Oklahoma Veterinarians Honor Denny

Retired veterinarian Dr. Marvin Denny has OSU to thank for his degree. But, he credits the Oklahoma City Wesley United Methodist Church for keeping him off the street as a boy.

After the family was “starved off” an Oologah, Okla., farm in 1948, Denny moved with his mother to Oklahoma City. “We lived in a house on the corner of Reno and Lee avenues in a rough part of town,” he says.

Instead of getting into trouble, he frequented the local YMCA, Police Boys Club and the church where he met his future wife, Norma Jean Lynch. He credits the mentoring he received as a big part of the reason the Oklahoma Veterinary Medicine Association recently named Denny the 2008 Oklahoma Veterinarian of the Year.

He started school at OSU in 1953 but later joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and married in 1954. When he completed his military duty, he returned to OSU and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1959. By then, although he initially wanted to be a rancher, Denny knew he wanted to be a veterinarian.

“It dawned on me during my first year of college that the way to become a rancher is to marry into it or inherit it,” he says. “Since both of those weren’t in my future, I decided the person who gets to spend as much time on a ranch as anybody is a veterinarian.”

He earned his veterinary medicine degree in 1961 and took a position at a practice in McAlester, Okla. A year later, after a short stint in Yukon, Okla., Denny moved to the Canadian Valley Animal Clinic in El Reno, Okla. He soon became a partner in the busy practice, but he always took time to mentor veterinary students.

More than 30 years later, he retired after hearing loss and a back injury took their toll. He sold his part of the practice to his partner, OSU alumnus Dr. Charles Eisenhour, and started a 12-acre horse farm just yards away from the practice. These days, he minds his 27 horses and tends another 400 acres damaged by summer flooding in 2007.

Denny, who served as the Oklahoma association’s president in 1985, the same year his wife headed the auxiliary wing, says he was surprised and humbled to receive the veterinarian of the year award. “I know there’s a world of veterinarians out there better than me. I really appreciate the honor.”

“I’m sure glad I’m a veterinarian,” he says, “because this ranching business is a tough row to hoe.”

Matt eLLiott