A Very OK Podcast

Episode 24: “The People’s House”

April 18, 2023

Episode Transcript

(upbeat music playing)

Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it is always great to see you. I can’t tell you how much I always look forward to getting together and talking about Oklahoma history.

Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, Trait, you’re doing a good job at picking topics and today, a topic that is especially dear to you after six and a half years working on the Capitol restoration, a building that is so important to all Oklahomans. And so, I want to thank you for a job well done and including the Oklahoma Historical Society in that project. We had the original plans here. I remember when you came over with the architects to digitize those and all of the artifacts that that related to the history, and the museum that we worked on together. So it was a good project. So I’ve been looking forward to this as well.

Thompson: Well, it was a lot of fun. And, you know, we had worked together when I was a staffer in Pro Temp Brian Bingman’s office, but then when I moved over to the Capitol project, you know, one of the first things we got to do together on that project was to kick it off in July of 2014, because that was actually the 100-year anniversary of the groundbreaking ceremony for the Capitol, and you brought over that silver-plated pickax that Governor Cruce had used to break ground, and you let me hold it. (laughter)

Thompson: Which I just thought—with gloves on—but, I just thought was one of the coolest things in the world, and we got to work together so many times on that project and on different aspects. People would always want to know the history of the Capitol, so we would work through that. And like you said, we came over here and used not only the, we found the original drawings, but our construction folks wanted to see those original photos of the building being built, because one of the things about how building trades were done back in those days, the architectural drawings were really more of a suggestion or a guideline, and it was up to the builder in the field to really make it work. And so a lot of times they would change things as they were going along, and so those photos that we have in our OHS archives were really key to helping everyone understand how the building was put together.

Blackburn: Well and, you know, it’s a little bit of fortunate history that the Oklahoma Historical Society had been created in 1893, before the Capitol, before statehood, 1895, territorial agency, 1907, state agency. And we were one of the first occupants in it. The Oklahoma Historical Society ran the museum in the basement there in those early years. So, we were right there in the middle of the process. And, thanks to our curators back then and Mr. Campbell, who was a curator at the time, they were gathering those materials, knowing those would be important artifacts for us in the future.

Thompson: I have to tell you, this is something that is a bit of personal pride for me, but I remember calling Bob, oh, this was maybe two or three years into the project. And, you know, occasionally reporters would call and want to know some bit of history about the Capitol. And I called Bob and said, hey, do you want to come speak to this reporter? They’re asking questions about the history of the Capitol. And Bob told me, I’ll never forget this as long as I live, because it means so much to me. Bob said, "Trait, you know as much about the Capitol as I do. Why don’t you just do that interview?" And I just thought, whoa! (laughter)

Thompson: I think I walked two feet off the ground for the next week after that, because Dr. Bob Blackburn is telling me that I am like somewhere in his league on something of history. It was a big moment for me.

Blackburn: Well, and you deserved it because I saw you developing during that project and gaining confidence. And of course, for you to do that project properly, because there was so much unknown. We don’t, we didn’t have the paint schemes. He didn’t know the colors. He didn’t know, some of the uses of the building were a mystery. You know, you saw what was on the plans, but you did the research, and you made sure, stayed true to the to the basic nature and the beauty of the Capitol, and then incorporated the changes that have been made over the years and tried to figure out what are the next needs of that State Capitol. And I think you accomplished that very well.

Thompson: Well, I appreciate you saying that. And I certainly don’t ever want to give the impression that this was a one-man show, because the restoration of the Capitol was literally hundreds and hundreds of people, everyone from the architects and the engineers who helped plan the work and make sure it was all being done correctly, to the construction folks and the teams who worked out all the logistics. We worked in an occupied building the entire time of that project, which was no small feat. And then, you know, one of the things that I’ll never forget about the restoration is we dug up the entire basement because we had to put all new subterranean plumbing in. We had to put in all the conduit for the electrical. And I just remember workers, a whole line of them, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, hauling dirt out one wheelbarrow at a time and just thinking, these people are incredible. I mean, the amount of work that it takes, there wasn’t a machine that was going to do it. There wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t an easy way to do it. It was one wheelbarrow at a time. So you talk about that level of hard work and dedication that went into this. And then I think about our stonemasons. I think about the people who restored the windows.

There was just so much love that went into that building. Everybody working on there knew that they were not only working for themselves, but their children and grandchildren were going to get a chance to really enjoy and experience that building. And so, not a one-man show by any stretch. I feel very privileged and very blessed that I got to be a part of that project. And then I got to help, in some way, form, or fashion, it be successful. But it was a team effort, and Oklahomans and people from really all across the country pitched in and made that project what it was.

Blackburn: You know, another challenge you had, Trait. And, it’s one of the things when I worked on the museum exhibit, started writing that copy, I wanted the title to be We the People. In a way, that was a challenge for you and the architects and everyone planning the restoration, because there’s no one entity that controls the Capitol. It is really the home, it’s our home. The people of Oklahoma, the citizens, and because government is really just a combination of people working for the common good. We elect the officials. We have commissions that are appointed and confirmed and people serving the state’s needs. But that lack of centralized authority over the Capitol is something you had to deal with is that you had the House of Representatives and the Senate and the governor’s office, the Supreme Court, all of these different entities who felt like this was their terrain, when in fact it is the property of the people of the State of Oklahoma. And so you were working for all the citizens from Cimarron County to Choctaw County, and that added to the difficulty.

But I think that what people see now, if they go to the Capitol, they go to the little museum. If they see the documentary, we’ll talk about it here in a minute, I think they will see that the spirit of the project was on target from the very beginning, really starting with the with the dome project that we’ll talk about here in a few minutes. So from the early 2000s all the way to the present day, it’s still unfolding. You’re still trying to put together you know, a completion date, but I think it stayed true to the to the nature of what the Capitol means to all of us in Oklahoma.

Thompson: Let’s get into that a little bit. And our Capitol has kind of a wild and wooly story. Our capital city starts out in Guthrie, and then June 11, 1910, is when there’s an election to choose between Guthrie, Oklahoma City, and Shawnee. And so what’s going on in Guthrie around that time and why did Charles Haskell want to get the heck out of Dodge, so to speak?

Blackburn: Well, if it is a problem, or at least the issue began when Congress in the Enabling Act says yes, you can put together a Constitutional Convention. You can create a state, but the capital will stay in Guthrie. And at the time, Congress, strongly Republican majority, the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, most of the state, or the territorial officials, have been appointed by a Republican president. Guthrie was a Republican town. The Guthrie Daily Leader, Frank Greer, the combative editor, probably one of the great journalists in Oklahoma history, was a staunch Republican and used the pages of the newspaper to attack the “devil Democrats.” You know, that would have been his approach at the time. And, so by federal law, when we became a state on November 16, 1907, the capital was in Guthrie. Of course, it was in rented facilities, different parts of government were spread around town. And the first governor, Charles Haskell, was a Democrat from Muskogee who came in and just locked horns with Frank Greer.

Thompson: Well, and we were an overwhelmingly Democrat state, too.

Blackburn: Yes. The Indian Territory strongly. Most of the Indian tribes had been Democrats from the Old South. So, in terms of southern traditions, it came with the Five Civilized Tribes to Oklahoma, and then so many of the settlers, even in Oklahoma City, largely to the south and west, came from Texas and Mississippi and Louisiana and the old South, like my own family. We come from Virginia and Texas on one side of the family, others South Carolina and Arkansas. Well, that’s typical of many Oklahomans. And those southerners brought in the Democratic Party politics at the time, and so it was a majority. Tulsa was an outlier because of the mid-Atlantic investors who were bringing the oil industry in from the old oil patch of Pennsylvania and southern New York, southern Illinois. So you get, Tulsa has always been a little different culturally from the rest of the state, strong Republican. The Cherokee Outlet was largely Republican because the settlement patterns in 1893 and the farmers coming in from Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa. And so, you have this political balancing act when the first governor, or the first legislature, meets in Guthrie. And, you know, we think to that today politics is bare-knuckle fighting. Well, it’s got nothing on what it was like in 1907.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: There would be journalists in a town that would get into fistfights and gunfights. And a professor at OSU, Norbert Mahnken, one of my mentors, wrote an article one time and called the article “Black Ink and Vitriol.” And that’s the way it was. They had a voice, and this is the time before radio, before television, before mass communication of any other sort. It was the newspaper was a way to reach a broad audience, and using the black ink to express an opinion and then adding the vitriol is that, hey, we’re not shy, we’re a Republican newspaper, and we’re going to go after the other party. The Democratic newspapers would say the same thing. Oklahoma City at the time was a Democratic town. Even E. K. Gaylord, who would come to Oklahoma City in 1904 and bought part interest on The Oklahoman, was a Democrat. Charlie Colcord, the richest man in the territory who had invested in the first wells in Glenpool, had made a fortune in real estate, the first chief of police of Oklahoma City, Democrat.

So Oklahoma City was largely a Democratic town, Guthrie largely a Republican town. And in both camps, people willing to duke it out, publicly. And, of course, that spilled over into the political process. Who was going to support the next candidates? Who was going to be in a position to win the next election? You add that volatility to a very personal, political landscape where people are involved. If you go to the grocery store, around the Cracker Barrel, people are talking politics. An idea of fun is to listen to a politician give a three-hour speech. Campaigns pulled people together for parties and barbecue. Politics was different then. It wasn’t some distant thing that you wait until you go to the ballot box. It was every day. And that was the situation from 1907 to 1910, as that first state government is really creating the State of Oklahoma’s governance.

Thompson: When that election is held in 1910, and it becomes pretty clear that Oklahoma City is going to be what the people selected it to be the new state capital. I don’t think people in Guthrie expected that it would move that very night. The Enabling Act said Guthrie would be the capital until 1913. So I think Guthrie probably thought, well, if we lose, we’ve got some time, you know, we can always come back, maybe do another initiative petition and or, you know, fight it out in the courts. Charles Haskell, he’s in Tulsa. He commissions this train to take him back to Oklahoma City, calls W. B. Anthony, and says, go get the state seal. We’re moving to Oklahoma City tonight. And, of course, the people in Guthrie lost their mind.

I don’t want to get too much into the state seal. Was it stolen? Was it not stolen? The fact remains is that Haskell didn’t wait a minute and moved to Oklahoma City and said, this is the new seat of government. And Guthrie, of course, loses its mind, and they immediately file a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court. And the state Supreme Court will come back and rule that because of a technicality, that election is tossed out. And then the legislature will meet in December of 1910, and they will establish Oklahoma City as the capital through legislation. And then also they’ll pick the site of the capital on land donated from the Harn and Culbertson families at 23rd and Lincoln, which at that point was just farmland, kind of in the middle of nowhere, about two miles north of the city center, north and east of the city center in Oklahoma City. But that’s what gets us to the Capitol site being selected. And then Guthrie is not to be dissuaded. They get enough signatures for initiative petition, and there’s another ballot initiative in 1912. We go to the polls again, vote for Oklahoma City again. And that finally seems to put the matter to rest. We can finally build the Capitol at that point.

Blackburn: You know, Trait, you mentioned location. Location so important in any city and what’s happening. Well, the two best proposals to move the government was Harn and Culbertson, the deal here. And it was only about two miles from Oklahoma City. If you could remove a lot of the buildings, you’re kind of on high ground looking down on Oklahoma City. As you go towards the river, of course, it goes downhill.

Thompson: High ground, being a relative term, but yes.

(laughter)

Blackburn: That’s right. But the best proposal, the most generous proposal was Israel M. Putnam, after whom Putnam City is named, wanted to grant a lot of acres, raise the money to build a Capitol, but it was going to be as far west as Meridian on 39th Street, on the interurban as it went out west. And that was going to be so far away, city leaders like E. K. Gaylord and Charlie Colcord and and Joseph Huckins and the people who are in this conversation say we don’t want that that far away. We want this to be part of the city.

Well, one last little note on the location, because it’s here at 23rd, what will become Lincoln eventually, when Epworth College finally folds and leaves Oklahoma City in 1911, the medical school has to go somewhere. The legislature says we need a state medical school instead of the private medical school. So it’s going to be part of state government. Well, typically it would have gone to the university town, but not enough doctors in Norman to serve as faculty. So it had to stay in Oklahoma City. So, where do they put that first medical school that the state sponsors? Just south of the Capitol on 13th Street. That becomes the seed that’s planted for the Health Science Center of today that is driving so much of the economy of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma and coming up with cures to diseases, and serving people, and just doing so much for our quality of life. So location was important.

Thompson: Yeah, and it was a great location. It was not too far via streetcar, although it was, you know, like I said, out in the middle of farmland. But yeah, the I. M. Putnam site, while it might have been good, it was about a 30-minute streetcar ride from downtown Oklahoma City, and the stockyards were fairly close by, and it smelled out there. And lawmakers decided, we don’t like that site out there. It smells a little funny. To some, might be smells like money, but they said, we’re going to go up northeast of downtown Oklahoma City, and that’s the site that they ended up working out.

So, we get an architect on board, and I want to talk about this a little bit. The architecture firm that designed the Capitol was Layton & Smith. Solomon Layton had been born in Iowa. He came to Oklahoma in 1902. He set up his shop as an architect in El Reno and then ultimately moved in to Oklahoma City. So by that 1912, 1911–1912 timeframe, he’s already a pretty prolific architect in Oklahoma. And he has designed, I mean, the list of things he’s designed in the state of Oklahoma: schools, courthouses, university buildings, homes. And then he gets the shot, and they design the Oklahoma State Capitol building. He’s got over 50 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.

Blackburn: Two-thirds of the of the county courthouses or more designed by he, and he had different partners— Hicks, Forsyth. But before he got this job, he had designed the OPUBCO building for E. K. Gaylord when he organized the Oklahoma Publishing Company. He had designed the Oklahoma High School, which later became Central High School. Today, it’s the law school for the OCU library, excuse me, law school for OCU. And he had been prolific, and he loved that neoclassical look. And so he was the architect of that time and knew how to get the jobs, knew how to work with the elected officials, and knew how to work with construction companies at the time. And his fingerprints are all over this project.

Thompson: Yeah. And one of the things I always like to talk about is this Capitol was designed to have a dome, but we didn’t put a dome on the building. And there’s some myths that I always like to try to dispel about why we didn’t do that. First of all, our budget to build the Capitol was $1.5 million, which even today, we can lose that much money in the couch cushions at the Capitol. But back in those days, it’s a hefty sum of money. But compared to other similar capitols, it was about $1 million short. So James Stewart and Company that built the Capitol had just come off building the Utah Capitol, and their budget was $2.5 million. And so, Oklahoma City, because of what you had mentioned, we had been paying rent in downtown Oklahoma City office buildings for years. You know, you figure by the time we start building the Capitol in 1914, we’re a state for seven years. By the time the building is finished, we’re a state for ten years. We were tired of paying rent. So, we want to get a Capitol built big enough to put all of state government underneath that one roof.

But when you look at the cost of the dome, so the building was costing $1.5 million dollars. Up to $500,000 was what it was going to be to put the dome on the building. And so early on in the project, and this is in 1914, they decide we’re going to wait on the dome. The legislature says you’re going to put the structure in place to hold the weight of a dome in case somebody wants to come on and put it later, which turns out to be a good decision. But we didn’t run out of money. I hear that one a lot. We ran out of money, and that’s why we didn’t build the dome. Well, no, we knew ahead of time we weren’t going to have the money to put the dome on. And then also, I always hear about material shortage during World War I, and that’s why we didn’t build the dome. And that’s not true either. In all my research I’ve done, that never really enters into the conversation about materials. It’s a pure, I have a million and a half dollars. I have to get a building this big to get everybody into the building. So what’s the first thing to go? That pretty little ornamental piece that doesn’t really serve much of a function. And that’s why we didn’t put the dome on the building. Although Solomon Layton, you can go back. We have those drawings in our archives; it was always intended to have a dome.

Blackburn: And you know, Trait, that kind of leads into why we had so many years without a dome is that the nature of Oklahoma politics is that the way the Constitution was written. The legislature has been dominant over the years. It was a weak-governor system, and that’s the way the people of Oklahoma wanted it. They feared central authority. They wanted their own people coming from their communities to the Capitol. Well, and at the time, the legislature met only every other year. So they would come in the winter, stay until the late spring, go home. So they were here three or four months a year, every other year. And to them, success was what could they do for their district back home? Success was not embellishing the Capitol and adding a very expensive dome. If there was an extra million dollars, they wanted to split it up into more highways, support for county government, support for the health system, or whatever it might be. The services that their voters wanted. So, it was it went against the nature of Oklahoma politics to centralize any kind of an expenditure in the capital city, especially when most people in rural Oklahoma thought, oh, those snobs in Oklahoma City just want more for their quality of life. And so it just lingered for years where the dynamics were never there to say, let’s finish that dome and appropriate enough money to do it.

Thompson: And that was, it was a controversial decision. There were people across the state, some of them who thought, we have to put a dome on to finish our Capitol, others who thought, total waste of money. Stephen Douglas, who’s on the Capitol Building Commission, said “in modern architecture, the dome has no place. It would cost $250,000 to put one on this building, and it would, however, be all expense without any use whatsoever.” Robert Williams said, “I’m not against putting a dome on the Capitol, but I do think the time is right just now... I do not think the time is right just now for spending that much money when the state is in need of so many other necessary and useful institutions.” And so, the Durant Democrat, though, had an editorial where they said, “there has been much ridicule poked at those who believe the Oklahoma State Capitol should have a dome. Just why this should bring forth such scorn, we are at a loss to understand. No one denies that it will add beauty to the structure. Oklahomans do not believe in doing things in a halfway manner, and we believe they would like to see a dome placed on the Capitol building.” So you had differing opinions on that.

But it, ultimately, it all came down to dollars and cents, and we didn’t have the dollars. Or as Robert Williams said, “We wanted to put those dollars to other uses.” So, we decided not to put it on. Now, you’re familiar with Robert Williams, third governor of the State of Oklahoma. The project, the Capitol building project was started during the Lee Cruce administration, but Robert Williams took it over. And really, he’s the one who finished it up. And if there was ever a micromanager, from everything, from how the building looked to what kind of money we were spending on it, it was Robert Williams.

Blackburn: Well, and too, R. L. Williams was from Hugo. That’s where he lived at the time—“Little Dixie.” And we have his collections in the Oklahoma Historical Society. He was on our Board of Directors after he left the governor’s office. He went on to the Oklahoma Supreme Court for many years, but loved history. And we have correspondence, and I’ll never forget looking through some of his correspondence. He was kicking little, little widows out of a rent home because they hadn’t paid their $5 a month rent.

Thompson: That tracks.

Blackburn: This guy, you know, knew how to hang on to a nickel until he could squeeze it. And he was very practical and a little sanctimonious at times. He, you know, even though we had a weak-governor system, most governors think that they know best and that if everyone would just listen to them, everything would be okay. And Williams was one of those. He was a very capable person, very literate, good writer. And, but he was kind of a skinflint little, little bachelor guy.

Thompson: Yeah. It’s a really interesting. I found this great story, and this tracks with his reputation as well. He was walking the job site one day, and they were putting the stone on the exterior of the building, and he notices a stone on the front part of the building that’s a little bit discolored, and so he’s really unhappy about it. He calls over the superintendent for James Stewart and Company, a man with the last name of Frederickson, and he says that stone’s discolored. I want you to take it off. Put a different one up there. The superintendent says, well, you know, it’s going to cause all this extra work and then it’ll decrease the stability of the stones around it. We will give you a $5,000 credit to the project just to leave it up there. Robert Williams was having none of it. And by the way, I did the math on this, $5,000 in 1916, ’17 is equal to $128,000 credit today. So, no small potatoes. That was a pretty nice gesture. Anyway, they, Robert Williams is not budging. Take that discolored stone off my Capitol. They finally agree that they’re going to go into arbitration. They go into arbitration over the stone. After the end of all this process, everyone agrees. Just leave the stone up there. You know, it’s not hurting anything. Leave the stone up there. But he was not happy about it. He was really upset about that. I tried to go find that stone because it had a fairly good description of where it was, and I went and walked to the front of the building, and I couldn’t find it. Over the years, the coloration and the elements have made it blend in with all the other stone. So if Robert Williams is listening out there, it didn’t turn out so bad, you know?

Blackburn: So that’s good story. I had not heard that.

Thompson: I found that I think in an article that was published in the 1950s in The Oklahoman newspaper, and it was somebody recounting the story of the Capitol being built. And, oh, I can’t tell you how much I loved reading that story when I found it, because it just tracks so well with him. The Capitol was finished in June the 30 of 1917, and, I found this quote. So the legislature moved in January 2, 1917, first day of the legislative session. The legislature moved in before the building was finished because they were done paying rent in downtown. And Representative D. B. Collums said, “when the pounding of the hammers got too loud, the legislature had to adjourn for the day or else go into some other part of the building.”

And I have to say, that gave me some PTSD a little bit because we made so much noise during the Capitol project. And as you know, we never emptied out the building during that entire time, and so I can’t tell you how many times we were making noise, and I would get a call from Governor Fallin or someone in their office going, governor is having a press conference. Can you guys stop the noise? Or, you know that we’re doing the window restoration, and we had these thin partitions that was between the guys that were working and the people on the other side who were trying to do their daily office work. And there was weird smells, and there was noises. So, Representative Collums really resonated with me as he’s talking about trying to get some work done in this unfinished Capitol that was not heated, and there was noise and dust everywhere. I’m like, well, that was the, you know, six or seven, eight years of the Capitol Restoration Project.

And then, of course, World War I, we go into April 6, 1917, the United States enters World War I. So we don’t have a large celebration. We don’t have a big parade. We don’t have any grand fireworks or festivities when the Capitol opens. It just, we open up the building and we go on about business because our attention is on other things. And so, as we go into, a little bit more of the Capitol project, I always like to talk a little bit about one of the unique things about our Capitol is if you come up to the exterior of it, you see this giant oil derrick on the on the front side of the building. Can you talk a little bit about our penchant for drilling oil anywhere and everywhere we find it, including right up to the base of the Capitol?

Blackburn: Well, of course, the Oklahoma City Oil Field blew in December of 1928, but it was at Southeast 59th and Bryant. So far, it was seven miles south of the Capitol building, and but the field started moving towards the north, got to the river, leaped across into neighborhoods on the north side of town. Then the city council said, no more drilling in these zones. And so they tried to do zoning, to say keep these drilling pads out of your backyards. But then we have a new governor elected in 1934, took office in February 1935. E. W. Marland, who was an oilman who created Marland Oil in Ponca City that became Conoco. E. W. Marland knew the value of the oil under the capitol, and under the laws of Oklahoma, the first to grab that oil gets it. And so he knew that if they were drilling wells around and it was sucking the oil from out underneath, the state was going to lose that revenue. So he defied the city fathers and says, no, this is state land. This is not city land. Your zoning laws have no effect here. And he was right, under the law. He allowed that first drilling. And as they started drilling wells up the median, at one point, there were probably a dozen oil wells from 13th Street to 23rd Street. And when they got to the Capitol, they knew there was oil under the Capitol.

And everyone thinks that horizontal drilling is brand new. Well, it’s not. They had that in the 1930s. So when they drilled what they called Petunia #1, they did a 70% slant drilling, and that is considered horizontal drilling. Now it was very difficult. Would have taken a great driller with rotary at the time, because you don’t know what’s going on down hole, but they could manipulate it where they actually went below the Capitol pulled oil.

Thompson: A mile and a half below.

Blackburn: A mile and a half, and that was still pumping when I started work for the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1979. So, many of those wells up and down Lincoln were still producing. There were still oil tanks on state property at the time. And there were were several wells on the west side, and I was able to get one of those derricks. The Senate wanted more parking spaces, so they were going to take out another derrick, and that just kills me losing another historic derrick. So I went to the pro tem at the time, Stratton Taylor, and said, Senator, I won’t embarrass you in the public, but tearing up part of historic Oklahoma City’s history here. But if you’ll pay to have it moved over to the new site of the Oklahoma History Center, we’ll make it part of an exhibit. Well, we have that oil derrick right here on the grounds of the History Center. But oil was very important not only for the revenue, but it changed the landscape. And if you understand the importance of oil and gas in the history of Oklahoma, it’s a point of pride.

And Governor Keating, whose father was in the oil business in Tulsa, had been in Pennsylvania, saw that, and he was the one that raised the money, and Phillips Petroleum donated some money, and they came in and fixed up those tanks and painted them. And they, I think they plugged the well at the time,

Thompson: 1986 is when they plugged the well.

Blackburn: Was that it? I remember, I went to the dedication of that, in fact, I may have spoken at that dedication, but, to me, I’m glad that’s there. And I’m glad when you all did the renovation of the Capitol grounds, that was continued to be a part of the project.

Thompson: Well, it’s kind of funny. I posted a picture of the Capitol. This has been two or three years ago, and somebody who I didn’t know had a comment on there. They said why did they put that oil derrick off-center from the Capitol building? (laughter) And, you know, as if it was done in a decorative manner. And I had to respond to them. I said, well, I think they just drilled where the oil was. I don’t think they cared about the aesthetics of it, and that’s really true. If you look at photos of the Capitol from the 1940s and ’50s, there were oil derricks just dotting all around the Capitol grounds, and nobody cared. It was really about this idea of of getting the revenue from the oil, just like you said, what E. W. Marland was interested in. And, you know, there are still oil wells, now not directly, directly right next to the Capitol, but there are still oil wells that still produce around in the Capitol complex area, and we were interested in that.

And today, there are two large derricks that are adjacent to the Capitol. One that’s right in front. That’s that Petunia #1 or State Capitol Well Site #1. And then there’s one directly behind the Capitol to the north and the west that still exists. And both of those are capped off and don’t produce anymore. But it’s an important part of our history, and it tells an important story about the revenue that we gain in oil and its importance to our state. The Jim Thorpe office building that is to the south and west of the Capitol was built with oil revenues, and so was the armory just down the street that was built in the 1938–1939 time frame.

Before we kind of start to wrap up here and get into our guests today. I think it’s important we also talk about a little bit about the inside of the Capitol. And over the year, when the Capitol was finished, it was really just white floors and white walls. There wasn’t a lot to see other than the ornamental plaster and the building, and of course we had beautiful marble floors. The marble was quarried in Alabama. We had the wall bases and stairways that marble came from, that marble came from Vermont and beautiful ornamental plaster, but not really much was painted at the time.

And it, we finally started, in the 1930s, to start to add art in and around the building. So in 1930, we add the tribute to the romantic riders of the range sculpture on the exterior of the building that was done by Constance Whitney Warren. I have to tell all of you out there who were going to go look at the plaque on that statue that’s on the south plaza that the plaque is false. There’s not really much true about that other than the artist. It says it was dedicated by Will Rogers, and that’s not the case. So, “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, not a big fan of Will Rogers, and so Will never got up to dedicate that statue. It wasn’t even really formally dedicated until I think, I don’t think it was Johnston Murray. It was 1957 when it was finally, formally dedicated.

But then on the inside, we start to add art. In 1928, we have the Pro Patria triptych, which is the three murals on the inside, right up above the grand staircase, and that pays homage to our soldiers who fought in World War I. And in fact, there’s over 2,700 names that are written on those murals of Oklahomans who died in World War I, and that was donated by Frank Phillips, painted by Gilbert White in Paris. And that was a big, major addition to the Capitol, and then we finally start to get more art. Charles Banks Wilson in the fourth-floor rotunda, an artist from Miami, Oklahoma, who did the four portraits. So, we have Jim Thorpe. We have Robert S. Kerr. We have Sequoyah and Will Rogers. And then up at the top, those wonderful murals telling the story of the history of Oklahoma starting in the 1500s and working their way in a clockwise fashion all the way to the statehood era.

Blackburn: Well, and fortunately for us, Betty...

Thompson: Price.

Blackburn: Price, Thank you. Betty Price was head of the Oklahoma Arts Council. Governor Nigh appointed her to that position, and there were federal funds becoming available for art. And so Betty was able to encourage legislators and others to donate. And they started on those projects, and that added tremendously to the art. I still give tours of the Capitol, where I can just go in and pick four or five paintings and tell the story of Oklahoma history. And Charles Banks Wilson, the great muralist from Miami, did such a good job on those four murals around the rotunda. It tells the story of Oklahoma, largely from European exploration all the way through the 1980s. But it’s wonderful art, and Charles Banks was a gifted artist.

Thompson: Yes, and in 1998, another person who was really instrumental to adding art in the Capitol was Senator Charles Ford, and he forms up a nonprofit group that begins commissioning art pieces to tell the story of the history of Oklahoma. I’m happy to say today, after the restoration of the Capitol has been completed as of 2022, and we had $1 million in Art in Public Places funds that was used to enhance the art in the building, add more art to the building. The Capitol will be the largest public art museum in the country, or in the state after all of the art is added in, and all the newly commissioned pieces come in. Let’s talk a little about the addition of the dome. So, Governor Frank Keating is who we have to thank for that. And one of his big initiatives was the beautification of the area, not just the Capitol itself, but the area around the Capitol and Lincoln Boulevard and saying, we have to have, we have to think better of ourselves, and have to do things a little bit better. And Governor Keating, you know, thankfully, he said, we have to finish our Capitol. It’s not a good message for Oklahoma to have an unfinished Capitol.

Blackburn: And that dialog had started during Henry Bellmon’s administration in the ’80s. I remember G. T. Blankenship and others saying, we’ve got to do something about it, but it never really took hold. And so, it was an issue when he comes along, but people may not remember it. There were a few old motels still surviving on North Lincoln, and there were ladies of the night making a living there that we don’t want to describe too carefully, at least I’ve heard that. But anyway, you could you can spot it when you’re driving north. And it was a depressed area, and people like Jim Hamilton in the House of Representatives, Senate before that, saw what state agencies were paying for rent around Oklahoma City, so why not bring them back in to the Capitol? Let’s do Lincoln Renaissance. That became the term, is that let’s fix up the area as well as the Capitol itself. Bring these agencies back in, use their rent money to pay off bonds. And out of that comes the idea with the Supreme Court to move out. They wanted our building, the old historical building built in 1930.

Thompson: Designed by Solomon Layton.

Blackburn: Designed by Solomon Layton. Thank you. And so what do you do with the Historical Society? Well, that led to the History Center being built, that we opened in 2005. Then that led to cleaning up Lincoln Boulevard and planting those beautiful trees and the landscaping and the parking and just to improving it. But it just shows that the State Capitol complex has always been evolving since the very beginning. Once this site was chosen, it’s never been static.

And Governor Keating is the one who says, hey, I’m going to do this. And he raised most of the money, not all of it, but most of it was privately raised, and they found a way to do it. Frankfurth-Short-Bruza was involved in the architecture. Flint Co. and Manhattan created a unique partnership to build that. I remember at the time watching that and at the dedication, and it gave everyone a sense of, yes, we can do this, we can have something better.

Thompson: And if I recall correctly, it’s the first dome added to a building since the US Capitol dome was put on during the, or added to during the Lincoln administration in the 1860s. And so, this was a this was a big, big deal to be able to get our dome on the building. One of the things I’m excited about i, as you mentioned, our State Capitol Museum in the ground floor of the Capitol. Well, that old stained glass that used to be part of the saucer dome before the dome was built was, it had been put in storage. We were able to rescue it, and through the restoration project, and restore it. I have to give a shout out to Tim Brown out of Edmond, Oklahoma, who did such a good job on the restoring all the stained glass in the building. And then we were able to put it in in that foyer, in that entry area into the Capitol Museum. So it is, it came home after 20 years, and that was really exciting to see.

Blackburn: And one thing I like about it, and we put voting machines and ballot boxes right underneath that. So that’s a symbol of the State Capitol from the earliest days. And right below it is the reason that we have a State Capitol, so people can vote, elect their representatives, and have this republic, you know, this democracy. And it’s all right there in that opening exhibit. And then you go and you see the story in one direction on the history of government, the other side, the story of the Capitol itself. But I would encourage people to go out and see that, and then soon they’ll be able to see a film.

Thompson: That’s right. And that’s one of the reasons we’re talking about the Capitol today. We had a, we’ve had the opportunity to commission a great documentary film about the history of the Capitol, about the restoration of the building, but not only that, about why do we have a Capitol and what is the importance of this building? And, Bob, you and I both got to be interviewed for this documentary and interviewed many other incredible Oklahomans, and I’m so excited about it, because it really crystallizes, you know, having a democracy in this place, we can go, and we can have our voice heard, and we have some incredible folks who have participated in this. Bob Ross, with the Inasmuch Foundation, provided the funding for this. And then Bryan Beasley, who’s a great film director who grew up in Oklahoma, lives in Los Angeles, was the one who put this all together. And so, we have, we have some great folks to talk to, and we’re going to talk to Bob and Bryan. So, let’s get into it.

Blackburn: All right.

Thompson: Bob, I’m excited for our guests that we have with us today. We have a couple of really fun and great people to be with, and I’ve had a chance to work with them over the past year or so, a couple of years since I’ve been here at the OHS. And I know you’ve had a chance to work with them even before that, when you were the director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, and I couldn’t be more excited to welcome them into the podcast.

First of all, we have Bob Ross. Bob is a fourth-generation Oklahoman. He currently serves as chairman and CEO of the Inasmuch Foundation, and that foundation was founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord in 1982. They focus on education, health, community, and journalism. He was previously an attorney with McAfee and Taft. He is a graduate of Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School and Washington and Lee University, and he also received a bachelor’s in business administration and his juris doctor from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1999. And our other guest, Bryan Beasley, is a native Oklahoman who studied at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, earning a bachelor’s degree in film and television. After graduation, he made the move to Los Angeles and has had the good fortune to work in film, television, and theater. Bryan is a renowned photographer and has photographed celebrities and music, film, television, and sports, and in addition to making the documentary Unconquered, he has directed other documentaries about Oklahoma, including The Battle of Honey Springs and The Long Road to Liberty. So, gentlemen, welcome in to the podcast. It’s so great to have you with us.

Bob Ross: Great to be here.

Bryan Beasley: Great to be here, Trait. Hi, Bob,

Blackburn: How are you today, Bryan?

Beasley: Fantastic.

Thompson: Well, I want to start out, Bob, can you, and I have to distinguish between our Bobs here. So I’m going to go Bob Ross, can you tell us a little bit about the Inasmuch Foundation? Because you guys do such great work here in Oklahoma City and in the state in general. So it’d be great if you could kind of educate us about what you guys do, why you exist.

Ross: Absolutely. Well, it’s great to be here. First of all, being with Trait and Bob Blackburn, it’s just a real pleasure. And we’re big supporters of Oklahoma history. And you all lead our historic efforts here in the state. So it’s just wonderful to be here. And then Bryan Beasley, my best friend, living out in Los Angeles. But he and I have gone to school together in Oklahoma City, and we did Boy Scouts together. We were Eagle Scouts together. We’ve known each other since we were probably five years old. So it’s great to be on the podcast with Bryan. It’s awesome to be able to work with him, you know, directing, producing all these wonderful films.

The foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, was started, like you said, Trait, by Edith Kinney Gaylord. Edith, her family were, of course, the pioneering Gaylord family who had the newspaper The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, and they had television and radio, a lot of various investments in Oklahoma City and around the country. And Edith was herself a real pioneer in journalism. She was the first woman on the general news staff of the Associated Press and worked in New York and Washington, DC. And the best story about that is she became best friends with Eleanor Roosevelt while she was working out there in DC. She was, of course, the first lady who was the first first lady to call her own press conferences. And, of course, she required women to cover those, and Edith was working for the AP, and so they hit it off real quick. But the foundation was started by Edith, with the help of my father, who was her longtime lawyer, and her dad’s longtime lawyer. And they got that started in 1982. And, Edith passed away in ’01 and fully funded the foundation in ’03, providing a gift of about $350 million at the time.

So, fast forward 20 years. We’ve given away, as of this spring, this April will mark the day that we have given away as much as Edith gave us, and we have $600 million in the bank.

Thompson: Wonderful.

Ross: So it’s been a great thing to honor Edith and continue her legacy. But we’ve been able to do some great things at the foundation, and part of that is working with you guys. I met Bob Blackburn when he was raising money for this very building right here that we sit in. And we wanted to make a gift, and Dad and I came out and had several meetings with Bob, and we ended up making a gift for one of the galleries down on the first floor. But the fun story really begins.

Thompson: I heard he suckered you into a statue.

(laughter)

Ross: But the fun story really begins when we bought the statue out front, and I’ll let Bob tell more about that. But we became really fun and fast friends because of that effort. But it really started with the fundraising for the building.

Blackburn: Well, and Trait, let me add on the role of the Inasmuch Foundation on quality of life in central Oklahoma is incomparable. No other foundation has made the impact than Inasmuch. And Edith Kinney Gaylord, if she was alive today, would be so proud of what Bill Ross, your dad, and Bob and the entire staff have done. It’s a very professional organization, and they do it from the heart. Will this help the community? Yes! And it was the same way with the History Center, one of the first major donors. I wanted to have six major donors at $500,000 or above. And Inasmuch said, yeah, we’ll be one. And then later, I’ll never forget. Bob said, well, what more can we do? And I said, wait a minute, I do have something up my sleeve.

(laughter)

Thompson: Funny you should ask.

Blackburn: It was that, the Unconquered. Of course, that was the last piece of sculpture done by Allan Houser before he passed away out in Santa Fe. And it’s called Unconquered—the unconquered spirit of the Oklahoma story. And the Apaches were the last of the tribes to be removed to Oklahoma in 1892 as prisoners of war. So they had all these challenges. But yet Allan Houser’s dad, Sam Haozous, accomplished so much. Later, when I met Bryan, we worked on the film on Sam Haozous as well as Allan. But buying that statue helped brand the organization. The donation to the gallery helped us pull together the exhibits. And then on top of that, the Inasmuch Foundation has been helping every year with the grant to make sure that every schoolchild can come to this museum without paying. So every year, because of that continuing grant, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of students come through this museum understanding the story of Oklahoma, looking at these heroes, and listening to the stories of challenges and opportunities.

Ross: The yellow bus brigade. They get on the yellow bus. That is such a great reflection.

And the thought popped into my mind, we’re here today because of Unconquered, the statue, and that’s why we’re all sitting here. And I’ll tell you why. Yes, Bob did talk us in. Dad and I came out and asked what, what more? And he said, we really need the statue. And so we went out to the Houser compound in Santa Fe and selected the statue, and it was brought here, and of course, it now graces the entrance of the museum. But then Bob Blackburn had the great, wonderful idea of doing a documentary on Allan Houser and his life. And we had lunch at the museum cafe, and he pitched me this idea and pitched Dad and I were there together with Bob Blackburn. Well, we said, of course, I said, except one caveat. We approve everything, but Bryan Beasley has to be the director. And Bob Blackburn was like, great. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but,

Beasley: Who? (laughter)

Ross: That sounds great. And so then Bob, then Bryan Beasley has a great story about that. But that has led to all these other films. You know, buying that statue, telling that story has led to all these other films.

Thompson: So, Bryan, that’s a perfect segue into talking a little bit about you and your history. And you’re Oklahoma born and bred from Oklahoma City, and you grew up, and Bob Ross is your best friend. But I love to hear a little bit more about how your career and how you get to where you’re going, because quite frankly, I think your life is pretty fascinating, and the things that you’ve been able to do, and you should follow Bryan’s Instagram page, because every other week he’s photographing some celebrity out there, and it’s just, it’s incredible. So tell us a little bit about how you got into this.

Beasley: Yeah. So, I mean, exactly how Bob described it, I get this phone call, and Bob Ross was like, hey, I know you’re coming to Oklahoma, and I think I was coming for a wedding. This is probably like 2014 or something like that. No, no, this was like 2008, right?

Ross: Earlier. For sure.

Ross: I was going to say 2008 or 9.

Beasley: The film, I think the film came out in ’09. So this would have been like, yeah, summer of ’08 or something like that. And, so yeah, at that point I never directed a documentary before. I had done lots of music videos. You know my photography career was in full swing, but directing-wise, I mean, when I came out, I graduated from NYU film school, and I came out to Los Angeles, my thing was like, I’ll direct traffic if they want. Like, I was just like, I’m not going to say no to anything when it comes to directing. And, like I said, I mean, I had done some videos, I’d done lot of theater. So I was building my resume, but I was still quite green when it came to directing anything, quite honestly. And so I come to Oklahoma City for this wedding, and Bob’s like, listen, we’re going to meet with Dr. Bob Blackburn over the history, the new History Center. You got to go see it. And, and we’re going to do this documentary on this artist. And, I was like, okay, can you tell me? And he’s like, we’ll talk about it there. You don’t need to know anything. Just show up. I’m like, great.

So on the drive over to the Oklahoma History Center, which I’ve never been to before, I get a text from Bob, and he was like, I can’t make it. But you’ll be fine. Just tell them who you are, and meet with Dr. Blackburn, and you’ll be good to go. And I’m like, okay. And I’m thinking, he told me, that we were going to meet, like, in the café. And so, a complete novice that I was, I show up in like, a t-shirt and jeans, and I’m met at the front by, you know, Dr. Blackburn’s assistant. So sitting there like, oh, right this way. And they take me to the executive offices, and I’ll never forget walking into like a boardroom. And there’s Dr. Bob Blackburn, there’s Dan Provo, I think Jeff Moore was in there. There’s a whole bunch of the board, basically, and they’re all in suits. And I look like the biggest schmuck, honestly. (laughter)

Beasley: And I walk in, and they go, Dr. Blackburn goes, so, I’m sure Bob Ross told you everything that we’re looking for. So, how do you see this film? And I’m like, I don’t even know what we’re doing. I don’t know Allan Houser’s name, I don’t know, and I just turn around, and I go, how do YOU see the film? (laughter)

Beasley: So I’m totally, to say the least, Dr. Blackburn saw right through that. And I definitely left, and, you know like, I, I kind totally BS’d my way through the rest of the meeting, and I was like, no, I’ll get my team together. But when I walked out of there, I was like, oh, man. I got to get back to LA, and we got, I got to get my producers together or we’re going to lose this. Like, I was not impressive in the room at all. And, so, yeah, that’s exactly what I did. I got back to Los Angeles, and I brought in the Sloggatt brothers to my producing partners at the time. And I remember we put together, like, a mock DVD, and I dived into the research and, you know, honestly.

And I mentioned this part too at Dr. Blackburn’s retirement party. I think he’s still wasn’t 100% sure on me. But the very first interview we did in Santa Fe at the compound was David Redding, who’s the main historian there for the Allan Houser family. And I interviewed him for like four hours. And, I mean, we went deep on really the meaning of Allan’s art and his life. And I remember walking out of there and Blackburn coming up to me and was like, “you did good, kid.” And I was like, ahh, but he sat in on the interview, and he’s never sat in on an interview since. And so I like I was like, I passed from then on out, and that was the first of four films that we did together. So, but yeah, it was, it was, you know, we had, we had to, we had to get our ducks in a row, but it’s been amazing. It’s a real amazing road working with everyone on this podcast, honestly.

Thompson: Well, it’s, that’s a great story. And now we’re looking at our, what fourth, fifth film about Oklahoma history that Inasmuch has been a big part of sponsoring and, the reason we’re talking here today is we have a brand new film coming out, and this one’s called The People’s House, and it’s about the history of the Oklahoma State Capitol. And so when I came on to the Oklahoma Historical Society after Bob’s retirement, you guys were just finishing up The Battle of Honey Springs documentary. And I saw that documentary, and I was just completely blown away. It’s such a great documentary, and it’s going to be coming to OETA hopefully pretty soon, so everyone will get a chance out there to watch it. Of course, you can go to the Honey Springs Battlefield site, and you can watch it out there too. But it just told such a unique story about Oklahoma in a compelling way. And so I think I’d known, Bryan, I’d known you and Bob for about 15 minutes before I was like, hey, want to make another documentary?

Ross: I remember we were at dinner.

Thompson: Yeah, we were at dinner together. And I said, listen, I’m just coming off, I worked on the State Capitol Restoration Project for a little over six years, six-and-a-half years or so. And I just said, the story needs to be told. I’d seen some other documentaries about other state capitols, and I said, let me tell you about kind of a vision for making a film about the Oklahoma State Capitol. And I was so thrilled that these two people that I barely met were like, that sounds really cool. Let’s do this.

Ross: Absolutely.

Beasley: Well, it’s funny. It’s funny you say that because I called Bob, and I was like, Blackburn’s retiring? Who’s the new guy? We got to take the new guy to dinner. We were like, we couldn’t wait to get you to dinner and be like, we’re ready! What’s next?

Ross: Absolutely. And the Capitol is such an important story to tell, and it’s such a unique and exciting, really thrilling story about how the Capitol came to be, and so I watched the film last night. I know it’s still in the editing phase, but it is incredible, you guys. The animation is spectacular. It’s amazing and really helps tell the story. And the drone shot is just mesmerizing at the beginning. I just am so proud of it. So, well done. But both of those, both of those aspects of the film are just so unique.

Thompson: I have to compliment Bryan, because Bryan and his team, and I have to mention Jaime Roman and Jon Roman, who have done such a good job through this whole process. Bryan got the vision immediately about the story we were trying to tell here. And I got to admit, if we’re just making a documentary about a building, pretty boring.

Ross: It could be boring. Yeah, there’s no doubt. You know, it could be a sleeper.

Thompson: But there’s a whole philosophy that goes into our Capitol building and why it exists and what happens there. And, Bob Blackburn, you’re always so eloquent when you talk about, you know, the Capitol being, you know, this center of democracy where the people’s voice is heard, and you know, getting that to come out in all of the interviews that we did and all the shots that we got, and I’ve seen the rough cut of the film, also. And folks, he nailed it. He absolutely nailed it.

Ross: It’s really special. I can’t believe it that this is a film about a building.

(laughter) It is the most, I mean, let’s talk about the animation. Whose idea was that, Beas, and where did that come from? That is the coolest deal, the coolest way to tell the story.

Beasley: Well, I appreciate that. You know, when you pitched it to us, Trait, we were at dinner, the three of us. Every time a movie is pitched to me, I’m like, I have to see it. Like a film is a visual medium. And if it doesn’t, like, immediately start, you know, gestating visually in my brain, then I know that I’m not right for that project, and you’re right.

At first, it’s like this building. The building is beautiful. The neoclassical, you know, this massive building there. It’s very picturesque. So there was never an issue there, but it’s like you can’t just keep showing the same photo or photos from 100 years ago of the same building over and over again. You’re right. It becomes, as Bob said, a sleeper. And I was like, animation can really lend itself to this, and it wasn’t just even the animation of the building, it was the animation of the history that’s happening around the building, the history that’s happening around the state, and you know why the building was picked to be erected where it was and how long it took and all the different, infighting, whether it be it should be built in Guthrie or should be built in Oklahoma City And all of that can kind of come alive through animation. And you had mentioned another film that we’d all done together and called The Long Road to Liberty, and in The Long Road to Liberty, which was made during complete COVID lockdown, we use the animation. We used kind of a different style of animation to tell the Clara Luper story. And I thought it was extraordinarily effective because, especially in that film, because there’s only so many photos of the sit-ins and stuff like that, and they’ve been used over and over and over again. And I did use those photos, but the animation brings what’s happening, brings those photos to life, and there was no shortage of photos when it came to the Capitol. You know, the archives that you have there on the Capitol are extensive. So, I knew that we could kind of lean on that. But it’s like to bring, to have the animation, kind of bring these photos to life. And, you know, there’s one really great photo of the groundbreaking. And there’s a few photos of the groundbreaking, when they went out there, and the governor at the time and the builders and they put the pick, the pickax and the shovels in the ground. And I was like, what if we animate it? Like, let’s be there. Let’s like have the camera move back. And you actually see the photographer taking the photo that we’re about to show you, or they have just shown you and, and the other thing about animation is that it brings the colors to life, and you can really, not only are you having a movement of the characters, but we’re bringing these historical figures to life, but then you can bring the colors of the day to bear visually. And so it really was the first thing that kind of jumped in my head when it was pitched to me, you know, like, let’s really jump on into some animation and really bring it to life.

And, going back to the Romans, Jaime, Jon, brother and sister producing team, they had worked with Luke out of Ireland and his whole team there. It was amazing that they were able to bring together, and it was a great part of it. It’s a certain kind of animation, and the word escapes and exactly what it is. But they had done some of this stuff for museums in Europe, but it has never been done here in the United States. And I was like, this is perfect. Like, we kind of have this proven animation technique that’s working well in the museum setting, but it’s never been done here in the States. And we’re going to, you know, we’ll be the, this will be the first film that brings that to a museum here in Oklahoma. And so, it’s very exciting stuff.

Blackburn: You know, when I look at this project, and especially in the rearview mirror, something’s happened, and you look back, and you think this was meant to be. This is one of those projects that was meant to be. Because if you think about the Capitol, rule of law. Bob, your dad lived rule of law, and he was an attorney, felt strongly rule of law. How do you use that to make the society work? Well, that starts at the Capitol. That starts with government. That’s us saying together we want to be governed. We want quality of life. What can we do together that we can’t do individually? So that brings your dad into the story. But it also takes us back to the first time I met your dad there in the First National Bank building, because I told him that day, I said, we want this building to look right on to artifact number one. And he said, what’s artifact number one? I said, it’s the State Capitol. It’s the one thing in our state that binds us together, whether we’re Cimarron County, Choctaw County, Tillman County, that is something that we all share.

And this is a state that was settled like a patchwork quilt. Different times, different people. The diversity here is unlike anything in the country, but yet the Capitol is what binds us together. That rule of law and try to do something better. And then when Trait was assigned, I knew Trait already; he was assigned to this project. He and I worked together on a number of press conferences, or like on that pickax, I brought the real pickax from our collections. I had the white gloves, ended up on the front page of the paper. But I saw what Trait was doing and really wanted this to work well, and near the end of it, Trait came to me and said, we’ve got some funds, we’ve got the space. Let’s do a museum. So we have an extension of the History Center in the State Capitol, a museum exhibit similar to what we have here, telling a story through artifacts, through graphics, through stories that binds all of this together. And then Bryan’s experience with us, working on four films, he was used to understanding what we’re trying to do. So in a way, the four of us, along with your dad, Bill Ross, it all, we all were on the stage of history at the right time to get this done, and it will serve this community forever if people understand why it’s important. People get pretty disenchanted with government in general. And the opinion of whether it’s Congress or the legislature or the president or the governor or whatever is typically fairly low in America. That’s something that’s not new. But people kind of resent that centralized authority. But to show the public why we have government, why we have elected officials, why we need to work together, why we need to improve the quality of life, that comes through in this film, as it does in the exhibit, the Capitol itself, the exhibits here. So this was one of those projects that I really consider was meant to be.

Thompson: Bryan, you mentioned the drone shot, or Bob had mentioned the drone shot, and I want to go back to that a little bit because, yes, this was something that I had had as an idea, and I didn’t know how it would work because I had watched the HBO episode of Hard Knocks with the Dallas Cowboys, where you saw the drone shot that went all the way through the Dallas Cowboys’ practice complex up in Frisco, Texas, and that shot went viral. It was unique. Everybody was talking about it at the time. And I thought, what if we could do something similar to that in the State Capitol? Because the State Capitol has a 450,000- square-foot building, how do you show off the building in the way that it really deserves to be showed off? And I said, Bryan, could we do something a little bit like that? And Bryan said, well, let’s just call those guys who did that shot. (laughter)

And, and I don’t think that we knew how expensive that would be. (laughs) Oh, yeah. That’s, I think that’s probably the most expensive part of the whole documentary. But it’s going to blow people away. You want to talk about that in a minute or two?

Ross: Yeah. And I’ll let Bryan tell the story. But normally, once the foundation approves the, you know, approves the plan, approves the, you know, the budget, you know, I don’t hear back again, and until the application process is done. But Bryan called me several times. He’s like, well, we’ve got something that’s going to be really expensive, but it’s going to be really cool. (laughter)

Ross: So, I’m like, well let me guess, we need more money. How’d you know? (laughter)

Ross: So in typical fashion, I was like, Bryan, just make it as, make the movie as awesome as you can, and Trait, y’all were on to something because it truly is special. But I’ll let Bryan tell the story because it’s really neat.

Beasley: And going off what was said, Bob, this is what makes you a great executive producer. I’ll pitch something, and you’re like, will it make it cool? I like yes, it will be so cool. Then we’ll do it, then yes, I will find the money to do it.

Thompson: I love that.

Beasley: Yeah, I remember, I remember you, you sending me and Jaime the clip from the Dallas Cowboys, and there was a little bit of a little bit of a hiccup on the side of, like, I’m like, yeah, we can do this. I mean, I talked to Jaime. I’m like, “can we do this?” And he was really, I’ll give credit where credit is due, Jaime was the one that was like, why don’t we just hire them? I was like, “Can we do that?” And, they’re called, they’re called Sky Candy. They’re out of Minnesota, and they are they are amazing.

Thompson: They were the nicest guys.

Ross: And they came from, they came from Dubai to Oklahoma City.

Ross: I was like, are you kidding me?

Beasley: They were shooting all the stadiums for the World Cup.

Ross: Yeah, for the World Cup.

Beasley: But you know we can fit you in between the World Cup and the opening of the next baseball season. After they left us, they went and shot, or, I know, the football team. They went and shot Kansas City.

Thompson: Kansas City stadium. Yeah. Arrowhead.

Beasley: Arrowhead. Yeah. And, so, yeah, we had them for two days, and they were not cheap. But what they do is extraordinarily specialized. And to go back to a word we’ve already used— super cool. And it was its own little production, like, I mean, it’s a little film, and we’re going to release it ahead of time. The four-minute drone shot will be like a short film that will be released a few weeks before we release the main film in May, and it’s exactly what we’re kind of describing. We start outside, and the drone flies through the Petunia #1, and it goes into the security gate, and it goes through the basement and comes back out, goes up around Unconquered and, and then, not Unconquered, around The Guardian, and then back through the front door. Matter of fact, we actually cast Trait to open the front door. It flies right through the front door on one take. It actually hit him in the in the rear side.

Thompson: Got hit in the booty with a drone.

Beasley: Hit in the booty with a drone.

Ross: It’s a little fun fact.

Beasley: Yeah, so we were pretty far away, the drone pilots and I. And I’m watching it on a monitor and he goes, oh, I just hit someone. And I go, oh my God, who did you hit? And I thought it was one of our extras, or even maybe it could have been worse. You know, one of our, some random person walking in the Captiol because they don’t ever close the Capitol, so it was open while we were doing this. And he goes, I look, and he goes, oh, that’s Trait. He’s our producer. We’re good. We’re good. If we’re going to hit anyone, hit him.

Thompson: Yeah, Just Trait, no big deal.

Beasley: Nobody else. But we cast 70 extras, you know, playing different roles of, like, when we go into the Supreme Court, we have lawyers debating. We head into the front steps, you see like a news crew, and they’re doing, like, a news report. We’ve got a tour of a high school tour. We kind of check up on them, we see them a few different times as we go through the Capitol, the different sections. Then we end with the Governor signing a bill. And what was the best, my favorite, favorite, favorite part of the drone shot is that I and the three of us, Bob, Trait, and I, we got to cast our families, like my entire family, came out.

Ross: Frank and I, and now my son Frank, is on the front row.

Beasley: And Trait is back there with his family. But, you know, it was really cool to bring some family friends and my entire family to come out, and they actually get to be in a film. They got to see what I do. And as my brother said, my younger brother, he’s like, oh, so directing is just you bossing people around. You’ve been doing that since we were kids. (laughter)

Blackburn: Bryan, this is Bob. One thing I’ve learned about your creative ability. You’re a great writer and a storyteller, and I recognized that from that first film Unconquered. But as a storyteller, as you looked at the story of the Capitol, what was your favorite individual story? Not in terms of production, but in terms of relevance or interest?

Beasley: I guess, really, and we start off with this, and then the you and Trait are the two historians we focus on interview-wise. It’s, just a battle between Guthrie and Oklahoma City. What other state can you say that there was, you know, there was all this backdoor channeling and there’s, you know, there’s the mystery of, like, was the state seal stolen? And again, going back to the animation, we bring all of that to life. And there’s, you know, all the backdoor politicking and, you know, we had one guy running the newspaper and the governor, and they didn’t like each other. It sounds like a story that could be told today, quite honestly. But it was happening back then. And what an interesting, it also kind of just proved like. And Trait talked about this of like the wild, wild West, like just how Oklahoma’s roots are really kind of like, embedded in that wild, wild West feeling, and just the craziness and the way the Capitol started was no different.

Thompson: Bryan, we got a who’s who of people to appear in our documentary, and I’m excited we had so many great Oklahomans who participated. You want to name some names about who people can expect to see in there.

Beasley: Well, we got Governor Nigh, we got a few governors. Well, you know, Governor Stitt makes an appearance, Governor Nigh. Governor Keating talks about, you know, putting the dome, a cap on it, as Blackburn says in it. We had Governor Fallin coming in and kind of introducing the whole, like, this building was falling down around our ears. We had to get the restoration going. My favorite is the tour guide, Bill, who’s been giving tours there I think 50 years. But he brought a really fantastic viewpoint of, like, you know, the smell of the building. It was a major thing of, like, maybe we should fix the plumbing.

Ross: Marilyn Luper, Clara’s daughter. Yeah, that was powerful, Bryan. That was really powerful.

Thompson: It was. Yeah. We’ve got, you know, Marilyn Luper; Duane Mass, Capitol architect. Jack Baker brings in some of the tribal history into Oklahoma. Amber Sharples, the director of the Arts Council. It’s just, it’s just a whole, Dr. Sunu Kodumthara, who listeners of this podcast will know because she was on our podcast just a couple of months ago. She was fantastic. But just a who’s who, Bob Blackburn was in it.

Ross: Trait, you were in it, I was in it. Hey guys, I was, I was silent.

Thompson: You were, and you did an incredible job.

Ross: I felt like it was really good. But thank you for saying so, Trait.

Blackburn: You were channeling Charlie Chaplin. (laughter)

Ross: They’ll keep that. They’ll keep him silent. I’m just good. I’m like a statue in the corner.

Thompson: And I’m excited about our narrator, too, because John Erling is going to narrate it, and he is our partner with the Voices of Oklahoma oral history project. And listeners out there will know the long-time, long-time anchor at KRMG in the mornings there in Tulsa. And so we were really, really excited to get John’s voice into this.

Beasley: Real Oklahoma.

Ross: Absolutely. And it was so neat how you pulled different stories; you threaded different stories through the history of a building. And that’s what this, you know, that’s what the job is of the historians is, you know, to find the not just not just the facts, but really make it come to life, and that’s what you all did in the film. You really, you made it come to life. You’ve made us proud Oklahomans. You told stories that were old, but some stories that were new. And, I don’t know, I just was real proud after I finished watching it.

Thompson: Bryan, do you want to give a hint about our end-credits scene?

Beasley: Oh, yeah, so, we can get, yeah, we have a, we have a nice little button, as they call it. So when the credits roll, don’t get up and walk away. There’s a little bit extra. But we’ll give a hint that there was actually a movie that was shot in the ’70s. And so you get to see, you’ll get to see a little bit of it. It’s like a full-on action piece. So Trait did a great job of kind of bringing that to life. We were able to uncover it. And so we give you a little, a little taste of some ’70s B-movie action.

Ross: I was pretty shocked an actor could fall from that height. and, well, I guess survive, walk away.

Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s, it’s exciting stuff. A little bit of a shootout in the Capitol.

Beasley: Yeah, that’s a nice tease. That’s a nice little tease—a massive stunt.

Thompson: Well, I have to say to both of you, as we’re wrapping up here, thank you both so much. First of all, Bob Ross, thank you for buying into the vision of this, for Inasmuch funding this project, and this is going to educate generations of Oklahomans about the history of the State Capitol.

So not only are we going to get this on OETA, we’re going to get it into film festivals across the country. We’re going to premiere it, but we’re also going to have it playing in the Capitol Museum, and so people will be able to see this for years to come. Of course, we’ll get it on YouTube and all those other kinds of things, but this is going to help people understand the importance of this building, not just this year or next year, but in years to come. And Bryan, thank you so much for, you really got it. You know, you understood that this wasn’t just about a building, but it was what the building represents. And that came through loud and clear in the documentary. So, thank you both so much for really understanding what we wanted to do here.

Ross: Absolutely. Was a pleasure to be here and a pleasure to help.

Beasley: It totally was. These are my favorite projects.

Ross: What are we going to do next? We got to come up with something.

Beasley: Yeah. What do we do? Any of the listeners out there? Send them, send some replies.

Thompson: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, just wrapping up. Bob, where can people find out more information about the Inasmuch Foundation?

Ross: Well, you can go on our website www.inasmuchfoundation.org. That’s a good start. And we’re also on social media channels, Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

Thompson: Fantastic. Bryan, how about you? Where can people keep up with you?

Beasley: Yeah. Instagram is the best. Bryan Beasley photo. Give it a follow.

Thompson: Yeah. You won’t regret it. He’s a fun follow, folks.

Ross: Yeah, it’s easier to list what movie star Bryan has not met because he’s met them all.

Thompson: That’s exactly right.

Blackburn: Well, thanks to both of you, what you’ve done for Oklahoma history. And Trait, good job with the State Capitol. The state owes you a debt of gratitude for making sure that was done well. No scandals. Every penny was well-invested. And, so, thank you as well. (laughter)

Thompson: Hey, it is Oklahoma. So we have to say that, right? (laughter)

Beasley: That’s right. And go buy Trait’s book. I mean, the film is basically based on Trait’s book. What is the name of the book?

Thompson: It’s called, easily enough, The Oklahoma State Capitol and published by Arcadia Publishing. And you guys can come to the History Center, buy a copy, or in the State Capitol Gift Shop, or Amazon will have it as well. So it’s a good place to go also. Well, thank you all so much. This has been a lot of fun. And we’ll look forward to movie premieres and promoting this in the future.

Beasley: Fantastic. Thanks, guys.

Blackburn: Bye.

Thompson: Well, Bob, you can really tell when you talk to Bob and Bryan just how much they enjoy each other’s company. You can tell they’ve been best friends forever. They work really well together, and we got to be the beneficiaries of that here at the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Blackburn: That’s right. You can see that they trust each other. Once, you know, we create a challenge, you know, what can you do with a video on this topic, whether it’s Unconquered and the story of Allan Houser, the story of Honey Springs, or the Capitol. Throw that challenge, and together they can come up with a vision, and they did in this particular sense, and I cannot wait for the public to see this film.

Thompson: I’m right there with you for that. Well, Bob, as always, it’s been so great talking to you today, and I can’t wait for our next podcast.

Blackburn: I will see you then.

Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.

(upbeat music playing)

---

Listen to A Very OK Podcast on these platforms

 Apple Podcasts     Spotify      Amazon Music      YouTube