Oklahoma Heritage Plaza

Friday, May 25, 2012.
I get off work decently early.  Becky and I hatched a plan the night before to meet up in Norman and high-tail it to Oklahoma City to the State Fair Park for the EGI Gem, Jewelry & Bead Show.
  
The show ends at 6:00 p.m. per the e-mail Rabicca had received.  We swing into the fairgrounds going on 5:15 p.m. and it looks pretty desolate.  No signs bespeaking a bead show.  I'm creeping along the grounds in the car.  I can't help it.  I am not used to going to the fairgrounds except during the Great State Fair of Oklahoma (Yes, I called it by its full name.  Doesn't it sound grand that way?  :-) ) and during the fair you are ushered unceremoniously to a 'parking spot' some ways off that you pay a fortune for.  Never have I personally driven inside the fairgrounds.  Eventually we come across a building with a couple of cars outside.  Skeptical that we have reached our destination but wanting to get information from someone in the know prior to giving up after working so hard to get there, we disembark the vehicle and peek inside.  There are just a few people setting up booths on the far side of the building.  Deciding to go ahead and go in there like a couple of lost tourists, we spot a woman walking around the corner.  She informs us that they are setting up for the gun show and nothing else is currently shaking at the fairgrounds.


Discouraged but not quite ready to give up we get back in the car and continue driving around some - still feeling like someone is going to jump out at us any minute telling us we aren't allowed to drive there!  Then around a corner there are cars!  We get closer and there is a sign!  The only sign - right outside the building it is in.  Somebody did a poor job of promoting the show.  Nevertheless, we are here!  In we run and frantically spend too much money on beads until it is time to leave so they can close up.


The point of this post, however, is not the bead show.  It is what we saw when we left.  We were walking to the car and plotting just where we were going to go to use some facilities when to the left I spotted large granite monuments.  It was the 'Oklahoma Heritage Plaza.'  The monuments list everyone inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and even include etched portraits of a select few.  Becky was not terribly amused with the detour given that she also had a need for certain facilities, but I assured her I wasn't going to take a picture of each monument - there are too many.  We quickly walked the path trying to find the most interesting ones.

This is the main stone telling about the plaza.  Not surprisingly, the two inductees on it are Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe.  It is interesting that both of them died 3 years after being inducted.  Hhmmm... could this be Oklahoma's version of the Madden Curse?  Well, probably not.  There are plenty of peeps that are still alive and well that have been inducted.  :-)


The actual Oklahoma Hall of Fame Gallery is housed at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum along with MANY other things.  Definitely looks like a worthwhile destination.  In the meantime, one can find out some interesting things about the Oklahoma Hall of Fame on their website.  


First off, there are 6 inductees that are listed from Chickasha.  I got pictures of monuments that include 2 from Chickasha including Anna Lewis who was inducted in 1940.

The most rockin'ly awesome thing about that?!  That I didn't even realize until I started on this post today?!  I published the post about Fred earlier and there was a link to an article a professor at OCW had written in 1934.  Yep, you guessed it.  SAME WOMAN!!  How cool is that?!  :-)  I am going to have to find out more about her.  She might warrant a whole post for herself!

Here is a monument that includes Te Ata, after whom the Te Ata Memorial Auditorium at USAO where she attended school (when it was OCW) is named.  The same auditorium my graduation was in!  :-)
Another interesting fact I encountered while looking at the Hall of Fame info online:  The Oklahoma Heritage Association's bylaws were not changed until 2000 to allow people to be inducted posthumously!!  Isn't that weird?  And since the change, only 4 have been inducted posthumously!  One of the four was Wiley Post.  Now THERE was an interesting character AND he had ties to Chickasha.  It is hard to believe he was not previously inducted.


I leave you today with this slightly amusing picture.  Doesn't it look from that angle like the tram is quite precariously perched?  :-)