Donna and Roger Hardesty grew up in the western Oklahoma town of Fort Cobb. They each knew the meaning of hard work when they met at age 15. Donna comes from a large family, many holding teaching degrees. 

After graduating from the University of Tulsa, she taught for a year at Sperry High School. She then joined Roger, becoming a real estate agent, as his construction company became the largest single-family construction company in the area with divisions in nine midwestern states. 

When The Hardesty Foundation was established in 2005, Donna placed a significant emphasis on the value of education in her grantmaking endeavors, which included the Hardesty Library.

Roger and Donna were truly a team, leading to the success of the Hardesty company and the foundation, making a major impact on the Tulsa community.

Monsignor Greg Gier was 17 years old and enjoying his high school days when the thought came to him, “There must be more to life than this, there must be, and that’s when I decided to see if, in fact, I was being called to be a priest.” 

Monsignor Gier was ordained on May 27th, 1967, and was the pastor at Christ the King Church in Tulsa for 13 years. He also served churches in Oklahoma City, Bartlesville, Dewey, Muskogee, and Ponca City.

He led or taught at Bishop Kelly and Bishop McGuiness High Schools, Marquette, and the Holy Family Cathedral School.

Monsignor Gier was rector for 17 years for Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa.  He was on the board of directors for Catholic Charities of Tulsa and was vocational director for the Diocese of Tulsa.
The 50th anniversary of Monsignor Gier’s ordination was observed in 2017.

Listen to Monsignor Gier as he talks about his favorite people of the Bible, the challenges of the church, and Pope Leo on the podcast and website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

Doug Dodd, a life-long Tulsan, was a television news reporter and documentary producer for KOTV and KTUL-TV before graduating from law school, and is one of a very few Tulsa attorneys who regularly represents national and local magazines, newspapers, and television stations, and media companies with an emphasis on First Amendment and defamation issues.

Doug served on the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education for 11 years and was a candidate for Oklahoma’s First Congressional District seat in 2002 and 2004. 

Doug is a veteran of the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command, where he served as a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander.

Doug has been fortunate enough to meet, know, or cover many of Tulsa’s most notable people. Before entering private law practice in 1982, Doug served as a Law Clerk for United States District Judge James O. Ellison in the Northern District of Oklahoma.

You can hear Doug’s oral history on the podcast and website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

2025 marks the 85th Anniversary of This Land Is Your Land. 

In this special edition of Voices of Oklahoma, we share the story of what motivated Woody Guthrie to write the song.

Woody Guthrie's daughter, Nora, reveals Woody's views on "God Bless America" and offers insight into his mindset when writing "This Land is Your Land."

After graduating from Antlers High School, Charles Stephenson attended the University of Oklahoma and earned a degree in petroleum engineering.

Following service in the U.S. Army, where he became an officer, he joined Amerada Petroleum Corporation.

Between 1973 and 1982, Stephenson was part-owner and president of privately-held Andover Oil Company.

After the sale of Andover, he co-founded Vintage Petroleum, Inc., where he served as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. 

The company grew from three employees at start-up to more than 750 with operations in four countries and reserves of approximately 500 million barrels.

Stephenson is a founder of the Sarkeys Energy Center and, through his foundation, has funded the construction of two research facilities at the Research Campus at the University of Oklahoma. C

harles and his wife Peggy made a $12 million donation to The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and in recognition of their support to the institution, a center has been named the Peggy and Charles Stephenson Oklahoma Cancer Center.

Listen to Charles tell his story and how his uncle interested him in the Energy business on the podcast and website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

Voices of Oklahoma interviewed Nancy and Ted Kachel because their careers significantly impacted Tulsa. They were asked to write an introduction to their story. It is being read as written.

We are Ted and Nancy, two lives entwined by shared ambition and curiosity. Our paths first crossed at Iowa University, where we married in 1961 and set out together on a journey that took us from New York to San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Bogota, Tulsa, and beyond.

Along the way, we built careers in higher education of campus ministry and teaching religious studies, in social services with runaway kids and reproductive services, and in advocacy for psychedelic mysticism and healing domestic abuse, adopted three wonderful children from Bogota, Colombia, and devoted ourselves to church and community.

Through every move and milestone, we found in each other the missing pieces that made us whole. At every turn, we became the moving parts to click in place in each other’s lives, pushing forward together in this adventure of life and love. Our motto braves: “We’ve only just begun!”

Listen to their story on the podcast and website of VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

MidAmerica Industrial Park, which is Oklahoma's largest industrial park, the third largest industrial park in the United States, and the eighth largest industrial park in the world, is located in Pryor, Oklahoma.  

In this episode of Voices of Oklahoma, as we share the story of the park, we want you to know the man responsible for its very existence: Gene R. Redden.

A bronze plaque outside the entrance to the MidAmerica Industrial Park administrative office reads: “GENE R. REDDEN, Founder of the MidAmerica Industrial Park”He was honored by a joint resolution from the Oklahoma Senate and House of Representatives stating: “His courage and enthusiasm knew no limits. This facility is dedicated to his honor.”

Gene was 70 years old when he died June 7, 1990.

We thank his son, Roger Redden, for being our storyteller on the podcast and website, Voices of Oklahoma.

A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Jay Hannah served as the Nation's Secretary-Treasurer and as Chairman of the Nation’s 1999 Constitution convention.

As Board Chairman of Cherokee Nation Business, Jay directed the Nation’s holding company for all enterprise operations. He Co-Chaired the Nation’s Private Industry Council with Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller.

A community banker for over 40 years in Oklahoma, Jay has served as bank president in the communities of Guthrie and Tahlequah. As head of Financial Services for BancFirst, Jay supervises a wide range of profit centers and support units.

He is a frequent lecturer at a variety of schools offered by the Oklahoma Bankers Association.In Jay’s oral history, you will encounter a history lesson of the Cherokees as it relates to the state of Oklahoma, on the podcast and oral history website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

Donna Shirley grew up in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. Her interest in Mars and space exploration began when she read The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke.  She took flying lessons at age 15 and soloed at the Pauls Valley Airport the next year, earning a pilot’s license at 16.
She enrolled in the University of Oklahoma as an engineering student, even though her advisor told her that “Girls can’t be engineers.”

Donna worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab from 1966 to 1998 and was the only woman among the 2,000 engineers who had an engineering degree. 

Her 35-year career as an aerospace engineer reached a pinnacle in July 1997 when Sojourner–the solar-powered, self-guided, microwave-oven-sized rover–was seen exploring the Martian landscape in Pathfinder’s spectacular images from the surface of the red planet.  She was the leader of the mostly male team that designed and built Sojourner–the first woman ever to manage a NASA program.  

Listen to Donna’s oral history interview, as she talks about the thrill of seeing the first Mars images, how she became a trailblazer, and whether there is life on Mars on the podcast and oral history website, VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

Howard Barnett began his career in 1975 as a business lawyer in Tulsa, specializing in securities offerings and corporate transactions primarily for the growing number of entrepreneurial oil and gas companies.

In 1985, he joined Tribune Swab-Fox Companies Inc. as its executive vice president and COO of its daily newspaper subsidiary, Tulsa Tribune Company, eventually becoming chairman and CEO of the parent company. 

Barnett entered state government in 1998 as secretary of commerce for Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating and as the director of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. In 1999, he became Governor Keating’s chief of staff, serving until the end of Keating’s term in January 2003.

He was named OSU-Tulsa President in 2009 and became President Emeritus in 2019.
In Howard’s oral history interview, he talks about the closing of the Tulsa Tribune, his work in state government, and his work in Tulsa’s new form of city government, on the oral history podcast and website of VoicesOfOklahoma.com.