TulsaPeople March 2013

March 2013

Reuse, recycle, remodel

A guide to inspiring home transformations

Putting the earth to work

How geothermal energy is being used in Tulsa homes, businesses and more

At the root of it A first-hand experience with genealogy research

Spring style has sprung Black and white steals the spotlight

ANNUAL

GREEN ISSUE

UNACCEPTABLE IN OKLAHOMA: PART 1

Mending offenses A look at the state’s high female incarceration rate

The way we were

WaterWorks Art Center … then and now

Roots rock

JD McPherson’s ascension from local open mic nights to Grammy nominee

Take the time

to enjoy a slower pace of life, found only at Utica Square.

With our exclusive boutiques and nationally recognized merchants, there is something special for everyone. With convenient parking, all the latest styles and a setting like nowhere else – Utica Square is the place to shop and unwind.

Utica Square gift certificates available at Commerce Bank.

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We Can Help You Stay Afloat.

Bank of Oklahoma Mortgage has new lending programs to help you refinance into a lower rate, even if the appraised value of your home is less than your mortgage amount and even if we are not your present lender.

In fact, we’ve helped thousands of homeowners just like you refinance into a more affordable mortgage.

Whether it’s through the Home Affordable Refinance Program* or one of our many other loan options, we have a solution and the capabilities to meet your unique needs.

Local underwriting | Local decision making | Local processing | Local offices Talk to your local Bank of Oklahoma Mortgage team. We’ll answer your questions and tell you exactly how much you can save, but you have to act quickly. Don’t wait to get the service and lower rate you deserve.

Adjustable Rate Loans | First Time Homebuyer | Fixed Rate Loans | Jumbo Loans Tulsa: 918.488.7140 | www.bok.com/mortgage © 2013 Bank of Oklahoma, a division of BOKF, NA. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender *The interest on any portion of credit greater than the fair market value of your property is not tax deductible for Federal income tax purposes. You should consult your tax advisor regarding the tax deductibility of interest and charges.

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living fearlessly.

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To learn more about the life-changing experiences of others like Elizabeth at Hillcrest, visit ChangingLivesAtHillcrest.com

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Features MARCH

2013

✻ VOLUME 27 / ISSUE 5

36

Essay: Family history takes root

Senior Editor Morgan Phillips dips her toe into the wide world of genealogy research.

by MORGAN PHILLIPS

40

Putting the earth to work

Geothermal energy is being utilized all over Tulsa — in homes, businesses and even a downtown park.

by JANE ZEMEL

46

Mending offenses

In the first installment of our six-part series addressing Oklahoma’s unacceptable rankings, we take a look at the state’s high female incarceration rate.

by JENNIE LLOYD

46

More women are jailed in Oklahoma than in any other state in the nation — by a long shot.

TulsaPeople.com

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Departments ✻ VOLUME 27 / ISSUE 5

63

22

Meloni Janzen

16

2013

Photo courtesy of Thomas Shahan

MARCH

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CityBeat

The Good Life

Agenda

13 Closing the loop Tulsans are now recycling more than ever thanks to the city’s new curbside program. 16 Odd jobs Meet arthropod photographer Thomas Shahan.

18 Desktop A look at the office of Joseph Gierek, gallery owner 20 What it’s like The Rev. Joseph Bias recalls the impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his own life and ministry. 22 Storefront Amanda Chea brings the concept of “working outside the box” to downtown Tulsa. 24 The way we were A look at WaterWorks Art Center, then and now 26 Lunch with … Arianna Moore, District 7 city councilor 28 Postgame Hometown hero and TU basketball star Shea Seals returns to his alma mater. 30 Not so long ago Bing and Bob 32 At large Spring is in the air. Sanity ... not so much.

55 Spring in your step This season is all about making bold statements through black and white ensembles accented with pops of color. 63 Home Inspiring Tulsa remodels 74 Gardening Plants that beat the heat 76 Travel Simple, speedy spring break getaways 82 Dining out Justin Thompson’s upscale steakhouse, PRHYME, classes up downtown’s beef offerings. 84 Table talk Meat markets and meatless Mondays 86 Wine Find comfort in wines outside your comfort zone this month. 88 Health Environmental changes could create health threats for Oklahomans.

109 Best in show Canine competitors from near and far come to Tulsa for the 2013 AKC National Agility, Obedience and Rally Championships. 110 Agenda This month’s standout events 112 Out & about See and be seen. 116 Benefits Fundraisers and fun happenings 118 Artist in residence Muralist Janet Fadler Davie guides guests of Iron Gate soup kitchen and food pantry in creating their own masterpieces. 120 The culturist A group of Tulsans make their own musical magic in “Five Course Love” benefiting Mizel Jewish Community Day School. 122 Tulsa sound Broken Arrow musician JD McPherson gives mid-century sounds a modern twist. 124 Get the picture A new film chronicles the life and accomplishments of Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller. 128 The last word My inner magpie

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

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Visit TulsaPeople.com all month long for exclusive content you won’t want to miss, including blog posts, photo galleries, contests, a calendar of local events, dining and shopping directories, and much more.

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Volume XXVII, Number 5 ©2013. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

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March 1

Plan a spring menu with a honey-kissed, spiral-cut ham from The Hamlet and enjoy a $50 Ziegler’s gift card.

PUBLISHER Jim Langdon

VP COMMUNICATIONS Susie Miller

MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR EDITOR ONLINE EDITOR A&E EDITOR FOOD EDITOR

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March 8

Win two tickets to the April 5 Tulsa Town Hall featuring James B. Stewart and a $50 McNellie’s gift card.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

OI

Beginning March 1, visit TulsaPeople.com/A-List to vote for your Tulsa favorites in the categories of food, fun, shopping and services.

Vote in all four categories and you’ll be registered to win a gift card package valued at $1,000!

March 15

Feel like royalty while dining at The Palace Café with a $100 gift card.

March 22

See the grandest of grand operas with two tickets to Tulsa Opera’s “Aida” on opening night, April 20, with prime orchestra seating.

March 29

Dinner is on us with a $100 gift certificate to The Spudder.

Amanda Watkins Brooke Lawson Michelle Pollard Evan Taylor Greg Bollinger

AD TRAFFIC MANAGER Kate Howell ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Andrea Canada, Steve Hopkins

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top 5% nationally for clinical excellence.

2011 | 201 2 | 2013 Most 5-Star ratings in Oklahoma for patient quality and safety.

For the third year in a row, Saint Francis Hospital is the recipient of the Healthgrades Award for Overall Clinical Excellence and is ranked among the top 5% of hospitals nationwide. Healthgrades, an independent healthcare ratings organization, also awarded Saint Francis Hospital with more 5-Star ratings than any other hospital in Oklahoma.

Thank you to the physicians, nurses, staff and volunteers for their ongoing commitment to quality, dedication to teamwork and for providing award-winning patient care.

Saint Francis Hospital was also recognized in the following clinical areas in 2013: Cardiac 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Heart Failure Vascular 5-Star Rated for Carotid Surgery Orthopedic 100 Best Hospitals for Orthopedic Surgery™ Ranked Among the Top 5% in the Nation for Overall Orthopedic Services Orthopedic Surgery Excellence Award 5-Star Rated for Overall Orthopedic Services 5-Star Rated for Joint Replacement 5-Star Rated for Spine Surgery 5-Star Rated for Total Knee Replacement 5-Star Rated for Hip Fracture Repair 5-Star Rated for Back and Neck Surgery Pulmonary 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Pneumonia Gastrointestinal 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Bowel Obstruction

Critical Care 100 Best Hospitals for Critical Care™ Ranked Among the Top 5% in the Nation for Critical Care Critical Care Excellence Award Ranked #1 in Oklahoma for Critical Care 5-Star Rated for Overall Critical Care 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Sepsis 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Pulmonary Embolism 5-Star Rated for Treatment of Respiratory Failure Women’s Health (2011 – 2012) Women’s Health Excellence Award Ranked Among the Top 5% in the Nation for Women’s Health 5-Star Rated for Women’s Health

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From the editors

by MORGAN PHILLIPS

S

Senior Editor

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

The story behind the story On Tulsa’s recycling program — BOB HARING Tulsa’s citywide recycling program is a step in the right direction. In checking into its operation for my story, I found it appears to be successful within Tulsa limits.

However, the system is still far too limited because it does not include apartment dwellers or extend to the larger metro area.

It does seem that the city and the Metropolitan Environmental Trust are cooperating, but what is needed is a comprehensive program covering the city and the suburbs, as well one inclusive of all recyclable materials.

Still, it’s an improvement from what existed when I moved back to Tulsa from New Jersey in 1975. Then, there was no organized effort to recycle anything.

I was disturbed, for instance, to find that wood chips from Public Service Co. tree-trimming, which was very limited then, were going to the dump. I

persuaded PSO to make the chips available to Tulsans for mulch. That led to a small but continuous mulching program, mainly at East 53rd Street and South Garnett Road, until the city got into the act after a big ice storm in the 1980s.

There was a huge pile of wood and debris at the fairgrounds, and then-Mayor Susan Savage wondered how to get rid of it. I suggested she consider chipping for mulch. The city rented a chipper to dispose of that pile, then bought one and began the city’s green waste program.

Eventually the Tulsa Zoo and some other public places put out containers for aluminum cans and plastic bottles, but city parks still dispose of those in trash containers, not recycle bins. Some restaurants and other establishments also separate those items, but many just pile them in with garbage.

So do the convenience stores at almost every city intersection. Separate recycling containers would help.

The current system is very efficient at recycling what it gathers. The problem remains to get everything that can be recycled into that stream.

On visiting prison — JENNIE LLOYD

Joe O’Shansky

ince the City of Tulsa began its curbside recycling program in October, the Phillips household has jumped on the recycling bandwagon. We’d always tried to recycle plastic water bottles — I’ve seen the commercial claiming Americans throw enough away to stretch several times around the globe — and a few other things I felt too guilty (yes, guilty) to throw into a landfill.

But now that we have once-a-week pickup of recyclable materials, we’ve kicked the habit up a notch. I find something oddly therapeutic about rinsing an empty plastic container and tossing it into our extra-large recycling cart. It’s satisfying to know we’re doing our minor part to be better stewards of the earth and its precious resources.

In this year’s “green issue” of the magazine, we check out just how much Tulsans are recycling with a look at the city’s new program and its $10 million processing facility (p. 13). We also explore local business owners’ and homeowners’ increasing use of geothermal energy, which utilizes the earth to heat and cool buildings more efficiently (p. 40).

Get up close and personal with nature in our profile of Tulsa native Thomas Shahan’s arthropod photography (p. 16) — more fascinating than icky, I promise — and see spring fashions in the season’s hottest color combination: black and white (p. 55).

I get a little personal myself this month with an essay on my journey into genealogy research (p. 36). As a beginner, I was surprised to learn the Tulsa Genealogy Center is a treasure trove of resources for those interested in their family tree.

Writer Jennie Lloyd provides an intriguing glimpse into the lives of women in jail in “Mending offenses,” (p. 46). Lloyd explores some of the reasons Oklahoma has the highest rate of incarcerated women per capita in the world in the first of our six-part “Unacceptable” series on categories in which our state ranks poorly.

As the weather warms and things begin to “green up” this month, I encourage you to consider what Earth-friendly tip you can try this year. (See p. 44 for some suggestions from Michael Patton of the Metropolitan Environmental Trust.) Next on my list: composting. tþ

I am afraid of prison. Many nights, I’ve awakened from nightmares wherein I’ve accidentally committed a terrible crime I can’t recall. On the other end of the law is that no man’s land: prison.

The day I met two inmates at Eddie Warrior Correctional Facility, the sky was a heavy canvas tent — low, gray, hunkered down. Apprehension grew as I pulled into Taft, where wild Oklahoma landscape mixed with burned-out, rusting buildings along the side of the road.

As I neared the prison, my heart quickened. I imagined a slapstick comedy plot wherein the plucky reporter is mistaken for an inmate and locked up. I was wide-awake and on the lookout for possible mix-ups.

But Eddie Warrior isn’t really the stuff of nightmares. The minimum-security facility holds ordinary-looking women who are free to walk about in the open yard, or hurry to classes, or chat with one another. It is decidedly unscary.

In a sparse office, I talked to two inmates,

Charlette Cohee (featured in my article) and Rachel Colbert.

Colbert is tall and blonde with a formal air. Ten years ago, she drove through Oklahoma on her way back to her home state of Indiana ... with more than 25 pounds of marijuana in her car.

She fought her felony drug trafficking conviction — and a 10-year sentence — for a decade, she told me.

Prison, she said, “scared me to death.” When she finally faced up to her sentence in January 2012, Colbert was surprised. Prison wasn’t what she expected.

“I learned a lot about myself,” she said.

The other women were similar to her, too, she found. They were just normal women — mothers, wives, sisters, employees.

Colbert was released Jan. 4 after completing a year-long prison paramilitary program in return for a suspended sentence. Her family and career (as a pub owner) awaited her return to Indianapolis.

The experience forged her into a smarter, stronger, more thoughtful person. Prison was Colbert’s worst nightmare, just like mine, until she faced it head on. Now, she is free.

But I’m still a little nervous.

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NEWS ✻ PEOPLE ✻ OPINIONS

Tom Hill, chief executive of Tulsa Recycle and Transfer, and Eric Lee, solid waste service manager for the City of Tulsa, stand in Tulsa’s new recycling processing facility that American Waste Control developed after winning the city contract in 2012. The facility, often referred to as “Mr. Murph,” processes an average of 70 tons of recyclable materials per day.

TulsaPeople.com

>VIDEO See a video about the new recycling program and processing plant, as well as a list of what can and cannot be recycled.

Closing the loop Tulsans are now recycling more than ever through the city’s new curbside program.

Evan Taylor

by BOB HARING

Bug-eyed P. 16

✻

Creative coworkers P. 22

✻

Duet disappeared P. 30 TulsaPeople.com

13

Closing the loop: continued from p. 13

Michael Patton is executive director of the Metropolitan Environmental Trust, which accepts recyclables from those not eligible for the city’s curbside recycling program.

T

ulsa’s residential recycling program is taking 70 tons of recyclables a day out of the waste stream and converting almost all of it into new material.

Tulsa Recycle and Transfer processes the items collected in the new curbside program that began Oct. 1, replacing a voluntary curbside program.

Results have been “extraordinary,” says Eric Lee, the city’s solid waste service manager, and overall, recycling “has been consistently climbing” each week.

“There appears to be more diversion from trash to recycling,” he adds, “and it appears people are looking at what can be recycled.”

The program is a complex operation that covers approximately 116,500 Tulsa households. Because it is a residential collection program, not a commercial program, apartment buildings are excluded from the curbside recycling services.

The city collects fees as part of the utility bill and provides trash and recycling containers. About 110,000 households have accepted and are using the city-provided recycling carts, Lee says.

A private company called NeWSolutions, which was formed by seven haulers who were formerly leaders of Tulsa Refuse Inc., operates the trucks that pick up refuse and recyclables.

Tulsa Recycle and Transfer processes the recycled material, while two trash-to-energy or “burn”

14

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Evan Taylor

Evan Taylor

A private company called NeWSolutions operates the trucks that pick up refuse and recyclables at Tulsans’ curbs.

“We’re very pleased with participation and quality of the material (we’re processing).”

— Tom Hill, chief executive of Tulsa Recycle and Transfer plants run by Covanta and American Environmental Landfill dispose of trash. According to American Waste Control, about 20 percent of the nonrecyclable material goes to Covanta and is converted into steam, while the remaining 80 percent goes to American Environmental Landfill, where 3.2 megawatts of electricity are generated.

The new program has changed recycling in Tulsa but not in the rest of the metro area, which still largely relies on the Metropolitan Environmental Trust.

The MET has existed since the late 1980s and has served Tulsa and surrounding areas, including seven suburbs and parts of Wagoner County, since 1993.

The MET has lost about threefourths of its Tulsa customers, says Executive Director Michael Patton, but “all the suburbs do a bang-up business.” The MET also continues to accept recyclables from many Tulsa apartment dwellers who are not eligible for the curbside program. In fact, the MET is relocating some of its collection sites to be more convenient for those users.

While the new recycling program

is much more inclusive than its predecessor, the MET accepts some material the curbside program will not, such as cooking oil, motor oil, batteries, and plastic bags for groceries, newspapers and bread. It also has added an e-waste component.

E-waste includes electronic items such as computers, stereos, VHS players, laptops, cell phones, microwaves, small appliances and Christmas lights.

The MET sends its collected material to a variety of outlets for processing, while Tulsa’s curbside recyclables go to one location operated by American Waste Control — Tulsa Recycle and Transfer, or “Mr. Murph,” on North Peoria Avenue.

It is a sophisticated $10 million facility that American Waste Control developed after winning the city contract in 2012. Tulsa Recycle and Transfer had previously operated a simpler system there since 1987 to serve American Waste Control’s mainly commercial customers.

The new processing facility uses a combination of optical and magnetic sensors and air currents to sort material as it moves along a conveyor.

“Screeners and polishers allow for

paper, newspapers and cardboard to be removed, while cross belt magnets pick up ferrous (iron-laced) materials,” says Tom Hill, chief executive of Tulsa Recycle and Transfer.

For example, magnets pick up non-aluminum cans, while an “eddy” current machine sorts the aluminum.

The optical scanners are so sensitive, they can sort glass and plastic by their material and color to tell the difference between a whitish, semi-transparent milk jug and a clear soda bottle.

Hill says the system captures 95 to 98 percent of the content put into it, sending little to a private landfill.

Once the captured material is sorted and baled, it goes to companies that process it into new material.

The system started with a bang, largely because customers apparently held back material until curbside collections began. It then leveled off to average about 375 tons per week and jumped again after Christmas to 453 tons per week.

In the first 15 weeks of 2013, nearly 5,700 tons went into recycling carts.

About 15 percent was removed because of contamination, leaving nearly 5,000 tons to be recycled. The tonnage varies somewhat, Hill says, but averages 70 tons per day.

“We’re very pleased with participation and quality of the material (we’re processing),” Hill says.

Of Tulsans, he adds, “They’re caring and trying to do it right.” tþ

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ODD JOBS

Interesting Tulsa occupations

Thomas Shahan Arthropod photographer

by BRADLEY MORRIS

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16

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Department of Agriculture’s entomology lab, stacking high magnification photos of arthropods. His photos are on display through Sept. 8 at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman in a large-scale exhibit on Oklahoma arthropods.

“They’re displaying some of my photographs, but they’ve also got these huge, photo-realistic sculptures,” he says.

For Shahan, that seems like bug heaven. We mean, arthropod heaven. tþ

Tulsan Thomas Shahan uses a technique called “macro photography” to shoot close-up images of arthropods. A collection of his photos are on display through Sept. 8 at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman. down in the dirt.

So, that led to a call from National Geographic, and they wanted some photographs for a piece on insects from our area.

That was a huge Thomas Shahan honor for me.”

And a kind of validation.

“That was the first testament,” Shahan says of his 2009 “Today Show” appearance, “that people might actually find these beautiful and interesting, which was great for me, because I think they’re beautiful and interesting.”

When it comes to actually shooting the photos, Shahan is at the mercy of his subjects: “I can’t get them to do anything, because they’re jumping spiders,” he says. “To get a picture

To see more of Shahan’s work, visit www.thomasshahan.com.

of a beautiful specimen, they kind of need to be alive and healthy.”

He has studied the arthropods, their behaviors, their habits, and met them — literally — on their level.

“If you put an arching leaf over a jumping spider and make a little canopy for them, they’ll kind of power down,” he explains. “They have haunches, and they’ll sit back on them and clean themselves and kind of relax.”

That’s when Shahan crawls in and gets the shot, but often after many, many attempts.

“You could shoot 1,000 shots and have 999 out-of-focus shots of a jumping spider … but that 1,000th shot might be the one you catch right before he jumps, and that’s the one you want. It’s very hard work.”

Shahan is currently working as the imaging specialist in the Oregon

Photos courtesy of Thomas Shahan

homas Shahan takes pictures of bugs. Well, actually, arthropods. He doesn’t freak out if you call a spider an insect (it’s not), but he definitely knows the difference.

When Shahan was a teenager attending Jenks High School, he was out in his back yard one afternoon, and something caught his eye.

“I started noticing these little jumping spiders,” he says. “They’re no bigger than a dime. I was looking at one of them, and it looked at me.

I mean, I made eye contact with this little jumping spider.”

Shahan, now 24, was immediately enthralled, having made some sort of connection.

“When you make eye contact with something, it’s easy to anthropomorphize, and also, they’re just really beautiful animals,” he says. “I decided I wanted to take the very best photographs of them that I could.”

In a seemingly unrelated area of his high school life, he also was into playing, buying and selling used guitars.

“People would want really upclose pictures of them — like the serial number, or the condition of the tuning pegs, or small cracks in the finish and things like that,” he says.

Through trial and error, Shahan learned how to shoot extremely magnified images, known as “macro photography.”

“I just sort of figured out by accident that if I reversed the lens, it was really good for those up-close shots,” he says. “It’s just basically using the equipment incorrectly.”

In college he began sharing his photos online, and word spread. He fast-forwards to two major accomplishments, both achieved in his early 20s.

“One day, NBC called and asked me to go on ‘The Today Show’ and talk about my work with these beautiful little animals,” he says. “It made it worth it — all the hours I spent face

What makes Thomas Shahan successful: 1. Knowing his subject. “If you go into this and you don’t know about arthropods, you’re not going to do very well,” he says. “But if you’re careful with them, they’ll be careful with you.

They don’t have the same rationale as humans, but if you (make them mad) they’ll let you know it.”

2. Patience. “I’ll spend all day outside doing this, and I’ll have sweat dripping into my eyes, and my arms will be shaking,” Shahan says.

“But I have to be patient.”

3. Looking beyond equipment. “You can have all this great macro equipment and not get good shots,” he explains.

“On the other hand, you might just be using an iPhone and a magnifying glass and get a beautiful photograph. Just take good photographs.

Don’t stress out about equipment.”

DESKTOP

Inside a Tulsan’s office

Joseph Gierek Owner, Joseph Gierek Fine Art

by LANE CLEGG Elusive gallery owner Joseph Gierek

“If I’m having a bad day and I look up, how can I not smile?” Gierek says of the children’s artwork he collects in his office. “This is the truth as they see it.” A few of the pieces came from an artist’s children, who gave him their drawings.

Other works have come from his step-grandchildren.

TulsaPeople.com Evan Taylor

See more items from Gierek’s office inside his Cherry Street gallery.

J

oseph Gierek may not have studied art in school, but it has certainly become his life’s passion. Gierek became interested in art as a child and later met an artist, liked her work and thought others would as well — so he began selling her art out of the trunk of his car.

After working at a gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz., and directing a gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., Gierek relocated to Tulsa. Fifteen

If art is Gierek’s first passion, baseball is his second. He received this autographed ball from W.P. Kinsella, the author of “Shoeless Joe,” after shuttling him around Tulsa during a Nimrod writer’s conference.

Kinsella wrote, “To Joe, go the distance” — a version of the popular line from “Field of Dreams,” the screen adaptation of Kinsella’s book.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

years ago this September, he opened a gallery a few doors down from the Palace Café at East 15th Street and South Peoria Avenue, but for the past decade Gierek has owned Joseph Gierek Fine Art near the Coffee House on Cherry Street.

“I’m lucky that I like what I do,” Gierek says. “I’m fortunate that I got into this business a long time ago. I love art, and I have such a great appreciation for what (the artists) do.” tþ

This iconic, signed photograph of Lou Gehrig is the original photo given to Yankees Manager Joe McCarthy on a special occasion. After McCarthy died, his family auctioned the photograph and Gierek purchased it. McCarthy is pictured here with the original photo.

“At one time I had the pottery out in the gallery tagged ‘not for sale at this time’ with the intent to sell ... I decided that I just didn’t even want to sell it, so I moved it into my office,” Gierek says. “I have everything from Anasazi to Acoma to Zuni to Hopi and some Santa Domingo in there.” Each piece is in its original condition.

Gierek keeps clippings of articles from The New Yorker about art or art distributors. “(The New Yorker) goes more in depth,” he says, referring to the magazine’s wide range of articles on art.

“There was a lot of controversy around it,” says Gierek of the original, framed photograph of pregnant and nude actress Demi Moore that was the cover of Vanity Fair’s August 1991 issue. The image was taken, signed and numbered by Annie Leibovitz. “Other than the photo of John Lennon that she shot with Yoko Ono before he was killed, this is one of (Leibovitz’s) most famous photos.”

Gierek acquired this piece from a historical autograph dealer in Philadelphia. The frame holds a letter written and signed by Georgia O’Keeffe requesting a color transparency of her own piece, “Cross with Red Heart.”

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WHAT IT’S LIKE

First-person experiences

Instrumental leadership The Rev. Joseph Bias recalls the impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his own life and ministry.

by LINDSAY WHELCHEL

G

Meeting Dr. King at the home of a family friend: We (Bias and his sister) were the only kids out of all adults at the reception. When he saw us he took us into the kitchen and we sat down at the table … he talked with us for over an hour about his mission, about the movement, about life, and really charged us that we had a destiny, that the future rested with us as to what would

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

The Rev. Joseph Bias, minister of worship at Tulsa’s First United Methodist Church, met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a young man.

happen with civil rights in America.

As the future generation, we had an enormous responsibility to do our best for the sake of those who would be coming after us.

On youth empowerment: When we were younger, everything that we did was important, not only for ourselves but for black people everywhere. Many of us were doing the first things ever done by black people in America. The doors for civil rights were opening for the first time and rights for black people were becoming something we could reach for, hope for and achieve. So, after years

Evan Taylor

rowing up in the South during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s was a tumultuous yet important time.

For the Rev. Joseph Bias, minister of worship at First United Methodist Church of Tulsa, music was both an escape and a vehicle for change.

In his early days in Savannah, Ga., Bias’ mother was the strongest influence in his love of music. Later, in large part because of an important meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when Bias was a teen, Bias committed to youth empowerment while making the connection that music had the power to change lives.

The civil rights leader encouraged Bias to attend his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Later Bias became an accomplished Christian musician, inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 2006 for gospel music.

Today Bias’ musical influence is far-reaching, specifically with the growth of the Rotary Club of Tulsa’s Crescendo Music Awards, which Bias founded in 1999. From a small effort with eight participants and a cash prize of $1,500, the annual competition, coming up March 21-23, has auditioned 827 high school and college musicians and awarded more than $375,000 over the past 14 years.

of performing and playing, I got to the place where I’d had some moderate success, and I wanted to reach back and help out as many people as I could — young people, regardless of color, anyone who had ambition and drive. I felt a certain responsibility to do what I could to help them and encourage them along the way.

Starting the Crescendo Music Awards: So many young people have talent and have ability, but they can’t get past that initial stage of needing the money and support for education, so they stop. The Crescendo Music Awards, and other oppor-

tunities like it, are helping myriad young people, encouraging them along the way to pursue their careers professionally.

The rewards of Bias’ work: That’s really rewarding to see these young people achieve things and to go on to greater things. I’m just so proud of them, especially knowing that many of them came from situations and circumstances that were not very promising. They were able to overcome, and we were able to be a part of that. tþ

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STOREFRONT

Looking at small business

Creativity at work Amanda Chea brings the concept of “working outside the box” to downtown Tulsa.

by BRITT GREENWOOD

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Amanda Chea, owner of the Creative Room, brought the coworking concept to downtown Tulsa’s Pearl District after feeling “disconnected from her community” while working from home as an artist, she says.

For more information, visit www.creativeroomtulsa.com, or call 918-779-6875.

for available locations in Tulsa. One month later, she found a space at 1317 E. Sixth St. near MADE: The Indie Imporium Shop and Phoenix Café. Renovations are on track to be completed this month, though the location opened Jan. 2.

The approximately 2,500-squarefoot space has room for eight desks, community tables and a lounge where people can work. It

also provides Wi-Fi, a kitchenette, lounge and meeting space for members. There are currently three dedicated members and several daytime users. A small list of house rules governs the space.

“Moving my workspace away from home helps me keep my work and home lives separate,” says Michael Champlin, a graphic designer and assistant director for the Creative Room.

“It also lends some credibility to what I do,” he says. “After freelancing for four-plus years, it’s great to meet clients somewhere a little more professional than my neighborhood coffee shop.”

Woodburning artist Joshua Seabolt says he has increased his

productivity since becoming a member in January.

“I enjoy being around a supportive community and the self-confidence it has given me,” he says. “Also, working in this sort of setup has gotten rid of the feeling of isolation I had working in my home studio.”

The Creative Room offers day passes, and part-time and full-time memberships.

Prices range from $20 for a day pass to $300 per month for a dedicated desk.

In the future, Chea plans to use the space for classes and workshops with a focus on creativity, creative pursuits and freelance business-related concerns. tþ

Evan Taylor

T

he Pearl District has added another art-inspired business — the Creative Room — that is giving a new, more literal meaning to the word “co-workers.”

Artists, writers and graphic designers set up shop, so to speak, at the Creative Room, sharing space in a “creative hub” where individuals can work, brainstorm and develop helpful, personal connections they would not otherwise have, says owner Amanda Chea.

It’s called “coworking,” a term used in 2005 by San Francisco programmer Brad Neuberg to describe The Hat Factory, a loft residence by night and sharable office space by day.

Neuberg then helped launch the famous (at least in the coworking world) Citizen Space — a pioneer in the now globally trending community workspace movement.

As coworking spread, some spaces became artist groups, some were tech-based and some became mixed with various freelancers willing to pay a membership fee.

Chea adopted the concept after spending 2012 in a creative pursuit.

The registered nurse, who also worked from home as an artist, felt “disconnected from the community,” she says. And she had a hunch she might not be the only person experiencing seclusion.

Rather than pay for a personal studio, individuals who cowork enjoy a cost-effective alternative to traditional office space in a distractionfree environment helpful for those who had previously worked from home.

Chea began researching the coworking concept early last summer after informally polling her professional friends to gauge their interest. She then began looking

THE WAY WE WERE

A peek into Tulsa’s past

Fluid facility WaterWorks Art Center is a first-class example of a historically significant, repurposed building.

The children in these undated photos rode the Tulsa city bus line to swim at Tulsa’s first city swimming pool, located in Newblock Park. The park also was home to the Newblock Pumping Plant, which is now WaterWorks Art Center.

The former city pool was located where the art center parking lot sits today.

L

ess than a mile from downtown Tulsa, located in the historic Newblock Park, sits a magnificent, circa-1910 building with expansive glass windows and a stunning view of the city.

Inside this building is arguably one of the better-kept secrets in Tulsa.

WaterWorks Art Center brings visual fine arts experiences, handson classes for all ages and quality art exhibits to the citizens of Tulsa.

The art center recently underwent a major renovation and expansion, opening the new space in March 2012.

In 1904 Tulsa built its first water treatment plant in Newblock Park, home to the city’s first swimming pool. After the Newblock Pumping Plant — also referred to as the Newblock Pumping Station or the City of Tulsa Water Works Building — flooded in 1923, the facility was relocated to what is now Mohawk Park. The Spavinaw Water Project was completed the following year.

Members of the Tulsa Parks board

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Evan Taylor

Photos courtesy of WaterWorks Art Center

by MARNIE FERNANDEZ

Lee Anne Zeigler later saw the old plant could benefit the community in another way. “(The board) had a great vision for this space, even back before repurposing buildings was ‘in,’” says Lee Anne Zeigler, WaterWorks executive director.

“Tulsa Parks still owns and operates

the facility, but we also have a WaterWorks Advisory Council, which is a nonprofit organization that supports the mission of WaterWorks.”

Although Zeigler has only been the director for three months, she has been coming to WaterWorks for decades.

“I started coming here as a child, even before it was named WaterWorks,” Zeigler says. “Not only are the art classes affordable, the teachers are amazing and really know their craft. I love to weave and still take classes to this day.

“The WaterWorks teaching method is a classical one, where you continue to build upon your knowledge instead of starting over each semester. ” WaterWorks offers classes yearround on everything from jewelrymaking and painting to mixed media and textiles.

“But we are probably best known for our ceramics,” Zeigler adds. “We actually have a waiting list for our pottery classes.”

WaterWorks offers classes and camps for children, as well.

“Our mission is ‘Art for Everyone,’ and we really strive to bring the fine arts to children,” Zeigler says. “We have a wonderful spring break camp and summer day camp for schoolage children.”

The existing historic building has housed WaterWorks Art Studio since 1999. The renovation and expansion last year provided 7,300 square feet of studio space. The facility also is available for birthday parties and private rentals.

“This is such a beautiful and unique space,” Zeigler says. “We hope to make more Tulsans aware of this treasure and continue building upon the synergy of everything happening in this area. It’s an exciting time for downtown Tulsa.” tþ

For more information on classes, rentals and scholarships for day camps and other programs, call 918-596-2442.

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LUNCH WITH …

Noshing with the newsworthy NUMBERS

Good natured

Arianna Moore

by SARAH MARTIN

District 7 city councilor Date: Dec. 18 • Time: 12:30 p.m. • Place: The French Hen

by MISSY KRUSE

E

lected at age 25 and now 26, Arianna Moore may be Tulsa’s youngest-ever city councilor, but that’s just her first step. She plans to be governor someday.

Big ambitions for a woman whose first race was for her current office, one she had held only two weeks when we met for lunch. But being governor? That’s something she has thought about for several years. There are issues she’d like to tackle, particularly welfare reform.

“No one in my family is in politics,” Moore said of her council race. “I don’t come from money.

It’s just something I thought about doing.”

In November, Moore beat incumbent councilor Tom Mansur, winning 57 percent of District 7 votes. (A figure I had to look up, because Moore herself didn’t know.) Mind you, Mansur wasn’t even eligible because he was moving to Ardmore, but he left his name on the ballot.

“He felt people deserved to make a decision and that I should not have been defaulted in,” Moore said.

And while Moore said she walked some neighborhoods, left flyers and attended a few “meet and greets,” her campaign was decidedly low-key.

While we visited over The French Hen’s salad special, Moore, a native Tulsan, expressed that while streets are an issue “close to my heart … I am just kind of jumping” in, trying to learn the system and the diverse issues that come before the Thursday council meetings.

What has surprised her so far?

“Everything,” she said. “I think I

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Arianna Moore

went in pretty open-minded, but day one the games start. Luckily the staff is really good — and the entire council. We all work to help each other, but you can already tell you have to draw a line. It’s a solo game some days. We’ve had to go against the mayor.

“I’ve only been on the job two weeks, and I’ve already angered him,” she continued. “But I am not going to do something just because the mayor asks me to, because I don’t work for the mayor, I work for the people whose tax dollars pay for me.”

A 2009 communications/business graduate of The University of Tulsa, Moore works as a parttime marketing assistant for an insurance agent, a job that provides her the flexible schedule councilors need.

She and her husband, Spencer, who works as a software developer for the GRDA, met at TU and have been married 3 1/2 years.

So, it’s not surprising she’s into

squeezing pennies. For her, that means organized coupon collecting.

“I’m very Type A. I like to be in control of things, so I have a binder” with the coupons “nicely organized,” she says.

The day we lunched, she had 22 tubes of toothpaste and like amounts of mouthwash and shampoo stored away. She maps out a route from her work to home to cash in on the bargains, she said, but gives most of it away. One of the beneficiaries is Counseling & Recovery Services of Oklahoma, which provides behavioral health and substance abuse services. She’s a recent addition to its board.

Before her election, she received a small taste of government on the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women, on which she still serves. It is obvious she has definite opinions about issues that affect women, including welfare.

If she makes it to the governor’s office, Moore wants to ”reevaluate and re-analyze how our welfare system functions. I think that it is lacking in some places,” she says, an opinion developed through watching the struggles of others.

She hasn’t mapped out how she will get there from here; she admitted, “That remains to be seen.”

She may do it. She never took debate, she said, “but I am a pretty good arguer … I’m a Daddy’s girl, so I am not used to the word ‘no.’ I don’t like to hear it.”

Then moments later she added wisely, “You’ve got to focus on the people, because that’s the only permanent thing there is.” tþ

A

large oasis nestled near the northern border of the city is the perfect place for Tulsans to “decompress from urban life,” says Eddie Reese, director of the Mary K. Oxley Nature Center.

Located in Mohawk Park next to the Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum and owned by the City of Tulsa, the Oxley Nature Center features hands-on exhibits, a small library and wildlife viewing area, and nature trails.

Its Redbud Valley Nature Preserve surrounds the nature center and provides a glimpse into northeast Oklahoma’s native plant and animal life.

804

Acres of natural landscape surround Oxley Nature

Center.

200

Species of birds have been identified in and near the

preserve.

50

Species of butterflies have been spotted. Nature center staff and volunteers counted 2,686 butterflies in April 2012.

10 ½

Miles of hiking trails surround the center.

Online maps allow visitors to plan their routes.

1,000

Children visit the nature center on field trips

each season.

80

Volunteers help run the nature center’s programs, which include guided school tours and various nature walks.

$0

For admission to the Oxley Nature Center. The center offers free programs Saturdays and Sundays nearly every weekend of the year.

OXLEY NATURE CENTER PUBLIC HOURS GATES: 8 a.m.-5 p.m., daily TRAILS: 7 a.m.-9 p.m., daily Interpretive Building (visitor center/museum) 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Saturday; noon-4:30 p.m., Sunday Visit www.oxleynaturecenter.org for more information.

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“Stress and its Causes”

Dr. Robert Sapolsky Thursday, April 4, 2013 7:30 p.m.

Allen Chapman Activity Center 440 South Gary Avenue

Dr. Robert Sapolsky

Science writer and biologist Robert Sapolsky is one of the country’s most insightful experts on stress and is known for his research on primates and their connection to the human condition. For more than 30 years, Sapolsky has conducted fieldwork with baboons and studied the causes of depression, aggression and other stress-related tendencies. He is a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow and a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University.

Sapolsky serves as a research scientist for the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya and has authored four books, including Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, as well as articles for Discover and The New Yorker.

“Robert Sapolsky is one of the best scientist-writers of our time, able to deal with the weightiest topics both authoritatively and wittily, with so light a touch they become accessible to all.”

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Free and open to the public For more information, visit www.utulsa.edu/pls.

The University of Tulsa is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action institution. For EEO/AA information, contact the Office of Human Resources, 918-631-2616; for disability accommodations, contact Dr. Tawny Taylor, 918-631-3814. To ensure availability of an interpreter, five to seven days notice is needed; 48 hours is recommended for all other accommodations. No tickets or registration required. Please call 918-631-2309 for event details. TU#13112

POSTGAME

Getting to know Tulsa’s top athletes

Shea Seals

Shea Seals over the years

A hometown hoops hero returns to his alma mater.

HIGH SCHOOL • Named the 1993 Oklahoma Player of the Year his senior year at Tulsa’s McLain High School.

by DOUG EATON

H

igh school star, college All-American, NBA player and state championshipwinning high school coach. All can describe Shea Seals.

The Tulsa native now returns to The University of Tulsa as director of player development and team manager, positions he began in May 2012.

TulsaPeople sat down with Seals before a recent Golden Hurricane practice.

Shea Seals played basketball for The University of Tulsa in the mid- to late-1990s. He returned in May 2012 as director of player development and team manager.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TULSA • Named Missouri Valley Conference Most Outstanding Freshman and Newcomer of the Year, and was named to freshman All-American Team.

• Named to All-Missouri Valley Conference First Team two consecutive seasons.

• Named to All-Western Athletic Conference First Team and Third-Team Associated Press All-America.

How did you start playing basketball? I had two passions as a kid — I loved playing football and basketball. We’d play whatever sport was in season. But I soon found that I was too slow to be a wide receiver in football, so I started concentrating on basketball, and I found I really enjoyed it. We played a lot at the North Mabee Center.

Your first collegiate game for TU in 1993 was remarkable: 33 points, six steals, five assists, five rebounds and a school record — seven three-pointers. Did you think it would always be that easy?

I remember when I walked off the floor after that game … I was just happy that I had decided to stay

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Evan Taylor

home to play. I remember how the other guys on the team, like seniors Gary Collier and Lou Dawkins, were so supportive. We were really a team.

That game made me confident of what I could do.

Of the many honors and recognition from your TU career, what stands out most? Being named AllAmerican was great, but I think the greatest honor was getting my jersey retired (in 1997). Seeing (the jersey) raised to the rafters in the Reynolds Center stood out for me more than anything else. To have that happen in the place I came from was very special.

Your overall high school coaching record was a very successful 130-45. How did you motivate your athletes? I think it helped that they knew I had been a pretty good

Photo courtesy of The University of Tulsa

After a tremendous high school career, you decided to play at The University of Tulsa. What other schools recruited you, and what swayed your decision to play for Tulsa? Actually, I had originally committed to Seton Hall (in New Jersey).

They had just recently experienced a lot of success, and I was excited about the prospect of playing for their coach, P.J. Carlesimo. But I had developed a great relationship with TU Coach Tubby Smith, and the idea of playing in front of my family and hometown intrigued me.

PROFESSIONAL • Joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 1997.

Seals played for TU in 1994 when the Golden Hurricane defeated UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament. player. Being from McLain and starting my coaching career at McLain definitely helped. But bottom line, they have to want to play. I tried to explain to them that it’s all about the decisions you make. tþ

• Played in France from 2000-2002 for the American Basketball Association’s Kansas City Knights and Indiana Legends.

• Played in Spain and the Philippines during two seasons with the National Basketball Development League’s Mobile Revelers.

COACHING • Named assistant basketball coach at McLain after retiring from professional sports in 2004.

• Served as McLain’s head coach during the 2005 and 2006 seasons.

• Served as head coach for Booker T. Washington from 2007-2012, leading the team to the state championship four seasons and state title wins two consecutive seasons.

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NOT SO LONG AGO

Stories from Tulsa’s past

Bing and Bob

by JOHN HAMILL

T

he visit to Tulsa by “Antiques Roadshow” should have brought it out of hiding.

I’ve done my best to find it since alerted to its history by author, Western swing historian and friend John Wooley. But it remains missing.

The “it” in this saga is a recording of a duet by Bing Crosby and Western swinger Bob Wills — possibly the most unusual coupling for the legendary crooner until Crosby and David Bowie warbled the “Little Drummer Boy” ditty on national television a few decades back.

The Crosby/Wills collaboration goes back to World War II, for it was a song written by Wills and the war itself that brought the two disparate singers together.

I stumbled on the story of this duet while doing research on “San Antonio Rose,” the song by Wills that took him, as he put it, “from hamburger to steak.” The research was for a performance at a Tulsa retirement center, a show where I play a number of popular tunes from the past on the piano and explain their heritage — the four prior titles of “Moonlight Serenade,” the personal heartache of the composer of “Laura,” and so forth.

I’d heard a tale about the two versions of “San Antonio Rose” and emailed Wooley for some insight on the matter. He confirmed the twoversion tale (which is deserving of another column) and added, “There’s a holy grail for Wills collectors involving Tulsa and ‘San Antonio Rose.’

“It seems that during World War II, both Wills and Crosby showed up at Tulsa’s country club for a war (bond) fundraiser, and the two of them recorded ‘San Antonio Rose’ together on a single disc,” Wooley informed me. “It was then auctioned off — and no one knows where it is today. Pos-

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

sibly in someone’s attic in or around Tulsa. I mention it because you might want to include the story in your presentation on the million-to-one chance that someone in your audience might actually have a lead on it.”

After some dozen presentations and telling of this tale, no leads.

Charles R. Townsend’s biography of Wills, appropriately titled, “San Antonio Rose,” amplifies Wooley’s telling and notes that the war bond rally took place “near the 18th green at Southern Hills Country Club.”

Long-time Wills sideman and a music legend in his own right, Leon McAuliffe, is reported by Townsend to say that the recording sold for $250,000. Townsend notes, however, that the sound engineer, Harry Rasmussen, who was in charge of the KVOO mobile unit that day, remembered the disc going for $20,000. But, there were other recordings made and auctioned that day and the total could have (considering the cause and the site) totaled $250,000.

Listen to the Bing Crosby version and the Bob Wills version of “San Antonio Rose” during John Wooley’s “Swing on This” Western swing show on KWGS, Public Radio Tulsa 89.5FM, from 7-8 p.m., March 23.

The reason for the duet was that Crosby had a huge hit recording of Wills’ song. According to Townsend, Bing’s Decca recording sold more than 84,500 copies shortly after its January 1941 release, and ultimately sold 1.5 million discs. Wills, of course, had a hit with the tune both as an instrumental and in a vocal rendition.

The Crosby recording of the song gives little hint of its Western swing heritage — as Der Bingle gives it a smooth (and relatively slow) rendering. Wills’ version is faster and far more, shall we say, lively than Bing’s.

(Tommy Duncan does the vocal on one of the most popular of the several Bob Wills’ band recordings of the song.)

Unless fire or storm or someone’s misguided notion to “toss out all of these old 78s” claimed the life of the Crosby/Wills Tulsa wartime recording, there truly is a chance that it is in someone’s attic or record album, or tucked away in a trunk.

If “Antiques Roadshow” couldn’t prompt its return, perhaps this column can. tþ

Freelance writer John Hamill is the author/ co-author of three books on Tulsa and the former editor of TulsaPeople.

He also teaches writing at The University of Tulsa.

ATTENTION READERS:

Tell us who’s on your A-List of Tulsa’s best businesses!

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O H C

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TulsaPeople is compiling the 2013 Readers’ Choice A-List of Tulsa’s best businesses to be announced in our June issue.

Please Visit TULSAPEOPLE.COM March 1-31 to vote for your favorite businesses and you could win one of our weekly prize packages!

Vote in all four categories and you’ll be registered for the GRAND PRIZE – a $500 Moody’s Jewelry gift card and $500 Castleberry’s Ethan Allen gift card!

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Only those who complete all four weekly ballots will be entered into the Grand Prize drawing.

BARRY FRIEDMAN AT LARGE

One man’s opinion

Spring is in the air.

Sanity ... not so much.

by BARRY FRIEDMAN Alms for the poor. But first, a urine sample. Rep. Dustin Roberts, R-Durant, filed legislation that would require drug tests for anyone applying for unemployment benefits. Last year, the state passed legislation requiring such testing for anyone receiving such assistance. Hey, why don’t we just test people as soon as they’re fired? For the love of St. Anthony of Padua, they’re not criminals — they’re poor. Some of these representatives won’t be happy until the unemployed are selling Chiclets and rosary beads under state bridges.

Coyotes don’t kill people; coyotes being chased by morons kill people. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported last month that two teenagers tried to run over a coyote in their truck, but were outsmarted by ... the coyote. OHP said the animal took “evasive action” (you heard right — that’s in the report), which caused “Lloyd” and “Harry” to roll the truck, sending one of them to the hospital with head, leg and internal injuries.

When the coyote got back to the pack, who could blame him if he were high-pawing everyone and boasting, “Who da coyote, who da coyote?”

Dumb Criminal of the Month Do not, do not, do not try this at home, but an employee at Popeye’s, after being confronted by an armed gunman who began hitting him, reacted by punching the gunman in the face.

The gunman fled, apparently completely forgetting ... he was armed.

With the possible exception of May 30-June 1, 1921. In her statement clarifying why she wants to be mayor again, Kathy Taylor said, “I

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Ups and downs  ... EMSA. For whatever it just did.  ... Oklahoma Bankers Association for tweaking its policy on head

covering, following an incident in which a Muslim woman was denied service for not removing her hijab (similar to an Orthodox Jew being forced to remove his yarmulke or a Catholic bishop having to take off his mitre to cash a check) when she entered a member bank. The new policy allows leeway into the “no hats, no hoods, no sunglasses” policy, which is the decent thing to do, because those practicing religious humility shouldn’t be treated like those about to pull a Glock on a teller. ... Rep. Josh Cockroft (you simply can’t make up these names),  R-Tecumseh, for wanting to defund the Oklahoma Arts Council by 2017.

He also believes that firearms made in the state should be exempt from federal regulations.

Is that even constitutionally fathomable, you ask? No, of course not, but Cockroft, 23, is new to the non compos mentis galaxy of the Tea Baggers, and his recently issued adult-sized tinfoil hat may be picking up all kinds of discordant signals. have a vision for Tulsa’s future that is as bright as its past.”

Aside from scaring the neighbors, some hair just doesn’t grow back.

A man, recently dismissed from his job, allegedly burned a cross on his boss’s lawn as a sign of protest. (Note to those who feel they have been unfairly fired: Write a letter expressing your displeasure before burning a crucifix on your boss’s front yard — just saying.)

Police say that when they arrested the man, the hair on his arms and hands was singed. (Again, with a letter, worst thing you get is a paper cut.)

Rule 91: In the life of every Tulsa news anchor, he or she will eventually shill for an automobile dealership.

Our favorite state Republican While agreeing politically with Gov.

Mary Fallin’s decision to not set up a state health exchange, Rep. Doug Cox, R-Oklahoma City, said, “The fact is, it is now the law, whether we like it or not.” Whoa!

He went on to say the state’s contribution to expanding Medicaid would be $56 million, something he describes as a “doable number.”

Damn!

“With the governor’s decision,” he concluded, “our money will be used to expand the program in other states, while our citizens continue to be uninsured.” For the win!

See, now you’re just being an ass.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe was only one of the three senators (the other two profiles in petulance: Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn) to vote against confirming a colleague, John Kerry, as secretary of state.

Overheard Stylist: “So, seen any good movies?”

Man: “Yeah, ‘Lincoln.’”

Stylist: “What’s that about?”

Man: “A man and his logs.”

Maybe the city councilors just weren’t paying enough attention when the “cafe” was being discussed. Ever drive by Ritz Cabaret & Cafe, East 18th Street and South Yale Avenue — in front of Sears, Target and Reasor’s — and think, “How did the zoning board allow this?”

Yeah, us, too.

While we’re in the area ... Weren’t they going to do something with Drillers Stadium?

Dumb Criminal of the Month (Mobile Edition) A couple, both in their 60s, both on Social Security, emptied their own medicine cabinet of Lortab, Norco, Soma and Xanax and then drove 165 miles to sell the stash — as it turned out — to undercover cops.

Police say the two were completely caught off guard when they were arrested. Really? You mean not once during the three-hour trip did one say to the other, “Selling $2,000 worth of our own pills to someone we just met on the Internet ... I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be something if we were being set up?” tþ

Barry Friedman is a national touring comedian, the author of “Road Comic” and “Funny You Should Mention It,” and doesn’t trust anyone who refers to him or herself in the third person.

TULSA AREA UNITED WAY 2012 ANNUAL REPORT A Joint Message from the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the President and CEO Efficiency is one of our core values at the Tulsa Area United Way. Our supporters expect it and we demand it of ourselves. According to the most recent data, the Tulsa Area United Way maintains the third lowest overhead of all 1,200 United Ways. This efficiency helped us earn a perfect four-star rating from Charity Navigator, one of the nation’s most respected barometers of nonprofit excellence.

Finally, an economic impact study conducted in 2012 on behalf of the Tulsa Area United Way revealed that for every dollar given, our partner agencies were able to leverage an additional $11.30 from other sources. In addition, our investment in our partner agencies The Tulsa Area United Way reached new levels of excellence in 2012. directly and indirectly supported 5,760 jobs in our community.

Our United Way attracted a record-shattering level of support by We should all take pride in these accomplishments – this United raising $25,575,522 – the highest fundraising total in our history. Way belongs to all of us. Together, we reached out to help our neighWe surpassed our goal of $24,900,000 by more than $675,000 – bors in need. the largest campaign overage ever achieved.

Jim Bender Mark R. Graham This campaign surplus provided us an opportunity to further strengthen our investments in the community, including additional President and CEO funding for our partner agencies as well as our new Community 2012 Chairman Board of Directors Collaborations and Venture Grants initiatives.

Financial Review - Financial Summary for years ended 12/31/12 and 12/31/11 (1) 2012 2011 REVENUES $24,768,669(2) 984,126 (648,025) 7,682 150,000 179,599 16,199 $25,458,250

$23,898,788 1,168,237 (767,816) 66,078 100,000 53,859 8,289 $24,527,435

Program Services Education Health/Safety Financial Stability Venture Grants and Special Funding Partner Agency Relations Total Program Services Management and General Expense Fundraising Costs Total Expenses

$8,573,566 8,573,566 1,491,055 1,403,715 402,984 $20,444,886 1,006,695 1,323,367 $22,774,948

$8,901,029 9,094,529 1,354,504 1,389,673 380,087 $21,119,822 989,174 1,339,620 $23,448,616

Change in Net Assets Less Change in Restricted Net Assets Unrestricted Change in Net Assets Unrestricted Net Assets, Beginning of Year Unrestricted Net Assets, End of Year

2,683,302 1,180,750 1,502,552 8,716,337 $10,218,889

1,078,819 629,604 449,215 8,267,122 $8,716,337

Contributions - Current Campaign Contributions - Prior Years’ Campaigns Less Collection Loss Provision Non-Campaign Contributions Special Grants Net Investment Return Other Total Revenues

Where the Dollars Come From

10% Foundations 27% Corporations 63% Employees and Individuals

EXPENSES

Where the Dollars are Invested

8% Financial Stability 46% Education 46% Health & Safety

n Goodwill Industries placed 922 individuals in jobs, resulting in wages earned of $6.4 million and an economic impact of $42.7 million.

Board Chair: Chet Cadieux - QuikTrip Corporation Chair Elect: Becky J. Frank - Schnake Turnbo Frank | PR Vice Chair: Robyn Ewing - Williams Secretary: David Keglovits - GableGotwals Assistant Secretary: Clint Swanson - Rogers and Bell Treasurer: Mike Rhoads - Oklahoma Department of Insurance Assistant Treasurer: Cathy Gates - Ernst & Young, LLP Ethics Officer: Page Bachman - St. John Health System Kelli Bailey - CMO Ltd. Dr. Keith Ballard - Tulsa Public Schools Basil Barimo - NORDAM D. Bruce Binkley - T.D. Williamson, Inc. Jeff Callison - United States Postal Service Steve Capron - Capron & Edwards, PC Daniel L. Christner - John Christner Trucking Dr. Gerry Clancy - The University of Oklahoma in Tulsa William J. Collins, III - American Airlines Paul Cornell - SpiritBank Jeff Crippen - Omni Air International Eric Draheim - Kimberly-Clark Corporation Dan Ellinor - Bank of Oklahoma N.A. Elizabeth Frame Ellison - Lobeck-Taylor Foundation Shane Fernandez - Crafton Tull Kevin Gross - Hillcrest HealthCare System Ted Haynes - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma John Hewitt - Matrix Service Company Betsy G. Jackson - Hall Estill Willard Jones - Greater Cornerstone Church Jim Langdon - Langdon Publishing Company Caron Lawhorn - ONEOK, Inc. John W. Lindsay - Helmerich & Payne, Inc. David Littlefield - Littlefield Brand Development Bobby Lorton - World Publishing Company Dean Luthey - GableGotwals Steve Mackin - Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southwestern Regional Medical Center Steve McIntosh - Williams Mike Mears - Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. Mike Messick - TWU Local 514 Dennis Neill - Samson Energy Company, LLC Jim Norton - Jim Norton Toyota Dave Ratcliff - CWA, Local 6012 Michael Rider - AFSCME, Local 1180 J. Brad Roberts - Hilti, Inc. Eli Smith - Saint Francis Health System Stuart Solomon - Public Service Company of Oklahoma Stuart Sullivan - QuikTrip Corporation Don Walker - ARVEST Bank

(1) 2012 amounts are unaudited. (2) As of 12/31/2012.

How Your Investment Helped - Examples of Community Impact n Nearly 400 Broken Arrow students received weekend food supplies through the Broken Arrow Neighbors’ Food for Kids program.

2013 Board of Directors

n 90 percent of clients in Youth Services of Tulsa’s re-entry program for juvenile offenders have reintegrated into society and are contributing positively to the community.

Ex-Officio Members Michael Redman - Neuens Mitchell Freese, pllc Mark R. Graham - Tulsa Area United Way Board Interns Amy Berry - Leadership Tulsa Dezeray Edwards - TYPros Melvin Murdock - New Voices

NEWS FROM OUR ADVERTISERS

BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center brings new treatment to patients

Chris Lilly/Kinslow, Keith and Todd

U

108 Contemporary opens its new art and design gallery this month with an exhibit by John Eric Riis. Formerly known as the Brady Craft Alliance, the nonprofit arts group supports Oklahoma’s contemporary fine craft artists.

108 Contemporary opens downtown art gallery 108

Contemporary, formerly known as Brady Craft Alliance, has a new art and design gallery in the Brady Arts District.

The space opened in February and plans to host art exhibitions featuring a range of media, including glass, paper, ceramics, fiber, metals, mixed media and wood. The work of contemporary fiber artist John Eric Riis is on display March 1-April 21.

Along with the gallery, the space includes a curated shop that sells art created by members of 108 Contemporary. It is housed in the renovated Tulsa Paper Co. building at 108 E. Brady St. “This building is much like the art of contemporary craft itself — taking

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

something older and repurposing it into something beautiful,” says Myra Block-Kaiser, 108 Contemporary executive chairwoman.

108 Contemporary is a nonprofit community arts organization supporting the state’s contemporary fine craft artists. It connects artists with educational opportunities, as well as exhibition and recognition programs.

The organization was renamed after its mission was re-evaluated and its scope broadened to include installation, performance and video components, according to a press release.

For more information on 108 Contemporary, visit www.108contemporary.org.

sing a reliable and trustworthy form of energy, BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center now offers Ultherapy, an FDA-approved method to tighten and lift the skin.

“Ultherapy is a remarkable new technology that uses ultrasound and the body’s own natural healing process to lift, tone and tighten loose skin on the brow, neck and under the chin,” says Malissa Spacek, owner of BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center. “I wanted to offer patients an alternative to invasive procedures without the long recovery and downtime.”

BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center introduced this non-surgical and non-invasive procedure to its practice as an effective and affordable alternative to plastic surgery.

By stimulating the deep structural

support layers of the skin, Ultherapy addresses areas normally treated with a surgical facelift without disturbing the skin’s surface.

Procedures typically take about 60 minutes, and patients can resume their everyday schedule immediately after the procedure, says Dr. James Campbell, medical director for BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center.

The results of clients who have experienced Ultherapy are substantial, and the clients continue to see improvement weeks and months after treatment, Spacek says.

BA Med Spa and Weight Loss Center is located at 500 S. Elm Place in Broken Arrow. For more information, call 918-872-9999 or visit www.baweightspa.com.

Oklahoma State Home Builders Association Tulsan Brandon Perkins, Oklahoma Builder of the Year, celebrated at a Jan. 12 banquet at the Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association Event Center in Oklahoma City. Pictured are Rob Miles, former Tulsa HBA president; Jeff Smith, current Tulsa president; Mike Fretz, immediate past state HBA president; Brandon Perkins; Phil Rhees, 2010 Oklahoma Builder of the Year and newly inaugurated vice president/ secretary of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association; and Paul Kane, Tulsa HBA executive officer.

le TulsaPeop

D I R EC TO RY The advertisers on these pages have been named on the TulsaPeople A-List by our readers for being the best in their industry. Use this monthly listing as a reference on where to find the best in Tulsa.

Visit TulsaPeople.com/Directories/the-A-List for the complete A-List and for more information about those listed below.

BARBECUE Elmer’s BBQ 4130 S. Peoria Ave., Tulsa, OK 74105 Elmer’s BBQ has been a top destination for “real hickory-smoked goodness” in Tulsa from the day the joint was opened in 1982 by Elmer and George Ella Thompson. Today, the popular restaurant is owned and operated by Keith and Rebecca Marks Jimerson, a relative of the late Elmer Thompson. Elmer’s BBQ specializes in “famous sandwiches,” dinners, bulk hickory-smoked meat and full-service catering. Two of the most popular menu items are the famous “Badwich” and the “Nelson Taste-A-Plate,” each featuring a sampling of ribs, beef, smoked bologna, hot links and smoked sausage and a choice of homemade sides.

The restaurant’s motto says it all: “It Be Bad,” as in awesomely good! Call 918-742-6702.

COSMETIC SURGERY Plastic Surgery Center of Tulsa 2107 E. 15th St., Tulsa, OK 74104, www.pscoftulsa.com Dr. Greg Ratliff and his staff offer an array of services to meet individual needs, including breast enhancement procedures, tummy tucks, liposuction, facial procedures, and more. Dr. Ratliff’s experience in breast augmentation surgery — and the number of women he has successfully treated — places him among the leading specialists in this important field. Dr. Ratliff is a board-certified plastic surgeon, a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and a teacher of other plastic surgeons. Dr. Ratliff founded the Plastic Surgery Center of Tulsa and serves as its medical director. The center is located in a former private home on historic Cherry Street in midtown.

Call 918-712-0888.

CREDIT UNION Tulsa Federal Credit Union Multiple locations, www.tfecu.org Since 1943, Tulsa Federal Credit Union has served the financial needs of its members. Starting with just 12 members and $240 in assets, the credit union has grown to include more than 54,000 members and assets of $615 million. With 11 Tulsa area offices, the full service credit union offers all types of loans, as well as checking account programs, money market accounts, plus certificates and IRA plans. With a philosophy of self-help, self-support and promotion of thrift within the membership has made the credit union successful. By joining the credit union you become a member, not just a customer. Call 918-610-0200.

GOLF COURSE Forest Ridge Golf Club 7501 E. Kenosha St., Broken Arrow, OK 74014 www.forestridgegolf.com Forest Ridge Golf Club opened in 1989 as the area’s first upscale public golf facility and is part of a master planned community. Forest Ridge is a country club for the day where one can experience the amenities of a private facility on a daily fee basis. The club provides amenities typically available only to private club members — a beautiful clubhouse, well-maintained course and exceptional service. After a round, Café Savannah’s offers a wide variety of dining delights

overlooking the fairways. Tee time specials are offered throughout the day and vary throughout the week.

Memberships are available as well. Call 918-357-2282.

HANDS-ON ART STUDIO Purple Glaze 3303 S. Peoria Ave., Tulsa; 6528 E. 91st St., Tulsa www.purpleglazestudio.com Purple Glaze Studio is a locally owned and operated pottery painting and mosaic making ceramic art studio. With hundreds of unfinished mosaic and ceramic items to choose from, everyone can select their favorite piece to customize with tesserae, paint and glaze. Birthday parties? Girls’ night? Date night?

For almost 20 years, Purple Glaze Studio has been the perfect place for gatherings on any occasion. Purple Glaze Studio provides all the materials, requiring guests to only bring their imaginations. Needing the perfect gift? Create a one-of-a-kind creation at one of Purple Glaze’s two Tulsa studios; the friendly and knowledgeable staff will assist in creating a ceramic masterpiece and appointments are not required! Call 918-592-6900 (Brookside location) or 918-491-6900 (South Tulsa location).

HOME The Market at Walnut Creek 8281 S. Harvard Ave., Tulsa, OK 74137 www.facebook.com/themarketatwalnutcreek Specializing in home interiors, furniture, art, gifts and fashion, The Market at Walnut Creek provides one-stop shopping for decorating the home. Local designers and business owners provide a variety of different styles — from traditional and contemporary to French country and western — in the Market’s 122 showrooms.

Customers can take a break from shopping and dine at The Ripe Tomato, a small bistro located inside the Market offering a variety of delicious options. This shopper’s paradise has served customers for more than 12 years and is open seven days a week. Call 918-492-3500.

HOME: PEST CONTROL Arrow Exterminators, Inc. 801 S. Main St., Broken Arrow, OK 74012 www.nomorebugs.com Arrow Exterminators began in 1952 by Bud Fulps and today, the second-generation company is led by Mike Fulps and continues to serve customers with pest and termite control services. Arrow aims to please and uses technologically advanced equipment and products to serve Oklahomans, including Sentricon’s termite colony elimination system and Temp-Air Thermal Remediation for bed bugs. Arrow is one of three pest control companies in the state to have an on-staff entomologist that provides expert information for pest infestations. Arrow’s second location in Oklahoma City serves the central Oklahoma region. Call 918-4811844.

Guaranty Exterminating Company 5455 S. 101st E. Ave., Tulsa, OK 74146 www.guarantyexterminating.com Guaranty Exterminating is known for its outstanding pest control service. Founded in 1961, the company has been owned and operated by Larry J. Tate since

1971. Guaranty, staffed with certified technicians, provides services for residential, commercial and real estate customers throughout the Tulsa metropolitan area. Pest control treatments performed by the company are thorough and neat. The crew’s objective is to provide a finished product that is effective and provides total customer satisfaction. For over 50 years, Guaranty Exterminating Company has been a stable and reliable source for pest control services.

Call 918-665-2129.

LIQUOR STORE Ranch Acres Wine & Spirits 3324A E. 31st St., Tulsa, OK 74135 Great customer service, a great staff, and placing a high value on community involvement and social responsibility have made Ranch Acres Wine & Spirits a favorite in Green Country. With a wide assortment of domestic and international wines, liquors and beer, one can find the perfect pairing for a celebration, dinner or event. The staff is knowledgeable and skilled in planning events and matching menus with the appropriate type of beverage. Ranch Acres strives to provide products that have a good price-to-quality ratio for its customers. For more than 50 years, Ranch Acres Wine & Spirits — popularly known as the “Wine Capital of Oklahoma” — has provided Tulsans with broad selections of libations for every occasion. Call 918-747-1171.

MEN’S CLOTHING Travers Mahan 8146 S. Lewis Ave., Tulsa, OK 74137 www.traversmahanapparel.com Travers Mahan is a family-owned business offering high quality apparel for any occasion with uncompromising service and expertise. The store offers a full range of men’s apparel from casual wear to formal attire. The store features a variety of lines including Tommy Bahama, Robert Graham, Robert Talbott, Nat Nast, Vineyard Vines, Southern Tide, Psycho Bunny, Ike Behar and Samuelsohn. Many of these are exclusive in the market area. The store’s knowledgeable sales staff sees that every customer’s shopping experience exceeds expectations. Travers Mahan, in the Plaza Shopping Center, is open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. TuesdayFriday, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Call 918-296-4100.

TANNING Bahama Sun Tanning Salon 3732 S. Peoria Ave., Tulsa, OK 74105 www.BahamaSunTanandSpray.com Along with four levels of tanning, Bahama Sun offers airbrushing and sunless tanning at its Brookside location. The new sunless booth, The Revolutionary, provides another option for those seeking a sun-kissed look. Customers can shop for bathing suits, cover-ups and costume jewelry at the salon, as well as find Designer Skin, Devoted Creations, Supre, Australian Gold and Norvell tanning and sunless tanning products. The store, which has been at its location for 10 years, offers corporate and student rates and is known for its cleanliness and recent renovations. Bahama Sun was recently named a Top 250 salon nationally. Call 918-748-9971.

TulsaPeople.com

35

ESSAY

FAMILY HISTORY

TAKES ROOT

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Senior Editor Morgan Phillips dips her toe into the wide world of genealogy research.

I

by MORGAN PHILLIPS

Interest in family history

A collection of photos from Senior Editor Morgan Phillips’ family tree

seems to have skyrocketed in recent years since the advent of poignant Ancestry.com commercials and recent TV shows such as PBS’ “Finding Your Roots” and NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” Each touts amazing, interesting connections discovered by ordinary people — or celebrities, in the case of the TV shows — that reel you in, persuading you of your familial claim to fame just waiting to be uncovered. Maybe you are the descendant of a famous military leader, U.S. president, or, perhaps most boast-worthy of all, nobility.

It seems we humans have an innate desire to be connected to something or someone that mattered, and perhaps our drive to learn about heritage is a product of this need. There’s also the curiosity of comparing ourselves with those before us to gauge our similarities and differences: Whom do I most look like? Were any of my descendants in my line of work?

Now that my husband and I are expecting our first child this summer, there’s an added interest in our family trees. I am driven by the yearning to find a meaningful baby name and, more importantly, the understanding of how our child will fit into the puzzle of our entwined pasts — something he or she might someday want to know.

I initially approached genealogy research as though I were diagramming a sentence. Like most beginning researchers, I later found out, I jumped onto Ancestry.com — a free demo with limited functionality — and began plugging in relatives’ names I knew well, followed by those I could recall from old stories only after considerable thought. Using the Ancestry.com iPhone app, I found it scintillating each time a new “leaf” magically appeared on a relative’s profile, providing a clue to that individual’s lineage.

My process went much like this: He begat him, he begat her, modify here and there, and skip over the dates. As long as they’re in the ballpark, they don’t really matter, right?

Wrong.

I quickly learned that a smartphone and quick fingers do not a family historian make.

Fortunately, Kathy Huber, manager of the Tulsa City-County Library’s Tulsa Genealogy

Center at 2901 S. Harvard Ave., gave me a crash course in doing genealogy research the correct way. It turns out, dates — along with documentation — are the building blocks of research, and they become even more important after working back several generations.

“People are finding (genealogy research) interesting because they can get online and play around” to find their relatives, Huber said. But she cautioned that sites such as Ancestry.com don’t require users to document the claims they make about family members, including dates and links to other family trees.

Documenting discoveries you make, which can be done by linking to a census document or other relevant record, is key to confirming your research and helping others in theirs, she advised.

At my first visit to the Genealogy Center, Huber handed me a paper chart depicting a family tree with enough blanks for four generations, including me. This, she informed me, was the jumping off point for research. I would need to fill out the chart to the best of my ability and return to the center, where the staff could then help me begin researching “where the holes were.” Of course, I already had many questions for Huber about the research process for others and myself: Is it difficult to trace American Indian or African-American ancestry? What about international research?

At what point in research do people most often get stuck?

Huber’s reply: “Just start here, with filling out the chart.” In other words, cross that bridge when and if you get there. Yes, ma’am.

Huber provided a range of other helpful advice. I learned, for example, that a 72-year privacy law on the federal census makes the 1940 census data the most current available.

Therefore, confirming the birth date of someone born after April 1940 requires other steps, such as requesting a copy of the person’s birth certificate, Huber said.

Even if ancestors are listed in the available census records, they can be difficult to find, she added, since spellings were subject to the interpretation of the census workers who went door to door recording families’ names. Legibility is another challenge; Huber showed me Continued on p. 38 TulsaPeople.com

37

Essay

Continued from p. 37

Tips for beginners, from a beginner

by MORGAN PHILLIPS

Genealogy research can be tricky and overwhelming for those of us just starting out. While I’m no expert, here are a few tips I’ve picked up so far:

1

Forgo an Ancestry.com subscription — at least, for now.

The Tulsa City-County Library has subscriptions to Ancestry Library Edition that can be accessed for free at any of the 25 Tulsa library branches with a library card. The Tulsa Genealogy Center has Ancestry and four other databases that can only be accessed at the center. Huber said the staff at the Genealogy Center is specially trained to teach beginners how to use Ancestry, so they recommend using the database there before purchasing a personal subscription to Ancestry.com.

2

Use a pencil. Ink is prettier on a family tree, but I made so many corrections to mine, I was glad to have used a less permanent medium. If you’re like me, you’ll erase ... and erase again.

3

Build on another’s research.

I felt I’d hit the jackpot, so to speak, when my dad passed along a large binder of research he and his mother began gathering several years ago.

Their findings helped confirm several of mine and included new information emailed from far-off paternal relatives — facts I likely would not have found without going through the same channels.

4

Ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask relatives for missing dates or names, or to ask the Genealogy Center staff how to find something. That’s the staff’s job — and my family was always happy I’d taken an interest in research.

5

Work carefully, not furiously.

Research takes considerable time, and Rome wasn’t built in a day. With one wrong connection your family tree could veer left, so be sure information is accurate before building on it.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Kathy Huber, manager of the Tulsa Genealogy Center, shows Senior Editor Morgan Phillips resources at the center that may be relevant to her family research.

examples of magnified census documents written in 19th-century cursive, several of which I simply could not make out, though Huber’s trained eye could.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have four living grandparents to provide insight into not only the names and other “on paper” details, but also the lives of their parents and grandparents, whom they remember well. My maternal grandmother often tells stories about “Momo,” my greatgrandmother who cooked fast and hot to turn kitchen scraps into a gourmet meal during the Depression.

My maternal grandpa is the bigger storyteller, though. He tells about his more than 6-foot-tall dad, known as “Short,” who changed his given name, Woodrow, which he hated, to Harmon.

(Incidentally, years later he named my grandpa ... what else? Woodrow. Great-grandpa Short must have had a change of heart.)

Knowing details such as these helped tremendously when filling out my family chart. After several text messages to and from my parents about birth dates, maiden names and anniversaries — there I go again on my smartphone — I had nearly completed my initial assignment.

When I returned to the Genealogy Center, I sat down at a computer to begin my 1 1/2-hour

session using the center’s databases. (Users are granted one online session daily.)

I typed a few of my grandparents’ names and birthdays into Ancestry.com, finding two Will Rogers High School yearbook pages from the late ’50s that featured my paternal grandmother, who could have nearly passed in her late teens as a young Elizabeth Taylor.

After switching my attention to research my maternal grandmother, I heard, “You’re related to a Peggy Cook, too?” I replied to the woman on the computer to my right that “Yes, I am,” but to our disappointment our Peggy Cooks were different; hers lived in Sand Springs, mine in Afton.

However, we began chatting a bit about her interest in genealogy research.

The woman, Dana Ogle, is a teacher with a passion for family research. Now 42, she began looking into her family tree at age 30 after becoming interested in relatives’ stories. She spends about an hour each month on research, and most of it is done at the Tulsa libraries.

One could say the time investment has paid off for Ogle, who said she has found links to famous ancestors, including Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Brad Pitt. She said she has dated the Ogle clan back to 1,000 B.C. through

her research and that of the Ogle Family Association, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of the history and genealogy of the Ogle and Ogles families.

One of the most difficult parts of genealogy research, Ogle said, is corroborating online records with reality — exactly what Huber had warned me about. Another is hunting “to link every relative between you and the person you are trying to link yourself to,” which requires a lot of work, Ogle added.

But the satisfaction of finding something you’ve long been searching for is what she enjoys most. In fact, Ogle said she would like to someday turn her hobby into a book about her searches or to conduct research for others.

Unlike Ogle, I’ve not yet been able to trace my lineage to any famous people, though public television will spur me to keep trying. After all, what if Marie Antoinette is my long-lost cousin, four times removed? Can’t you see the resemblance? tþ

Upcoming genealogy events Two March events focus on American Indian research. Visit www.tulsalibrary.org for more information on these and other genealogy programs.

March 9 — “The Guion Miller Roll: Documenting Cherokee Families” 10:30 a.m.-noon. Tulsa Genealogy Center, 2901 S. Harvard Ave. Free. The Guion Miller Roll is a list of Eastern Cherokees who applied for money awarded in 1905 as a result of a 1902 lawsuit filed by the tribe against the United States. Learn how the roll based compensation on family connections and genealogical information, and how it can be utilized in genealogy research.

March 16 — Genealogy workshop with Dr. Daniel Littlefield 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St. Free. Dr. Daniel Littlefield, director of the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will provide an overview of the center’s collection and discuss resources that document the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes. He also will focus on records that can be used to research Freedmen members of the Five Civilized Tribes.

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TulsaPeople.com

39

Being Green

Putting the earth to work Geothermal energy is being utilized all over Tulsa — in homes, businesses and even a downtown park.

N

by JANE ZEMEL

Geothermal energy isn’t about pulling water out of the earth. It’s about taking advantage of what the water in the earth can do.

There’s a very scientific explanation of how it works that involves wells, coils, Freon gas and blowers, but Jay Murphy, co-owner of K&M Shillingford (KMS), explains geothermal best with this kitchen metaphor: “If you have a hot frying pan, you can cool it with a fan, eventually. Or, you can put the hot pan in cool water.

“The water brings down the temperature of the pan faster, plus the pan warms the water in the sink,” Murphy explains.

That’s the principle of geothermal, which literally means heat from the earth.

Increasingly, geothermal systems are replacing conventional heating and cooling units for home and industry.

KMS, a geothermal design-build mechanical contracting firm, has installed thousands of systems and millions of feet of geothermal pipe in the earth — horizontally and vertically — to more effectively heat and cool a range of facilities.

The buried pipes circulate water in the ground, pumping heat into homes in the winter, pulling out heat in the summer and replacing it with cool air. The hotter it is outside, the better the system works.

“Every day, we drill 5,000 to 10,000 feet (to install pipe),” Murphy says.

Looking ahead, he expects the industry to explode.

“Geothermal was zero percent of the HVAC industry when we started, “ he says. “Now it represents 5 to 10 percent of U.S. products.

Ten years from now, that could be as much as 20 to 25 percent.”

Murphy calls geothermal “the best thing out there to save money on heating and cooling bills.” He says homeowners can expect a five- to

40

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Photos courtesy of K&M Shillingford

No, not Old Faithful.

K&M Shillingford digs a trench for underground piping to geothermal wells, above, and drills a geothermal well bore in a customer’s back yard, left. KMS is a Tulsa-based geothermal design-build mechanical contracting firm that has installed thousands of geothermal systems to effectively heat and cool a range of buildings.

Geothermal energy has various residential and commercial applications, including direct use, which produces heat directly from hot water within the earth; electricity production, which generates electricity from the earth’s heat; and heat pumps, which use the earth’s shallow ground temperature for heating and cooling.

Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

six-year payback without tax credits, even faster with the credits; and an annual savings of 13 to 20 percent.

“If utility rates rise — and who doesn’t think they won’t — the payback period could be four or five years; the return on investment, between 15 and 25 percent,” he says.

The company has installed geothermal in thousands of residential properties, from tiny houses to big mansions, as well as in schools, banks, nonprofits, military bases, post offices, museums, universities and more.

“We have the best reference list in the country,” Murphy says.

Continued on p. 42

SPONSORED EDITORIAL

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The 229 contestants in the annual pageant were judged in three categories: interview, swimsuit and evening gown, and judging criteria also included character, poise, confidence and personality. The pageant selects the contestant who will represent California in the Miss USA contest.

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We Are Proud Of You, Olivia!

—Your Family & Friends in Tulsa

Photos by Raphael Maglonzo

Being Green

Continued from p. 40

“Geothermal uses the earth as a big storage battery, taking out heat in the winter, putting it back in the summer.”

— Jim Bose, Oklahoma State University professor

Some people dream about fantasy adventures. Ken Klein dreams about geothermal loops. One night, it came to him that the four acres he was developing at East 61st Place and South Harvard Avenue would be ideal for geothermal energy. By powering the 10 homes with one central loop, he could build green and bring down each homeowner’s operating costs.

Klein has been in the building business since 1972 and has been incorporating geothermal into projects since 1997.

“It was always important to me to be responsibly green and economically justified,” he says.

The selling feature, according to Klein, is geothermal’s low cost for heating and cooling. No noise pollution either, because all the equipment is inside the house.

With no exposed compressors, the equipment lasts longer, too, according to industry sources. Inside, geothermal feels like electric or gas, but the heat isn’t quite as dry.

Front-end costs, however, are higher.

“But there’s a very reasonable payback period without tax incentives, and (it’s) even better with them,” Klein says. “As utility rates increase, geothermal’s attractiveness becomes greater. The costs for the energy loop are constant, so the higher the rates go, the more energy you save.”

Klein is not only the builder, but also a resident of the development. When asked to describe his own electric bill, he simply said, “I love it.”

Geoshowplace Scott Pardee wanted to show Tulsa that his small company could do big jobs — projects that promote energy efficiency, healthier living and good economic sense. To prove his point, he built a headquarters for his company, Pardee Construction, that flexed these very muscles.

The building at 816 E. Sixth St. is in downtown’s East Village and is now seeking certification as one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the country.

42

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Photo courtesy of K&M Shillingford

If you build it, they will save.

Geothermal piping for a commercial system installed by K&M Shillingford. Geothermal energy is increasingly replacing conventional heating and air units.

During the first phase of the application process, when Pardee Construction applied for the green distinction, the awarding organization couldn’t believe a building could be so energy-efficient. But the numbers checked out.

During the remodel of existing office space, Pardee installed two heating and cooling systems, one of which was geothermal, to cut energy costs in half. The geothermal system operates from three wells in the parking lot, each 400 feet deep. In addition to heating and cooling the building, the incoming water also goes through a second heat exchange to the water heater.

“We have 120-degree water for free,” Pardee says.

Other green and money-saving features include LED lighting, using a fourth of the energy as a fluorescent system at the same cost; plants to clean the air of harmful chemicals; and polished concrete floors costing $1.25 per square foot. Other noteworthy highlights: sensors that turn off lights automatically, plus

Pardee Construction is seeking certification of its downtown headquarters as one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the country. Geothermal energy helps heat and cool the facility while also providing hot water to the office.

an adobe wall made from materials from the Arkansas River.

“The building is modern and inviting. It looks clean and simple,” Pardee says.

A green retrofit Dr. Jayen Patel wanted a state-of-the-art, futuristic facility for his young company. His green vision started with a recycled building — a concrete-based steel shell at East 15th Street and South Delaware Avenue, formerly a carpet showroom — that is now Oklahoma Pain and Wellness.

“We’re a young company, technically oriented,” Patel says. “We use electronic health records to avoid cutting down trees. And we’re one of the first to feature electric carports so employees can recharge their electric cars while they’re at work — cutting down on fossil fuels.”

Patel believes his is the first pain management operation to be a green facility with dedicated geothermal heating and cooling.

Retrofitting a building with geothermal energy is a little trickier and more expensive than starting with new construction. For one thing, 30 well fields had to be drilled 450 feet deep in the parking lot, then piped into the building.

The geothermal system is web-based with limited keypad control. And the building’s energy recovery system provides another step of efficiency.

Continued on p. 44

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43

Being Green

Continued from p. 42 Because of the high ceilings, open floor plan and numerous windows, the facility requires a little more energy than the average practice, but with the exception of the gas-powered back-up generator, all fossil fuels have been removed from the building.

“It has great bones and is immaculately well done,” Patel says. “The building feels great to be in.”

Mr. Cool Guy Most local geothermal contractors and developers agree that Oklahoma’s modernday godfather of geothermal energy is Oklahoma State University professor Jim Bose.

He brought the technology to the state, then trained others to use it. That was more than 40 years ago.

In a true mother of invention story, Bose was called in one sweltering summer to help an Oklahoma City family whose pool was so hot, it was steaming. The home’s water-source heat pump, a device that works by transferring heat from the house to a body of water, was pushing the backyard swimming pool temperature to around 110 degrees.

Bose had heard about geothermal energy being used in Europe and decided to try it here, referring back to a textbook that discussed transferring heat into the ground. It worked.

“Geothermal uses the earth as a big storage battery, taking out heat in the winter, putting

Get your green on.

Tired of the same ol’ suggestions for greening your life? Try these tips from Michael Patton, executive director of Tulsa’s Metropolitan Environmental Trust.

Carpool with a colleague. Drivers are more likely to carpool with co-workers than with neighbors, so find a commuter buddy.

“We need an Eharmony.com for carpoolers so people can talk about the big game or American Idol on the way to work,” Patton says.

1 2

Precycle. Think about packaging, storing and shipping before you buy a product.

Which is the greenest way to buy orange juice: in a can (concentrate), carton or jug? The concentrate takes up less room but uses electricity to stay frozen. The carton isn’t recyclable; the jug is. Correct answer: jug.

3

Cereal in the bag. Patton calls the cereal aisle “the art gallery of the grocery store,” but inside every box is a plastic bag filled with cereal. So, even though boxes are 100 percent recyclable, he says to cut out the box and just buy the bagged varieties. Then, invest in dry storage containers.

4

Eat broken crackers. Don’t get him started. “Crackers come in plastic bags in a cardboard box wrapped in plastic wrap, and they still go stale,” Patton explains. “So, buy them in minimal packaging. We eat broken chips, why not broken crackers?”

5

Buy gas for your car at night. No room for a science lesson, but during ozone alert season, the afternoon sun bakes the air. Filling up at night makes a measurable difference.

44

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

by JANE ZEMEL

6

If you have a lawn, mulch. “Grass clippings and leaves from the tree are gifts from God,” Patton says. “They should never leave your property.”

He swears mulching makes more fertile soil: “That’s how we went from Dust Bowl to Green Country.”

7

If you have a garden, compost. “Soil yourself,” Patton jokes. “Make your own dirt.”

Details are on his website, www.composteverything.net.

“If you do it right, it takes two months. If you do it wrong, it takes two years. But composting is the secret to gardening,” he says.

8

Use LED bulbs. They’re new on the market and about to become mainstream — better than the curlicue bulbs that contain mercury — and LEDs use just one-fifth the energy of incandescent bulbs.

9

Eliminate leftovers. Americans waste 30 percent of the food they buy. Stop throwing away brown bananas that could be frozen and used in banana bread. Quit tossing leftovers that could go into soups or casseroles.

And why trash veggies and scraps that could be composted?

“Plan your meals appropriately,” Patton advises.

10

Recycle responsibly. What dangerous chemicals are you storing in your garage? Under your sink? In your medicine cabinet? Get rid of them responsibly at the April fairgrounds pollutant collection event.

Visit www.metrecycle.com for details.

“Your home, neighborhood and planet will be safer,” Patton says.

it back in the summer,” he says. “In Oklahoma, heating a home isn’t the problem. Cooling it is. And to cool something, you need to use something cooler than the air — which is the soil under ground.

To homeowners considering geothermal, Bose says: “You don’t have to wait for a breakthrough. And you don’t have to worry about someone jumping up with something better.

You’ve got physics on your side.”

A greener Green The George Kaiser Family Foundation was already considering geothermal energy for the new arts campus it was developing in the Brady Arts District — even before learning about $50 million in grants available from the Oklahoma Department of Commerce for such projects.

“This project was perfect because it was designed to reduce energy consumption and demand,” says GKFF Senior Program Officer Stanton Doyle of the Guthrie Green, the urban garden and performance space at 111 E. Brady St. created by the foundation.

In March 2009, GKFF, in collaboration with the Tulsa Industrial Authority, was awarded $2.5 million by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.

A year and a half later the project’s builder, Manhattan Construction, began drilling 120 wells, each 500 feet deep, covering two acres in the Guthrie Green. A few months ago, the system became operational.

Multiple buildings pull from one source — the well field. There is one main pump with one additional as a back-up. The water from the well field serves heat pumps in each tenant’s space, some of which are in shared buildings. Projections are for a 60 percent reduction in heating and cooling costs with a six-year payback.

Geothermal energy is common in this state, but it’s unusual to have a project under a park, serving multiple nonprofit organizations, Doyle says. The Guthrie Green’s well field serves the Green, the Hardesty Arts Center and the Tulsa Paper Co. building, which houses Philbrook Museum of Art’s satellite location, the Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education, 108 Contemporary, the soon-to-open Woody Guthrie Center and Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.

“Oklahoma has a great climate for geothermal, plus it makes sense because we have all the drillers and pipe manufacturers here,” he says.

“It makes a lot of economic sense to spend up front, especially for nonprofits,” Doyle adds. “This long-term investment to reduce operating costs will leave them more money for programs.” tþ

KEEP CALM AND WELCOME HOME

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to join our email list and receive the Tulsa Weekender!

Manhattan is proud to be part of the team that made Guthrie Green a reality.

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TulsaPeople.com

45

Charlette Cohee, 37, has spent the past six years at Eddie Warrior Correctional Facility in Taft, Okla.

She was charged with Robbery I, a violent felony conviction, and sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in a Lawton bank robbery.

Twenty-two years of her sentence were later suspended. Cohee’s tentative release is set for late 2013.

46

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Part 1 Oklahoma ranks poorly in many national categories, leading us to explore six of these rankings and the reasons behind them.

Mending offenses Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than anywhere in the world. TulsaPeople asks, “why?”

All stories by JENNIE LLOYD

“I don’t have any secrets anymore,”

Charlette Cohee says. February marked the 37-year-old Lawton woman’s sixth year behind bars.

Cohee is remarkably open about her life in prison, a place masked in secrecy. Correctional facilities are tucked away in nowhere towns; families hush-talk of loved ones who are locked up; the stigma of the convicted felon persists.

Many have preconceptions about people behind bars. But Cohee — and many like

her — defies these notions. She is bright and polite with an easy smile. She is shyly beautiful; she laughs often and talks softly. For an inmate with a violent felony conviction (Robbery I), she appears awfully angelic.

By her release late this year, Cohee will have spent most of her 30s in a blur of courtrooms and prisons and in frantic worry over her two children.

In prison, Cohee became an avid runner.

Every day at 5 a.m., she runs in the pre-dawn light of the prison yard of Eddie Warrior Cor-

rectional Facility in Taft, about an hour south of Tulsa. Running, she says, “is the only thing I can control.”

So, she runs and keeps her eyes on the future, on the rolling flatlands beyond the high, barbed-wire fence. Taft is an economically depressed, formerly all-black town chopped into a pair of prisons: the women’s minimum-security prison to the north, and the men’s minimum-security prison (Jess Dunn Correctional Facility) to the south.

TulsaPeople.com

47

An unflattering picture In Oklahoma, more women are jailed per capita than any other state in the nation — by a long shot. The Sooner State has led the pack for 18 years with an incarceration rate nearly twice the national average. Oklahoma averages about 130 incarcerated women per 100,000, while the national average is 67, according to 2010 Bureau of Justice statistics. Our surrounding states — yes, even Texas, which comes in second behind Oklahoma with 96 inmates per 100,000 — have considerably lower numbers than Oklahoma.

The United States locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies. Oklahoma could be said to lead the globe in incarceration. The number of Oklahoma men in jail also is incredibly high; our state ranks No. 5 in the county for male incarceration, sending more than 1,700 per 100,000 to prison, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics.

Since the mid-’90s, the number of incarcerated women has increased steadily in Oklahoma. The state spends up to $42 per inmate per day on its 2,606 female offenders. Compare this figure to non-violent community sentencing programs, which cost about $2.60 per day, or mental health and drug courts, which cost about $25 and $15 per day respectively.

In 2011, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) reported that on reception, more than 80 percent of incarcerated women’s offenses were non-violent; 56 percent of their crimes were drug-related.

Located about an hour south of Tulsa, Eddie Warrior Correctional Facility is a minimum-security prison that houses more than 700 female offenders.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Former State Rep. and Speaker of the House Kris Steele, a Republican from Shawnee and self-described “dedicated fiscal conservative,” is working to reverse the trend of over-incarceration in Oklahoma. He believes Oklahoma needs to think about prison and rehabilitation in new, more cost-effective ways.

“Oklahoma incarcerates for reasons no other states do,” Steele says. “We think the more we incarcerate, the safer our state will be.”

The ODOC is the third-largest expenditure in the state budget, Steele says. First and second are education and healthcare.

So, follow the logic: imprisoning more people creates greater public safety, thus Oklahoma must be safer than any other state, right?

Wrong.

“Our statistics have gone up for violent crime, while 40 other states have seen significant decreases in violent crime rates,” Steele says.

A model offender Eddie Warrior is a study in grays. The lead gray of barbed wire. The faded gray of the sweatpants worn by the facility’s more than 700 female inmates. The women live in vast gray dorm rooms lined with gray bunks, each bed and each woman just a few feet from the next.

“Someone lives this far from you,” Cohee says as she stretches out her thin arm. “You can reach over and touch her.”

Sharon McCoy, the soft-spoken yet firm warden of Eddie Warrior, calls Cohee “a model offender.” She stays out of trouble and cleans the prison’s administrative offices as part of her assigned job. Cohee’s drab sweatshirt swallows

her petite frame as she tells the story of how she ended up behind bars and what she has learned on the prison yard.

Her story, like most others, starts in childhood. Her mother was only 26 when she died in a car accident. Cohee and her siblings were left to shuttle between their grandmother and father. Cohee married young, had two children and later left the abusive relationship. She served in the military for a time before taking a series of temporary jobs in the manufacturing and health care industries to support her children.

But Cohee fell behind on bills. She barely scraped by, missing work to care for sick youngsters and turning to alcohol to handle her depression. She found herself in small claims court for writing bad checks to the tune of almost $20,000.

At a party one night, Cohee says, some high school friends “were sitting around talking about how one guy had robbed a bank before.”

The men were planning another heist, but Cohee laughed off their talk as bravado.

A few months later, she was moving again and needed money for “all these different things,” she says. The men from the party offered her “fast money,” a small cut of the take, if she would drive them to the bank and drop them off.

She really needed the money.

A long-ago observation by Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius applies to Cohee’s decision that day, and to the decisions behind the sentences of many other Oklahoma female inmates: “Poverty is the mother of crime.”

INCARCERATION RATE OF WOMEN

Cohee’s two children, 17 and 14, are being raised by family members while she completes her sentence.

Incarceration rate per 100,000

National average:

67

SOURCES: Oklahoma data provided

by Oklahoma Department of Corrections; other state data obtained from respective states.

Poverty affects most of the women in prison. Nearly 90 percent were unemployed at the time of arrest, according to 2011 reception-day surveys conducted by the ODOC. And 77 percent were frequently unemployed. Steep obstacles — stunted education, addiction — stand in the way of steady work for incarcerated women. Laura J. Pitman, Ph.D., the deputy director of Institutions-Division 1 for the ODOC, explored in depth the long-term effects of trauma, mental illness and addiction, and the prevention of interpersonal violence during research for her clinical psychology doctorate.

Pitman’s studies led her to the prison system.

Common pathways to prison “I learned that a lot of people with these characteristics are incarcerated,” she says.

Pitman was hired to lead Female Offender Operations in November 2008, when Oklahoma established

the division to address the high rate of incarcerated women.

The statistics bear out Pitman’s research. According to ODOC surveys, 67 percent of the 1,171 female offenders who entered Oklahoma prisons in 2011 were identified to have a moderate to high for substance abuse treatment.

Other shocking patterns have emerged from ODOC research.

About 66 percent of female inmates reported they were abused sexually or physically as a child, according to a 2010 study on incarcerated Oklahoma mothers and their children.

The study also reported 71 percent of incarcerated women had suffered domestic violence in their homes.

Compounding the poverty, the abuse and the addiction, Pitman says, she also sees high rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in the female offender population. Sixty-nine percent of new female offenders in 2011 had a history of mental illness or were currently being treated for a mental illness.

Continued on p. 51

“Oklahoma incarcerates for reasons no other states do. We think the more we incarcerate, the safer our state will be. ... Our statistics have gone up for violent crime, while 40 other states have seen significant decreases in violent crime rates.”

— Former State Rep. and Speaker of the House Kris Steele

24%

Possession of/obtaining controlled dangerous substances

20%

Distributing controlled dangerous substances

Larceny

TOP FIVE OFFENSES Oklahoma Female Offender Receptions — FY2012

Assault

Forgery

8% 7% 6%

SOURCES: Oklahoma Department of Corrections, evaluation and analysis TulsaPeople.com

49

From hopeless to hopeful When

Mimi Tarrasch is in the bustling headquarters of Women in Recovery, “It feels right,” she says. “We are doing the right thing. It’s fiscally right, it’s socially and emotionally right.”

Tarrasch is the director the of Women in Recovery (WIR) program, a three-year-old rigorous prison alternative based inside the Family & Children’s Services Sarah and John Graves Center.

“It resonates so true to me,” Tarrasch says. “These women, as busy as they are, are working on their recovery, on their traumas from the past, learning to be a different kind of person.”

WIR is dedicated to reforming, educating, healing, counseling and rehabilitating non-violent female offenders. Currently 85 women are in the program, which lasts 18 to 24 months, depending on the participant. While on house arrest with GPS ankle monitors and constant supervision, each woman begins to make a new life for herself.

“Ninety-nine percent of the women in the program have experienced a significant trauma in their life,” such as domestic violence, rape or addiction, Tarrasch says.

WIR is there to help them address these traumas, which are an underlying cause of many women’s criminal behaviors, she says.

The George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) has made a significant investment in WIR because evidencebased alternatives to incarceration can achieve far better results than imprisonment, says Amy Monsour Santee, GKFF senior program officer.

Since its inception in June 2009, 95 women have graduated from the program, which is grounded in the best practices and research around trauma, addiction, mental illness, criminal behavior and family reunification, Santee says.

Young mother Nicole Hayes when she entered the Women in Recovery program, left, and with her son, Hayden, above, after graduation.

Mimi Tarrasch, director of Tulsa’s Women in Recovery program, and Amy Monsour Santee, senior program officer with the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which supports the program.

She says the difference between prison and WIR became clear to her when she visited both places on the same day.

“We sat in a room with four or five women from Eddie Warrior,” Santee recalls. “They all talked to me about their concern for housing, employment and their kids. Some hadn’t seen their kids. One was very concerned for her son, who was having difficult challenges in school.

“So, we leave and we’re sad and

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

worried about these women,” she says. “Then, we drive to Women in Recovery and it’s a completely different experience. … The women in prison felt lost and overwhelmed.

At Women in Recovery, the women had hope. The women at WIR are learning about addiction and how to continue their recovery. They are learning how to seek and retain a job, how to have healthy relationships with their children.”

A woman at WIR told Santee about getting her first paycheck from the first legitimate job she has had in years. And she was reuniting with her kids.

“All the women were just beaming with a parent’s pride,” Santee says.

The cost to send a woman to prison for one year costs about the same as one year in WIR, yet Santee says

Continued from p. 49

Short drive, long sentence

Graduates of the Women in Recovery program during a session in the computer lab. Pictured are Mackie Jeffries and Jodi Watts, first row; Andrea Armstead and Amber Rock, second row; and Heather Reynolds, standing. she sees a remarkable difference in the women in prisons and in WIR. WIR offers classes in nutrition, relapse prevention, healthy leisure activities and volunteering, parenting, personal relationships, resume building and employment readiness.

The program trains women for the workforce and offers employment through partnerships with several Tulsa businesses from hotels to retail to manufacturing businesses.

Workforce Oklahoma, an employment service, has teamed up with WIR to provide proficiency testing, professional development, job-related certification and HR support, all of which helps the women find employment.

To graduate from the program, WIR participants must be employed, drug-free, participating in recovery support meetings within the Tulsa recovery community, reunifying with their children and meeting their legal requirements.

“It’s very, very comprehensive,” Tarrasch says.

WIR is not an easy path for women who would otherwise be in prison, and not all of the women who have attempted the program make it to graduation day. There is a 64 percent completion rate for this multi-faceted program.

“The transformations that these women have undergone as a result of the WIR program are incredible,” says William Kellough, presiding Tulsa County district judge.

“This program is an outstanding model for an alternative to incarceration, providing these women with the treatment, supervision and resources they need to re-enter society and reconnect with their children,” Kellough says.

“To build a just and stable community requires not only strict enforcement of the law, but also a process to rebuild our fellow citizens, mentally and morally. Our judicial system fails if it does not take this into account.”

Luckily, WIR is not alone in its commitment to assisting troubled women. Resonance, a substance abuse rehabilitation center, has mentored and counseled women suffering with addiction since 1977.

“So, I drove them and dropped them off and left,” Cohee says of the robbery for which she is serving time.

The men robbed the bank at gunpoint, hurt no one, took the money and ran. They were later caught and Cohee was implicated and charged, too. Though she did not have a gun, she also was charged with a violent felony.

Local Lawton TV station KSWO reported on Cohee’s capture at the time, including the Lawton police captain’s assertion they’d found a wig Cohee wore during the robbery, money from the bank and practice notes she’d written — a note like the one later given to the bank’s clerk.

“When I went into questioning,” she says, “I totally denied it. But I was paid to drive them.”

That short drive came with a hefty prison sentence: 30 years.

“That robbery carried a violent sentence,” she says. “By no means am I minimizing what I did. Yes, I need to pay for what I did, but it’s not like I went in there with a shotgun and shot somebody. But that’s how I was charged.”

Twenty-two years of her sentence were later suspended. When she first heard the verdict of 30 years, though, it was like a death sentence.

“I would’ve rather been shot when I heard that,” she says. “I’d never been in trouble, never been locked up before then.”

The hidden victim Perhaps the most crushing statistic is the number of children left behind after their mothers’ arrests. More than 80 percent of women in prison are moms. They each have an average of 2.8 children whose lives are suddenly changed after their mothers are taken from the home.

In Cohee’s case, her children were taken in by family members. Her son took the loss harder than her daughter. The boy, 11 when Cohee was arrested and now 17, is in trouble now. He ran away from his father’s home, and “for a while none of us knew where he was,” she says.

“When the police picked him up, he was at a house with five other (adults) and there was stolen property in the house,” Cohee says. “Now he’s gotta go through juvenile court.”

Cohee’s 14-year-old daughter was 8 at the time of her mother’s arrest. She is an honor student with top-notch grades.

“The hardest part is being separated from my kids,” Cohee says. “I don’t think the system understands. Mothers are so important.

We still have children, and when you’re missing from your kids’ life, it affects them.”

Thousands left behind The George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF), a Tulsa-based philanthropic organization that invests in strengthening families and improving the lives of children, began looking into the over-incarceration of women several years ago. Amy Monsour Santee, GKFF’s senior program officer, says the foundation learned children were struggling in the wake of their mother’s arrests.

“What we learned was that female incarceration has devastating impacts on children,” Santee says.

“They are at greater risk of dropping out of school, getting involved in drugs, engaging in delinquency, running away from home — just a whole series of events leading to incarceration.”

GKFF conducted a comprehensive study to “understand how many children were being impacted by Oklahoma’s female incarceration rates,” Santee says.

In January 2012, GKFF, along with several community partners, surveyed most of the women who were in ODOC custody (87 percent of the female prison population — more than 2,000 women — responded).

Of the group’s 4,680 children, 2,833 were under age 18.

About 55 percent of the women’s minor children had never visited their mother in prison.

Sheila Harbert, community development director for Tulsa’s successful Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program, says prison terms are separating families.

“The women are admitting they made mistakes, but to me the only true victim is the child,” she says.

Harbert does her part to reunite Girl Scouts with moms behind bars by driving them for visits. (See p. 53 for more on the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program.)

“When we’re transporting these children, I see the pain,” she says. “And I see when we connect them, their whole lives change.

They light up.”

The Texas success “Five years ago, Texas was in the same position as Oklahoma,” former Rep. Steele says. In 2007, the Lone Star State impleContinued on p. 52 TulsaPeople.com

51

Continued from p. 51 mented a Justice Reinvestment Initiative (also utilized in 16 other states) to stem runaway incarceration costs.

“In 2007, Texas needed 17,000 new prison beds” for its growing prison population, Steele explains. But in the five years after the initiative brought reforms — including more community-based programs — Texas saved $2 billion.

“And Texas’ violent crime rate is the lowest in 30 years,” Steele says. “They even closed a prison last year, and public safety is flourishing.”

Steele, who retired from the legislature in November, is pushing for similar reforms in Oklahoma. Instead of harsh, punitive sentencing for non-violent or drug-related crimes, he proposes that Oklahoma should increase its reliance on more affordable and more effective community-based rehabilitation.

When discussing change, Pitman mentions another state success: Kansas. There, the rate of female incarceration is low, only 43 women per capita. The biggest reason?

“There are four specific drug offenses you can’t go to prison for,” she says. “You would go to probation instead.

“There are many alternative punishments when someone is convicted of a felony,” Pitman adds. “Alternative punishments include probation, community sentencing, mental health court, drug court. All are far less expensive than incarceration.

“If Oklahoma were to increase their reliance on these sentencing alternatives, we’d incarcerate fewer people, hold them accountable and provide resources they need to become productive citizens.”

Making plans Cohee’s long sentence is reminiscent of another young woman supporting her children as a single mom: Patricia Spottedcrow.

She was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling $31 worth of marijuana.

The crime was Spottedcrow’s first offense; her story spread rapidly in the media. People were outraged at her harsh sentence, which was later reduced to two years. She was released on parole in November.

“I knew Patricia; we called her ‘Lala,’” Cohee says with a smile. She remembers Patricia from the yard at Eddie Warrior.

Cohee says she doesn’t think “Lala” will return to prison.

“She was young, had a bunch of kids,” Cohee says. “She came from bad circumstances.”

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

CHARACTERISTICS OF FEMALE OFFENDERS IN OKLAHOMA IN CHILDHOOD*

66% Experienced physical and/or sexual abuse as a child

61% Had divorced parents 53% Ran away from home before age 18

IN ADULTHOOD*

71% Experienced domestic violence 36% Were victims of rape after age 18 While a felony conviction will make it difficult for Cohee to find employment, she hopes to return to hospital labwork after her release.

After her tentative discharge this year, Cohee will begin the tightrope walk of probation. She says, “I’m gonna be on the straight and narrow. I probably won’t even drive again. I’m going to have some kind of phobia. I’m so afraid of getting in trouble.”

Cohee is a recent graduate of a fourmonth, in-patient program called “Helping Women Recover.” Sponsored by GKFF, the program — which Cohee says changed her life — addresses inmates’ drug and alcohol addiction, experiences with domestic violence and past trauma, and examines the reasons behind the women’s life choices.

“I didn’t realize how much my mother’s death had affected me until I went through the program,” Cohee explains. “It’s not a justification; it just shows you a new way of thinking.”

Family members have offered her temporary employment — part-time janitorial work, harvesting hay — after her release.

But she’d really like to go back to hospital labwork.

“I know I’ll have some barriers to employment because of the violent crime,” she says.

“The charge itself is just Robbery I, and they’re gonna say, ‘Nuh-uh, you can’t work here.’”

She’s right. A felony conviction will make it difficult for her to find housing, to acquire student loans for school, to secure gainful employment.

With her shy smile she says wholeheartedly, “But I’m not gonna give up.” tþ

CURRENT POPULATION**

83% Have a history of mental illness AT RECEPTION (FY2012)**

57% Needed substance abuse treatment 93% Were unemployed at the time of arrest 64% Relied on social assistance 75% Lacked basic education SOURCES: *Oklahoma study of incarcerated mothers and their children, Jan. 22, 2010; Susan F. Sharp, Ph.D., Emily Pain and the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth. Sample size of 301 female offenders was representative of the incarcerated population. **Oklahoma Department of Corrections, evaluation and analysis

EFFECTS ON CHILDREN In January 2012, ODOC and GKFF conducted a survey of 2,333 women incarcerated on that date. The response rate was 87%.

82% reported having a total of 4,680 children • 2,833 of the children were under age 18 • Average children per mother was 2.8

35% reported they had one or both parents incarcerated

344 reported her parental rights were terminated on one or more of her children SOURCES: Oklahoma Department of Corrections

Where’s Mom? TIME OF ARREST More than 1 in 6 children were present at the time of their mothers’ arrest

Sheila Harbert of the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program transports Girl Scouts and their families to visit incarcerated family members.

VISITATION

55% of minor children have never visited their mothers in prison 25% Visit less than once a month, but have visited 20% Visit once a month

TELEPHONE CONTACT

40% of minor children have never had phone contact with their mothers in prison

16% Have phone contact less than once a month, but have had phone contact

44% Have phone contact once a month or more SOURCES: Oklahoma Department of Corrections, evaluation and analysis

“There

are lots of stories,” says Sheila Harbert when discussing the effects of the Oklahoma Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program for which she is chief community development director.

But one story in particular sticks with her, she says.

Years ago, a young girl waited after school for her mother. The two were thrilled because the girl made the cheerleading squad, and they were going to pick up her cheerleading uniform. Before making it to the school, the mother was stopped and arrested on drug-related charges.

“They didn’t realize it would be three years before they saw each other again,” Harbert says.

The girl waited at the school for hours before she found out her mother had been arrested. The first time the girl saw her mother again was through Oklahoma’s Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program.

For the past decade, the program has had a simple, powerful goal: to bring a child back to her mother.

This girl was lucky. After reconnecting with her mom, the former Girl Scout is now working on her master’s degree in Arkansas.

However, the children of incarcerated parents are five to six times more likely to go to jail than other kids, according to Bureau of Justice statistics from 2000 and 2008. Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma helps these hidden victims, the children traumatized by their parents’ jail time.

In Girl Scouts, girls are assigned to a special interest troop that, along with providing traditional Girl Scout activities, offers drug and alcohol prevention, and conflict resolution. Anger and animosity between mothers and daughters are tackled head on, Harbert says.

“There are a lot of fears associated with having a parent incarcerated,” she adds.

Before Girls Scouts Beyond Bars, children could only see their parent if a caregiver had the time and money to organize a visit.

“A lot of children had not seen their moms for two or three years,” Harbert says. “They didn’t know what their moms looked like.”

Roberta Preston has been the CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma for the past two years. But it didn’t take her long to see the sudden trauma experienced by Girl Scouts who have lost their mothers to incarceration.

“Many times, very unexpectedly, Mom is arrested and taken off. And the child all of a sudden doesn’t have Mom,” she explains.

Instead, she has a new caregiver, she may change school districts, and she can lose her friends and become separated from siblings.

Tulsa County Jail allows minors to visit only if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. But, a caregiver may not be interested in taking a child to see her mom.

“So, we took it upon ourselves to just connect these families,” Harbert says. “And it works, it’s just that simple. You put the child with the mom and there’s a healing that goes on.”

The program seems to have other positive results, as well. Of the hundreds of girls who have actively participated in this program over the past 10 years, none have been incarcerated through the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Harbert says.

TulsaPeople.com

53

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the

good life TRENDS ✻ HOME ✻ HEALTH ✻ FOOD

Spring in

Gerry Weber polka dot sweater, $139, Kate Spade checkered capri pants, $248, Sam Edelman “Leighton” flats, $110, and Rebecca Minkoff studded pouch, $75; all from Miss Jackson’s.

your step

This season is all about making bold statements through black and white ensembles accented with pops of color. To see more spring fashion, turn the page.

by KENDALL BARROW Models courtesy of the Linda Layman Agency; hair and makeup courtesy of Kim Freeman, Hannah Delozier, Jessica Squires and Michelle Coslett of Ihloff Salon & Day Spa.

Home Remodeling Guide P. 63

✻

Great getaways P. 76

✻

PRHYME dining P. 82 TulsaPeople.com

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FASHION

Erin Fetherston polka dot shirt, $195, Thvm black jeans, $95, and Loeffler Randall black suede wedges, $375; all from Rope (chair from Sideways, $175).

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Thvm black jeans, $95, Rope; Joseph Ribkoff jacket, $235, and Rustic Cuff gold cuff, $68, both from Donna’s; and Naya black suede oxford, $170, The Glass Slipper (chair from Sideways, $175).

TulsaPeople.com

57

FASHION

Sharon Young sweater, $109, and Rustic Cuff gold cuff, $68; both from Donna’s.

Tt Collection white blouse with black lace details, $235, Theory Lynie short, $160, Valentino Rockstar Noir studded heel, $995, Jimmy Choo clutch, $595, Alexis Bittar necklace, $135, and earrings, $105; all from Saks Fifth Avenue.

TOMS sunglasses, $129; The Glass Slipper; Alice + Olivia Black leather pleated skirt, $495, Vince leather shell, $495, Jimmy Choo Vero pumps in white and black patent leather with gold trim, $750, Jimmy Choo Lulu multi metallic/white leather and snakeskin clutch, $2,475, Alexis Bittar stack bangles, $78-$395, and earrings, $225; all from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Erin Fetherston leather dress, $395, Rope; Rustic Cuff silver cuff, $65, and black and silver cuff, $58; both from The Glass Slipper.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

What we love @ Donna’s: Karen Kane’s Spring Collection!

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FASHION

Line & Dot star print trench, $145, Lulu Frost bangle, $143, Kendra Scott coral chandelier earrings, $90, and Kate Spade mint cross-body bag, $238; all from Miss Jackson’s.

Kate Spade nautical stripe dress, $448, Kelsi Dagger patent and vinyl loafers, $90, Melinda Maria cuff, $275, Rachel Zoe tassel earrings, $250, Kenzo scarf, $295, and Tory Burch turquoise tote, $395; all from Miss Jackson's.

S.I.C. Couture black dress, $242, Hyde Collection pink belt, $38, and Deux Lux purse, $136; all from Sideways; Salvatore Ferragamo black patent pumps, $495; Miss Jackson’s.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

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FASHION

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Lida Baday black zip dress, $995, Valentino lace wrap espadrilles, $495, John Hardy ring, $695, necklace, $895, and earrings, $550; all from Saks Fifth Avenue.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

HOME REMODELING G U I D E

Better abodes

Grant Homes remodeled this home’s kitchen, tearing down a horseshoe configuration of cabinets and an adjoining wall to create a culinary space that opens to the new dining room.

These recent Tulsa remodels offer plenty of ideas for your next home improvement project.

by ANNE BROCKMAN

Continued on p. 64

TulsaPeople.com

63

HOME

The kitchen also has easy access to the new outdoor kitchen and living spaces on the home’s 2,300-square-foot patio.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

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Continued from p. 63

Natural beauty

Living lakeside in midtown is not something many experience.

Peter Grant’s 1950s traditional ranch home is on the banks of Florence Lake, but when he bought the house, it was in desperate need of a makeover to bring it into the 21st century.

A nature lover, Grant decided to focus on the home’s most valuable asset.

“Everything about this project has been bringing the outdoors in and the indoors out — in order to fully appreciate and enjoy lakeside living,” says Grant, a professional remodeler for more than 20 years and president of the Home Builder Association of Greater Tulsa’s Remodelers Council.

He evaluated the home’s back side, deciding to add and install new energy-efficient Andersen windows and doors that opened up to a new 2,300-square-foot patio, which includes exterior living space and an outdoor kitchen.

Inside, one of the biggest tasks was the kitchen redesign. Grant first removed the wall separating the living room and kitchen and doubled the size of the culinary space. Custom cabinetry, stone countertops, luxury appliances and a new entryway to an outdoor kitchen were just some of the changes this space underwent.

Continued on p. 66

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HOME

Grant converted the home’s original dining room into a private office.

The new dining room is conveniently located adjacent to the kitchen and living areas, perfect for entertaining and socializing, Grant says.

Continued from p. 64 He then converted the home’s original dining room into an office space since a dining area now flanked the open kitchen. The new kitchen-dining configuration creates easier access to the high-traffic areas and lends to the overall openness of the spaces.

To unify the rooms and to match the existing oak floors, Grant

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

swapped the old tile floors in the kitchen, living room and master suite for oak hardwoods. A dark stain created a cohesive look that matches the home’s recently added contemporary aesthetics such as paint, new baseboards and crown moldings, fixtures and doors.

Continued on p. 68

Grant tied the rooms together with similar contemporary aesthetics, including matching the existing hardwoods and staining them a darker color. In the living room, updates included the fireplace as well as the old walk-in bar that was converted to a new built-in shelving unit. The east side of the home now opens to the lakefront with expansive windows and doorways.

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HOME

Meloni Janzen

Lesli Pitts

Meloni Janzen

After scrapping plans to use the kitchen’s existing cabinetry, the homeowners chose custom Alder wood cabinets topped with Floral Fantastico granite, shown at left. The kitchen’s 5-inch red oak hardwood floors add to the rustic elegance of the remodeled home, pictured below from the exterior.

Meloni Janzen

Space for entertaining and hosting family gatherings is important to these homeowners, so when the time came to remodel, they added new living areas inside, pictured above, and out, right.

Continued from p. 66

Rustic revival By adding approximately 1,000 square feet to this existing Sand Springs home, Cowen Residential gave its owners a rejuvenated dream home perfect for them and their grandchildren.

The seven-month remodel included updating the entire house and adding a family room, office, master suite and outdoor living space.

The owners had lived in the home for 16 years but felt it was time to create more space for family gatherings, holidays and other special occasions.

The homeowners love to entertain, so kitchen improvements were important to them.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

“The original plan was to reuse the existing kitchen cabinets and reconfigure them to the new kitchen layout,” says John Cowen, owner of Cowen Residential. “However, it was determined that it would be more beneficial to fabricate all new custom cabinets to the desired kitchen layout.”

Even though this delayed the project a few weeks, the custom cabinetry cost only slightly more than the original budget, and it gave the entire project the “best bang for the buck,” Cowen adds.

As with any remodel, it was important for the improvements to flow seamlessly between

the existing and new spaces. Details such as drywall texture, roofline transitions and new flooring had to match perfectly, he says.

Cowen also covered the home’s exterior with James Hardie fiber cement shingle siding, a long-lasting siding product.

The new outdoor living space has become a haven for the outdoors-loving family. The patio centers on a Geneva stone fireplace, which mimics the interior fireplaces with its handhewn reclaimed timber mantel. Such touches bring the entire remodel full circle with its rustic, yet elegant, craftsman style.

Continued on p. 70

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HOME

Continued from p. 68

Over the years, these homeowners added rooms such as a man cave/wine room, below, and billiards room, right, by building out areas under their home.

Before this remodel, the only access to these rooms was from the outside.

J. Madden Homes solved this problem by creating an interior staircase accessible from the upstairs kitchen and family room.

Indoor comfort Having a downstairs man cave is great.

Having a downstairs man cave you can access without having to walk outside is even better.

Prior to a renovation by J. Madden Homes, these homeowners had to go outside onto their porch, down some stairs and walk to the side of their house to access a multi-room man cave.

Years earlier, the homeowners had built the additional rooms by employing space that was originally designed as crawl space and other unused areas underneath their home.

John Madden, owner of J. Madden Homes and a certified green professional, created a functional access point that flowed with the rest of the stucco house.

“It’s fairly simple, but it allowed them easy access,” he says of the project that took about three weeks to complete.

By creating an entry in the side wall of the home near the kitchen and family room, Madden was able to construct a staircase and extend the exterior wall into the yard by about 8 feet. This allowed plenty of space for a stairway leading to the basement area.

The alcove the extension created also made a perfect place for a safe room. Madden’s other 70

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

A safe room was installed underneath the area created by the new stairs.

With their new interior stairway to the downstairs man cave, and billiards and exercise rooms, these homeowners no longer have to walk outside to access these spaces.

company, ICF Construction, builds tornadoresistant homes from a specialized concrete fabrication — the same technology used to make safe rooms — which was utilized in this home.

With an existing separate cigar/wine room, a billiards room and an exercise room with sauna,

this man cave required only a few updates with the staircase additions.

Madden says he was mindful to match décor and materials to make the entire addition, inside and out, appear to be part of the original construction. tþ

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HOUCHIN ELECTRIC

New Building Signals Growth Of Premiere Company.

SINCE 1974, John Houchin has steadily built his electrical contracting business into one of Tulsa’s largest and most respected service companies.

Today, Houchin Electric employs a team of over 44 employees to providing services to a wide variety of businesses from area refineries, bulk-product handling plants, manufacturing companies, small businesses and residential homes from the company’s new 5,000 square foot facility at 9134 East 46th Street.

“We are unique in that our business ranges from doing work for residential customers to complex control and power wiring for automatic process control systems for a commercial customer,”says Houchin.

“The common thread is the level of trust we’ve established with our customers.

They know our certified and licensed electricians are true professionals who are able to efficiently repair any electrical

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Houchin Electric is regarded as a premiere electrical contractor in Tulsa.

The company’s awards include the Superior Service Award from Angie’s List the past two years and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.

John Houchin, a 1965 graduate of Nathan Hale High School, is a Tulsa success story.

Over the past 39 years, he has built the company on a foundation of high-quality workmanship and professionalism, and being cuttingedge. Houchin utilizes advanced tools, equipment and technology to stand-apart.

The company’s thermograph technology allows for a predictive maintenance that engages scheduled shutdown instead of expensive unscheduled downtime.

“We are proud of our history in Tulsa,” says Houchin. “People know they can trust a company that’s been in business since 1974.”

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73

GARDENING

Dry country

As Tulsa remains behind in precipitation, more look for ways to beat the heat this gardening season.

I

It’s not always

easy being green — especially if you’re a plant living in Oklahoma the past few summers. Record temperatures and lack of rainfall have made Tulsans and others in the area consider more drought-tolerant and native plants for their landscapes.

But people shouldn’t just dig a hole and drop one of these hardier plants into their Tulsa soil. Southwood Landscape and Nursery’s Steve Smith says there are numerous factors that come into play to make a drought-tolerant plant thrive.

“Just because it says it is a drought-tolerant plant doesn’t mean that it will survive anything,” Smith says. “Drought tolerance is increased with age and degree of establishment of roots. Site location, soil type, sun-to-shade exposure, overall plant health and availability of subsoil moisture also come into play (in) a plant’s ability to survive extreme drought.”

Landscaping and gardening with less water-hungry plants is called xeriscaping. It is a technique typically employed in more arid climates such as the American Southwest, Smith says. However, its methods of planting less lawn and more native plants, including groupings of grasses, are worth consideration in Oklahoma.

The Garden Trug’s Marcy Smith appreciates xeriscaping’s use of drip irrigation systems. With a small hose that travels directly to a plant’s base, less water and nutrients are wasted than with large sprinkler systems. The heat of the past few summers and the lack of rain have caused Tulsans “to water

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

by ANNE BROCKMAN Lavender

Lantana

Some of Tulsa’s drought-tolerant plants TREES Crape Myrtle (comes in tree and shrub varieties) With several color variations, this is a full-summer blooming plant available in a number of sizes, providing flexibility for planting sites.

Yucca

Chaste Tree Its aromatic lavender flowers make this a favorite for butterflies throughout the blooming season.

SHRUBS Yucca Common in many dry- climate gardens, yucca does best with a welldrained soil and plenty of sun. Its spires burst with white flowers in the summer and fall, remaining evergreen throughout the year.

so much, and we’ve been leeching so many nutrients out of the soil,” she says.

The Garden Trug suggests an organic product such as Bio-tone Espoma when establishing new plants. The product is a fungus that stimulates the root system by creating a web around the plant, allowing its root ball to increase in size. This draws in the nutrients, increasing a plant’s vitamin and mineral content, Marcy Smith says.

While watering is important in dry times like these, Steve Smith recommends homeowners assess how much water is actually penetrating the soil. Often the soil is so dry during periods of drought that it has become compacted, causing water to roll off the soil instead of soaking into it.

“I definitely recommend aeration,” he says. “As long as we are in these times, it is good to break that compacted layer so that the water can get in.” tþ

PERENNIALS Lavender Lavender is known for its fragrance, and its color can determine its aromatic scent. The deeper the purple, the more fragrant it is. This plant can withstand a lot of heat, lack of water and windy conditions.

ANNUALS Lantana This colorful plant is a magnet for butterflies and comes in a variety of colors. It grows relatively easily with little care needed.

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Southern SafeRooms are manufactured from 3/16inch steel and installed by our experienced staff using Hilti concrete anchors. They are available in 3’x5’, 4’x4’, 4’x6’ and custom sizes to fit in a garage or workshop.

Each meets FEMA and Tulsa Municipal Code regulations for safety.

A Southern SafeRoom located under a stairway inside the home’s garage.

Southern SafeRooms is a division of Southern Sheet Metal Works, Inc., a 110 year old, fourth generation, Tulsa company. Visit our web site—www.southernsheetmetal.com—for added info, or call 918-584-3371.

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TRAVEL

Close to home

Buckle up for spring break 2013. Here are six easy travel destinations to get you en route to a stress-free vacation.

by LINDSAY PIERCE

visit www.crowncandykitchen.net.

Gateway Arch — public domain

Rest up: The Chase Park Plaza is a tasteful St. Louis landmark housing a cinema, fitness center, salon and spa.

Its premier location is steps away from Central West End and Forest Park. Call 314-633-3000 for reservations.

The Courtyard by Marriott, located on Market Street in downtown St. Louis, offers budget-friendly rates,

W

Whether you need

a change of pace or a change of scenery, spring break is the perfect time to get away from your normal routine. Start packing for a few nights in these nearby locations; you’ll arrive before the kids can ask, “Are we there yet?”

DESTINATION

St. Louis Whether you’re attending a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game or strolling under the Gateway Arch, you will enjoy the metropolitan atmosphere of St. Louis without straying from the hospitality of the Midwest.

Route: Start on Interstate 44 East for the six-hour road trip.

For the kiddos: The City Museum is enjoyable, even for adults. Located on the brink of downtown St. Louis, the 600,000-square-foot museum is filled with urban materials from the city and surrealistic playgrounds that scream, “explore!” Call 314-231-CITY, or

visit www.citymuseum.org.

If you’re looking for a quiet place to have a family picnic, visit Forest Park,

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

a treasured attraction in St. Louis that spans 1,371 acres. Call 314-367-7275, or

visit www.forestparkforever.org.

Take a ride: A quick tram ride will take you to the top of the 63-story Gateway Arch, adjacent to the Mississippi River. On a clear day, you can see nearly 30 miles in either direction — Illinois to the east and Missouri to the west. Call 877-982-1410, or visit

www.gatewayarch.com.

Coffee lovers: Located between Washington University and Forest Park, Kayak’s is a famous coffee hub with a rustic atmosphere. Kayak’s is a branch of Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Co., which has been roasting and brewing coffee for the Show-Me State since 1994. Call 314-862-4447, or visit

www.kaldiscoffee.com.

Shopping: The St. Louis Galleria features hundreds of stores and restaurants that will please any fashion appetite, including department stores such as Nordstrom and Dillard’s. It is located at Interstate 170 and Interstate 64. Call 314-863-5500, or

visit www.saintlouisgalleria.com.

Food: Crown Candy Kitchen is the oldest soda fountain in St. Louis and

wireless Internet access, complimentary parking, an evening bar and an indoor pool. Call 314-241-9111 for

reservations.

DESTINATION

Branson, Mo. Branson has become a favorite destination for visitors of all ages because of its outdoor activities and carnivallike attractions.

Route: Take I-44 East for a relaxing 3 1/2-hour drive through the Ozark Mountains.

For the kiddos: If you enjoy the

Silver Dollar City

Photo courtesy of Silver Dollar City

a Travel Channel hot spot. To satisfy your sweet tooth, choose from a menu of deluxe sundaes, malts, floats, ice cream sodas and classic shakes — the cherry on top of your visit to St. Louis. Call 314-621-9650, or

St. Louis Gateway Arch at night

Crested Butte skiers

DESTINATION

topsy-turvy thrill of a rollercoaster, visit Silver Dollar City, a family-friendly theme park located 15 minutes outside downtown Branson. With 30 thrilling rides, 60 craft shops, live entertainment and dozens of restaurants, Silver Dollar City will become your family’s favorite place to play.

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City is a bustling metropolis of Western traditions with a hip twist. Why not kick back and stay awhile?

Route: Take I-44 West for the 1 1/2hour trip.

For the kiddos: Learn about space, tornadoes and all things science at the Science Museum Oklahoma.

Located in Oklahoma City’s Adventure District at 2100 NE 52nd St., the Science Museum provides handson exhibits that will leave your kids wondering about the world.

www.bigcedar.com.

Out of the ordinary: “Zip” your way through the Ozark Mountains on the Branson Zipline. Located seven miles north of Branson off Highway 65, the themed zipline course is suitable for all ages, depending on weight, and provides a bird’s eye view of the Ozarks. Call 1-800-712-4654, or visit

www.bransonzipline.com.

Shopping: Branson Landing, which sits along Lake Taneycomo, features more than 100 shops and restaurants. Stop by the Landing’s town square to watch the hourly water attraction, a dazzling show with 120-foot geysers, fire cannons, lights and music. The daily shows begin at noon. Visit www.bransonlanding.com.

Food: The late Andy Williams, a 1960s singer and host of “The Andy Williams Show,” visited Branson in 1991 and decided to build the Moon River Theatre in the heart of the town. After settling down in Branson, he opened the Andy Williams Moon River Grill — “It’s where the stars come out at night!” boasts the restaurant. If you’re craving comfort food after a bustling day of shopping and exploring, head to the grill for a plate of Gouda macaroni and cheese.

Call 417-337-9539 for more information.

Rest up: Chateau on the Lake Resort Spa & Convention Center, located

at 415 N. Highway 265, offers a private movie theater, indoor pool, spa, 24-hour workout room and restaurant. Relax on the porch in a wooden rocking chair and watch the sunset over Table Rock Lake.

Visit www.chateauonthelakebranson.com, or call 1-888-333-5253 for reservations.

DESTINATION

Crested Butte, Colo.

Crested Butte is a mountain town nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Pack up your warmest clothes and hit the slopes.

Route: United and American Airlines will land you at Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport in approximately five to six hours, depending on connecting flights. Shuttle service to Crested Butte is available from the airport.

Activities: Visit the Crested Butte Center for the Arts and the Mountain Theater to enjoy a community play or event; take a snowmobile tour; or go cross-country skiing, sledding and ice skating at the Nordic Center. Visit

www.skicb.com to learn more.

Coffee lovers: Grab a cup o’ Joe at Camp 4 Coffee, a locally owned coffee shop on Elk Avenue. With coffee and a morning paper in hand,

participate in a local pastime called “bench sitting.” Find a bench on Elk Avenue, and enjoy the brisk morning air. Visit www.camp4coffee.com, or call

970-349-2500.

Hidden treasure: Take an open sleigh ride from Crested Butte’s mountain base to Uley’s Cabin, just off the International Run, for a fourcourse dinner of Colorado cuisine.

Call 970-349-2275 for reservations.

Shopping: In downtown Crested Butte, wander farther down Elk Avenue, the town’s historic main street. The street spans six blocks with unique boutiques for clothing, home furnishings and children’s items.

Food: The Slogar, 517 Second St., has offered American cuisine since 1882. With a selection of fried chicken and steak dinners, plus wine, beer and cocktails, the restaurant boasts hearty meals and modest prices. Call

Call 405-602-6664, or visit www.sciencemuseumok.org.

Take a ride: All aboard the Bricktown Water Taxi for a 40-minute trip through the heart of OKC. Before you head to a Thunder basketball game at the Chesapeake Arena, float down the Bricktown Canal and learn more about the historic Business District. Visit www.bricktownwatertaxi.com

for tickets.

Out of the ordinary: Want to get your kicks on Route 66? Make a stop in Arcadia, Okla., on your way out of town to get a picture next to the 66-foot-tall pop bottle at POPS. Then, step inside the soda ranch to refresh with an ice-cold soda pop and a tasty burger. Beware: there are more than 600 flavors of soda (or as they call it, a “bumper crop of pop”). Visit

www.route66.com to check out the flavors.

Continued on p. 78 POPS soda ranch on Route 66

970-349-5765, or visit www.theslogar.com.

Rest up: The Old Town Inn is located at the entrance to Crested Butte.

The inn is a short walk to the community’s historic downtown and seconds away from the ski shuttle.

It offers a continental breakfast, a knowledgeable staff and a hot tub to rest aching muscles after a day on the slopes. Call 1-888-349-6184, or visit

Photo courtesy of POPS

Must-see: Big Cedar Lodge is set on 800 acres in the Ozark Mountains.

Visitors can enjoy walking trails, fishing, golf, horseback riding, fitness classes and spa treatments. Indulge in hot chocolate from Truman Coffee and Cake, and take in the beauty of Table Rock Lake. Private log cabins, cottages and luxury suites will entice you to stay the night (or four). All rooms come with complimentary Internet access; many offer a full kitchen. Reserve a room at

Tom Stillo

Call 1-800-475-9370, or visit www.bransonsilverdollarcity.com for tickets.

www.oldtowninn.net.

TulsaPeople.com

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Continued from p. 77

Shopping: If you really want to embrace your cowboy roots, visit the Stockyards District. Located south of downtown on Agnew Avenue, the Stockyards District boasts a plethora of Western jewelry, clothing and shoe stores. Find more at

www.stockyardscity.org.

For the best deals in town, head to one of the newest additions to the OKC shopping scene: The Outlet Shoppes at Oklahoma City.

The mall features more than 75 outlet stores and a food court. Visit

www.theoutletshoppesatoklahomacity.com.

Food: According to Southern Living magazine, Cattlemen’s Steakhouse is one of the best roadside wonders “off the eaten path.” The restaurant has been serving flavorful steaks for more than 100 years; they even serve steak for breakfast.

Whether you’re hungry for a T-bone or a prime rib-eye, Cattlemen’s will satisfy any steak lover’s appetite. Visit

www.cattlemensrestaurant.com.

If you think “bon appétit” means international cuisine, then you will

enjoy the globally inspired foods at Vast. Located 726 feet above downtown on the 49th and 50th floors of the Devon Tower, the restaurant offers higher-end entrees and wines for the perfect date night. Call

Downtown Dallas

www.legolanddiscoverycenter.com, or call 1-877-818-1677.

405-702-7262 for reservations.

Out of the ordinary: The Dallas Farmers Market, 1010 S. Pearl Expressway, is one of the largest in the country. It is open daily from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. and boasts hundreds of vendors and dealers. Pick up a few specialty products on your way out of town. Visit www.dallasfarmersmarket.org,

Rest up: Just minutes away from the city’s major attractions, the Colcord Hotel is a luxury boutique hotel in OKC with incredibly spacious rooms and traditional hotel amenities. The stylish landmark was the first skyscraper in the city, offering historic charm with modern luxuries. Visit www.colcordhotel.com, or call

or call 214-670-5879.

405-601-4300 for reservations.

For a more wallet-friendly stay, the Holiday Inn Express is located at 3520 NW 135th St. near Quail Springs. Call

405-751-8900 for reservations.

DESTINATION

Dallas

The Dallas slogan says it all: “Big Things Happen Here.” With more than 13 entertainment districts,

Ma rch 9

the largest urban arts district in the nation and nearly unlimited shopping options, Dallas is a fun getaway for visitors of all ages.

Route: Jump on U.S. Highway 75 South for the 4 1/2-hour trip.

For the kiddos: Thirty minutes from downtown Dallas, you will find the LEGOLAND Discovery

thr ou gh

Ma y2 7, 2 01 3

American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This exhibition is made possible with the generous support from National Endowment for the Arts, American Masterpieces Program; the Henry Luce Foundation; Curtis Publishing Co.; Norman Rockwell Estate Licensing Co.; and the Stockman Family Foundation.

CrystalBridges.org Bentonville, Arkansas • 479.418.5700

Sponsored locally by The Bob Bogle Family • Cadillac of Bentonville The Paul and June Carter Family • ConAgra Foods • Hallmark Cards, Inc. Harriet and Warren Stephens, Stephens, Inc. Going and Coming (detail), © 1947: SEPS. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Center of Dallas-Fort Worth. Your kids will learn top LEGO building secrets and get lost in the vibrant color and magnitude of each play area. For ticket information, visit

Shopping: Allen Premium Outlets offers 100 outlet stores, including Adidas, Banana Republic, Coach and Ann Taylor. Take U.S. Highway 75 North from Dallas. Learn more at

www.premiumoutlets.com.

For a more luxurious shopping experience, NorthPark Center houses more than 200 stores with everything from top designer shops to the Gap. NorthPark’s beautiful courtyard provides a resting

World Travel Presents... place from a busy day of shopping.

See www.northparkcenter.com.

Cupcake lovers: Sprinkles Cupcakes off the Northwest Highway is a must for anyone with a sweet tooth. Sprinkles is a gourmet cupcake shop with 11 bakeries across the country. The founder developed the most popular flavor, red velvet, as homage to her husband and his deep Oklahoma roots. Try it with a bottle of classic Coke for a finger-licking snack. Visit

www.sprinkles.com for a complete list of flavors, or call 214-369-0004.

Food: For breakfast, sit down to a scrumptious meal of Normandy French Toast or buttermilk pancakes at Bread Winners Café in uptown Dallas. Visit www.breadwinnerscafe.com,

or call 214-754-4940.

For dinner, visit Cane Rosso, 2612 Commerce St., and order an authentic Neopolitan pizza. At Cane Rosso, you will find pie made according to the guidelines of the Associazone Verace Pizza Napoletana, a nonprofit that safeguards and promotes the culture of Neopolitan pizza, and tomato

sauce made daily from hand-crushed Italian tomatoes — delizioso! Visit

www.ilcanerosso.com, or call 214-741-1188.

Rest up: The Fairmont Dallas Hotel, 1717 N. Akard St. in the Arts District, is an easy walk to downtown entertainment and restaurants. The hotel features wireless Internet access, a fitness center, restaurant and Starbucks on the base floor. Call 866540-4427, or visit www.fairmont.com/dallas.

The Joule in downtown Dallas, 1530 Main St., offers a memorable stay for the less budget-conscious visitor. The décor features moving art installations and an art collection with work by Andy Warhol among others. The Joule offers a fine dining restaurant and a not-to-be-missed rooftop pool that extends over the edge of the building. Call 214-748-1300, or visit www.thejouledallas.com.

and Tours Mar 26 Alaska! With Holland America Cruises ropean River Cruises Aprwith23VikEu ing River Cruises May 21 Mediterranean Voyages with Azamara Cruises

aliisesa & New Zealand 11 SilvAuersestra Cru Junwith Jul 16 AFRICA with Africa Travel Sep 17 Multigenerational Familtoury s Travel Experiences with Tauck R.S.V.P. please · 918-743-8856 · dtaylor@worldtvl.com Classic Vacations Dec 3 The Tropics with *subject to change

DESTINATION

Arkansas The Natural State offers a wide variety of attractions outdoors, indoors

7645 East 63rd Street Tulsa, Oklahoma 74133 www.worldtraveltoday.com

Continued on p. 80

TulsaPeople.com

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Continued from p. 79

Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism

Devil’s Den State Park

Now you can deposit a check anytime, anywhere with your smartphone or tablet. Sign up for Online banking and download your Free mobile banking app. Visit onbbank.com/mobile today.

and in between. Stay for the week or make it a day trip.

Route: Take U.S. Highway 412 East to reach Fayetteville in two hours, or take Interstate 40 toward Little Rock for a four-hour road trip.

For the kiddos: If you can’t get enough of the outdoors, take your kids to Devil’s Den State Park in the Lee Creek Valley. The park spans more than 2,500 acres with caves, hiking and biking trails and a park café that is open seasonally. You can stay for a day, or spend the night in a fully equipped cabin. Call 479-761-3325

for more information.

Must-see: The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville is a must-see for art and culture fanatics. The museum gets its name from Crystal Spring, a natural spring on the museum’s 120 acres. Collections include American masterworks ranging from the Colonial era to the current day. General admission is free. Call 470-418-5700, or visit

www.crystalbridges.org.

ONbbANk.COm/mObIle | 918.764.1490 © 2012 Central bancompany Inc. All rights reserved. member FDIC

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Out of the ordinary: Take a soak in the natural hot springs of Arkansas.

For centuries, visitors from around the world have flocked to the “healing waters” in Hot Springs. If you’re in the mood for a getaway, plan a trip to the Quapaw Baths & Spa and experience the world-famous mineral baths. To make a reservation, call

501-609-9822.

Shopping: The Promenade at Chenal in Little Rock is an outdoor shopping center with stores such

as Apple, J. Crew and Nike. Visit www.chenalshopping.com, or call 501-8215552 for more information.

For a local shopping experience, visit The Heights and Hillcrest neighborhoods in Little Rock — the shops are a Southern Living favorite. Be sure to visit Bella Boutique and Box Turtle for a selection of jewelry, art and beauty products.

Food: To top off your Arkansas stay, head to Fayetteville for a gourmet lunch. Bordino’s, 310 W. Dickson St., offers everything from a classic grilled chicken salad to Arkansas Arborio Risotto with Pumpkin. Visit

www.bordinos.com, or call 479-527-6795 for reservations.

For a more casual meal in Fayetteville, visit Hammontree’s Grilled Cheese on West Avenue and order a loaded grilled cheese sandwich or the Caprese Melt. Visit

www.hammontreesgourmet.com, or call 479-521-1669.

Rest up: The Inn at the Mill near Fayetteville offers a comfortable bedand-breakfast atmosphere with continental breakfast and free wireless Internet access. Visit www.innatthemill.

com, or call 479-443-1800 for reservations.

If you’re looking for a room in Little Rock, the Peabody Hotel is famous for its service and the “duck march.”

Twice a day, the Peabody Little Rock ducks leave their Royal Peabody Duck Palace and march around the marble fountain in the lobby. To make a reserva-

tion, visit www.peabodylittlerock.com, or call 501-906-4000. tþ

Youth Services

Blank Canvas 2013 Date & Time

April 11, 2013 6:30 p.m.

Location

Tulsa Convention Center Ballroom Dress

Business Attire

April 11

Chairs

Kathy McKeown and Gary Betow Chef Coordinator

Justin Thompson, Chef/Owner of Juniper and PHRYME Presenting Sponsor

George Kaiser Family Foundation

Tickets are $125 per person.

Information on purchasing tickets, becoming a patron, or anything else you might want to know about Tulsa’s own version of “Iron Chef” is available at www.yst.org, or by contacting Liz Neas at 918.382.4402 or lneas@yst.org.

We’ll see you there!

Blank Canvas 2013 Celebrity Chefs When top chefs participate in a live culinary competition, you have a blank canvas that becomes a masterpiece.

Candace Conley

Grant Vespasian

Philip Phillips

Tuck Curren

The Girl Can Cook

The Tavern

Lone Wolf Banh Mi

Biga / Local Table

Jakub Hartlieb

Trevor Tack

Erik Reynolds

Michael Fusco

Elements Steakhouse at River Spirit Casino

R Bar & Grill

SMOKE. on Cherry Street

Wolfgang Puck Bistro

Benefiting

DINING OUT

The 8-ounce tenderloin at PRHYME, which offers grass-fed and U.S.D.A. prime steaks

The restaurant’s caviar service features American paddlefish, American white sturgeon and golden osetra.

The bone marrow “canoe” is filled with spreadable, roasted marrow topped with capers and red onion, and served with toast and sliced bread.

In its PRHYME

Justin Thompson’s upscale steakhouse classes up downtown’s beef offerings.

T

Thirty-five degrees,

80 percent humidity, a black light to prevent mold growth and a change of air every hour and a half. This sounds suspiciously like the description for a greenhouse at the North Pole, not the ideal environment for a future steak.

However, Justin Thompson knows this is exactly the environs beef enjoys for a nice, dry age.

And those who have been dining on the steaks he grills to order at the recently opened PRHYME DownChef Thompson town Steakhouse agree.

“Tender,” “juicy” and “super flavorful” are just a few of the comments I have heard.

Thompson became known around town when he helmed the kitchens at Ciao Baby! and The Brasserie, but he recently hit his stride upon opening Juniper Restaurant & Martini Lounge in late 2011 to great acclaim.

His next personal challenge was to create a fine dining steakhouse, and after researching upscale steakhouses in Dallas, Kansas City and San Francisco, he came up with a plan for PRHYME. He wasn’t expecting to open another restaurant so soon after the launch of Juniper, but about a year later he did.

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

by JUDY ALLEN

PRHYME (a play on words with thyme, his favorite herb, and prime, the denotation of the best selection of beef) features a creative selection of appetizers and other starters — including what Thompson believes is Tulsa’s only caviar service that appears on a menu full time — in addition to an assortment of steaks, chops and seafood.

PRHYME’s steaks fall into two categories — grass-fed and U.S.D.A. prime. When cows graze on grass, they take in more iron than with grain feeding. After processing, the beef is given a 21-day wet aging. Both of these components produce the beef’s slight “gamey” flavor, such as you might find in lamb. The grass diet also results in leaner meat than prime, which is valued for its rich, fatty marbling.

As I mentioned above, U.S.D.A. prime is a grading given to only the top echelon of beef. This grading denotation varies from year to year based on many variables, and rarely appears in more than 2 percent of all beef produced. Thompson says this year, around 1 percent of all beef consumed in the U.S. is graded U.S.D.A. prime. Considering 650,000 head of cattle are processed every week, the amount of prime beef is remarkably low.

All of PRHYME’s prime beef (in addition to the grass-fed) is aged, specifically to Thomp-

son’s specifications, at a facility in St. Louis, and can be further divided into wet-aged and dry-aged.

In wet aging, the meat is sealed airtight in plastic (without the addition of any liquids, as the name might suggest) and aged for 21 days. The natural enzymes in the beef start to break it down, resulting in a more flavorful and tender steak.

In dry aging, the beef is hung in large cuts in a temperature- and humidity-controlled cooler for 40 days. As evaporation occurs, the meat can shed 15 to 20 percent of its muscle weight, intensifying the flavor.

Include another 15 to 20 percent loss that occurs when trimming the dried edges of the beef (natural enzymes and bacteria have been hard at work in the aging process), and you are looking at a cut that has shrunk to nearly half its original size. For instance, a 10-pound loin of beef will only yield about 6 pounds of steak.

This accounts for the higher price of the beef — the dry-aged rib-eye at PRHYME will set you back $75.

Tate and I tucked in on a cold, sleeting winter’s evening to find a full house. While perusing the menu, I was excited to see a bone marrow appetizer on the menu.

“I didn’t know if Tulsa was ready for this,”

The PRHYME Chocolate Pie offers a rich Oreo cookie crust, dark chocolate mousse, chocolate crumbles and chocolate whipped cream.

One of many available side dishes, the brown butter-roasted Brussels sprouts are topped with crisp bacon.

Thompson quipped, referring to the femur bone “canoe” ($15.95), which is roasted until the marrow becomes soft and spreadable. It is topped with a scattering of capers and thinly sliced red onion, and paired with toast and sliced bread for smearing — truly decadent.

“It’s cool to see people exploring and learning about different foods.”

Roasted marrowbones are one of my favorite dishes. I didn’t share.

Other starters include a traditional beef tartare ($16.50), buttermilk-fried escargot with herbed lemon aioli ($14.95) and oysters served with a cocktail sauce and horseradish slaw ($18.95). The caviar service features American paddlefish, American white sturgeon and golden osetra ($65, $95 and $145).

I did share, however, the PRHYME Chop Salad (a take on the classic Cobb and chop salads), which includes grape tomato, red onion, cucumber, blue cheese, bacon, egg and red wine vinaigrette ($8.95). It was a nice palate cleanser after the rich marrow, and before the meaty steak to come. Four other salads and three soup selections round out the menu’s starters.

As far as entrées are concerned, steaks are served à la carte, while seafood, poultry and chops are served with a side chosen to complement the protein. Steaks come with no accoutrements, and side dishes are served family-style, perfect for sharing. I knew my husband would order the grass-fed tenderloin, so I opted for a wet-aged rib-eye, just so we could compare notes — and I always order the rib-eye. Both of our steaks arrived cooked to perfection.

The 8-ounce tenderloin ($34.95), which I often consider to be a boring, lean cut, was extremely

tender and surprisingly flavorful. I probably could have cut my 16-ounce rib-eye ($47.50) with a fork, but opted for the steak knife. A 12-ounce tenderloin and 14-ounce New York strip also are available under the grass-fed and wet-aged selections. Sauce selections are available upon request, and include béarnaise, veal demi-glace, peppercorn cream, blue cheese cream and PRHYME Steak Sauce.

If you desire something besides a steak, PRHYME offers Australian lamb chops; a grilled, 14-day dry-aged, bone-in pork chop; and a veal loin chop. There are a handful of poultry and seafood selections, as well.

As a companion to our steaks, we chose brown butter-roasted Brussels sprouts, topped with crisp bacon and a platter of thick onion rings served with PRHYME Steak Sauce.

Other sides include sweet corn maque choux (a traditional southern Louisiana dish with corn, green peppers and celery), garlic smashed red potatoes and sautéed seasonal mushrooms.

All of the half-dozen desserts are made in house. We felt chocolate was in order and enjoyed the PRHYME Chocolate Pie, a rich concoction with an Oreo cookie crust, dark chocolate mousse, chocolate crumbles and a dollop of chocolate whipped cream. Other choices include New York-style cheesecake, carrot cake and a popular Bourbon-vanilla bean crème brûlée.

When I mentioned the exceptional waitstaff to Thompson, he said, “We are going the extra mile when it comes to food … the same goes for service. We strive to be the best in Tulsa.”

Servers are tested weekly on a variety of topics — wine, service and food knowledge.

PRHYME boasts a generous offering of 250 wine labels (a number that Thompson hopes to bring to 300 by summer) that have been carefully cultivated by Joe Breaux, certified sommelier and beverage director. The selection features around two dozen wines by the glass and a scattering of 375ml bottles. Select from a handful of boutique brews on tap, as well as more than a dozen bottled selections. And don’t forget Breaux’s creative cocktails.

The week after we visited, Thompson rolled out a new bar menu, which features three types of burgers and a few other dishes.

“I wanted customers to be able to ‘go big’ or eat modestly,” he said, “with the same great level of service.”

The menu is only available in the bar, but diners in the bar area also can enjoy the full dinner menu.

I asked Thompson how he was managing his time between the two restaurants, implying that he might be working some long days.

“It’s been fun,” he hinted. “Their identities are so different. Juniper is fun and casual, lively and imaginative, while PRHYME is elegant and formal, and the food is about consistency and perfection.

“I like what I do,” he added. “I’m pretty lucky.”

And in my opinion, so is Tulsa. tþ

PRHYME Downtown Steakhouse 111 N. Main St., 918-794-7700 www.prhymetulsa.com Cuisine — Modern American steakhouse Setting — Brady Arts District, ground floor of the Fairfield Inn Capacity — 60, dining room; 20, bar Owner — Justin Thompson General manager and operating partner — T.C. LeRoy Prices — Starters and salads, $5.50-$24.50; steaks and chops, $33.50-$75 Reservations — Accepted and encouraged.

Credit cards — All major accepted.

Hours — 4-11 p.m., Monday through Saturday; 4-9 p.m., Sunday Dress — Business casual to formal Noise level — Moderate Handicapped access — Yes Parking — Street parking and various parking lots downtown

TulsaPeople.com

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TABLE TALK

The buzz on Tulsa’s tastiest products, restaurants and events.

by JUDY ALLEN MEET ME AT THE MARKET Grass-fed beef is often touted as the best-tasting, and for good reason. Typically, the cows are pasture-grazed through the spring, summer and fall. When they come inside during the winter, they are fed hay — no grains or other feed.

These animals usually do not need antibiotics or hormones, and the meat is leaner than traditional ground beef, and has higher vitamin and omega-3 content.

Grass-fed beef is usually a bit more expensive, so look for it in fine dining restaurants that offer burgers. Or, head to one of Tulsa’s great meat markets and take some home to grill yourself. In addition to local beef, look to these places for allnatural chicken, pork, lamb and bison.

Café Samana’s Falafel Pizza

3807-F S. Peoria Ave., 918-742-3559, www.cafesamanatulsa.com THINGS ARE GREENING UP Look to these Irish-themed stalwarts to up the ante again with big beer-y blowouts for St. Patrick’s Day. Check their websites for up-to-the-minute listings on all of the festivities.

The case at Harvard Meats is stocked with beautiful cuts of natural beef and Beeler’s Pork from Iowa, as well as locally raised bison and other wild game. This old-fashioned meat market cuts meat to order and provides customers with an assortment of organic vegetables, and herb and spice blends, as well as all-natural ice cream.

James E. McNellie’s Public House: 409 E. First St., 918-382-PINT, www.mcnellies.com Kilkenny’s: 1413 E. 15th St., 918-582-8282, www.tulsairishpub.com Arnie’s Bar: 318 E. Second St., 918-583-0797, www.arniesbar.com tþ

3245 E. 15th St., 918-949-4200, www.harvardmeats.com Cimarron Meat Co. opened recently in a south Tulsa shopping center to little fanfare, but I am extremely excited to have a new market so close to home. The locally owned market features all-natural, and hormone- and antibiotic-free Oklahomaraised meat, as well as made-to-order sandwiches and artisan cheeses.

8173 S. Harvard Ave., 918-935-3210, www.cimarronmeat.com

For pasture-fed, lean Italian Piedmontese beef raised in Bixby, or Oklahoma-grown pork, bison and lamb, stop in at Natural Farms. The quaint market also features a wide assortment of Oklahoma-made products, including cheese, eggs, honey and locally roasted coffee beans.

420 S. Utica Ave., 918-583-5354, www.naturalfarms.com

JUST ANOTHER MEATLESS MONDAY In addition to the myriad resolutions I made for 2013, I vowed to bring back “Meatless Monday” … to our home at least. It’s a popular idea because many people have changed to vegetarian, vegan or even raw diets. The idea for a meat-free day dates back to World War I when the U.S. Food Administration urged families to reduce food consumption to aid the war effort. Herbert Hoover, then head of the Food Administration, spearheaded the move-

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options. If you prefer meat with your meal, Café Samana also offers dishes with locally sourced meats and seafood.

Caton is dedicated to running a conscientious café. She uses post-consumer recycled to-go containers; an eclectic collection of plates, glasses, tables and chairs; uses mostly organic products; and sources locally whenever possible. The café is open for lunch Monday through Saturday, as well as for dinner on Friday evenings.

ment, claiming, “Food will win the war.” Powerful words indeed … some 10 million families, 7,000 hotels and more than 400,000 food dealers took the pledge to observe national meatless days.

These days, I try to keep my pantry stocked with vegetarian-friendly ingredients (tortillas, tofu, mushrooms, salsa, beans, grains, etc.) so that I am more inspired than deflated when it comes time to make dinner. The move has proven fruitful, and I will be sharing some of my successes on TulsaPeople.com throughout the year. However, if you’re feeling more like doing your meatless mains out and about, try this little café that never fails to satisfy, meatless or not.

( Ask Judy )

Café Samana owner Tracy Caton took over the spot vacated by Blue Moon Bakery a few years ago, and has created her own special niche in Brookside.

Her 95 percent vegetarian menu features not only salads, but also creative specials that have included Falafel Pizza (pesto hummus and sliced homemade falafel with spinach, tomato, feta and mozzarella on a whole wheat pita crust) and the Veggie-dilla (organic black beans, zucchini and other veggies layered with organic white cheddar and fresh cilantro in a crispy spinach tortilla). The menu also features daily vegan and gluten-free

Have a question, recipe or tip you would like to share? Know of a great home cook in Tulsa? Had a great meal somewhere that you want to tell everyone about? I would love to hear from you. Send me an email: contactus@tulsapeople.com.

 TulsaPeople.com

The word “green” has many meanings when it comes to food — all of them positive. Check out my recipe for a comforting bowl of Green Pork and Hominy Soup.

Since 1957 GAME ON! Stop by for a Beer and Pizza while watching the Madness in March!

6 Tulsa Metro Locations

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We Cater To You Wedding Showers • Baby Showers • Engagement Parties • Rehearsal Dinners Watch Parties • Anniversaries • Birthdays • Office Meetings

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phone: 918.519.3572

email: tiffany@mcnellies.com

TulsaPeople.com

85

WINE

Weird is wonderful

Forgo an old favorite this month to try a wine that’s beyond your comfort zone.

W

by RANDA WARREN, MS, CWE, AIWS, CSS*

When it comes

to wine, we all have our old standbys. Why not go “off the radar” and find some delicious, oddball wines to make life a little more interesting?

For example,how about Caladoc,Moschofilero,Roditis, Savatiano and Cinsault? If you’ve never heard of some of these intriguing beauties, you’re not alone.

When considering some kooky wines from around the globe, Greece has to take the lead with loads of indigenous and hard-to-pronounce grapes. We know Greek winemaking goes back 6,500 years, yet today most Oklahomans have only heard of, and possibly tried, Greek Ouzo (a licorice-flavored liqueur).

Red Agiorghitiko (from Nemea), red Xinomavro (from Naousa) and white Moschofilero (from Mantinia) are surprisingly available in Oklahoma. Most Greek wines, however, don’t make their way into the Oklahoma market.

Italy is renowned for its colorful array of peculiar indigenous Italian grapes such as Falanghina, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Aleatico and Dolcetto.The world is embracing and understanding the Italian wines more easily than those from Greece, Portugal, Romania, Tasmania, Madeira, England and even Oklahoma (hybrids).

Here are just a few wonderfully weird wines to seek out, especially if you’re traveling to any major U.S. cities, where many are available more readily than in Oklahoma: Austria:GrunerVeltliner (white,available in Oklahoma); Zweigelt (red, available in Oklahoma); St. Laurent; Welschriesling; and Blaufrankisch.

Portugal: Touriga Nacional (available in Tulsa as a still wine and in dessert Ports), Alvarinho, Maria Gomes, Bastardo, Baga and Ramisco.

Spain: Airen, Macabeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo (available in Oklahoma; the first three are blended in Cava sparkling wine), Pedro Ximenez, Godello, Albarino and Mencia.

Argentina: Bonarda and Torrontes (both available in Oklahoma). tþ *Wine columnist Randa Warren is a Master Sommelier; Certified Wine Educator; Associate Member of the Institute of Wines and Spirits; and is a Certified Specialist of Spirits.

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These off-the-radar varieties are found on many Tulsa-area wine shelves.

Join us for our

SIPS AT HOME MAGIC POTION Ixsir Altitudes 2008 Rouge, Lebanon — $15.83 Lebanese wine has made it to Oklahoma. This blend is comprised of Caladoc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Tempranillo. Pair this smooth, rich and slightly oaky wine with anything from hamburgers or pizza to filet mignon.

GREEK SENSATION Elios 2010 Mediterranean White, Peloponnese, Greece — $13.58 This is a fantastic blend of Moschofilero (melon flavors), Chardonnay (apple flavors), Roditis (crisp and citrusy) and Savatiano (with hints of wildflowers). I was thrilled to see it recently on a few wine shelves in Tulsa. This is what spring is all about.

OOH-LA-LA Domaine de Fontsainte 2010 Corbieres, France — $15.56 A burst of red and black spicy fruit hits your palate with this blend of Carignan, Grenache and Syrah. The tannins are medium and the fruit is large in this southern French wine. A subtle earthiness comes through for added complexity.

In the Raw

Grand Opening in our new home

108 E. Brady Tulsa, OK • The Brady Arts District

Tapestries of Jon Eric Riis March 1-April 21, 2013

Members Only Opening Reception, March 1, 5-6pm Opening Reception Friday, March 1, 6-9 pm Artist Talk Saturday, March 2, 1-3 pm Icarus #2 Jon Eric Riis Brady Craft Alliance re-imagined

108contemporary.org

Care, Comfort, and Compassion

SIPS AROUND TOWN IN THE RAW Bar Manager Angel Flora says In the Raw’s white Spanish Albarino, Salneval, has been a hit with the restaurant’s sushi and sashimi.

It is $9 a glass and $36 a bottle.

“It’s bright and very palate cleansing,” Flora says.

3321 S. Peoria Ave., 918-744-1300

WOLFGANG PUCK BISTRO Manager Derrick Brandenburg says “offthe-mainstream” wines are alluring to customers. He particularly likes the Trimbach Gewurztraminer from Alsace, France. It sells for $60 a bottle.

3330 S. Peoria Ave., 918-292-8585

As a dentist and a clinical psychologist, Dr. McDougall provides compassionate, high-quality dental care. Dr. McDougall and his staff listen to and understand your concerns, needs, and goals. As a reflection of his commitment to the highest level of patient care, Dr. McDougall will call you personally following each treatment visit. Dr. McDougall and his staff are dedicated to creating a comfortable, relaxing, and enjoyable experience, utilizing the best of current technologies to help you achieve the smile of your dreams.

918-742-8775 • 4433 S. Harvard Ave. www.mcdougalldds.com TulsaPeople.com

87

HEALTH

Change is in the air Environmental changes such as drought and warmer weather could create health threats for Oklahomans.

F

by MISSY KRUSE

Fact:

Last year, Oklahoma recorded its warmest year on record.

Fact: Planting zones have shifted northward.

Fact: Flowers are blooming earlier.

Fact: Pollen levels are increasing.

Fact: Infectious diseases are appearing in new locales.

The world’s climate is changing — and it is bringing new and increased risks to human health.

In Oklahoma, the health threats include air pollution, extreme heat, infectious diseases and the effects of drought, flooding and extreme weather, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental action group that tracks a wide range of issues.

Among them, NRDC provides a state-by-state breakdown of potential health effects that may be associated with environmental change.

In Oklahoma, “In the future, with climate change, average temperatures could increase by 2.5 degrees F to more than 13 degrees F by late century,” states the NRDC website.

Oklahoma doesn’t yet have a plan to deal with the potential health impacts, NRDC says.

Those could include increased risk for asthma and allergies, more heat-related illnesses and even previously rare-to-the-state diseases such as West Nile virus, according to site information.

Internationally, scientists and health experts are studying the myriad challenges to the globe brought on by our changing climate. Issues as seemingly diverse as farming and changing growing seasons, infectious diseases, shifting animal and plant migration patterns, and the movement of disease-carrying insects all play into the situation.

A few of the major organizations involved are the International Panel of Climate Change, established by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held annually since 1994, as well as the Global Health Care Summit, sponsored by several India-based health care organizations.

Among those attending the GHC Summit in early January this year was Dr. Anil Kaul, associate professor and director of clinical labs

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Climate change is affecting weather conditions and patterns of pollination, even here in Oklahoma, caution many scientists.

at the OSU-Center for Health Sciences. He specializes in infectious diseases and has a background in public health.

Across the globe, “we are seeing an increasing number of infectious diseases, including malaria and dengue fever moving from traditional areas to new temperate areas because of climate change,” Kaul says.

Similarly, during 2012, Oklahoma experienced the highest number of annual cases and fatalities from West Nile virus, a mosquitoborne illness, which thrives in high temperatures and dry climates, he explains. According to the Oklahoma Department of Health, 177 people in the state contracted the virus and 13 died. Compare that to the previous nine years, with its total 327 cases and 21 deaths.

Kaul isn’t trying to create panic with such facts, but he does believe health conditions are changing.

“If you look at a map, most infectious diseases are found in the equatorial or tropical areas,” he says.

If warmer conditions move northward, so will the infectious diseases that are prevalent in tropical areas.

“Even in the U.S. we see certain disease patterns in the south (such as dengue fever); you don’t see them in the north,” he says. “Traditionally places which were cold are becoming more tropical. Oklahoma is not tropical, but there is a likelihood of changing disease patterns if there is a change in temperature.”

Additionally, because of hotter Oklahoma summers an increased number of older people — who are more susceptible to the heat — will be affected or will die, he says.

In India, Kaul’s native country, drought has caused farmers in some regions to abandon their land and move to cities.

“So, we have this migration that is creating health issues of multiple types,” including housing and food shortages and malnutrition, he explains. Combined with crowded conditions and unsafe drinking water, “it creates a hotbed for diseases such as diarrhea and cholera,” Kaul says.

In drought-ridden areas with water shortages, diseases are exacerbated because the little water available is contaminated as a result of overuse.

While Oklahoma is not India, if drought conditions continue, we may similarly see some migration from farm to city, Kaul says. Also, according to a 2010 study commissioned by the NRDC, by 2050, Oklahoma is among those states that will have “an extreme or high risk to water sustainability or are likely to see limitations on water availability as demand exceeds supply.”

On a less threatening level, we are already experiencing longer and more miserable allergy seasons, says Dr. Estelle Levetin, professor of biology and faculty chairwoman of the biological science department at The University of Tulsa. She has been studying pollen for more than 30 years, tracking varieties wafting from trees, shrubbery and weeds as they move from Texas northward, along with the changing growth patterns of plants and trees that produce the pollen. Global temperatures have shifted in the past 130 years and carbon dioxide levels are changing, she says of various scientific studies.

“I am not a climate scientist, but I accept these as firm data,” Levetin says. “What has already been documented is the impact on plants — and the impacts vary.”

One impact that has been well studied is the changing vegetation on mountainsides. In short, “the tree line is moving up the mountains,” she explains, noting, “Where we were getting permafrost, we are now getting shrubs.”

In November, the U.N. reported that “massive stores of carbon” trapped under permafrost “risk being unleashed and significantly contributing to global warming,” should thawing continue.

“Because it’s warmer, plants are advancing upward,” Levetin says. “This has been happening around the globe, but probably one of the most significant (indicators) is the U.S.D.A. plant hardiness zone map. The zones have shifted north from 1990 to the latest (report) in 2012.

“We see this even (in Oklahoma) and in Alaska,” she adds.

Additionally, we are experiencing changes in the natural plant community, Levetin says.

While some traditional flora may no longer be able to survive in warmer temperatures, other plants are proliferating.

Warmer temperatures may signal plants to pollinate earlier, impacting those with pollen allergies.

Among the flourishing varieties, “the one that impacts Oklahoma is the Eastern red cedar,” Levetin says. “I will not say that climate change is responsible, because there are three theories” for the tree’s invasive spread — fire suppression, overgrazing and increased carbon dioxide, she explains.

However, Levetin adds that her own research on cedar pollen parallels the increase in cedar trees.

“Some studies show some cedar species will do better at higher carbon dioxide levels. ...

Cedar pollen has been increasing in Tulsa in the 30 years I have been sampling, which, of course, has health effects” such as hay fever for those allergic to cedar pollen, she says.

Seasonal warming is occurring earlier, too, signaling plants to pollinate sooner.

In spring 2012 “almost everything was pollinating earlier,” Levetin says. “It started earlier, peaked earlier and ended earlier.”

Although this is not her area of study, she cautions, such changes could affect other organisms, such as birds and insects and their feeding habits, and the environment.

Whether patterns of early pollination are attributable to climate change or normal variability is one aspect of her studies.

“As we see more and more evidence of earlier and earlier pollination, then we can say (the climate is changing),” Levetin notes.

Studies in Europe verify it, with pollination happening 10-18 days in advance of normal.

Closer to home, a 2011 study showed that in some parts of the U.S., particularly up north, the ragweed season is longer because those areas are warming.

In already warm Oklahoma, ragweed generally goes through its complete cycle — creating misery for allergy sufferers — and dies before the first frost. Fortunately heat and drought helped keep ragweed production at bay the past two years, Levetin says.

In combination with pollen, drought-related dust storms also will cause more to suffer from allergies and asthma. In fact, dust storms are

likely to create a more serious health threat here in Oklahoma than in other parts of the world, says OSU’s Kaul. Because the dust is finer here than in areas such as the Middle East, it is more easily inhaled, potentially causing chronic lung diseases.

Just as Oklahoma has experienced drought, extreme weather patterns may also bring flooding to the region, according to the NRDC, and with it increased mold. After Hurricane Katrina, Levetin and other scientists studied outdoor mold in New Orleans. They found more, she says, and others working on indoor mold saw “a tremendous increase.”

Warmer weather, compounded by flooding, also could continue to affect Oklahoma’s lakes with toxic blue-green algae, which can cause nausea, rashes and respiratory illness for those who come in contact with it, Kaul notes.

What can we do? Like the Boy Scouts, be prepared.

“We can work at two levels: individual — by educating people — and at the state or policy level where action can be taken to deal with these complications,” Kaul says.

Most of the climate-born diseases are treatable, Kaul says, but will we know these new enemies when we see them?

“For example, if we see a case of dengue fever in Oklahoma today, many of the health care workers will find it very difficult to diagnose and also to treat,” Kaul says.

Health professionals, including physicians, need to educate themselves on potential health threats, and health departments need to stay aware, he contends.

“We have to keep our eyes and ears open to what’s going on,” he says, whether it’s bird flu in Asia or what is happening in neighboring states. “Things will happen, but are we ready to deal with them?” tþ TO LEARN MORE The effects of climate change on health are complex, going far beyond disease to perhaps even altering the way humans live.

“The risks to health from climate change are very large and will affect all populations, but particularly children, women and poor people and those in developing nations,” according to the Doha Declaration on Climate, Health and Wellbeing.

Learn more by visiting these websites:

International Panel on Climate Change: www.ipcc.ch Natural Resources Defense Council: www.nrdc.org/health

United Nations Framework on Climate Change: www.cop18.qu and www.dohadeclaration.weebly.com TulsaPeople.com

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Q&A

FROM TULSA PROFESSIONALS

BEAUTY AND WEIGHT MANAGEMENT Q: My neck has become the least favorite part of my body. Is there an effective alternative to plastic surgery for my loose and sagging skin?

A: Now there IS an alternative to plastic surgery that is highly effective with no downtime. Ultherapy uses ultrasound to lift, tone and tighten skin. It’s FDA approved for the face and neck. Ultherapy targets the deep foundation below the skin-typically addressed in cosmetic surgery-without cutting or disrupting the skin’s surface. With just one treatment it initiates the lifting process and the effect builds gradually over two to three months. Ultherapy is a compelling option for people with mild to moderate skin laxity and those wanting to “stay ahead of the game” or looking to prolong the effects of cosmetic surgery.

Malissa Spacek and Dr. James Campbell BA Med Spa & Weight Loss Center 500 S. Elm Place • Broken Arrow, OK 74012 918-872-9999 • www.baweightspa.com

PROSTHODONTISTS Q: What information should I retain concerning my implants?

A: An important thing to do to insure your continued success in wearing an implant prosthesis is to know the doctor, brand, type, size and any modifications to the original implants. An implant prosthesis can wear out and parts will need to be replaced. Your doctor will have a much better chance of helping you if this information is available. Keep this information in a safe place.

Dr. Roman Lobodiak Roman Lobodiak, D.D.S. 3232 E. 31st St. • Tulsa, OK 74105 918-743-1558

WILLS AND TRUSTS Q: A tough question to answer: Who will care for the kids?

A: Often clients haven’t done estate planning because they can’t figure out who will care for the kids if tragedy strikes. You will only perpetuate the tragedy if a decision isn’t made and put in writing. It will then be left up to the State and courts. The person you want nurturing your children isn’t required to be the same person who handles the finances. Talk to your estate planning attorney today, and make your own decisions concerning your children.

Karen L. Carmichael The Law Office of Karen L. Carmichael 918-493-4939 • 2727 E. 21st St., Ste. 402 www.tulsawillsandtrusts.com 90

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

REALTOR Q: “How do I sell my house?” Yes, someone asked.

A: Hire a Realtor! Selling a home for the first time can be overwhelming. Even experience home sellers can have that feeling, too.

While it may be tempting to avoid Realtor fees and handle things on your own, having a professional by your side can make the process go smoother in one of the biggest financial decisions of your life. A Realtor is there from start to finish when it comes to the process of selling.

Shohreh Woessner • McGraw Realtors 918-361-4748 homesoftulsaok.com shohreh@mcgrawok.com

ATTORNEY Q: How does Oklahoma’s recent tort reform affect me if I am an uninsured motorist and have been injured in a collision that was not my fault?

A: Oklahoma law dictates that, in the event of a vehicle collision, a no-fault injured and uninsured person (failure to carry the state’s minimum liability insurance requirement of $25,000.00) will be limited to the recovery of only medical costs, property damage and lost income. Although the collision is not your fault, you forfeit any right to recover for “pain and suffering,” including care, assistance, mental anguish and loss of companionship. Accordingly, carry adequate liability, uninsured motorist and medical payments coverage. Contact the attorneys at Stall, Stall & Thompson, P.A. to discuss your rights.

Kate D. Thompson • Stall Stall & Thompson, P.A. 1800 South Baltimore, Ste. 900 • Tulsa, OK 74119 918-743-6201 • stallthompsonlaw.com

VETERINARIAN Q: How can I know if my veterinarian is staying current on the latest medical developments?

A: After obtaining a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, they are required to pass state and national board exams to be licensed. Each year, all veterinarians must renew their license and obtain 20 hours of continuing education.

These opportunities are offered through many avenues, such as local, state and national associations, universities, and specialist groups. Veterinarians as a group enjoy learning and sharing knowledge with colleagues. We are required to post our license in our clinics for the public to see.

Ed Wagner DVM 15th Street Veterinary Group 6231 E. 15th St. • Tulsa, OK 74112 918-835-2336

GENERAL DENTISTRY Q: Is there a connection between oral health and the rest of my body?

A: Yes. When the gums in your mouth are irritated by plaque it causes inflammation.

Inflammation anywhere in your body puts you at a higher risk for heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, just to name a few. You can minimize this risk factor by brushing and flossing well and being evaluated by a dental health professional regularly for diagnosis and treatment of this disease process.

Gene McCormick DDS & Drew Endicott DDS SAFE/COMFORT Dentists 2106 S. Atlanta Pl. • Tulsa, OK 74114 918-743-7444 • www.safecomfortdentists.com

PAIN MANAGEMENT Q: I have chronic back pain and do not want to take prescription medications. What do you recommend?

A: Our pain management specialists receive extensive training in interventional and integrative pain medicine. These specialties are dedicated to the treatment of chronic pain, which often includes back pain, through non-invasive methods or minimally invasive outpatient procedures that help patients “take control of their pain,” ideally without the use of prescription medications. Our goal at Tulsa Pain is to treat pain without prescription medication. We provide patients with education and news they need to “take control of their pain.” Call us today at 855-918-PAIN and learn how we can help.

Dr. Lindsey Behlen Tulsa Pain Consultants 2000 S. Wheeling • Suite 600 • Tulsa, OK 74104 918-742-7030 • www.tulsapain.org

We advocate on behalf of more than 3,100 businesses. Our members have more than 30 opportunities a year to meet directly with elected officials. We bring together more than 56 regional partners to advocate through OneVoice, our flagship legislative policy program. Want your opinions heard? So do we.

Stronger. Together. Join us.

tulsachamber.com

“Changing the way Tulsa views Cleaning” Advancing Clean. Driving Innovation.

INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Q: How much should I set aside in an emergency fund?

A: Instead of setting aside funds in a low-interest bearing money market or savings account, consider a home equity line of credit (HELOC). The HELOC provides a source of liquidity for emergencies. This line of credit allows you to tap into your home equity for short term financing needs. With this contingent source of liquidity, investments can be committed longer term. Since the loan is collateralized by your home, any interest paid (on the first $100,000 of indebtedness) may be deductible (subject to AMT).

J. Harvie Roe, CFP, President AmeriTrust Investment Advisors, Inc. 4111 South Darlington, Suite 450 • Tulsa, OK 74135 hroe@amerad.com • 918-610-8080

“A Janitorial Company” • 918-663-1919 TulsaPeople.com

91

McGraw Realtors

Luxury ProPerTy GrouP aT mCGraw reaLTors The PoinTs Grand LaKe

Tim hayes

Gorgeous 3 Bedroom, 2.5 Bath Country French lake home situated on over an acre with 126-ft. shoreline.

4 fireplaces, 2 in and 2 out. Beamed & vaulted ceilings, hardwoods, granite kitchen. Cement floored dock with 4 boat slips, sink & TV. Great outdoor living! Located on Party Cove. Offered at $1,095,000.

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2428 E. 24th St. Tastefully remodeled with spacious formals, commercial-grade stainless kitchen opening to family room with walls of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park-like backyard. Office opens to sun room. Master Retreat with sitting room, fireplace and luxury bath. Exquisite finishes and upscale baths throughout. Offered at $719,000

diana PaTTerson 918.629.3717 dpatterson@mcgrawok.com

enGLish sTyLe midTown esTaTe

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ConTaCT The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP and enjoy The

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

4116 S Atlanta Ave. Newer home with 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms. Significant updates include beautiful hardwoods throughout and faux finish paint. The kitchen has granite counters, newer stainless steel appliances and is open to the living room.

The master suite is on the first level and has a private door opening to the diving pool and spa. 3,996 sq. ft. $745,000 USD

McGraw Realtors

a neTworK of BroKers rePresenTinG The finesT ProPerTies worLdwide McGraw realtors has enjoyed the reputation of beinG northeastern oklahoMa’s leader in sellinG luxury hoMes. the luxury property Group at McGraw is an extension of this reputation. the luxury property Group brinGs toGether these experts in MarketinG luxury and unique properties, eMployinG the hiGhest standards.

souThern TraiLs esTaTes

Grand LaKe

3705 S. Tamarack. Quality amenities throughout. Hardwoods, vaulted ceilings, beams, granite, custom paint. Handsome study, upscale kitchen open to great room. Large game room with wet bar and home theatre room. Private courtyard with fountain and neighborhood pond view. 5 BR, 4.5 BA, 4 Living Areas, 3-car Garage. $499,900

Beautiful Italian Villa in The Grottos overlooking the main lake with views from every room. This spacious home offers gorgeous finishes such as granite, marble hardwoods and tile. Detached garage has a darling guest quarters above with stainless and granite kitchen. 4 bedrooms, 4 baths. $795,000

The esTaTes of hamPTon hiLLs

uPdaTed in midTown

13126 S. Yorktown Ave. Luxury Estate on almost 5 acres with panoramic view of the private pond. Impeccable home with a casual elegance. All rooms are spacious and four en suite bedrooms are on main level. Exercise, game and media rooms up. Stunning kitchen with Galley sink. Resort-like pool overlooks the grounds and pond. Bixby Schools. $1,350,000

2724 South Florence Drive. Charming remodeled Ranch style home. Floor plan has been opened up to create fantastic living and dining areas. Granite kitchen has stainless steel appliances. Vaulted master bedroom with private marble bath and outside access. Spacious deck overlooks fenced backyard. 3 Bedrooms, 2 baths, 2-car attached garage.

The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP 918 739-0397 TulsaPeople.com

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Luxury ProPerTy GrouP aT mCGraw reaLTors river oaKs

Tim hayes

6009 E. 117th Pl. Breathtaking newer construction situated on a cul-de-sac lot in prestigious South Tulsa community. Magnificent details with no expense spared from hand-carved cabinetry to the luxurious finishes. Fabulous outdoor living including custom heated pool and spa with pebble finish. 5 BR, 5 Full & 3 Half BA, 8 Living, 4-car garage. $1,999,000

918.231.5637 Tim@TimHayesJr.com

KeLLy howard 918.230.6341

Grand LaKe

khoward@mcgrawok.com

Rustic luxury in this log cabin on Grand Lake.

Top-of-the-line granite and stainless steel kitchen open to the living and dining areas. Master suite downstairs with granite bath, second bedroom down. Living/Office + 2 bedrooms ups. Covered balcony, huge deck, soaring stacked stone fireplace, private dock. A personal paradise!

diana PaTTerson 918.629.3717 dpatterson@mcgrawok.com

midTown TuLsa

sherri sanders

2616 E. 46th Pl. Custom built by Spencer Construction in 2008, this Country French stone and stucco home features a master suite and guest bedroom/ bath on the first floor!

Granite kitchen flows into the vaulted family room and casual dining. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, & game room upstairs 3,964 sq ft. $775,000.

918.724.5008 ssanders@mcgrawok.com

Gordon sheLTon 918.697.2742 Gordon@GordonShelton.com

ConTaCT The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP and enjoy The

Luxury LifestyLe you desire.

The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP 918 739-0397 94

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McGraw Realtors

Luxury ProPerTy GrouP aT mCGraw reaLTors

Grand Lake, The Grottos. $765,000. Overlooks main lake. 3 R, 3.5 BA, sleeping loft, outdoor fireplace, private dock.

8701 S.Pittsburg Ave, $244,900. All new granite surfaces.

Plantation shutters. Jenks Schools. 4 BR, 2.5 BA, 3 Living

10909 S. Winston Ave. $550,000. Gated Stonebriar Estates.

2 bedrooms down. Pool w/sunshelf. 5 BR, 4 BA, 3 Liv, 3-car.

Grand Lake, Eagles Roost. $565,000. 3 BR, 3 BA. Large Master w/ balcony. 3 Living, covered porches. 34’ slip.

7331 E. 112th St., $439,000. Woodcreek. 4 BR. 3 full/2half baths. New construction. Game room & media room.

12021 S Kingston Ave., $1,250,000. Gated Crestwood at the River. Luxury new construction with pond view.

1411 S. St. Louis Ave. $324,750. St. Louis Lofts at Cherry Street. Upscale townhome. 3 BR, 3.5 BA, 2-car garage.

3164 S. Rockford Dr. $725,000. 4 BR, 3 BA, 2 Living, 2-car.

Newer construction loaded with amenities.

1436 E 37th Pl. $525,000 Cottage style new construction in Brookside. 4 BR, 3.5 BA, 2 liv. J Rambo cabinets, granite.

CaLL any one of The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP reaLTors aBouT one of These homes or any ProPerTy ThaT you have an inTeresT.

9136 S. 69th East Pl. $112,500. Spacious townhome in Jenks Schools. Covered patio. 3 BR, 2.5 BA, 2-car garage.

They wiLL

Provide you wiTh suPerior PersonaL serviCe in ConCerT wiTh The hiGhesT inTeGriTy.

The Luxury ProPerTy GrouP 918 739-0397 TulsaPeople.com

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Premier Home Group of Tulsa ing d n Pe LD SO $1,900,000 7590 N Harvard Ave Tulsa Co Unplatted Extraordinary Mediterranean custom- built home secluded on approximately 30 acres.

Spectacular views from almost every room.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

$1,290,000 4920 E 105th St Country Gentlemen Estates Still time to customize New Construction with Super floor plan. Fresh new design with Custom details throughout. Large Lot.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

ing d n Pe LD SO

$1,200,000 4405 S Mimosa Ave Berwick Fairways 1 Beautiful New Construction with view of Cedar Ridge Golf Course.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

$949,000 1350 E 26th Pl Travis Heights Spectacular Renovation in Midtown. Completely renovated commercial grade kitchen with marble counters.

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

ing d n Pe LD SO $929,000 2906 E 26th Pl Beautiful new construction in Midtown. 5 Bedrooms w/ Master down. 3 Living areas plus office.Spacious covered patio w/ outdoor fireplace.

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

$825,000 2216 Forest Blvd Forest Hills Beautiful Traditional later build with fabulous floor plan, pool, and Forest Hills address.

Gourmet kitchen, 3 living areas.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

$769,000 3612 E 96th Pl Crown Pointe Meticulous 4 or 5 bdrm home with large yard and pool. Granite kitchen with huge island, professional appliances, and loads of space.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

$759,000 1212 Hazel Blvd Sunset Terrace Sunset Terrace traditional, remodeled & updated. Loads of upgrades! Heated pool and guest quarters.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

ing d n Pe LD SO $685,377 4508 Oak Leaf Dr Oak Country Estates 1 Over 1 acre near the Oaks Country Club!

Fabulous Master with fireplace, and modern touches.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

Pam Case 918.809.3247 96

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Lois Rauner 918.851.8886

$679,000 2407 E 30th St. South Lewis Park East Coast style in Midtown Tulsa. Newly added Master suite, guest quarters with full bath and living. 6 Bedrooms 4 1/2 baths

& Pool Pam Case 918.809.3247

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

$579,000 11708 S 70th E Ave Estates of Graystone II Outstanding updated 4 bedroom home in beautiful Estates of Graystone. Move-in ready. Gorgeous backyard with cabana and pool!

Pam Case 918.809.3247

Mickie Bingham 918.630.4434

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

$499,000 6912 E 115th St Devonshire at Graystone Stunning 2 story home has a comfortable elegance and is majestically nestled on large wooded lot.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

Hoop it up with us on Facebook!

McGraw Realtors

ing d n Pe LD SO $479,000 5140 E 108th St Southern Oaks Estates Spacious updated home. Extensive trim work, beautiful details. Granite kitchen w/ nice view of pool. Cast stone fireplace, 2 staircases & flexible 2nd level game room.

Pam Case 918.809.3247

$379,000 6921 S Delaware Pl Timberlane Heights Resub Updated Kitchen, beautiful landscape.

Versatile floor plan offers Master up or down.

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

$395,000 8816 S Lakewood Ct Woodhill Hollow Cul-de-sac location with great floor plan.

Newer hardwoods and granite kitchen.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

$299,987

1511 S Norfolk Ave Morningside 1920 Bungalow located in Mapleridge Historical District. House maintained with it’s original charm.

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

$385,000 2147 E 25th St Wildwood Midtown updated 3BR plus living quarters.

Corner lot convenient to Utica Square and St. John’s.

4747 S Evanston Pl Parkwood Lovely traditional home with 4 or 5 bdrms on a quiet street. Gorgeous backyard with pool

$255,900 26089 E 101st Pl Stone Horse Farms Custom built home on .58 acre lot,Kitchen has corian counters,stainless KitchenAid appliances,tumbled marble backsplash, 8+ft. center island, 5-car garage.

$227,500 3901 S Gary Pl Ranch Acres Great floorplan w/2 living areas, kitchen w/ granite opens to living room. Large landscaped yard w/mature trees.

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

Lois Rauner 918. 851.8886

ing d n Pe LD SO

$379,000

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

Katie Lieberman 918.698.3800

ing d n Pe LD SO

$207,000

$220,000 4908 S Columbia Ave South Lewis View 1.1 acre lot in Midtown. Kitchen and staircase have fabulous 50’s feel.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

3722 W Charleston St Mission Gardens Impeccably maintained home with terrific floor plan. Private courtyard perfect for entertaining

Mickie Bingham 918.630.4434

$139,900

5539 S 67th East Ave Sungate California Contemporary in private cul-de-sac.

Sungate neighborhood pool.

Lori Lassman 918.760.7844

March Madness is here, and the ball is in your court!

Call a Premier Home Group Real Estate Professional today!

$75,000 3106 S Bahama Dr Prattwood Estates 2 3 bedroom 2 bath investor’s dream

Lois Rauner 918. 851.8886

$50,000 900 E Rochester St The Oaks at Indian Springs Large treed corner lot on cul-de-sac. View of golf course, park, pool and tennis courts

Mickie Bingham 918.630.4434

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9 1 8 . 5 1 8 .0500 BrownAndZinn@mcgrawok.com Raising Standards. Exceeding Expectations.

9409 South 73rd East Avenue $348,500

Ashton Hollow

Gorgeous gem in South Tulsa gated community, move-in ready! Newly refinished hardwoods, new paint, granite Kitchen opens to Family Room with stone fireplace. Study or 2nd Bedroom down. 3 Bedrooms & Game Room up.

Jenks Schools. 4 Bedrooms, 4 Baths, 3 Living, 3-Car Garage.

10484 South 87th East Avenue $389,900

Legacy Park

Stunning home with fabulous floor plan featuring high-end amenities and hardwoods galore. Elegant Formal Dining, Study, open Kitchen and Family Room. Elegant Master Suite with fireplace. Guest Suite down, 3 Bedrooms and Game Room up. Neighborhood pool and park. Jenks Southeast Schools.

5 Bedrooms, 3 Baths, 2 Living Areas, 3-Car Garage.

5730 East 103rd Street $399,900

Forest Meadows

Beautifully updated with a fabulous price for so much elegant space! Lovely Formals, Kitchen opens to warm Family Room. Office or 5th Bedroom + Master with Sitting down. Game Room, 3 large Bedrooms + huge 2nd Game or Media Room up over side-loading garage. Jenks Southeast Schools.

5 Bedrooms, 3 Full & 2 Half Baths, 5 Living, 3-Car Garage.

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Chris Zinn

Brooke Spencer-Snyder

Senior Partner

Realtor Associate

Janis Taylor

Gannon Brown

Realtor Associate

Realtor Associate

McGraw Realtors TulsaPeople.com

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31st st. PAtRICK’s DAY RUN

Join us on

Saturday March 16, 2013 RunnersWorld Tulsa is excited to be the Presenting Sponsor of the 31st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Run. This year’s race will start at 43rd & Peoria and will benefit Special Olympics Oklahoma and the Tulsa Running Club.

at the

a Black-tie affair

For more information:

with

(918)481-1234 or www.sook.org

Dinner anD Dancing

Contact Caroline holmes for sponsor information: 918.508.2705 cholmes@dvis.org

EvEnt Chairwoman rosEmary harris

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“ I wa n t my c h i l dren, my g randc hi ld re n, a n d ever y gen e ration af t e r t hat t o b e i n gra i n ed wi t h the k now le d ge t hat th e re i s n ever, eve r an exc u se f o r dom esti c vi o l e nc e . I st and agai nst do me sti c vi ol en c e becau se I b e li eve t h at toge th e r we c an eli mi nat e t hi s evi l from the wo rld .”

Feli x Jon es Professional Running Back Phot o by Shiela H ay nes

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013 4893_DVIS March Issue Ad.indd 1

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ✻ OUT & ABOUT ✻ BENEFITS

agenda 3/15-17

Best in show

Canine competitors from near and far come to Tulsa for the 2013 AKC National Agility, Obedience and Rally Championships.

by JULIE RAINS

Handler Chris Hatchett will lead her 11-year-old Shetland sheepdog, Zoe, left, in competition at this month’s American Kennel Club national championship.

Hatchett’s other dogs, Zar’n and Ziva, will not compete this year.

‘Five Course’ funny P. 120

>VIDEO Watch Hatchett and Zoe prepare for the upcoming competition.

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Old school turns new P. 122

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petition in Tulsa will be unique because “this is the first year we are combining the agility, obedience and rally competitions into one national event.”

AKC is anticipating approximately 1,000 dogs to compete from all over the United States and Canada, Peterson adds.

Agility events (March 15-17) feature dogs in races against the clock through tunnels, weave poles and jumps.

“It’s as exciting as any other competition you’ve ever seen,” Hatchett says.

The rally event (March 15) is new to AKC competition. Peterson describes it as “a hybrid of obedience and agility.” During the rally competition, the dog and handler proceed at their own pace through a course of 10-20 designated stations requiring different demonstrated skills. Elements include “weaving through cones or over jumps, and some aspects of obedience, like ‘sit’ and ‘stay,’ or ‘come’ on command,” she says.

Obedience events (March 16 and 17) vary from highlighting traditional commands to more advanced commands, such as asking dogs to pick out gloves.

“These dogs can do things you don’t think a dog can do,” Hatchett says.

The events are open to pure-bred and mixed-

oe is 11 years old. She is sharply intelligent, extremely loyal and a highly competitive athlete. This month, she will compete against many of her peers at the national championship level.

Zoe is a tri-color Shetland sheepdog. Her owner and handler, Chris Hatchett, teaches the “Advanced Skills Agility” course at the Tulsa Dog Training Club, but it was Zoe who first introduced Chris to the world of canine competitive agility.

“I’ve had shelties all my life, but Zoe was the first one I formally trained in obedience courses,” Hatchett says. “She was the only one in her puppy class that would run through the tunnels. She seemed to be having so much fun. I was hooked because she was so good.”

Hatchett and Zoe began traveling cross-country to American Kennel Club competitions and first qualified for the national agility competition in 2006. Competing at nationals requires a dog to achieve first-place awards in many qualifying competitions, and Zoe has “won hundreds, if not thousands, of first-place awards,” Hatchett says. In 2011, Zoe scored 32nd out of 250 dogs competing in the national competition’s regular division; currently, she is the highest-ranking dog in Oklahoma.

AKC spokeswoman Lisa Peterson says the com-

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breed dogs that have met the qualifying standards.

Hatchett and Peterson agree that border collies’ and Shetland sheepdogs’ intelligence and speed give them success in agility competition.

But Peterson says sporting breeds such as Labradors and golden retrievers perform well in obedience “because they have a close working relationship with their masters. They are always looking for the next instruction.”

Hatchett is the volunteer leader of the Oklahoma spirit team, designing T-shirts and team banners to cheer on the 19 handlers and 22 dogs from Oklahoma who qualified for this year’s championship.

“This is the biggest group of competitors from Oklahoma ever,” she says. “Tulsa is the best venue I have ever been to.”

Spectators can catch action all three days of the championships, Peterson says. In the main arena, several competitions are often ocurring at once.

According to Hatchett, “There’s not a bad seat in the house.” tþ

The 2013 AKC National Agility, Obedience and Rally Championships take place at Expo Square’s Built Ford Tough Livestock Complex, 4145 E. 21st St. All events are free and open to the public. Visit www.akc.org for a schedule of events.

St. Patrick’s Day Run

Special Olympics Oklahoma

“Peter Pan”

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The University of Tulsa

Craig Schwartz

Conference USA Basketball Championships

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3/13-16

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Performances are at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center’s Chapman Music Hall, 110 E. Second St. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased at www.tulsapac.com.

All-session passes to men’s and women’s games range from $45 to $290 for club seats. Visit www.bokcenter.com to purchase passes or view a schedule of C-USA games.

Register by mail before March 8; in person from March 11-15 at RunnersWorld, 4329 S. Peoria Ave.; or for a small fee at www.stpatricksdayrun.eventbrite.com. Cost is $30, adults; and $15, children under 12. Visit www.sook.org for more information.

“Peter Pan” According to J.M. Barrie, “All children, except one, grow up.” Tony Award nominee Cathy Rigby might agree. More than 20 years ago, she first stepped on the Broadway stage as Peter Pan. Rigby will reprise her role in Celebrity Attractions‘ Tulsa performances that are part of a national tour.

The Washington Post says, “‘Peter Pan’ sparkles ... Rigby has mastered the boy who wouldn’t grow up.”

For kids of all ages, “Peter Pan” is a glimpse into Barrie’s “world made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”

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Conference USA Basketball Championships Paint your face and wave your foam finger — March Madness is upon us.

The University of Tulsa plays host this month to the Conference USA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships. Women’s teams will play their first two rounds at the Tulsa Convention Center before joining the men at the BOK Center for the semifinals March 15.

“This is a basketball city,” says Don Tomkalski, TU’s senior associate athletic director. “Fans turn out to watch really good college basketball.”

St. Patrick’s Day Run May the luck of the Irish be with participants in the 31st annual St. Patrick’s Day Run presented by RunnersWorld Tulsa and benefiting Special Olympics Oklahoma. Three races begin at 4320 S. Peoria Ave: a one-mile fun run at 8:30 a.m., a Special Olympics run at 9 a.m. and the chiptimed 5K run at 9:15 a.m.

In St. Paddy’s fashion, racers should wear plenty of green; avoid a pinch and compete in the race’s costume contest at 10 a.m., followed by a post-race celebration with activities for all ages.

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OUT & ABOUT

People, places and events

OKPOP Museum In January, the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) announced the acquisition of an anonymous donation of a large collection of items to add to The Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture (OKPOP), a museum that the OHS plans to build in Tulsa’s Brady Art District once funds are raised.

The donation features items related to famed Tulsa musician Leon Russell, who was on hand at the press event announcing the acquisition. Pictured at the event are Mayor Dewey Bartlett; Mike Neal, president and CEO of the Tulsa Regional Chamber; and Russell.

Just-bCAUSE Nick Salis and Maria Stevenson hosted a speak-easy party at Waite Phillips Penthouse to launch Just-bCAUSE, an entertainment event company that benefits worthy causes. Their first event will be in April to benefit the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences. For more information, visit www.just-bCAUSE.com. Pictured are Steve and Teresa Moyer, Stevenson and Salis.

Tulsa Regional Chamber Becky Frank, Tulsa Regional Chamber outgoing chairwoman; Don Walker, former chairman; and Mike Neal, president and CEO, at the 2013 Annual Meeting in which Saint Francis Health System CEO Jake Henry Jr. (not pictured) was inaugurated as 2013 Tulsa Regional Chamber chairman.

Arthritis Fundraiser Dalesandro’s and Dr. Ron LaButti recently hosted a fundraiser benefiting the Arthritis Foundation.

Pictured at the event, which was held at Dalesandro’s, are Dr. LaButti, Sonny Dalesandro and Whitney Parker of the Arthritis Foundation.

Taste of Tulsa The 29th Taste of Tulsa, a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oklahoma, took place recently at the Tulsa Convention Center. More than 800 guests dined on offerings from more than 50 participating restaurants. Pictured are Chip and Sharon McElroy and Donna and David Dutton from McElroy Manufacturing, presenting sponsors of Taste of Tulsa 2013.

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Bishop Kelley Auction Stephanie Galles and Elizabeth Inbody are co-chairs of Bishop Kelley’s “BK Corral” 33rd annual dinner auction April 6. The event will raise funds for tuition assistance and upgrades to Bishop Kelley infrastructure.

American Heart Association Marquay Baul, who was born with a heart defect and now is an executive at Arvest; event emcee Jennifer Zeppelin of Tulsa’s Channel 8; and Heart Walk Chairman Bruce Thames of T.D. Williamson gathered for the Heart Walk kickoff at the Lorton Performance Center at The University of Tulsa. The Heart Walk is April 20 at ONEOK Field.

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OUT & ABOUT

People, places and events

The Heart of Henry The first awards dinner hosted by the Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless was born from a desire to honor what philanthropist Henry Zarrow has done for the Center and the Tulsa community. Zarrow has long embraced the importance of “helping the least to make all of us better,” the catalyst behind the event and award. Pictured at the Feb. 9 event are Sandra Lewis, executive director of the Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless; Zarrow; his daughter, Judy Zarrow Kishner; and Peggy Helmerich, wife of the honored Walt Helmerich.

Toyland Ball The Sweet! 2013 Toyland Ball was held recently at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tulsa and benefited the Parent Child Center of Tulsa. Pictured are Stan and Irene Burnstein, honorary chairs; with Desiree Doherty, executive director, Parent Child Center of Tulsa.

The inaugural event bestowed the first “The Heart of Henry Award” posthumously on Walt Helmerich, Zarrow’s friend, who “exemplified the character and spirit with which the award was created.” Among the many family members of the late honoree in attendance at the awards dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel were sons Jono Helmerich and Rik Helmerich; grandson Jordan Helmerich; and son Hans Helmerich.

Tulsa Shock The Tulsa Shock and Osage Casino recently announced a multi-year marquee partnership between the team and the Osage Nation. The casino logo will appear on Shock jerseys beginning in the team’s 2013 season. Pictured at the Jan. 31 press conference announcing the partnership are Steve Swetoha, president of the Tulsa Shock; Mayor Dewey Bartlett; Shock player Scholanda Dorrell; Neil Cornelius, CEO of Osage Casino; and Sam Combs, owner and managing partner of Tulsa Pro Hoops.

Heart Ball The 42nd annual Heart Ball was held Feb. 2 at the Exchange Center at Expo Square.

Area high school sophomores, “Sweethearts and Mavericks,” were presented at the ball, which benefited the American Heart Association.

Chairman of the American Heart Association Board of Directors Bill Miller of Walgreens; his wife, Missy; and board member Brad Ulrich with his wife, Erin

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Sweethearts Mackenzie Phipps, Claire Schonacher, Emily Allen and Sarabeth Coatney

Dr. Mary-Jane Barth and Dr. Hisashi Nikaidoh, both pediatric surgeons at The Children’s Hospital at Saint Francis, with one of their favorite patients, Zyron Shaw. Shaw sang “This Little Light of Mine” with his mother at the Heart Ball. He was born with a congenital heart defect called hypoplastic right ventricle syndrome.

Colin Evert, Stephanie Evert and Grant Bumgarner

John and Karen Power

MARCH

30 2013

UNLEASH YOUR SENSES at the best part y in town Tulsa Convention Center

visit bestpartyintown.org for more information or contact Paul Davis | 918.382.2407 | pdavis@mhat.org BENEFITING THE MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION IN TULSA

Carnivale_TulsaPeopleAd.indd 1

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Tulsa Oratorio Chorus 20th Anniversary Gala and Performance March 9, 2013 • 7:30 pm

Celebrating 20 Years!

Lorton Performance Center, TU

Great Choral Moments from Stage and Screen In collaboration with the Department of Film Studies at University of Tulsa’s School of Music, TOC presents favorite selections from the stage and screen, including Les Miserables, The Mission, West Side Story, and Henry V.

Sponsored by

Purchase tickets at

myticketoffice.com or at the door.

TulsaPeople.com

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CHARITABLE EVENTS REGISTRY

Fundraisers and fun happenings

March compiled by JUDY LANGDON

3/14 Red Cross Rescue Gala Event co-chairs Phillips and Elaine Breckinridge, along with Eastern Oklahoma Red Cross Board Chairman Travis Campbell, prepare for the 2013 Red Cross Rescue Gala. The theme for the event is “It Starts with a Spark.”

4/5 DVIS Guests gathered for the Monarch Ball patron party at Susan and Bill Thomas’ home. The gala is April 5 and benefits Domestic Violence Intervention Services. Pictured are Bill and Susan Thomas, Rosemary Harris, event chairwoman; and Kristin and Jim Bender, honorary chairs.

March 1 — Bunco for Breast Cancer 6 p.m., doors open; 6:15 p.m., dinner; 6:30 p.m., game begins.

Union High School Multipurpose Activity Center, 6836 S. Mingo Road.

Meal, dessert auction and door prizes. $30. Benefits Breast Cancer Assistance Program Fund. Visit http://bcapfund.org.

The Alzheimer’s Association, Oklahoma and Arkansas Chapter. Call Christian Helm Leikam, 918-3925011; or visit www.memorygala.org.

March 1 — CASA Casino Win for Kids! 6 p.m. Hyatt Regency, 100 E. Second St. Casino games, silent and live auctions, wine pull and Elvis impersonator; business or “after 5” attire. Sponsorships available.

Benefits Tulsa CASA Inc. Call Paula McKay, 918-584-2272, ext. 106; or visit www.tulsacasa.org.

March 2-3 — Post Oak Lodge Challenge Various times. Post Oak Lodge, 5323 W. 31st St. N. Ten-kilometer, 25K, 50K, and marathons and half marathons. Includes breakfast buffet and dinner for participants and finishers. Benefits Tulsa Boys Home. Call Kyle Johnston or Linda Diaz, 918-245-0231; or visit www.postoakrun.com.

March 2 — Sip for Sight Grand Wine Tasting Gala 7-10 p.m. Main Hall, OSU-Tulsa, 700 N. Greenwood Ave. Wine tastings, food from local restaurants, silent auction and wine pull. $75. Benefits Prevent Blindness

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Oklahoma. Call Melanie Sherl, 918-496-3484, ext. 101; or visit www.preventblindnessok.org.

March 3 — Souper Safari 2013 3:30-6 p.m. Spirit Bank Event Center, 10441 S. Regal Blvd. Salads and soups prepared by local restaurants, with silent auction. $20, adults; $10, children 12 and under; free, children 5 and under. Benefits Total Source for Hearing-loss and Access. Call Kirsten Wilson, 918-832-8742; or visit www.tsha.cc.

March 4 — Kingpins for Kids 6 p.m. Dust Bowl Lanes & Lounge, 211 S. Elgin Ave. Games and live music. Benefits Operation Aware.

Call Mandie Rowden, 918-582-7884, ext. 101; or visit www.operationaware.org.

March 7 — Golden Gala 6 p.m.

IDL Ballroom, 230 E. First St. Dinner, silent auction and Grady Nichols concert. $50, tickets; $1,500, $2,500 and $5,000, table sponsorships.

Benefits Crossroads Clubhouse. Call Tiffany Adamson, 918-749-2141; or visit www.crossroadsok.org.

March 7 — Memory Gala 6 p.m.

Tulsa Convention Center, 100 Civic Center. Cocktail hour, dinner with wine service, luxury raffle, wine pull, exclusive Valentin Magro Jewelry Collection and live auction. Benefits

March 8, 9, 23 — Bowl for Kids’ Sake Noon-2 p.m. AMF Sheridan Lanes, 3121 S. Sheridan Road.

Benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oklahoma. Call Adam Nicholas, 918744-4400 or visit www.bfkstulsa.org.

March 9 — 16th annual Red Ribbon Gala, “Just Wear Red” 6 p.m. Tulsa Convention Center, 100 Civic Center. Donors and attendees are encouraged to wear red. Dinner, cocktail reception, live auction and dancing. $500, tickets; $1,500$25,000, sponsorships. Benefits Tulsa Cares. Call Ally McGinnis, 918834-4194; or visit www.redribbongala.org.

March 9 — Denim and Diamonds Dinner Gala, “Pearls and Prohibition” 6:30-10:30 p.m.

Southern Hills Country Club, 2636 E. 61st St. Silent and live auctions, raffle, casino games and dinner. $90, tickets; $250-$10,000, sponsorships.

Benefits Junior League of Tulsa.

Email Alex Paschal, apaschal@jltulsa. org; or visit www.jltulsa.org.

March 9 — Mizel Fundraiser, “Five Course Love” 8-10 p.m.; 9:30 p.m., 90-minute musical. Sylvan Audito-

rium, Tulsa Jewish Community Day School, 2021 E. 71st St. Reservations requested. $50. Benefits Mizel Jewish Community Day School. Recommended for adults. Call 918-4949593, or visit www.mizelschool.org.

March 9 — Tulsa Oratorio Chorus 20th anniversary Gala 6 p.m. Lorton Performance Center, The University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Drive. Pre-dinner reception, gourmet dinner, with special seating; and live entertainment by Tulsa Oratorio Chorus performing Broadway and classical favorites. $150, gala and concert; $20, concert only; $500-$3,000, sponsorships.

Benefits Tulsa Oratorio Chorus. Reservations required. Call Curt Long, 918-728-8600, or visit www.tulsachorus.com.

March 13 — Annual Spud Luncheon 10:30 a.m. Yale Avenue Christian Church, 3616 S. Yale Ave. $8. Benefits Northeast Active Timers.

Visit www.neatstulsa.org.

March 14 — Quinn’s sixth annual Meals on Wheels “Keeping ’em in the Green” — An Event Full of Irish Spirit 6:30-10 p.m. John Rucker Warehouse, 1227 S. Detroit Ave. Live music by Irish band Cairde na Gael; authentic Irish food, complimentary wine and beer, Irish dance lessons

Volunteer Leaders

Tom Quinn Jr.

Founder, Meals on Wheels Tulsa “Keeping ’em in the Green”

by JUDY LANGDON

M

eals on Wheels Tulsa is dear to Tom Quinn Jr.’s heart. He has been delivering for the local nonprofit for 30 years — he began volunteering with his family during college.

After the 2007 death of his father, Quinn decided to hold the first MOW fundraiser, an event that has grown every year of its five years.

TulsaPeople recently visited with Quinn to learn about this year’s event, “Keeping ’em in the Green,” on March 14 at Rucker’s Warehouse. The soiree includes all things Irish: dancing lessons, a whisky toast, authentic food and live music, and a “Caps and Corks” wine and beer pull. Plus, every $3 donated provides a personally delivered meal to one person who is homebound.

How did your parents become involved in volunteering for Meals on Wheels? My mom (Celina Quinn) first started volunteering ... in 1982, and my father (Tom Quinn Sr.) started volunteering after his retirement in 1984. They both helped deliver the meals, then moved on to helping put the meals together for the drivers. My daughters, Christine and Tarra, remember helping put the meals together for the drivers when they were 10 and 8 years old. My father also was the treasurer (of MOW), until his health prevented him from carrying on the duties any longer.

Due to health issues my mother and father stopped volunteer-

Carol Quinn; her husband, Tom Quinn Jr., who founded the event in honor of his father, Tom Quinn Sr.; their daughter Christine; Tom’s cousin Patrick White; and Tom’s mother, Celina Quinn ing in 2006 or so, but my famiy still will help deliver Thanksgiving Day meals.

What do you remember about helping as a young child?

(Growing up, we volunteered) once a week. Fifteen people were on (the) route; snow was the biggest obstacle. My mom remembers giving out “blizzard meals,” which consisted of extra soup and crackers, in case other volunteers could not make it to their homes.

In what ways did this family activity impact you? The most profound impact on me and my wife, Carol, was not so much the need of food, but of human companionship. The recipients were many times single and the delivery would be the highlight of their week or day. It taught us the value of giving your time … to slow down and take a minute to visit. My daughters also saw this and came to understand the importance of taking care of their elders and giving back to the community as they grew up.

How did the “Keeping ’em in the Green” event begin?

After my father passed away in December 2007, I wrote a check

and live auction. $50. Benefits Meals on Wheels Metro Tulsa. Visit http://mowinthegreen.org.

stationery included. Call Amanda Lucie, 918-592-2267; or visit www.tulsacampfire.org.

March 14 — Red Cross Rescue Gala, “It Starts with a Spark” 69 p.m. Tulsa Convention Center Ballroom, 100 Civic Center. Raffle, wine pull and cocktail hour with dinner, live auction and Everyday Hero Awards ceremony. $300, tickets; $2,500-$25,000, sponsorships.

Benefits Eastern Oklahoma Region Red Cross. Call Devone Chezem, 918-831-1207; or email devone.chezem@redcross.org.

March 21 — H.O.P.E. 15-year anniversary and van dedication 6-8 p.m. Health Outreach Prevention Education Inc. Clinic, 3540 E. 31st St., Ste. 3. Visit www.hopetesting.org.

March 16 — St. Patrick’s Day Run 8:30 a.m., one-mile fun run; 9 a.m., Special Olympics run; 9:15 a.m., 5K run; 10 a.m., costume contest.

RunnersWorld, 4329 S. Peoria Ave. Benefits Special Olympics Oklahoma. Visit www.sook.org.

March 21 — Absolutely Incredible Kid Day Letter-writing campaign calling families and friends to write letters to Camp Fire USA members and to all children nationwide. Free

March 23 — Seize the Moment 5K 7 a.m., registration; 8 a.m., 1-mile fun run; 8:30 a.m., 5K run/walk. Stone Canyon Elementary School, 7305 N. 177th E. Ave., Owasso. $15, fun run; $25, 5K (online pre-registration); prices increase $5 on race day.

Benefits epilepsy awareness. Visit www.seizethemoment5k.com.

March 23 — Fur Ball 2013, “Wizard of Paws” 6-10 p.m. Hyatt Regency, 100 E. Second St. Dinner, wine, music, raffles, and live and silent auctions. Benefits Oklahoma Alliance for Animals’ adoption, spay/ neuter and educational programs.

Email Melissa Abernathy, abernathy.melissa.r@gmail.com.

to Meals on Wheels in honor of my dad, but felt driven to do more to celebrate his and my mom’s legacy of volunteering. So, I met with the MOW executive director, Dan Rabovsky, and had his blessing to put on a small dinner event around St. Patrick’s Day. I believe we might have raised around $15,000.

Right before the event, though, MOW hired Stacey Wilson for community outreach. Stacey helped pull the first event together and then coordinated everything for the next three years, with attendance and donations rising each year.

Our venue changed to John Rucker’s Warehouse in 2010, and Jill Thompson was hired by MOW in 2011 (as director of development and community relations). The event continued to grow in popularity and donations, with last year being the largest to date — 300 people in attendance and more than $65,000 raised.

Describe the event’s atmosphere. The food is fantastic — corned beef, potatoes and other Irish traditions — and of course, the spirits are flowing. But the best thing is the music and dancers. Tulsa’s own Cairde na Gael plays traditional Irish music ...

The event is just now coming into its own after five years and God willing, will become an annual tradition for MOW of Tulsa for decades to come.

Why is volunteering important? We reap what we sow. If we don’t give back and help our fellow Tulsans in need ... who will be there to help us if/when times get tough? You never know what tomorrow is going to bring, but if your spirit is already in the community giving back, I believe you can rest assured you will be taken care of.

March 14 — Quinn’s sixth annual Meals on Wheels “Keeping ’em in the Green,” an Event Full of Irish Spirit 6:30-10 p.m. John Rucker Warehouse, 1227 S. Detroit Ave. $50. Benefits Meals on Wheels Metro Tulsa. Visit www.mowinthegreen.org.

March 23 — Living with Diabetes 2013 7:30 a.m., screenings begin; 8:30 a.m.-noon, exhibitor booths; 10:15-11 a.m., lecture/discussion with Dr. Raphael C. Francisco. Tulsa Marriott Southern Hills, 1902 E. 71st St. Screenings (must fast in advance), consultations with medical experts, food samplings and presentations. Free. Presented by Eastern Oklahoma American Diabetes Association. Call Christy Lamerton, 918-492-3839, ext. 6037; or visit www.diabetes.org.

March 27-29 — Abersons and Friends Warehouse Sale 4-7 p.m., Wednesday, preview party; 10 a.m.7 p.m., Thursday; and 8:30 a.m.3 p.m, Friday. Family & Children’s Services, 650 S. Peoria Ave. More than 50 local retailers donate merchandise at 87 percent off retail prices. Benefits Family & Children’s Services. Visit www.fcsok.org.

March 28 — Recipe to End Hunger 6 p.m. Culinary Center, Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma,

1304 N. Kenosha Ave. $45. Food and wine prepared by local chef.

Benefits Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma. Call Heidi Ewing, 918-936-4507; or visit www.cfbeo.org.

March 30 — Carnivale 2013, “Forbidden Garden” 6:30 p.m.

Tulsa Convention Center, 100 Civic Center. $2,000-$60,000, sponsorships. Benefits Mental Health Association in Tulsa. Call Paul Davis, 918-382-2407; or visit www.bestpartyintown.org.

March 30 — March for Babies, Tulsa 2013 10 a.m. Mabee Center, 7777 S. Lewis Ave. Pledge/donation walk. Benefits March of Dimes. Call 918-742-0333, or visit www.marchofdimes.com/ oklahoma. tþ

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Visit the online Charitable Events Registry for updated event information.

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ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Highlighting local talent

Art to feed the soul Muralist Janet Fadler Davie guides guests of Iron Gate in creating their own artistic masterpieces.

by JUDY LANGDON

P

Explain how you first became involved at Iron Gate, and what led to your art lessons there?

(Painting) the murals that grace the walls at Iron Gate introduced me to (Executive Director) Connie Cronley.

Seeking to add to the mural painting, I had started teaching fun art classes in my studio in downtown Tulsa, The Artist’s Loft. I approached (Cronley) with an idea about having the same, creative art classes with the guests. My daughter had volunteered (at Iron Gate), and I thought I could volunteer by helping the guests express themselves artistically.

opular Tulsa trompe l’oeil artist Janet Fadler Davie, whose wall murals grace many local homes and businesses, recently began volunteering to teach art lessons to guests at Iron Gate soup kitchen and food pantry in downtown Tulsa. Her students range from age 4 to senior citizens.

TulsaPeople caught up with Fadler Davie to learn more about her latest venture that helps Iron Gate provide “food for the soul” as well as food for the stomach.

Do you have a favorite classical artist? How has that artist’s work influenced yours? I do

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Photos courtesy of Janet Fadler Davie

How long have you been a professional artist?

Which instructors have had the greatest influence on you? I started painting murals in 1983. Charles Faudree shopped at a flower shop where I worked and saw drawings of flowers I did and asked if I could paint murals. He and other notable Tulsa interior designers (Lynn Knight Jessee, Richard Blissett and Kathryn Shackelford) jumpstarted my career in Tulsa and around the United States.

Early on, my mother recognized my talent and sent me to art lessons with Katherine Phelps and Priscilla Hauser. … My high school art teacher, Dennis Rutledge, influenced me the most by entering my work in art shows that awarded scholarships to art schools.

I have an associate’s degree in fine art from Tulsa Community College; I’m self-taught in decorative painting and murals. My art professor at TCC, Bill Derrevere mentored me through a show of my work there. Mat cutting, framing and hanging the show was an invaluable experience.

What types of art are you teaching the Iron Gate guests? (They) can either follow along with me and paint seasonal subject matter, or create their own masterpieces. I let them pick among artists’ trading cards (about the size of a business card), postcards that they can paint or draw on … or (on) sheets of mixed media paper.

Tulsan Janet Fadler Davie specializes in trompe l’oeil, a realistic painting style. Two of her pieces, “Farm Fresh,” an acrylic on canvas; and “South of France Waterfront,” a wall mural; are shown above. like Vincent Van Gogh’s work for his use of brush strokes and Johannes Vermeer’s use of light in his paintings. Lately I have been using an impressionistic style with lots of saturated, bright colors. The realism in Vermeer’s paintings has influenced me in trompe l’oeil murals, my specialty.

How many aspiring artists are taking your classes at Iron Gate? Have their various personal backgrounds influenced their work? Four to six people usually sit down to create art at Iron Gate.

A little girl, who is 4, will paint wonderful abstract paintings using dark colors such as brown, orange, blue and black. I love her freedom from restraints we adults place on ourselves in art. She will paint and then slap one of the tracings cards down and paint over that, turning it into a mixed media piece.

Other guests are very good at pencil drawings.

Connie’s office walls are filled with past works of guests: a museum to the creativity at Iron Gate.

What have you learned from teaching art at Iron Gate? The guests keep me focused on the reality that we all are fighting against problems in one degree or another, and we should help each other.

The classes let them connect with their creative side and if for a moment, find peace. tþ

40th Celebrating 40 years in Tulsa

Benefiting The Foundation for Tulsa Schools Dates April 26 - May 19, 2013 Address 2723 South Birmingham Place The Fashionable Venue to hold a private party or enjoy a special Mother’s Day weekend brunch!

Learn More www.tulsadesignershowcase.com 918.746.6602

Aphrodite and the Gods of Love An exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Showcasing twenty-eight local Tulsa Designers

Mar 10 – May 26, 2013

Events Family Spring Break Drop In Mar. 19, 20, 21, 1 – 4 p.m.

Choose a day to explore the Museum, then create art with your family in this drop-in workshop.

Third Thursday: Art of Aphrodisiacs Thursday, Mar. 21, 5:30 – 8 p.m.

Explore myths related to love, sex, and beauty.

philbrook.org Head of Aphrodite, “Bartlett Head.” Greek, made in Athens, Late Classical period, about 330 BC. Marble, from Paros. Francis Bartlett Donation of 1900. Photography © 2013 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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THE CULTURIST

The best of local arts and culture

Unusual musical

by KENDRA BLEVINS

I

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

ALSO THIS MONTH

Liz Bealko, James Knowlton and Bill Sheets rehearse for “Five Course Love.” The actors are undergraduates in the theater program at Oklahoma State University. and Dave Sylvan Auditorium on the Zarrow Campus into a black box-style theater. “(The Sylvan auditorium) is just four walls, so we’re creating a theater with curtains, lights, stage, live band, projection and quick-change area,” says Jeff Darby, Mizel board president.

Dundee met Westerhoff while her daughter, Sabrina Darby, a Tulsa stage manager, attended OSU’s graduate theater program.

“Peter is one of the best directors we have seen,” Dundee says. “He’s also doing the choreography. Not anyone could do a show like this.”

Actors Bill Sheets, James Knowlton and Liz Bealko, all undergraduates in the OSU theater program, will play 15 characters in five restaurant settings. OSU Professor Brian Hoffman is music director, and Tulsan April Madden is the costumer. Tulsan Matt Morton is the set designer,

Photo courtesy of Janet Dundee

am always impressed with Tulsans’ enthusiasm to make things happen. For example, if there’s a musical you want to see but nobody in town is producing it, well, let’s just make that happen.

That is exactly what’s going on at the Zarrow Campus, home of the Mizel Jewish Community Day School, with the musical “Five Course Love.”

“We basically created our own production team to do this musical,” says Janet Dundee, “Five Course Love” chairwoman and board member of the Mizel Jewish Community Day School.

The event is one of the school’s two major annual fundraisers. Proceeds from “Five Course Love” will benefit the Mizel Scholarship Fund. Founded in 1975, the school provides secular and Judaic education for children in preschool through fifth grade. It is the only Jewish day school in the state.

“Students learn about another culture, which helps them to learn about each other,” says Sandi Tilkin, Mizel director. “And for this fundraiser, we went with something different.”

Dundee brought the idea of “Five Course Love” to the table after she found a CD of the show’s musical numbers online and fell in love with it. After years of enjoying the musical’s upbeat tunes, Dundee still had not seen it performed. As far as she knows, “Five Course Love” has not been produced in Oklahoma; hence, she was determined to produce it.

Directed by B. Peter Westerhoff, director of performance in the theater department at Oklahoma State University, the unusual, 90-minute musical will transform the Barbara

and Darby designed the lighting.

“Five Course Love” is about finding that elusive one true love, Dundee says. Although the event benefits the school, the production is for an adult audience.

Among the many scenes in the musical, the audience will watch a blind date gone wrong, a mob wife’s secret rendezvous and the discovery that a waiter, a dominatrix and her kept man are all dating each other. A cast party reception follows the show.

Though they are not acting in the musical, Darby and Dundee are experienced thespians. Dundee previously led California Pacific Theatre in San Diego, and Darby worked as technical director and set and light designer. In 1979, the couple moved to Tulsa to work with American Theatre Company. They now own Sweet Tooth Candy & Gift Co. in midtown Tulsa. tþ

Symphony by the Sea for Students The Oklahoma Aquarium is offering a field trip opportunity that combines arts and science education through a partnership with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.

Students travel to three stations inside the aquarium to learn about a particular animal or habitat and hear a selected musical ensemble.

9:45-11:30 a.m., March 6-8, at the Oklahoma Aquarium, 300 Aquarium Drive, Jenks. Cost is $6, students; $10, adults. Register at www.okaquarium.org.

Louder than a Bomb-Tulsa Share the poetry stage with a Louder than a Bomb poet in residence during the group’s Tuesday open mic night.

6-8 p.m., March 12, at Hardesty Arts Center, 101 E. Archer St. Free.

Visit www.ahct.org for more information.

The “Five Course Love” fundraiser is at 8 p.m., March 9, in the Barbara and Dave Sylvan Auditorium on the Zarrow Campus, 2021 E. 71st St. Tickets start at $50. Call 918-494-0953.

Kendra Blevins is a freelance writer who enjoys playwriting, community theater, traveling and reading.

Do you have Tulsa’s Cutest Pet? TULSAPEOPLE CUTES

Bending, Weaving, Dancing: The Art of Woody Crumbo Through May 19, 2013

Fur your consideration …

T PET PHOTO CONTE

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The results are in!

For the fifth year, TulsaPeop le asked you, our reade rs, to share your favor ite photos of your four-legged friends. The more than 100 submissions we received included pets large and small, in a variet y of breeds and colors, all makin ga strong case for why they should be name d Tulsa’s cutest. In the end, we chose seven winners, including our larger-than-life grandprize winner. Here, meet the winners of our annual Cutest Pet Photo Contest.

CONTEST SPONSORS

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Collar courtesy of Dog

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39

Winning pets will also receive a Dog Dish gift certificate and the grand prize winner will receive a $200 gift certificate!

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Cain’s Ballroom Enter at TulsaPeople.com Entry deadline: March 22, 2013 $10 entry fee benefits the Tulsa SPCA

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TULSA SOUND

A look at what’s happening in the local music scene

Roots rock

Broken Arrow musician JD McPherson gives mid-century sounds a modern twist.

by JARROD GOLLIHARE

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

JD McPherson stuff. It was great. It just really hit the mark for me.”

It led him to explore the genre’s history, re-examining Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, then Little Richard, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Larry Williams. It profoundly altered his musical direction.

After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in media arts, McPherson married, moved to Broken Arrow, had his first child and worked a number of odd jobs … all while pursuing a music career with his band, The Starkweather Boys. Eventually, he decided to attend graduate school at The University of Tulsa for a degree in open media.

During this time, McPherson also met Jimmy Sutton, a Chicagobased, roots rock bassist/producer/ label owner.

“I was trying to get some weekend gigs up in Chicago for my band,” McPherson says. “So, I approached him on MySpace. He listened to our music and got us some gigs. As time went on, we started talking a lot.

He hired me to play guitar for The Jimmy Sutton Show at a weekender in Seattle. That led to us ultimately making a record together on his label.”

The two musicians, along with drummer/pianist/organist Alex Hall,

Photo courtesy of Jim Harrington

O

ld school meets new school.

So far, that has been the game plan for the solo career of roots rocker JD McPherson.

And it’s a strategy that’s working well for the Broken Arrow musician.

Since summer 2011, McPherson’s band has appeared on “The Conan O’Brien Show,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “The Late Show with David Letterman” … all after inking a deal with Rounder Records.

The band also has toured the U.S. and Europe, bringing its infectious 1950s-inspired sound to ever-larger crowds of adoring fans. All this rapid success is partially due, however, to a very modern social networking phenomenon: YouTube. More on that later.

A rancher’s son, McPherson grew up in Buffalo Valley, Okla. By age 13, he discovered an abiding interest in classic rock — Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, etc., based on his big brother’s record collection.

His brother also began showing McPherson how to play guitar. He was hooked.

“When I started learning how to play, it’s all I wanted to do,” McPherson says. “I was practicing all the time.”

Not surprisingly, this led McPherson to get involved in numerous garage bands. By the time he discovered alternative and punk rock in high school, McPherson had begun penning his own songs and making demos.

Then he discovered vintage rock ’n’ roll. It would change the trajectory of his life.

“I had heard a lot of older music on the radio growing up, but it didn’t affect me much,” McPherson says.

“It was always presented like ‘This is what happened before Led Zeppelin.’ My older brother always called it the ‘roots of rock.’ Later on though, I got a hold of some Buddy Holly

formed the core players for McPherson’s 12-track debut, “Signs and Signifiers.”

“We wanted to make a record for the roots rock lovers, but we wanted to package it more like a modern record,” McPherson says.

Recording commenced in 2009 at Sutton’s vintage gear-filled studio.

Just as “Signs and Signifiers” was reaching completion, McPherson was hired at Holland Hall as an art and technology teacher, but he was laid off in May 2011 because of budget cuts.

“We had enough steam in the roots rock scene to do a couple of tours” until he could get another teaching job, McPherson says.

Luckily, he never had to. The video’s ongoing success had generated interest from management agencies. The group eventually signed with one that quickly hooked them up with promotional and booking agencies.

“Then we started fielding requests from label people,” he says. “We were talking to major label bigwigs who had absolutely no idea what to do with us. Some of their ideas were pretty funny.”

Eventually, the band signed with longtime, well-respected indie label Rounder Records. The label released “Signs and Signifiers” in April.

Along with appearances on late-night TV shows, the band has been the subject of articles in Rolling Stone and MOJO, and received glowing coverage on several NPR programs, including “All Things Considered.” Most recently it received a 2013 Grammy nomination.

The band completed an extensive European tour in January. In February, the band was scheduled to head back into the studio to record its follow-up record that Sutton and McPherson will produce.

Looking back on his band’s poten-

tially risky decision to fuse modern and classic sensibilities for its debut release, McPherson is grateful.

“Luckily, the rockin’ scene didn’t push it away,” he says. “They embraced it.” tþ

MARCH’S BEST BETS FOR LIVE MUSIC 3/10 Muse, BOK Center Since forming in 1994, Muse — whose members, Matt Bellamy, Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme, specialize in soaring, cinematic rock and deeply grooved alterna-pop — has released five studio albums and sold around 15 million records.

Doors open at 7 p.m. Opening act is Dead Sara.

3/13 They Might Be Giants, Cain’s Ballroom They Might Be Giants, those legends of nerd rock … the absolute smartest, strangest, funniest accordionand-electric-guitar-wielding duo (plus a full band) to ever grace a stage in Tulsa, return this month.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Opening act is Moon Hooch.

Jarrod Gollihare is a freelance writer and one-third of Tulsa power-pop group Admiral Twin. He’s also a music producer and a painter of odd things. He claims to be the true king of Prussia, but no one believes him.

Have you visited TulsaPeople.com lately?

00 Over $1,5 l il w in prizes ! ed be award

Oklahoma Young Professionals Summit 2013 June 5 | Tulsa

Join Lt. Governor Todd Lamb on Wednesday, June 5 at the Tulsa Convention Center to discover opportunities for forging Oklahoma’s future. Stay tuned as guest speakers, panelists and registration details are announced.

Forging Oklahoma’s Future Presented by Lt. Governor Todd Lamb and the State Chamber of Oklahoma Sponsors include:

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123

GET THE PICTURE

Notes on local and regional film and video

The water’s fine

by HEATHER BRAZILLE

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

Mike Heller

The film’s director and producer, Charlie Soap; actress Kimberly Guerrero, who plays Wilma Mankiller; and actor Mo J, who portrays Soap

says. “I’m grateful for the professional filmmakers who came to help make this film possible.”

Shot exclusively in and around Tahlequah, “The Cherokee Word For Water” was a community effort. Most of the music in the film was produced locally, and the cast and crew were hired from Oklahoma when possible.

Soap says the American Indian community was extremely helpful in the making of the film — another testament to the power of gadugi.

The actors represent a wide range of tribes. In addition to Cherokees, the company cast actors from nations including Seminole, Kiowa, Comanche, Choctaw and Chickasaw.

The team also benefited from generous financial contributions from the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole and Coquille nations, Soap says.

Actress Kimberly Guerrero plays Mankiller in the film. A native Oklahoman, Guerrero has numerous film and TV credits, including that of “Winona,” Jerry’s American Indian girlfriend on the TV comedy “Seinfeld.”

Soap is portrayed by actor Mo J of the Lakota Nation. When not acting, Mo works to develop the rights of American Indian communities and advocates for the safety of their elders.

“The Cherokee Word for Water” will show in March, Women’s History

Shane Brown

G

adugi is a Cherokee word that refers to people and communities coming together to help finish a project or task.

This concept of gadugi is what motivated Wilma Mankiller, who became the first modern female chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Mankiller, born in Tahlequah in 1945, was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1983 and became the first female principal chief in 1985.

During her three terms — two years as deputy chief and 10 years as principal chief — Mankiller reinvigorated the nation through her leadership of community projects in which men and women worked together for a positive cause. One of her most well-known projects was bringing water to the town of Bell, Okla.

Now a group of filmmakers is offering a movie that showcases the chief’s life and accomplishments.

“The Cherokee Word for Water” is set in early 1980s Oklahoma, where homes in a small town are rarely more than shacks and nearly all lack running ama, or water.

Told from the viewpoints of Mankiller and full-blood Cherokee Charlie Soap, whom Mankiller married in 1986, the film chronicles the collaboration of the Cherokee community to build a 16-mile water system, as well as the project’s opposition within a male-dominated tribe.

In his directorial debut, Soap was also a producer for the film, which premiered in Tulsa in November.

Mankiller herself worked on the script, which took more than 20 years to complete. The film also is co-written by Tim Kelly and Louise Rubacky, who edited the film and produced it with Kristina Kiehl, Perry Pickert and Paul Heller, executive producer.

“What I found most rewarding was having the opportunity to make a great film that (incorporated local people) on the big screen,” Soap

Oren R. Lyons and Mo J on the set of “The Cherokee Word for Water” Month. Soap explains that the film is a perfect testament to women’s leadership.

“As a leader (Wilma) was tenacious, very good at bringing out the best in people,” Soap says. “Her philosophy was that people have a right to support and to vote for who they want to. She was respectful of others, and in Indian policy-making nationally she always managed to include other Indian leaders when she could.

“What could be better for Women’s History Month than a movie about the project that led to Wilma Mankiller becoming chief?” he asks.

The film is beautifully shot, remarkably told and serves as a powerful testament to not only the people who built Oklahoma’s history, but also to the artists who continue shaping it today.

Oklahoma’s culture is strongly influenced by the actions and leadership of American Indian communities, and Soap says the film is a reminder of this heritage.

“It is my hope that this film will empower the Cherokee people to decide their own destinies in their communities,” Soap says. “This film should give Indians and non-Indians a view of the hope and resilience of Indian country.”

Soap says the film also speaks to the necessary balance in leadership between men and women. He says he hopes “to inspire Indians to help themselves solve their own problems and not be so dependent on governments.”

Though Mankiller played a large role in the story behind this film, she will be unable to watch its blossoming success. Mankiller died of pancreatic cancer in April 2010.

Approximately 1,200-1,500 people attended her memorial service.

However, Soap says he plans to keep her spirit alive through this film. “(Mankiller) inspired girls, women, Democrats, Republicans,” he says.

“This film is her chosen legacy.” tþ

EDITOR’S NOTE: See p. 128 for Contributing Columnist Connie Cronley’s take on the film.

For screening dates and locations, visit www.cw4w.com.

Heather Brazille is a graduate of The University of Tulsa’s Film Studies program. She enjoys her Westie, Johnny Depp movies and roadtrips with her fiance.

ENTERTAINMENT TO APPLAUD

OF MICE AND MEN

Stew Milne

OF MICE AND MEN is based on the classic American novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. The Depression-era drama centers on two migrant farm workers, George (Brian Rattlingourd) and Lennie (Nate Gavin), who are caught in a desperate search for honest work, a parcel of land to call their own, and an end to the crippling emotion of loneliness.

The story is based on Steinbeck’s own experiences as a hobo in the 1920s. The title is taken from Robert Burns’ poem To a Mouse, which reads: “The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.”

Dan McGeehan directs this production with sets by Richard Ellis, lighting by Edward Durnal, costumes by Paulette Record and sound by Aaron Veale.

LIVING ARTS OF TULS A

NEW GENRE FESTIVAL: PARTICULAR SMALL THINGS FASCINATE. The pebbles in Kyoto’s rock garden. Drops of rain falling into a puddle. Starlings in a murmuration. How is the individual simultaneously unique and an anonymous part of a compelling whole?

Particular is an evening-length multimedia dance work exploring the relationship between the individual and the flock, performed by Lostwax Multimedia Dance of Providence, Rhode Island. Each dancer has a specialty — ballet, hip-hop, jazz, modern — but all can blend seamlessly into the whole.

According to Gestalt, we have a natural affinity toward flocking behavior. This is the basis for Lostwax’s choreographic and media exploration. The tension between the flock and the individual serves as a compelling, fertile field to play with new movement ideas and expand each dancer’s personal vocabulary.

L I D D Y D O E N G E S T H E AT R E Tickets are $20; $10 for students and seniors.

CATHY RIGBY IS PETER PAN TONY AWARD NOMINEE Cathy Rigby takes flight in an all-new production of Peter Pan. Rediscover the

Craig Schwartz

March 1-2 at 8 p.m.

CELEBRITY ATTRACTIONS

Brian Rattlingourd and Nate Gavin

John Carlson

AMERIC AN THE ATRE COMPANY

March 1-2, 7-9 at 8 p.m.

March 3 at 2 p.m.

J O H N H . W I L L I A M S T H E AT R E Tickets are $24-$30; $21-$27 for students and seniors.

magic of this two-time Emmy Awardwinning and two-time Tony Awardnominated musical about the Darling children — Wendy, John and Michael — and their adventures with Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and Captain Hook on the island of Neverland.

Rigby has starred in several other musicals on Broadway and in national tours, but she says the role of Peter Pan remains her favorite: “One of the greatest gifts of my theatrical career has been the opportunity to play Peter Pan — the thrill of seeing the faces of the children as I fly over their heads sprinkling fairy dust, and having the chance to relive the adventure of a perfect make-believe childhood.”

March 5-10 CHAPMAN MUSIC HALL Tickets are $15-$65.

TULSA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER • TULSAPAC.COM • BUY TICKETS AT 918-596-7111 AND MYTICKETOFFICE.COM TulsaPeople.com

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ENTERTAINMENT TO APPLAUD

PL AYHOUSE TULS A

24-HOUR PLAY FESTIVAL NO, IT’S NOT an all-day play; it’s an all-day — and night — page-tothe-stage process!

Writers, actors and directors collaborate in small teams to produce and perform a 10-minute play in 24 hours. They begin writing on Friday night and frantically start rehearsals Saturday morning for a performance that night!

The Festival is still accepting participants. If you are interested in taking part in this event, e-mail Christopher Martin at chmartin@oru.edu.

March 9 at 7:30 p.m.

L I D D Y D O E N G E S T H E AT R E Tickets are $15; $12 for students and seniors, $5 for children.

THE ATRE T UL S A

OLIVER!

OLIVER! is a 1960 musical based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, about a young boy who runs away from an orphanage and joins a group of pickpockets.

Thirteen-year-old Grayson Warlick will portray Oliver Twist, and Jett Armstrong will be the Artful Dodger.

Both young men are making their Theatre Tulsa debuts. Rebekah Peddy plays Oliver’s surrogate mother, Nancy, and Fagin is portrayed by John Orsulak. Mitchell Neill is Bill Sykes.

Supporting characters in the cast of 45 include Mike McEver and Renee Walker as Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry, Dave Garcia as Mr. Bumble, and Kelly McEver as Widow Corney.

Lionel Bart wrote the book, music and lyrics for Oliver! Well-known songs in the show include “As Long as He Needs Me,” “Consider Yourself” and “I’d Do Anything.”

March 15-16, 21-23 at 8 p.m.

March 17 at 2 p.m.

LIDDY DOENGES THE ATRE Tickets are $18; $14 for students and seniors.

T UL S A S Y MPHON Y

VIOLET

ASSOCIATED WITH royalty, violet is a color that fits well with the medieval romantic tones of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major. Also fitting: this piece, which premiered in 1881, was dedicated to a prince.

Tulsa Symphony welcomes musical “royalty” in the persons of guest pianist Robin Sutherland and guest conductor Daniel Hege.

While still an undergraduate at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Sutherland was appointed principal pianist of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra by Seiji Ozawa. Many

composers have dedicated works to him, and he has participated in numerous world premieres. A favorite performer at OK Mozart, Sutherland will be featured in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21.

Hege, a popular guest conductor throughout the U.S., was music director of the Syracuse Symphony for 11 seasons. He has been the music director of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra since 2010.

March 16 at 7:30 p.m.

CHAPMAN MUSIC HALL Tickets are $25-$70.

Robin Sutherland

TULSA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER • TULSAPAC.COM • BUY TICKETS AT 918-596-7111 AND MYTICKETOFFICE.COM 126

TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

CH A MBER MUSIC T UL S A

QUARTETTO DI CREMONA ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE at the Società del Quartetto in Milan and at the Academy Santa Cecilia in Rome, Quartetto di Cremona enjoys an international reputation for artistic and thoughtful interpretations of repertoire from classical to contemporary.

For their first U.S. tour, this exciting quartet performs rarely heard gems from great Italian composers: Boccherini’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 32, No. 4; Verdi’s String Quartet in E minor; Puccini’s “Chrysanthemums” Elegy for String Quartet; and Cherubini’s String Quartet in D minor.

The quartet was formed in 2000 in

Paul Asaro

Cremona, Italy, a famous musical center since the 16th century and the home of some of the earliest and most renowned luthiers, such as Guarneri, Stradivari and several members of the Amati family.

March 17 at 3 p.m.

DUAL PIANOS RAGTIME

Center. In addition, the troupe has performed in South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

GRAMMY nominees Brian Holland and Paul Asaro are among the finest ragtime and early jazz pianists on the planet. Asaro is a fulltime musician in the Chicago area and periodically goes on tour as an accompanist with Leon Redbone. Holland won the World Championship Old-time Piano Playing Contest three times (1997-1999) and has been invited back several times as a judge.

Holland and Asaro are regular performers at the four-day Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, and the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento. Holland was recently a headliner at the International Stride Piano Summit in Zurich, Switzerland, and played with fellow ragtime pianist Jeff Barnhart in Rwanda. When Holland and Asaro last appeared in Tulsa in 2006, they received two standing ovations.

March 23 at 7:30 p.m.

March 19 at 7 p.m.

JOHN H. WILLIA MS THE ATRE Tickets are $25; $5 for students

PA C TRUS T

STEP AFRIKA! ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING dance forms to evolve in the 20th century, stepping creates intricate rhythms and sounds through a combination of footsteps, claps and spoken word. The tradition grew out of the songand-dance rituals practiced by historically African-American fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s. Today, as well as being highly entertaining, stepping is often used as an educational tool to promote themes such as teamwork, academic achievement and cross-cultural understanding.

Step Afrika! is the first professional company dedicated to stepping. Founded in 1994 and based in Washington, D.C., the company is a frequent partner of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has graced some of America’s most prestigious stages, from the White House to Lincoln

R A G TIME F OR T UL S A

JOHN H. WILLIA MS THE ATRE Tickets are $28; $12 for students and seniors.

JOHN H. WILLIA MS THE ATRE Tickets are $25; $5 for students.

TICKET PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE • BUY TICKETS AT 918-596-7111 AND MYTICKETOFFICE.COM TulsaPeople.com

127

The Last Word

L

“Life beats down

Commentary on Tulsa life by CONNIE CRONLEY

My inner magpie

and crushes the soul,” said the great acting coach Stella Adler. “Art reminds you that you have a soul.”

I thought of that after seeing the made-inOklahoma movie “The Cherokee Word for Water.” This is the story of the late Wilma Mankiller, who became principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and Charlie Soap, who became her husband. They organized and inspired a small, poor community in eastern Oklahoma to voluntarily dig and install 16 miles of waterline. This brought running water to the town of Bell, Okla.

Of course, they didn’t do it alone. The Cherokee Nation and other donors and supporters were behind them, but these two people were the activists.

This is a feel-good movie that made me want to applaud. It had gentle humor and gentle sadness. The movie felt personal to me because it was shot in a landscape I know, eastern Oklahoma. I saw the resilient spirit of the Cherokee Nation, my own heritage. I saw quiet, courageous people coming together as a community.

I saw all of this and thought: I forgot how much I love turquoise jewelry!

Face it, I told myself, you’re never going to dig a waterline in the rocky soil of eastern Oklahoma or anywhere else. You’re part magpie and attracted to shiny objects. So, enjoy who you are.

Recently I was assigned to a booth at the Episcopal Diocese’s state convention.

My job was to hand out literature about the soup kitchen where I work. I showed

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TulsaPeople MARCH 2013

up on time, a soldier about to do her duty, when what should I see but an American Indian jewelry booth right next door. No wonder I believe in miracles.

They didn’t take credit cards or checks.

“I’ve got to find an ATM booth,” I said.

“Ask the bishop,” said Mr. Whitebird, the artisan. “He knows where it is because he has already been here buying moccasins.”

“Face it, I told myself, you’re never going to dig a waterline in the rocky soil of eastern Oklahoma or anywhere else. You’re part magpie and attracted to shiny objects.”

It was Mr. Whitebird who told me lots about turquoise. It is a mineral related to copper. The bluer it is, the more copper; the greener, the more iron. I once bought a cheap turquoise ring so blue I suspect it was really a melted Clorox bottle.

When I did some research I discovered that the blue-green gem may have gotten the name turquoise from the French word for Turkey because some believed the stone came from that country. Really, it probably

came from present day Iran or Egypt. In Iran, palaces were domed with turquoise because blue symbolized heaven on earth.

Aristotle, Pliny and Marco Polo refer to turquoise.

In history, people wore turquoise as a talisman against death or evil. Turquoise is still thought to bring the wearer good luck, good fortune, wisdom, happiness and connection to the spirit world. One legend says that throwing a piece of turquoise into a river will bring rain.

Ancient Egyptians mined turquoise in the Sinai Peninsula, so it is logical that turquoise was found in the dry geography of the southwest United States, in states such as Arizona and New Mexico. Albuquerque has a turquoise museum.

According to American Indian legend, here’s how turquoise was formed: When the rains came, ancient peoples danced and wept for joy. Their teardrops mingled with raindrops and seeped into Mother Earth, where they became turquoise. It has been called skystone, pieces of the sky fallen to earth for our pleasure.

Ah, turquoise, the gem worn by Aztec kings and Jewish high priests and me.

The Cherokee word for thanks is wado.

It is more than a cursory, “Hey, thanks a bunch.” Wado means a big, great, genuine, heartfelt thank-you.

I say wado for the wonderful little film “The Cherokee Word for Water.”

Wado for leaders who can bring people together as a community. And wado for turquoise. tþ

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