As an industrious young man, Joe McGraw worked at Kewanee Oil Company during the day and attended the TU College of Law at night to earn his degree. He added duties as the TU Law librarian after his night classes for his last two years of law school, demonstrating the determination and strong work ethic that would lead to his tremendous career achievements in Tulsa’s real estate sector.

McGraw graduated from law school and went to work for a bank briefly before entering the real estate business, where he discovered his true calling. He founded McGraw Breckenridge Company Realtors in 1965, which merged with another company in 1986 to create McGraw Davisson Stewart before establishing McGraw Realtors and McGraw Commercial Properties.

In addition to his real estate enterprises, Joe McGraw worked for his fellow Oklahomans by serving in the Oklahoma House of Representatives (1964-66) and the Oklahoma State Senate (1966-1972). His sense of civic duty also led to his service as a Director of RELO, The International Relocation Network, based in Chicago, Illinois, and on the TU College of Law Advisory Board.

Bart Conner is the most accomplished male gymnast America has ever produced. He is the only American gymnast to win gold medals at every level of national and international competition.

Bart was a member of the gold medal-winning men’s gymnastics team at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games and won an individual gold on the parallel bars. He was also part of the 1976 and 1980 USA Olympic gymnastics teams.

Conner is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and owns and operates the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy in Norman, Oklahoma along with his wife, Romanian gold medalist Nadia Comaneci.

Bart and Nadia are longtime supporters of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and Special Olympics.

U.S. Representative and Senator from Oklahoma from 1987, James Mountain Inhofe was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on November 17, 1934. He grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended public schools and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa. He served in the U.S. Army and worked in aviation, real estate, and insurance for three decades. He was president of Quaker Life Insurance Company before entering politics.

As a Republican he was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1966 and became a state senator in 1968. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He was a three-term mayor of Tulsa from 1978 to 1984.

In 1986 he ran again for the U.S. House from the First District and was elected. He has sense won reelection three more times.

In 1994, when Sen. David Boren resigned to become president of the University of Oklahoma, Inhofe won Boren’s U.S. Senate seat in a special election. Two years later, in 1996, he was reelected for his first full term. November 16, 2014 he won election to his fourth term ending January 3, 2021.

His committee assignments have included Armed Services, Indian Affair, and Environment and Public Works.

It was at the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore that Alex Adwan got his start in journalism. He was the editor of OMA’s Guidon newspaper and the Vedette yearbook in the mid-40s.

Alex attended both high school and junior college at OMA. He graduated from junior college in 1948 and continued his journalism studies at the University of Oklahoma.

After graduating from OU in 1950, he served as a tank platoon leader in the U.S. Army, 45th Division in Korea. He was awarded the Bronze Star with “V.”

After his military service, Alex returned home to work at small daily newspapers—the Seminole Producer, Wewoka Times, and Pauls Valley Daily Democrat. He became co-publisher and managing editor of the Seminole Producer.

From 1960 to 1967, Alex was with United Press International, serving as a bureau manager in Tulsa, Houston, and Oklahoma City. He covered Houston’s new space center in the early 1960s, reporting on the last of the one-man orbital space missions and the beginnings of Project Apollo, the program to send astronauts to the moon.

He joined the Tulsa World as Washington correspondent in 1967, became associate editor in 1972, and editor of editorial pages in 1981.

On his retirement as editorial page editor in 1994, Alex was named senior editor.

Among many distinguished honors, Alex was named to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1991.

Born near Chelsea, Oklahoma, Gerome Riley attended a rural all-black school through the Eighth grade. And because of segregation he had to choose between going to Claremore, Nowata, or Vinita for high school. He selected Claremore Lincoln and became a member of Claremore’s only boys’ basketball state championship team in 1952.

Gerome was a member of the Claremore Clowns, a local baseball team of all-Black players who played teams in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas. The Clowns were considered a semi-pro team. The end of school segregation in the early 1960s meant the end of the Claremore Clowns.

Riley worked 37 years for Phillips Oil Company. He started out as a porter at the Will Rogers Turnpike station at the Claremore gate and became the station’s final manager. He retired in 1995.

Gerome became a student of Black history, and as a living part of that history, he contributed his knowledge to the Claremore Museum of History.

Growing up in an artistic household, Patrick S. Gordon took his first painting lessons from his mother, Janelle Gordon, a locally recognized still life painter. He began his formal studies under the tutelage of the widely regarded watercolorist Glenn Godsey, at the University of Tulsa.

Patrick received his BFA from the University of Tulsa in 1974, where he also completed extensive graduate work in watercolor.

Born in 1953 in Claremore, Oklahoma, Patrick gained national attention with a series of solo exhibitions, beginning in 1982, at the Fischbach Gallery in New York City and Joseph Gierek Fine Art in his then-adopted hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Since then, he has continually exhibited at numerous, prominent galleries around the country, been featured in notable museum shows and competitions, and his works can be found in important private, corporate, and museum collections throughout the United States. Print editions of Patrick’s work are widely popular with collectors throughout the world.

Dr. Don G. Nelson specialized in Internal Medicine and pulmonology for 60 years. He graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1965. Don became affiliated in Oklahoma with multiple hospitals including Hillcrest Hospital South, St. Francis Hospital, and the Veteran Affairs Hospital in Muskogee.

He was born in Moline, Illinois, where he graduated Moline High School and then the University of Illinois. 

In 1973 he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was first associated with Springer Clinic.

In addition to his medical career, Dr. Nelson became a triathlete and participated in three hundred Triathlons. His first triathlon was the first Hillcrest Ultimate Challenge. He was one of the pioneers of the sport in the Tulsa area and traveled to many countries while competing in World Championship events.

Listen to Dr. Don Nelson talk about his love for the medical profession, his triathlon experience, and his advice for everyone, regardless of their age, to exercise for good health on the oral history website and podcast VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

In celebration of Voices of Oklahoma's 15th anniversary, founder John Erling shares this oral history example: a recording of his father, John Arnt Frette telling the story about how his father emigrated from Norway and built (and re-built) their family home.

Though John Erling regrets not recording his mother's voice, it's thanks to this recording that he remembers his father's voice and this brief story of his family's history.

James Gray East grew up in Muskogee, Oklahoma and, while attending Oklahoma State University started, an underground newspaper which led to employment with the Daily Oklahoman.

Realizing he was interested in crime reporting, he moved to Binghamton, New York to report on the Mafia for a Gannett-owned newspaper.  

Moving back to Oklahoma, Jim worked for his hometown newspaper, The Muskogee Phoenix, and then was hired by the Tulsa Tribune where he became an editorial writer. 

When the Tribune closed in 1992, Jim became Chief of Staff for ten years for Tulsa Mayor Susan Savage. Then he began a career in the car rental business with Vanguard Car Rental company, later moving on to the Hertz Car rental company, becoming VP of Government Relations.

Jim was deeply involved in the Tulsa community serving on many boards including the Metropolitan Tulsa Transit Authority and CAP-Community Action Project of Tulsa County. 

Jim was 69 when he died in Japan on April 16th, 2024.

His oral history interview was recorded on February 6th, 2024.

Richard Chapman was the head track coach and history teacher at the year-old Memorial High School in 1963.

In 1965, “Coach.” as he became known, was hired as head football coach at Edison High School, where, in his second season, he led his team to win the District Championship title. 

Coach was named Tulsa Tribune Coach of the Year in 1966. He coached and taught at Edison for seven years before returning to Memorial High School as head tennis coach.He retired for a year in 1986, before being hired to coordinate the in-house program at Nathan Hale High School, a position he held for several years before retiring completely.

In 1988, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Hall of Fame and also was inducted into both the Edison High School and Memorial High School Coaches Halls of Fame, as well as the Oklahoma Track Coaches Hall of Fame.

Richard Chapman was 91 when he died May 21, 2020.