the form of murals that celebrate its past. Take a look at my photographs of the Murals of Alva.

There is nothing wrong with taking ideas and borrowing them or expanding on them. "The Murals of Alva" is something that would work in Ponca City.

The Pioneer Woman Statues at Woolaroc

A few months ago my wife and I drove over to Woolaroc Museum to spend the day.  The museum was almost empty the day we visited. The guides were very helpful as they gave us a private tour.

The last time I had been at Woolaroc was over 45 years ago when I was a nine year old boy in 4th grade at Lutheran School in Ponca City. My father, Dale Pickens, drove school buses for the Ponca City School System and chartered his school buses for church groups and private organizations and I remember that dad drove our class over to spend the day at Woolaroc.

As a nine year old boy, I thought Woolaroc was exciting and wonderful.  The most fascinating items were the dinosaur egg from the Gobi Desert,  the shrunken heads from the Amazon jungle, and a miniature of the Pioneer Woman Statue that I had seen in Ponca City many times and eleven more miniatures that were never produced as full side statues.

With the perspective of 57 years of age and having seen museums all over the world, Woolaroc seems a lot different now than I remembered and the emotions I felt while I was walking through the museum weren't so much excitement as sadness and regret over lost innocence. 

When I was nine years old I asked my father why the Pioneer Woman Statue was in Ponca City and the miniatures were 75 miles away in Woolaroc.  He wouldn't tell me me and I forgot about it for forty years.  Visiting Woolaroc made me remember my questions and do some research.

I decided I wanted to find out what really happened and the best way for me to develop a factually accurate narrative is to research an article for Wikipedia so I researched and wrote a section on the Pioneer Woman Models and added it to the Wikipedia article about Woolaroc.

Here is the story.

In 1928, EW Marland, founder of Marland Oil Company (later to become Conoco) and one of the richest men in the world, commissioned twelve miniature 3-foot sculptures that were submitted by US and international sculptors as models for the Pioneer Woman. Marland paid each sculptor $10,000 for his submission. The miniatures traveled to twelve cites where they were viewed by 750,000 people who cast votes for their favorite.

The winning statue was produced by British-born American sculptor Bryant Baker and was unveiled in a public ceremony on April 22, 1930 when forty thousand guests came to hear Will Rogers pay tribute to Oklahoma's pioneers. The Pioneer Woman Statue, located in Ponca City, is 27 feet high and weighs 12,000 pounds.

After financial reverses that included the loss of his company Marland Oil Company, E. W. Marland wrote a letter to his friend Frank Phillips on March 11, 1940: "My financial condition compells [sic] me to sell objects of art, tapestries, bronzes, rugs, and paintings acquired by me in more prosperous years. I will sell at a price approximately 25 per cent of their cost to me... And will consider it a kindness if you will come yourself or send someone to look them over with the object of buying anything you fancy."

Phillips sent art expert Gordon Matzene to inspect the bronzes and began bargaining with Marland for their purchase. In the end Phillips offered Marland $500 for each of the twelve miniatures. Matzene declared that the purchase was a wonderful bargain and the miniatures were removed from Ponca City along with other statues and artwork to became part of Phillips' collection at Woolaroc where they are on display today.

The Frank Phillips Foundation that runs Woolaroc Museum was founded in 1937 by Frank Phillips and his wife Jane Phillips with "the primary purpose of providing educational support for the employees of Phillips Petroleum Company and their families." Now that Phillips and Conoco have merged into ConocoPhillips, there are lots of Phillips employees in Ponca City who would benefit from Woolaroc's mission of providing educational support for their employees.

Wouldn't it be a noble gesture if the Frank Phillips Foundation returned EW Marland's twelve miniature statues of the Pioneer Women to Ponca City where they really belong to benefit Phillips employees in Ponca City?

---------------------------

Take a look at the photo essay of the Pioneer Woman Miniatures that I put together with additional information on the history of this unique sculptural competition.

Independence Day Celebration

Independence Day
Each year before the American Independence Day, the Fourth of July, retailers across the nation experience a surge in fireworks sales. The Fourth of July is a federal holiday celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Independence Day is commonly associated with parades, barbecues, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history and traditions of the U.S. Fireworks have been associated with the Fourth of July since 1777.

In many states, consumer fireworks are sold for personal use or as an alternative to a public show. Concerns about safety have led some states to ban fireworks or limit the sizes and types allowed, but illicit traffic from less restrictive border states is common.

Some of the most famous fireworks displays include Macy's - 4th of July Fireworks in New York and the Boston display on the Charles River esplanade. There are also many other spectacular displays in St. Louis, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario host one of the largest fireworks displays in the world over the Detroit River each year in celebration of both American Independence Day and Canada Day during the Windsor-Detroit International Freedom Festival.

If you missed the fireworks display at Lake Ponca, click on this link to enjoy a slideshow of the display.

Information Source:  Wikipedia

"Bruce in the USA" is coming to Ponca City on June 30

"Bruce in the USA" is coming to Ponca City on June 30
Mark your calendar for Saturday, June 30 because the world's best Bruce Springsteen Tribute Band "Bruce in the USA" is coming to Ponca City for the 4th of July holiday weekend and will be appearing at the Poncan Theatre for a two hour show starting at 7 pm.

My wife and I have seen this group twice now, both times appearing at Ram's Head in Annapolis Maryland.  The last time we saw them in 2005, we went backstage and met Matt Ryan and told him "I want to bring you to my hometown, Ponca City, Oklahoma for 4th of July weekend next year" and he said "Great, we'd love to, where's Ponca City?"

This group is good. Music critic Greg Matlby said "If Matt Ryan and his band, American Dream, took the stage at a Springsteen concert ...few people would be able to tell the difference."  Clarence Clemons himself, joined the band on stage in New York, claiming after the show that it was the greatest Tribute he’s ever seen.

Matt played the Springsteen character for eight years, in their full scale Las Vegas show. The great success with “Legends of Rock and Roll” evolved his character into the Bruce In the USA show. His amazing portrayal of “The Boss” (not to mention his jaw-dropping resemblance) is as close as you can get to see the real thing in concert. Bruce In the USA takes this genre of performance art to a whole new level making it the world’s #1 tribute to the E. Street Band’s legacy.

Vaudeville was at its peak when the Poncan Theatre was originally built and the theatre was designed for live performance so that makes it a great venue for live rock and roll. When my wife and I moved to Ponca City, we met with Dave May, manager of the Poncan Theatre, and told him we wanted to help bring more rock to Ponca City and make it available at an affordable price so we are pricing the tickets starting at $20 for the back balcony and going up to $35 for the prime seats in the front downstairs.

Support Ponca City and the local music scene, come out for a terrific 4th of July music holiday, enjoy yourself while listening to some of the best music of the past 35 years, and see a show you will never forget.  Call Dave May at the Poncan Theatre at 580-716-7016 and reserve your tickets now.  See you at the Poncan Theatre on Saturday, June 30.

Take a look at our slideshow of a recent "Bruce in the USA" show we attended in Towson Maryland.

The Standing Bear Museum is coming along well

The Standing Bear Museum

The Standing Bear Museum has been under construction for several months and is coming along well.  The museum located in Ponca City will contain permanent and traveling displays of current and historical artifacts and of the natural science of Native American culture.

The museum is named for Standing Bear, a prominent 19th Century Ponca Indian chief and outspoken proponent of Native American rights.  In 1876 when the Ponca were told they were to be moved to Indian Territory, they sent ten chiefs with a United States agent to look over the land and its prospects. They were to make a decision for the Ponca tribe; however, based on what they learned, the chiefs could not make a favorable report. The tribe voted not to go to Indian Territory. The government then decided to send the Ponca to Indian Territory with or without their consent. So the Ponca left on foot for Indian territory, escorted by the U.S. Army.

After arriving in Oklahoma territory, the Ponca had no time to plant a crop on their new land and were not prepared for the winter there, causing many deaths including Standing Bear's son. Standing Bear wanted to bury his son on Ponca soil and with thirty others traveled back towards their home on the Niobrara. They reached the Omaha Reservation were they were welcomed as relatives, but word of the arrival back in Nebraska soon reached the government. They were arrested on orders from the Secretary of Interior by General George Crook. Standing Bear and the others were taken to Fort Omaha and detained. Although they were ordered back to Indian Territory at once, a delay was obtained so they could rest and regain their health. During this time their story was told to the public by Thomas Tibbles of the Omaha Daily Herald.

In 1879, Standing Bear argued his case against General Crook and The United States Government in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Nebraska; from this landmark civil rights case comes the petition's oft-quoted "an Indian is a person" statement. The judge ultimately found in favor of Standing Bear and the Ponca people. This case received the attention of the Hayes administration, and provisions were made for some of the tribe to return to the Niobrara valley.

The Standing Bear Native American Foundation was formed in 1993 to recognize Native American achievements and traditions. The original impetus for the foundation was a protest by Native Americans at the dedication of a statue titled "This Land is Mine" that depicted a rider on horseback staking his claim during the Cherokee Outlet Land Rush. The bronze is located at Centennial Plaza in front of Ponca City's Civic Center. After the protest, members of the Native American community and citizens of Ponca City formed the committee to create a memorial to honor those who have gone before. Standing Bear Park and the 22 foot bronze sculpture of Standing Bear were dedicated in 1996.

Take a look at our slideshow of the construction of the Standing Bear Museum.

References: Wikipedia: Standing Bear, Ponca City News: Centennial Statue Brought Standing Bear Memorial

Ponca City digs out

Ponca city digs out

When I was growing up in Ponca City in the 1950's and 1960's, it was unusual to have snow on the ground for more than a day or two a year.  Most of the time a light flurry would fall and melt off as it hit or a few hours later. Some years we didn't have snow at all.

When I went away to school in Brockport, a few miles south of Lake Erie, I learned what real cold weather was.  The weatherman said the year I arrived - 1969 - was the coldest winter in upstate New York in 31 years - after I heard that I didn't feel so cold then.  The snow started falling in November and it stayed on the ground through April - we didn't see the sun for six months.

Living in Baltimore for twenty years my wife and I saw some hard winters there too.  About four years ago, we had a blizzard that covered the ground with several feet of snow.  I remember looking out our front window and not being able to see any cars parked on the street - they were completely covered in six foot drifts.

I have always liked heavy snow days - it means a chance to stay at home from work and sit by the fireplace drinking hot chocolate with the dogs lying at my feet.

Imagine my surprise to find that since I left 40 years ago, Ponca City has started to have snowy winters too. We had an ice storm come through town three days ago that shut down the city for a couple of days. It isn't much snow compared to what we are used to - but it's a lot compared to what Ponca City is used to. 

The biggest difference between Ponca and colder climes is that while a city like Baltimore can invest millions of dollars in snow moving equipment and salt trucks for something they know is going to happen every year, it wouldn't make sense for Ponca City to purchase that kind of equipment for an occurence that may happen a day or two every few years. It was fun to watch road graders being used to clear the snow and frontal loaders lifting up piles of ice from Grand and filling dump trucks to haul it away.

Anyway it was lovely.  It's nice to live in a place where you have real seasons. 

Take a look at some of my my slideshow of photos of Ponca City after the blizzard of 2007.

I heard the silence on Christmas day

I heard the silence on Christmas day

Once a year the shopping stops, the stores empty, the parking lots are vacated, and everyone retires to their homes and churches to observe the day of Christmas.

Time stops and all is silent.

Look at our photo essay on the silence of Christmas day in Ponca City.

Joy to the World - Ponca City, 2006

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

The Festival of Angels at Lake Ponca Park

The Festival of Angels

The Festival of Angels is Ponca City's Holiday Lighting Celebration and is located in four city-wide locations: Cann Memorial Gardens, Marland's Grand Home, the 30-foot Angel Host at the Pioneer Woman Statue and the "Mile of Angles" at Lake Ponca Park.  This year marks the 13th anniversary of the event that runs from November 22 to December 30.  The highlight of the Festival is forty acres of exhibits at Lake Ponca Park including many animated exhibits.

Take a look at our slideshow of photos of the Mile of Angels at Lake Ponca Park.

"Ponca City, we love you"

Ponca City, We love you

In dear old Oklahoma
Fairest daughter of the west
Stands our beloved high school
In the city we love the best;
We chose the blue of western skies,
The red from the sunset's hue,
Now, what could be more fitting
Than our colors red and blue.

Ponca City, we love you
With your colors, red and blue
Ever loyal, faithful and true,
O dear old Ponca, We love you.

To anyone who has gone through the Ponca City school system, the words "Ponca City, we love you" are instantly recognizable as the opening lines to the school song we sang at every assembly. The song, written seventy years ago by Christopher Wells, embodies how we feel about our hometown.

We have created this website for the same reason that we sang the song - to celebrate the spirit of Ponca City. Check this website every week to see new photos and stories about Ponca.  If you have a news reader, click the link on the right that says "Subscribe to this blog's feed" and you will automatically receive copies of new stories as they are posted.

Take a look at our slideshow of photographs of Ponca City High School.

Ceremonial Signing for University Multispectral Lab at City Hall

Ceremonial Signing for Multispecral Lab at City Hall

Representatives of the Ponca City Development Authority (PCDA), Oklahoma State University (OSU), and ConocoPhillips Oil Company held a ceremonial signing of checks on December 13 in City Hall  for creating the  University Multispectral Lab (UML), a testing center for sensor technology that will be located at the Research East building of the ConocoPhillips complex. ConocoPhillips and the Ponca City Development Agency have each committed $2 million for running the facility.

PCDA, OSU and the designated center operator, AMTI of Virginia Beach, Virginia, have been in discussions about the project for more than 18 months. PCDA Trustees have been directing the talks throughout the process, according to PCDA Executive Director David Myers. "This has been a decision and a commitment that has taken a great deal of study, consideration and soul searching. We know it's a great deal of money but we have world class partners in ConocoPhillips and Oklahoma State University. We all have a lot invested in this and we all stand to benefit from the project's success. The Trustees felt that a significant leadership pledge would make the difference and indeed, it has."

While University Multispectral Laboratories (UML) is a partnership between the Ponca City Development Authority (PCDA), Oklahoma State University (OSU), and ConocoPhillips Oil Company, Applied Marine Technology, Inc. (AMTI) has been chosen to operate the laboratory. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire AMTI.  "This acquisition integrates AMTI's expertise in intelligence, scientific and custom engineering solutions, prototyping and manufacturing capabilities, and other areas with SAIC's technical and operational presence to support the most challenging missions facing our nation's intelligence, special warfare and homeland security communities," said Lawrence Prior, president of SAIC's Intelligence and Security Group.  "We look forward to combining AMTI's capabilities with our offerings and are pleased to welcome AMTI's employees and exceptional leadership team to SAIC."

A recent economic analysis conducted by PCDA said that the project would have an economic benefit of $120 million over the next ten years. PCDA Trustee and Treasurer Chuck Van Cleave noted, however, that a potentially larger benefit could come from companies that will move to the area over time to work closely with the center. Said Van Cleave, "the spin-off effects of a project such as this are often much greater than the impact of the direct jobs. This has the potential for significant additional jobs, investment and growth in Ponca City."

Members of the audience rose to give a standing ovation at the conclusion of this historic ceremony.

Take a look at our slideshow of photos that we took at the ceremony.  If you attended you should be able to find yourself in one of them.