For those who remember the television show “Shindig!” but may have forgotten the host, this story will remind you of the very talented Jimmy O’Neill, who was from Enid, Oklahoma. He started his radio career at 16 in Enid, then on to WKY Oklahoma City and KQV Pittsburgh before making his Los Angeles debut at the brand-new KRLA in 1960. The station had just adopted a top-40 format. At the age of 20, Jimmy O’Neill had the most popular program in his time slot, making him the youngest person ever to have a No. 1 show.Jimmy was 24 when he hosted “Shindig!” which was on ABC television from Septemb ..read more

James C. Leake was a Television pioneer along with his wife Marjory Griffin Lake and brother-in-law John “J.T.” Griffin. In the 1940s, they applied to the FCC for licenses to put television stations in Little Rock, Arkansas (KATV), Tulsa, Oklahoma (KTUL) and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (KWTV). They put these three stations on the air in nine months. What you are about to hear is James Leake describing the process from application time, their competition, money issues, to building studios, and to when they went on the air, December 1953.It was February 3, 1998, when Mr. Leake recorded this oral hi ..read more

Ernestine Dillard of Bixby, Oklahoma is perhaps best remembered for her April 23, 1995 performance when she electrified 11,000 mourners and a national television audience with her “God Bless America” vocal arrangement. The medley closed the Oklahoma City Memorial Service honoring the victims of the Murrah Building bombing. In 1994, Ernestine Dillard ended a 33-year career as a registered nurse—the last two years with the Tulsa County Health Department—to pursue music full time. That same year Dillard won the “American Traditions” competition at Savannah Onstage, an annual music festival in Ge ..read more

Oklahoma native James C. Leake, Sr., grew up on the farm his grandfather homesteaded in 1891. He worked the soda counter at Rickner’s Bookstore and Restaurant in Norman while attending college at the University of Oklahoma and, as a trombone player, even took a job repairing the school’s band uniforms on a $10 sewing machine. He became president of the band in 1938 and raised money for trips, where he often slept in the baggage car to protect the group’s uniforms and instruments.In 1940 Leake married Marjory Griffin, the daughter of grocery pioneer J. T. Griffin of Muskogee. He became a sal ..read more

In the late 1930s, women basically had four career choices – nurse, secretary, hairdresser, or teacher. Mary Helen Stanley decided to follow in her aunt’s footsteps to become a teacher. She began her career as a high school speech and English teacher and later joined the faculty at the University of Tulsa, where she taught speech and organized the university’s first debate team. After taking more than a decade off to get married and devote her time to being a wife, homemaker, and mother of three, Stanley was forced to re-enter the workforce when her husband, Bob Stanley, died in 1959 of lung ..read more

Marina Metevelis answered the call to defend the United States as one of the iconic bandanna-clad Rosie the Riveters. Marina was sixteen when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941—an event that inspired her to apply for a job at the Wichita aircraft plant where the B-17 Flying Fortresses met the wings that carried them into battle. She became a Rosie the Riveter her senior year in high school. When Marina was a kid, she spent summers in Tulsa visiting her uncles. They were 32nd Degree Masons…and so were the oil barons. During those visits, she met all of the oil barons—thus her knowledge of Tulsa ..read more

George Krumme was born and reared in rural Oklahoma, about five miles northeast of Okemah. His early education took place in a rural school. He finished high school at age 16 in Bristow and then attended Oklahoma A&M as a music major.World War II changed the course of his life. He left A&M to study weather forecasting at Spartan School of Aeronautics and then taught aviation cadets in Texas. Krumme enlisted in the Army Air Corps and received training in mathematics and physics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Reassignment to the infantry led him to Europe during the Battle o ..read more

“The greatest game ever pitched” was an event that may best describe the baseball story of Warren Spahn. For in that game, he displayed the strength and the stamina that earned him the title of the greatest major league left-handed pitcher of all time. Warren Edward Spahn was a baseball hero and a hero on the battlefields of World War II. His 363 wins on the baseball field made him the all-time winningest left-handed hurler in the game. In 1973, Warren Spahn was admitted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. And on the battlefield he was a true hero as he was awarded the Battlefield Commi ..read more

Julius Pegues was the first Black varsity basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh, and went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force as a weather forecaster and later as an advisor to the Federal Aviation Administration. A star basketball at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, he was forced to matriculate to the University of Pittsburgh because University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and the University of Tulsa did not allow Black players.Julius quickly transitioned from a walk-on to a scholarship player after averaging 20 points per game in his first month. He finished as one of onl ..read more

He’s a small-town guy who charmed the big city. He was merely a name who coached high school sports before he became the face of Oklahoma high school athletics. Through his appearances on radio and television, J.V. Haney became the state’s most significant voice of high school sports. From the late 1980s through the early 2000s, Haney promoted Oklahoma high school sports from his pulpit that was Cox cable television. Through football season, basketball season and an assortment of lesser-recognized seasons, Haney provided the passion and the commentary for television audiences statewide. In ..read more