All-Around Service
®
All Around Oklahoma
journal Oklahoma Farm Bureau
Volume 54 No. 5
(ISSN 1091-921X)
Page 2 Reduce your risks
Page 6 Horses stay wild
August 2002
Just showin’ off
Inspiring today’s youth through Oklahoma’s athletic heritage By Mike Nichols executive director of the Oklahoma Sports Museum. “We The aroma of freshly roasted peanuts and hot buttered didn’t know what we were doing.” popcorn almost permeates the air as echoes from roaring Memorabilia from 400 to 500 athletes with Oklahoma crowds seemingly reverberate from the corners of the Okla- ties now adorns the museum. There are more than 1,000 homa Sports Museum in historic downtown Guthrie. items displayed. The 13,000 square feet “We thought we could facility is a shrine to provide a place where we Oklahoma’s top athletes, a could not only recognize tribute to their careers with Hall of Fame athletes,” displays replete with memosays Hendricks, “but all pro rabilia from their glory days. athletes from Oklahoma.” It also features relics of noThere are large displays table state collegiate action. of Oklahoma’s superstars This unparalleled facilin Major League Baseball ity is the brick and mortar (MLB) and the National offspring of an impromptu Football League (NFL). discussion initiated by LoOklahoma MLB Hall of gan County Farm Bureau Famers featured include member Richard Hendricks Jenkins, Mickey Mantle, with Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins and Harlem Johnny Bench, Warren Spahn, Willie Stargell, Carl Hubbel, Globetrotter great Geese Ausbie. Bullet Rogan and Paul and Lloyd Waner, the only brothers in Hendricks, an educator and coach at Guthrie for 19 years, the shrine. broached the idea of a place to display items from Jenkins’ “Oklahoma has a lot of baseball players. There’s no other and Ausbie’s illustrious careers following a school assembly. sport where we have that many. That’s the reason we’re heavy He remembers the occasion well. on baseball,” says Hendricks. “It was during Red Ribbon Week (a drug free promotion). One special baseball exhibit is a Rawlings Gold Glove We invited Ferguson Jenkins and Geese Ausbie to put on an Award donated by Rawlings Company honoring five assembly for the kids. They talked to the kids (about staying Oklahomans who received the award as best at their Richard Hendricks shows off the Warren Spahn Award. in school and being drug free), and when it was over we talked position. Bench, the former Cincinnati Reds catcher, is in the Gold Glove Hall of Fame for winning the award 10 about a place to display their memorabilia and consecutive years. using their influence positively to influence our NFL Hall of Famers include Leroy Sellmon, kids.” Tommy McDonald, Jim Thorpe and Steve Largent. Hendricks, now retired, and the two OklaHeisman Trophy winners Barry Sanders, Steve homa all-star athletes took their 1991 idea to the Owens and Billy Sims have memorabilia on display community and by 1992 a non-profit organizaalong with OU coaching legends Bud Wilkinson tion was established and the push to gather and Barry Switzer. material for exhibits began. Some three years No display about Oklahoma sports would be later, trustees guaranteed funds to purchase the complete without legendary OSU basketball coach buildings for the museum and by 1996 the first Henry Iba. Mr. Iba is memorialized for his excelbuilding was restored. lence at both OSU and the Olympics. Relics from The West Gallery was opened next by Gov. the arena bearing his name, Gallagher-Iba, include Frank Keating, who assisted museum trustees in a set of the first wooden chair backs and another set obtaining a grant to help install electricity, heat that replaced them before the recent renovation and and air in that area. enlarging of the basketball mecca. “I just felt lucky the Lord lead me to do this,” Oklahoma’s most recent superstar Olympian, says Hendricks, who now serves as president/ A set of the original chairbacks from what is now OSU’s Gallagher-Iba Arena. (Museum, Page 3)