A Very OK Podcast

Episode 52: “Building the Oklahoma History Center”

November 18, 2025

Episode Transcript

(upbeat music playing)

Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And here with me as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to see you again.

Dr. Bob Blackburn: Thank you, Trait. It is always a lot of fun, and I’m hearing more and more from people at restaurants or at meetings and parties. I say, oh, we’ve been listening to the podcast, and they say you and Trait have a real rapport. I said, do we? I said, I like Trait, and we get along well, and some good laughs, and they say, yeah, it’s working. So I think whatever we’re doing, we need to keep doing it now.

Thompson: I think we do have a good rapport, Bob. I don't think we last, almost five years of doing this podcast together and over 50 episodes so far. But, you know, I think one of the things that I noticed when I first got this job and we were traveling together around the state, right before you officially retired, is, you know, I’d gotten to spend time with you, and I always liked you but I didn’t get to spend a lot of time because you’re busy, I’m busy. But having the time that we’ve had in cars. We played pickleball together. We’ve done projects together. You know, I just generally enjoy the time we get to spend together. And I’ve, I’ve enjoyed having you as a friend, in addition to being a mentor and my predecessor.

Blackburn: Well, thank you. You’re doing a great job, and everyone is impressed. And so, you know, good things are happening, and a lot of it is because you know how to get things done.

Thompson: Well, I pulled the wool over many people’s eyes and, let’s just hope we can keep the ruse going as long as possible. Well, this is, it’s great to be with you. I do have something I want to mention before we get into. This is about a TV show I’ve been watching that’s really interesting. It just came out on Netflix called Death by Lightning, and it is about James Garfield and his rise to the presidency. And then, of course, his assassination, and Chester Arthur, the vice president assuming the presidency. And it’s really fascinating. It’s got great actors in it. Michael Shannon plays Garfield, and Nick Offerman plays Chester Arthur. And it’s a really good. It’s only four episodes, but I have really enjoyed it. And for the most part, it sticks pretty well to the history.

Blackburn: I haven’t seen that, but I’ll, I’ll try to find it.

Thompson: Yeah. It’s, it’s worth all of you checking out if you have a chance to do that, for sure. I always love finding good history dramas because sometimes they’re difficult to find. They’re not always well-acted either, but this one has great actors in it, and, a finer collection of beards and mustaches and, and Nick Offerman has an incredible set of mutton chops, for his portrayal of Chester Arthur as well. So definitely worth checking out.

Blackburn: Well, the, the only TV that I’ve watched lately that I remember, at least, there’s so much that you can forget. But I’ve found is a documentary series that’s partly docu-drama on Alexander the Great, like a six episode. I think it probably came out some time ago. I just had never paid attention. But I love ancient history. A lot of people don’t know that I really wanted to be an ancient historian in the beginning, but we’re going to have to learn German to do primary research, and I thought I don’t want to learn German. And, I’ve always loved Oklahoma and history of the American West is what I finally finished with. But in graduate school, ancient history was one of my four areas on PhD, one of the three in the masters. And, it’s a pretty good little series. Some pretty good acting and, you know, nothing really new, but personalizing the stories about individuals and history can really work. And if it’s done well, and in that particular series it was.

Thompson: I agree, I agree. I’ve watched some kind of docu-dramas about the history of Rome and things like that. I did, I watched one a couple of years ago. Maybe it’s three of four years ago now on the Medici family in Italy, and that one was pretty fascinating as well. So yeah, I love that stuff too. I have to check out the Alexander the Great one for sure. Speaking of not so ancient history, we’ve got a great topic to discuss today. It happens to coincide with a big milestone for the Oklahoma Historical Society. This month, November of 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma History Center being completed. And I thought we would spend some time today talking about that because, you know, some of our listeners, we may think, well, why do I care that a building was completed? But this was a major milestone in not only the history of our state, but a major milestone in the Oklahoma Historical Society being able to carry out its mission.

Blackburn: Yeah. And, there was so much going against this thing. In the article that I’ve written about it, I call it improbable. That’s the word I use because it is improbable that we were able to pull this off. And it wasn’t an individual effort. It was partly a matter of historical timing, opportunities, you know, the right people, the right places, of course. And but having the right atmosphere, but we had so much going against us. We, you know, people would refer to us as the “hysterical society” because really, we lost our way in the 1960s. Really up until the 1960s, everything of historical society was in the four walls of the old historical building. We had, we had preserved a few historic spots like Sequoyah’s Cabin, part of Fort Gibson, but no staffing, not doing much with it. It was just, we need to save it and treating those as collections is really what we were doing, but we were not a parks department. Tourism had already started in the 1950s, developing parks and some historic museums under the rubric of parks. And so in the 1960s, the legislators discovered the OHS as a place to put some of their local projects until it got to be almost 40 things we were in charge of and a long list of pork. And John Eric, not John Eric. Janet Cartwright, the attorney general, kind of cut out a lot of the pork, but that was what our agency was seen as a place that legislators could put money in our budget, and then spin it out on their districts and very little oversight. And it was not a transparent thing. So when I started here in 1979, on contract, next year, full time, we had a lot of ground to make up. And, so we started putting teams together. Blake Wade came on as a deputy director at one time. Louis Coleman was influential in all that of doing budgeting. Even David Salay, who didn’t last a year as director, brought some internal reform. And then in the 1990s is when we really started turning things around and tried to overcome the disadvantage of the reputation up to that point, especially with legislators and the public. Not many people outside of Oklahoma City were aware that we were even a state agency. People within the state government didn’t know we were also a private organization with press. And as long as the press was strong, like they were our main constituency supporting us, but it really didn’t, we didn’t have a lot going for us, but we were putting together the right people, the right team, gaining prestige, earning the support of the press. So we went in to battle in the in the 1990s, going up against the fact that rural legislators do not want to spend money in Oklahoma City.

Thompson: That’s true. It’s still true.

Blackburn: Exactly. And you discovered that when you were working on the State Capitol. That’s another improbable investment that the state had made in the last 20 years. But, they want to spend it in their hometowns, please their constituents. So getting them to vote for something in Oklahoma City was an uphill battle. We had never had a fundraising tradition. We had trouble raising money. We had a few success projects. We were getting some federal grants in the 1990s, the first ones, and got a pretty steady stream of those. And then with a Route 66 museum, we came up with a new business plan, that based on some earned revenue, some donated money from the community, a partnership between a community and historical society, and really rely more on partnerships, knowing that we would never have the resources to do it on our own. We were not Minnesota. I’ll never forget when I started, Minnesota had an annual budget of 24 million. Our budget was 4 million. It was that big a of the difference. And so we were coming up with a business plan, how to deal with the realities of Oklahoma. But then along came the opportunities too. We had people like Yvonne Kauger saying, I want your old building. So if they’re going, if she’s going to get our building for the Supreme Court Judicial Center, we had to get something else. So suddenly we were part of a conversation. We had Senator Kelly Haney, who was probably one of the most dynamic personalities in the Senate at that time. He at one time had been Chairman of Appropriations in the House. So he knew state politics, and he was a gifted dealmaker, and he wanted us to get something good because he also wanted a museum on American Indian history, which is now the FAM. And so that all was there in 1997 and 1998. Our reputation was better. We felt like we could take on something because we had a team, a good, productive team here. Board of Directors was really unified at the time. We’d gone through some troubles in 1989 and 1990 with a split board. Wanted to go different directions. Largely those had been washed out by the mid and late 1990s, where the board was very unified. Good leadership by Jack Haley, longtime archivist at Western History Collections at OU. Marvin Kroeker, retired professor from East Central. Denny Garrison, former senator, big genealogist from Bartlesville. We had good leadership at the board level, and they were ambitious. They wanted us to do something and without a board really saying, yeah, go for it. They can yank you back with a pretty short chain. But, when we had that opportunity with Yvonne and Kelly’s support, and then we got lucky with the times. Oil and gas was just coming out of its deep funk that had started in 1982 with the failure at Penn Square Bank. First National Bank in 1995. Excuse me, 1985. And the oil and gas industry was recovering. We had new technologies, people like Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward and Harold Hamm, Larry Nichols, they were just finding their footing at the time. And of course, in the oil patch, they’re always willing to take a risk. And it’s not just drilling a well, but let’s take a risk on making a donation to a good cause. And so we came along at the right time with the economy beginning to recover. And in 1998, we were able to get $200,000, which was the figurative foot in the door to say, hey, we are part of the conversation. And they gave us $200,000 to do a plan.

Thompson: Can I back you up for just one second?

Blackburn: Yes, sir.

Thompson: The old building that we had, the Oklahoma Historical Society building built in in 1930 and later renamed the Wiley Post Historical Society Building. Can you talk about the deficiencies that it had as far as having a modern museum, modern archive storage, and that kind of thing?

Blackburn: Well, by the 1960s, museum technology was changing. The way museums would portray history was changing. I call it the antiquarian approach to exhibits. You put a lot of stuff out in cases with a label. A boot from the Civil War, you know, doctor’s instrument from the 1920s. You still see a lot of museums like that. Smithsonian was going through the same changes we were. We didn’t have the the space to improve it. So we still had just a lot of cases, a lot of stuff. Antiquarian approach, very little interpretation. And then the building itself had been built for 1930s technology, no air conditioning. So how do you moderate the heat of summer in a building like that? You open the casement windows with air wells in the middle of the building. You open the transom above the door if you want privacy. Open the door if you want more airflow, and then the rising heat going up the air wells would draw air in through the air to the outside windows. And it might cool it down five or six degrees. So instead of 102 it’s going to be 95. So it was still bad. And of course, you could imagine the fluctuation in humidity based on whatever it was like on any given day. And then you throw in radiators with steam heat running those, leaking. And so humidity was up and down. That’s your enemy. That’s organic materials of course. So the building could not be sealed. And we tried a variety of, the people in charge of the building, I was not in charge of the building in the 1960s and 1970s or even the 1980s, 1990s more so, but they tried to do things. They replace the old original elevator. That was a manual operator. When I started, you actually pulled the cage to the side, pulled another door closed, and then, you know, shifted a lever to go up and down. It was, it was an old building. It hadn’t changed. And so and in terms of space, we had no space for collections and some early efforts to do interpretation that had pushed collections back. So instead of everything being out in cabinets, open storage was really what it was for decades, from the 1930s through the 1960s. In the 1970s, you start getting a few interpretive exhibits, but then stuff had to come off the floor. Well, where do you put it? This closet. Well, above that shelf over here, behind that radiator. Yeah, it just was awful. No inventory to speak of. The building could not be heated and cooled. We had a chance late. In fact, I was deputy director already. We had a chance to get a Smithsonian exhibit focused on Woody Guthrie. And they had specs on what the temperature fluctuation should be, fluctuations in temperature. We put in humidifiers, dehumidifiers on a daily basis trying to, never could stabilize it in one of the galleries on the third floor. And the Smithsonian said, well, we really want this there, so we put it up anyway. And so we created some little micro environments to help out some. But it was an impossible place, and the staff was growing as different organizations around the state wanted us to do more. We were adding staff, no place to put them. We had put historic preservation, which really doesn’t get going until the early 1970s, had to build a platform in the stacks. At one time, people called it the canyon. You look down a few doors and you look straight down the basement. And these bookshelves went three stories tall, and you’d have to access it different ways. Well, they finally covered one of those areas for historic preservation, so that was typical. And then preservation eventually moved out to quarters, eventually in the Journal Record Building, where the bombing injured some of our employees. But it was really an impossible building. Good location, right by, and in fact, it was the first building built in the State Capitol complex outside of the Capitol. So we had been a priority. A lot of school groups coming in, they didn’t charge admission, so generated almost no income. So it really wasn’t working very well. We needed something. We all recognize that. By 1988, the board had already gone on record saying we want a new building.

Thompson: Yeah, in 1982 and in 1992, there were attempts to get funding to build on to the building that were unsuccessful. And so I think at that point, later on, when Justice Kauger decided the Historical Society building would be a perfect place for the new judicial center, that’s when things started coming together to get the wheels in motion for the OHS to get a new building.

Blackburn: Exactly that, along with Kelly Haney’s desire to have two museums going, he really understood that it would be almost impossible in Oklahoma to get funding for an Indian museum. And this is before the tribes had the resources. You know, FAM was finished largely because generosity of Bill Anoatubby in the Chickasaw Nation. That was not there in 1997. The tribal enterprise was just getting started and was really not making much. We relied more on federal grants than income. And so he knew he needed the OHS to have a new building and then try to keep them going in lockstep. And so we both got planning money. So, a new commission that was established by statute got to build an Indian museum. We got the money to do our planning. At my right side, I had Sandy Stratton, who had risen up through the ranks from historic preservation. She had worked at the museum in Guthrie for a while, and I really came to admire Sandy. So I said, Sandy, I need help. So I had money to pay with this amount of money coming in for planning. So I brought Sandy in on special projects. Let’s, let’s figure out what is our vision. So what we had to do is to take what the board wanted, staff members, constituents like the press, academic community, education community, genealogists, obviously. But we were, we relied on them tremendously at the time. And, so we all went together. So what do we want? So really my task with Sandy helping was how do we come up with one plan, a planning document that incorporates what everyone wants to keep the momentum going that we can then take back to the legislature, then eventually take to the philanthropic community and say, we want you to invest. We had to find ways to generate revenue. We knew that was critical at the time, something we had never done. We had to figure out how we could raise the money, which we had never done, and we needed a new site because we couldn’t build on the old location because that was, the Supreme Court was going to get that building.

Thompson: So the plan says that you need 200,000 square feet of space. You need eight acres for parking. And it recommended a bond issue for construction funding, which you, and at that point, they anticipated $46 million from the state, with an additional $10 million in private funds raised. During the 1998 session, you were able to get a $32 million bond issue passed from the legislature, which is less than needed. But legislative leaders at the time, Kelly Haney, Governor Keating, they said, we’ll come back next year, and we’ll re-allocate the rest of the funding. And that ran into some challenges because of the economy, because then for the next few years, the state goes into a period of contraction in terms of state budgets.

Blackburn: It did. And, so the board really had to make the decision. I could make recommendations all day, but the board has to, as you know, working with the board now, you know, only lead that so far. Then you have to rely on their wisdom to make a decision. So I talked to everybody, Governor Keating, of course, he loved history. He, when he was in Washington DC, he had told me that he went out to museums and sites, Civil War battle sites every weekend. He just, and he still does to this day. We’re having lunch this next week and we talk history when we get together still. But he wanted it, and he wanted it to be Smithsonian. He wanted us to get the real Winnie Mae. And that’s still contentious between me and him.

Thompson: Oh, believe me, he mentions it to me. And I love you, Frank Keating, but he mentions it to me at least every other time we see. He’s like, “Trait, why can’t we get the real Winnie Mae?” And I have to tell you, I say, Governor Keating, the Smithsonian doesn’t want the real Winnie Mae hanging in a big atrium with a lot of natural light. I said, I don’t know that that’s a possibility, but he’s still holding out hope for that.

Blackburn: I know. And, anyway, he was an enthusiastic. And then on his, his secretary of state was Tom Cole, now US congressman from Oklahoma, Chairman of Appropriations, right? And Tom was PhD in history. And he and I had been friends. We were both in graduate school at the same time. So Tom is helping and enthusiastic. Governor Keating is enthusiastic. Kelly Haney, of course, wants us to get more money so his project could get more money. So he’s pushing that on the Senate side. But with the state revenue down, there was just no chance. So after that next year when we didn’t get it, Governor Keating said it’ll still be in my executive budget. We’re going to ask for it. Well, for people who don’t know politics at the Capitol, typically, if a governor wants it, legislators love it because then they can use that as leverage to say, we’ll never go for that, but here’s what we want. Then in the final days, they find a compromise. They each get a little bit of what they want, but never everything. And so that dialog is going on. The legislators, well, Governor Keating wants it. Let him fund it. You know, we’re not doing it. But with the revenue shortfalls, Governor Keating is leaving office. We still don’t have the money. Now, we had broken the first contract down with Don Beck, who we’ll talk to here in a little bit more about the design. Don Beck got the contract to do the design. Manhattan Construction, And this was a design bid built. The state did not give us any options other than that at the time. Well we decided we’ve got to break it into two phases. Fortunately, all my staff I had heard my deputy director, Bob Thomas, by this time. Bob was a, an experienced architect. OU School of Architecture, had worked with Bruce Goff, the great architect there. And he had had his own firm with Neal McCaleb, which was a good connection with the Keating administration, because Neal was head of transportation at the time, and we were getting transportation grants almost every year. When we didn’t get the rest of the money, I’d go to Neal and say hey Neal, instead of one million for the site development, we had to spend four million and take down those houses. He goes okay, I’ll see, and so I’d say, well, I want another million dollar grant for this or that. And we were getting those. So we were keeping things moving. But Manhattan was getting close to wrapping up phase one and spending all of the 32 million that we had. We really hadn’t started much of the fundraising effort. We had some going on, but it was not rolling. And, we really got to a point where we delayed or slowed construction for a really a year. And Manhattan agreed, we’ll go slow, we’ll pull crews off. We’ll just do a little bit here and there, try to keep a presence at the site with the management team because they said if we have to leave, re-stage, it’s going to at least a million, maybe two million more to the budget in the very end. So we were facing a crisis. When Governor Keating leaves office, new governor is elected, Brad Henry, who fortunately I knew. And, here comes Brad, a new governor. So we’re still saying we need the funding to finish this thing.

Thompson: And I want to back up just a little bit because, you know, we’re located across the street from the State Capitol. But there were other locations that were initially under consideration. There was a location in Edmond, location down I-35 and I-40 area near the North Canadian River that was on the board. There was a location near the Harn Homestead, which is just south of the State Capitol. So how did we hone in on picking this site?

Blackburn: Well, Sandy and I did pros and cons of each, and those are somewhere in my notes, somewhere in the archives. But we went through because I had to make a presentation to the Board of Directors. Here are the pros and cons of this, and it was going to be their decision. Now, of course, their decision would have a political impact if the legislators or the governor or someone didn’t like it, and then I’d have to deal with that. So everyone knew this was a critical decision where to go. I actually initially I liked the site where the Wildlife Department is now. Wildlife wanted to get out of there at the time. Their building was old and not performing very well, and Harn Homestead is right out the back door. I’ve had the great to have a museum, a history center right there on Lincoln Boulevard. So still part of the political complex or the government complex, but with this great teaching tool right out the back door, kind of liked that in the beginning. But it finally came down to where can we raise the money? Where could we keep the legislature involved? And when the site here at 23rd and Lincoln came up, it was a parking lot, plus about 41 homes that were in a various state of repair. Some were, should have been torn down, some had been maintained pretty well. And one of the the downsides of that, if we choose that location and we get those 41 homes, we’re going to spend another $3 million to acquire them, which is going to have to come out of the construction budget. So, we presented to the board pros and cons, politically in terms of what is most marketable, what will help us raise the money, what will help us keep the legislature involved with providing the money to support the staffing and maintenance of the place? And at the end of the day, it was unanimous. All 25 board members said it needs to be on the northeast corner, 23rd and Lincoln, across the street from the State Capitol, very visible. And as legislators would come out at that time, most were staying north of Lincoln somewhere. So as they come out of the parking lots, the drive right by it, so they’d see it every day, numerous times. And it’ll be close enough, we thought, for special events so lobbyists would rent the place. We put together eventually a business plan. 521 00:26:51,067 --> 00:26:5 4,904 And, we just thought that this is the best location, and the board agreed.

Thompson: And you ultimately, Speaker Loyd Benson, 1999 session, says, Bob, I don’t think there’s any more money coming for this thing. And you have to decide, you know, are we going to continue on with our big grand plan, or are we going to scale down. You know, Benson’s recommendation is that you scaled down the project. What made you and the board confident to move forward with the original grand vision?

Blackburn: Well, we could see what was happening with the economy, and the economy was improving. So we assumed that state revenues would keep going up, and state revenues are not always tied to what’s having at the moment. There’s almost a delayed reaction. And so state revenues did not keep up with it. So a little bit of a miscalculation. But with Governor Keating’s enthusiasm, our board’s enthusiasm, my enthusiasm. I and I guess goes back to basic personality. I’ve been accused of being an eternal optimist that, you know, whatever the challenge is, how we deal with it creates character, teaches us new lessons, what didn’t work, what might work, and then looking for the new opportunity and trying to seize it. So I was optimistic that somehow I didn’t know how. And, so I think my optimism was there when I made the presentation to the board. But we had people like Marvin Kroeker, and Jack Haley, some historians, and of course, we had the volunteer members, like Barbara Thompson and Denny Garrison, who believed in our mission. The genealogists wanted to go forward. We were, we were being encouraged. The press wanted us to go forward. I was talking to a lot of of senior people in the press at the time. And fortunately, I had done a couple of books that really drew in the press. The Gaylord family, for example. I wrote the history of the State Fair in the mid 1990s, which gave me the ability to go see Mr. Gaylord or to see Christy, who is soon to be the publisher. And so I was talking to people like that. What do you think we should do? And so I tried to distill all that down into one board meeting. And the board voted unanimously. Let’s just keep it at the Smithsonian National Archives level and not compromise. So we just boldly went where no one had gone before.

Thompson: And you had to wait because we go through the 2002 legislative session and there’s still no bond issue forthcoming. And in your article, you mention that you wrote a letter to all of the legislators about, hey, we’re in dire straits now, and we need to have a bond issue or this project is going to be in jeopardy with a half built structure across the street from the Capitol. And you mentioned that it was met with deafening silence.

Blackburn: Yes, I, my mailbox was not full of responses.

Thompson: And, you know, that had to be very disheartening until, Senator Morgan gives you a call and says, okay, we’re willing to do this if you can commit to raising private pledges. And if you can get a pledge for two-thirds of the House and two thirds of the Senate that they would vote for a bond issue, and you had put forth the idea of capitalizing the interest on a current bond to pay for the future bond as well, which required a little bit of financial creativity but was well within the bounds of state law, according to the bond advisor, Jim Joseph, which, you had to, you know, had have them call the House and Senate fiscal staff to make sure that, to convince them that was a thing that could be done. So there was a lot that you had to do. Tell us about getting that two-thirds in the House an Senate to sign on to this.

Blackburn: Yeah, that was the first challenge. Second would be to raise the money, the $12 million. And at that point we had raised a little bit, but not all we needed. And it was a revenue shortfall year. So as you go into a legislator’s office and say, you know, I need a bond issue, they’d say, well, we need to pay our teachers. And they were furloughing teachers that year. I think of all of my years in state service, that may have been the only year they furloughed teachers. You know, they’d furloughed state employees several times. And I had to make decisions how to do that within our organization, but never did they, because they knew that was in all their districts, and they didn’t want to do it, but they were going to be forced to do it that year. So we had that uphill battle. And so I started with a roll call sheet. I started with those who I thought would vote for it and started with them. Ma’am, sir, you know, here’s the deal. And, you know, started with a few yeses. And then I started I’ve tried to avoid the no’s, and there were going to be some that I probably never talked to, knowing that they didn’t like government, they would wish government would go away.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: And we go back to the cave, you know, times where we just, survival of the fittest. So ignored them largely and then trying to get that middle of getting two-thirds and, and Senator Morgan and Cal Hobson, who was pro tem at the time, the way they saw it, they did not want this to be a campaign issue.

Thompson: Right.

Blackburn: And if it was just a Democratic led and at that time, the Democrats still control the majority, barely, barely in the Senate, and barely in the House. In fact, that would change within two years. But, they did not want to be a partisan issue that could be brought up. And the other thing, no log rolling, nothing else could be added. Typically, the way bond issues were always put together, typically in history, going back years and years, about every eight to ten years, deferred maintenance, mainly at colleges and then around the Capitol complex, and it would build up to where roofs were leaking, enough pressure that you could put it together. But you put together 40 projects drawing in enough votes. Well, yeah, Senator, that’s up in your district. Vote for it. Okay. And that, but this one was won in Oklahoma City where most legislators don’t want to spend any money anyway. And in Senator Morgan’s offer to me on that pivotal night, and I know the exact night, and I think in the article I put the exact. It was in my calendar when we had that call, and, so I had to get that without any log rolling. He said it would, it’ll kill it if he added anything to it. And I think they knew that without adding things to it, you couldn’t get the votes. So I had no bargaining position on say, well, if you do this or that and, but it was just a matter of circling around. The legislative assistants really helped me. They’d say, well, the senator just went down to the bathroom. He should be coming back in about ten minutes. You can intercept him at the corner. You know, these legislative assistants were critical to this, and I just lived over there. I don’t remember the exact date now. I should have looked that up before I came in. I think it was in March when he gave me that offer. So I had about two months into the session. It’s always going to end, it doesn’t have to, unless they go to a special session, but the end of May. Yeah, last Friday of May, it’s going to end at 5:00. So had a couple of months only to pull this together and just keep adding one or two here, there. And I’ll never forget, I got to speak to the Republican caucus on the Senate side, and, I was making my pitch, what this is going to do for all of them. One thing I did have is we were collecting newspapers from all their hometowns. So their publishers and all these towns. And at that time, newspapers were still alive. Today, the different world. Right. We don’t have those editors out there to push. Well, then I had the editors, and the press was very supportive. And so I say, we’ve been collecting your newspapers. We have 33 million pages in our archives. Someday we’re going to get to digitizing. It’ll be, you know, my sales pitch. And then we’re doing this and that and schoolkids and, you know, going on, patriotism, you know, your grandfather’s carved out a frontier, but, you know, that sort of thing. And I’ll never forget one Republican senator from south side of Oklahoma City where you wouldn’t expect a lot of support, stood up. He said, Bob, we’ve got to do this. I just could have hugged him. (laughter) You know, it was one of those moments that you kind of say, oh, thank you. And so started picking up more votes there. And on the House side, just kept going until I had the two thirds of both the House and Senate. And plus you dealt with votes there. It reminds me a story Denny Garrison told me when he was a young representative. He had a bill, he asked an old senator to vote for, and he said, oh, yeah, young man, I’ll vote for that. Gets to it. Got votes against it. Denny says, what happened, Senator? He said, I didn’t say forever. And so, I know that they were going to change. I’d had a couple of bills fail over the years.

Thompson: Oh, yeah.

Blackburn: One person took a ride at the very end. And, so we had a couple of extra votes. And it comes down to the very day that we’re going to put the bill on the floor and another person in state government tells the Senate staff, you can’t amortize the interest. You can’t do this, because I was going to use some of the interest from the old bond issue before we spent it to actually make the payments on two years of the bond issue. I didn’t need any cash. That was probably my best sales pitch that year. I need no cash, senator, representative. You can fund this. We’ll be finished here, and in two years someone else will have to put up money. But for two years we’re covered. And Jim Joseph had taught me about that. And so, we got the votes, and the day that this lawyer on the Senate side said, well, Bob, so-and-so said we can’t do this. It’s not legal. I said, what? Jim Joseph said Gary Gray, not Gary Gray. Gary. I’m sorry, his name is not coming to me. But whoever was the bond the contract person.

Thompson: The bond attorney.

Blackburn: Bond attorney. Thank you. And so, fortunately, I had a cell phone with me, called his number. And he answered, these people never answer their phone. He and I said, Gary, I said, I’m here in the Senate office. Can you explain amortizing it? The guy listened, writes the bill, and survives. And that was like the day before the end of the session, gets up there and we get a vote and that has to go to course one house and then the other, and it passed.

Thompson: Well, and I have to mention, you mentioned in the article that the minority chairman of the Senate Republicans was Jim Williamson from Tulsa. And when I started working in the pro tem office in the senate 15 years ago, Jim Williamson was Pro Tem Bingman’s chief adviser at that time. And I have to say that, he is one of the most principled men that I have ever known. And so when you wrote in there that he said, I’m not going to vote for it, but I will let you come and speak to the caucus, that is Jim Williamson altogether. And I have nothing but respect for him because, first of all, he’s just a very honorable person, but he’s also someone who I, almost everything that I learned about procedure, legislative procedure, about bills, I learned in those first couple of years working under Jim Williamson. Another one that I just have to mention, since I’m right here talking about it, But, Carolyn Dennis, who worked for years and years on Senate staff taught me an incredible amount as well. But I loved working with Jim Williamson, and I loved the opportunity to learn underneath him. Because when you’re in the minority, if you want to get anything done, you have to figure out. You have to learn the rules. You have to figure out every trick of the trade you can to try and advance your agenda.

Blackburn: Yeah. And you mentioned Carolyn Dennis, Debbie’s on the House side. I had friends within the staff by that time. I’d been working with John Bryant and Randy Beutler and Senator Gustafson over on the Senate side on battlefield protection. So I had my network within the Senate and the House. Rick Littlefield had been chairman of my subcommittee for years. And so I could, you know, I could work with these people toward deals, and it worked. And then we had to raise the money, once we got the bond issue approved, and Manhattan continued with a construction management contracts, we didn’t have, God forbid, which saved a lot of time. So we kept them on the side. They geared back up. We start moving forward because we have the cash coming in soon. And, but then I had to raise that $12 million, or we had to raise it. I shouldn’t use the word I ever in this because it was always a team effort. But we started out raising. Lou Kerr was critical in this, because I’d known Lou literally since I was a teenager. She and my mother, they had a TV show. We’re good friends. And Lou had the Kerr Foundation at the time. So one of the first people, I go to, Lou Kerr. I said, Lou, what do I do? I’ve got to raise all this money. We’ve never raised any money. Do I need to hire a fundraising team? She said, no, Bob, she said, you can do this. She knew I was about half salesman. And she said, you can do this, and it’s a good cause. She says, I’ll make a contribution. But Kerr Foundation, she said, we always like to give at the end of a campaign. They don’t like to give in the beginning. They want to make sure something’s really going to happen before they tie up any cash or a pledge. She said I’ll put money in, but it’s got to be the last money, and I’ll get you over the finish line, but you’ve got to go to work. She told me about a couple of other foundations just being formed. That’s when I met Bill Ross, one of my heroes and turned out to be a great friend. He and I were friends until the end of his life.

Thompson: Inasmuch Foundation.

Blackburn: Inasmuch Foundation. Ethics and Excellence in Journalism at the time.

Thompson: Still a great friend of the OHS. Donates to us every grant cycle usually.

Blackburn: His son Bob is continuing that impact. But then going to Larry Nichols and Aubrey McClendon. I had met Aubrey didn’t know him well but go to him and pitch him. Turned out he was a history major at Duke, loved history, wanted me to write books on the oil and gas industry later on in our friendship. But, yeah, I’m in. So we put together a plan. Had to get, I think it was six $500,000 donations to kick it off, and I knew there needed to be some from Tulsa. Couldn’t be all Oklahoma City. This was not going to be an Oklahoma City museum, in my mind. So I had to go to Tulsa, had to go to Ardmore, other communities and got the Noble Foundation, got ONEOK in Tulsa and started putting together the big pieces as we were working on the smaller pieces.

Thompson: And you created a 501(c)3, Friends of the Oklahoma History Center to be that nonprofit arm. And you brought in Cliff Hudson, CEO of Sonic, to be the first president of that. Right?

Blackburn: He was good personal friends, Debbie and I and Cliff and Leslie and Debbie and I were, you know, dinner friends. And so I asked Cliff, who was chairman of the board, CEO of Sonic America’s Drive-in to lend credibility in the business community, because we had never gone to the business community to fund anything at the OHS. And so I said, I need credibility, someone believes that we’re really going to do this. And Cliff was in, Chuck Wiggin. John Yoeckel, some other businessmen in the community at the time. Jay Hannah, the BancFirst, and so brought these people in. So I was able to use put their names on letterhead. So I said, sir, I need a meeting with you, and the money will go to this foundation because it’s tough to raise money for a government agency. So we had a foundation that was semi, more private than even the OHS was, and it wouldn’t have to go through the same procedures as state money. As you know, you get state money, you go through hoop, hoop, hoop, hoop, one after another. But in the foundation you can spend it directly, much more efficiently, much more timely. And so we knew we needed that. So that was fairly early on. And so as we started raising money, the checks were made to the foundation. And so largely, most of the exhibits were built with private money.

Thompson: Yeah.

Blackburn: The building itself was largely public money. It’s the people’s museum. We did not want a huge amount of money coming from any one entity. We did not want to name it for anybody or any organization. It was a people’s museum. It was the Oklahoma History Center and shouldn’t have a name on it, in our opinion. The board agreed with that. And, so we had to do it in chunks, $500,000 initially. Now a lot of those donors, Kirkpatrick Foundations, plural, Inasmuch, and Ethics and Excellence, the E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation, goes on and on, which would surpass a million eventually because we kept going back for sustainability. But the way we did the fundraising, as Lou predicted, we then had a tradition. We had a method for raising the money. And she said, you got you know, you won’t be able to stop raising money when you open. If you’re going to keep a quality museum, state-financed, state support isn’t there. So because of that, we kept working with the Bill and the Bob Rosses of the world and Aubrey McCLendons and the Larry Nichols. Back after Larry said yes on the first $500,000 for the building, I went back to him and I said, sir, I may be going to the well too many times that we want to bring over an oil derrick from the old site. We got an oil derrick from the west side of the Capitol that Stratton Taylor wanted out, and I said, I’d like to do this oil patch exhibit, but I need money for it. I don’t have any in the budget. He said how much? I said $500,000. He said, I made the decision on the first. You got to sell my staff. And so, I was reaching out to Larry Nichols again, didn’t know what response. I said, I want to do an oil patch exhibit. Got a couple of derricks. We can get more, but I said I need the money. He said, how much? I said $500,000. He said, well, I made the decision on the first you have to sell my staff. So all the senior staff comes over. That’s when I met Duke Ligon, your current president of the board right now. Duke and I would become good friends and a man I truly admire, an American hero in many ways. And people knew his entire story, service to the country in Vietnam and oil patch as well as community leadership. But Duke came. I’ll never forget him because he’s about six foot two or four. You know, it could have been six foot eight in my.

Thompson: He’s a formidable man.

Blackburn: And so he’s there, and I’m selling all these financial people, legal people, community. And they say, yeah, but we want a third of it to go into an endowment to support, make us sustainable. I said, man, you’re talking my language. So we were doing things like that, and we’re able to raise the money and get that thing open in November of 2005.

Thompson: There’s one story before we transition into talking to the architect, Don Beck, in this episode, but I do want you to tell the story about getting the Allan Houser statue out front, because I love hearing you talk about talking, Bob Ross and and his father into going with you to New Mexico to get that statue.

Blackburn: Well, early on in the process, in fact, as before, Blake went to the Centennial Commission when we were just working with the $200,000 because by the time we got the bond issue, he was already gone. But so, it was early on, and I really thought we needed a piece of sculptural art out front, and as I was going around the country using that $200,000, we went South Carolina went to Sacramento, Atlanta Heritage Center, Minnesota History Center, we went to twice. And so was going to all these museums putting together ideas, and one of them was, the best ones had sculptural art out front, something to brand a historical organization, right? Not just a sign, but a brand. And so we called Betty Price. And Betty was head of the Arts Council and a good friend by that time, and said, Betty, what kind of art should we put out here? She had been instrumental in the art that was already in the Capitol and around the Capitol. And she said, oh, it’s got to be Allan Houser. Yeah, Apache Indian. He was with, his dad was with the Geronimo’s band, and so kind of got our attention. So she brought over a catalog of his art, and there was one piece called Unconquered. It was the last piece Allan had worked on before he passed away, suffering from cancer. And it wasn’t quite finished, but it was the last that he initiated. And it was two Apache warriors, one kneeling, one standing, looking out in the distance, and I just fell in love with it from the first time I saw it. Just in a photograph. So Cliff Hudson, I said, Cliff, we need that piece of art. That’s $1 million. He said, well, let’s go look at it. So we got in his Jaguar at the time and flew out to, drove, seemed like flying in that Jaguar, went out to Santa Fe and Mrs. Houser was still alive at the time. Fell in love with her too. And a couple of the sons, Bob and Philip, went out to the compound. David Rettig was their corporate manager, marketing. It was a compound. It’s on the Turquoise Trail between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. High desert. You go around this bush, and you see another piece of sculpture. You go along this path, you, an incredible emotional experience. Well, of course, Cliff and I said, yeah, this is it. We’ve got to have this out front of the building. And finally they said, well, they’ll take $750,000 for it. Well, okay. A real bargain.

Thompson: Yeah. (laughter)

Thompson: On sale.

Blackburn: On sale for over $750,000. We had didn’t have a penny, didn’t have it raised, and this is still fairly early. So by the time we get to the fundraising drive that’s kind of there and we say, well, no one’s going to buy it, you know, in the meantime. So we thought, well, put that on a shelf. So kind of set that aside. Dealing with other crises, and it gets down to it. So after we make that first round of $500,000 contributors, I go back to Bill Ross. By this time, his son had come in to the staff. And so it’s with Bill and Bob. Bob, of course, now is CEO of the foundation, but he was there. And so I’m pitching this to Bill again, and I could see I wasn’t winning Bill. But I noticed out of the corner of my eye, Bob just kind of nodded. Oh, wow. Cool. I like, I like it. And he hadn’t learned to put on that poker face yet. He didn't have a lot.

Thompson: He’s better at it now.

Blackburn: He is much better. Yeah, and he was real good at what he was doing then, but I could just kind of sense. And Bill said, I’m sorry, we can’t help so. But I talked to him and say, Bob, we really need to do this. This has got to have a brand. You all invest a lot of money. We can’t stop there. We gotta do this. And so, and I don’t remember if Bob suggested or I did, but anyway, let’s get Bill to Santa Fe to see it, the magic of the space and scene. And for our listeners who don’t know, Allan Houser was the son of Sam Haozous, who literally was fighting with Geronimo when he was captured in 1886, became a prisoner of war down near what’s now Apache.

Thompson: And Allan was born in captivity.

Blackburn: Born in captivity, and becomes this, And he changes American Indian art from the Kiowa Five, very flat art to really expressing an American way of life. Almost all of the current Indian artists would say Allan Houser was the guy. So Allan was magical within the Indian art community, and it’s just a beautiful sculpture. And, we get them out there, I go and pick up Bob and Bill. We go out to the compound, and Philip playing his flute there at the foot of the statue. Mrs. Houser, who’s about 95 years old by this time, is talking about the whole thing in this desert air, the the sand, and the pebbles, and the trees and the sculpture. It was magical. It’s funny how you know when something’s going to really happen. Bill starts walking around the statue and looking at it. Then he goes around again. I thought, hmm, he sees what we’ve been seeing. And out of that, he said, okay, we’ll do it. And so we got that funding. And then Cliff and Leslie Hudson stepped up and said, we’ll build the monumental base for it. So and I’ve seen 40 kids on that base getting their photograph taken with Unconquered. And every photograph that defines who we are, largely it’s from that perspective. It did exactly what we wanted.

Thompson: It’s incredible and iconic, and it is the identification of this building.

Blackburn: And it was the last Indian tribe. In fact, I had board members who doubted and questioned that. I never, never forget. One board member who’s quite a historian himself said, Bob, why the Apaches? Why not the Cherokees or the Choctaws? I said, well, we only use one tribe or one artist from one tribe. And I said, the Apache were the last Indians brought to Oklahoma. They were brought here not for a reservation or for the title land. They came as prisoners of war. How more dramatic can you get with that story? And those two warriors are looking out. Are they looking at the enemy? Are they looking for a place to hunt, to gather food for their families? Are they looking for a place to put up camp the next day? I said, this is a monumental sculpture that came out of Allan’s heart, of his dad’s experience, his experience of being raised in a community that says he shouldn’t be an Indian anymore. Give up your hair, give up your language, religion, give up your land, and become a good little American. He had gone through that, and he expressed it in that piece, and everyone saw it. And Bill and Bob Ross saw it. Cliff and Leslie saw it. And to this day, over a million people have walked by that sculpture coming into this building.

Thompson: And we’ll be back after this short message to talk to Don Beck, the architect of the History Center.

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Thompson: Well, friends, I am extremely excited to have a friend of the Oklahoma Historical Society with us today as our guest. We have architect Don Beck with us. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in environmental design and architecture, with continuing education at Harvard University. He studied under renowned architect Bruce Goff and has over 45 years of hands-on involvement in programming, planning, and design of diverse and distinctive buildings throughout the country. He has over 200 design awards and has been involved in the design of over 1,500 buildings, master plans, and restoration projects. Don, we’re so excited to welcome you into the podcast today. I think my first question is, how big of a house do you have to shelve all of those 200 design awards you have?

Don Beck: First, thank you for having me. And actually, they’re in the boxes in storage. There’s really no place to put them. But the next design award is going to be the next project we do. So we’re kind of looking forward, not in the past.

Thompson: Fantastic. Well, we’re just so excited to have you here because we’re talking about the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma History Center. And can you believe it’s been 20 years?

Beck: No. It seems like you just blink and then five years go by and all of a sudden now it’s 20, but it’s amazing, and the building still looks great.

Blackburn: And one thing that’s changed since we started this project that Don and I both had black, gray, or more gray hair. Way less gray hair then. In fact, we probably both had black hair 25 years ago. But, yeah, Don and I have worked together for many, many years. In fact, 1978, we got a chance to meet when a carpenter here in town, Neal Horton, said he wanted to do some of the old warehouse buildings. He hired a young architect when other firms wouldn’t touch it. He was hungry. Reached out to me, a graduate student about to graduate from OSU with a PhD and had me put buildings on the National Register, and that was the beginning of Bricktown.

Beck: That was a great project, great opportunity. And you’re right, no one else wanted to touch it. And I was working with Neal Horton on some renovation work at the Colcord Hotel, which later we end up owning and and developing as a hotel. And, the Devon, Larry Nichols took it over. But, Neal, one day he said, look out the window out here, over to the east. What do you see with all these brick warehouses? And, he had the vision for what it could be. And Bob and I got to help him develop that vision.

Thompson: Did you ever think it would be what it is today? Entertainment district, a place that draws people from all over and kind of the hub. If you come to Oklahoma City as a visitor, you got to go to Bricktown. (BLACKBURN0 Well, you know, the West End at the time was really booming in Dallas. So that was the goal. Let’s do West End here in Oklahoma City. And I think probably, I don’t know if Neal use that terminology, but it was already going because I was going there as a graduate student to party, and it was really hopping. Of course, it declined, whereas Bricktown has only gotten better. But, I think Neal had that vision of, well, you know, a Spaghetti Warehouse kind of eatery that would go into those old places and, developers getting the tax credit, which is soon-to-be 25% tax credit, for what they spend, just a federal’s dime. But yeah, I think, Neal, what do you think, Don?

Beck: Yeah, I agree. He loved the West End. And then also he looked at Larimer, Larimer Square up in Denver and the canal down in San Antonio. And so when I developed the masterplan for Neal, he wanted this canal. So I located, drew it, and actually as it turns out, it’s built exactly in the original location that I had put it on the master plan. But I said, Neal, we’ve got a problem. You know, at the beginning, you know, the elevation at the beginning of the canal is, a lot higher than the end, so how are we going to get water? We’re going to have to pump water to make that happen. So ultimately, I think that’s exactly what did happen. And, but at the time, when Neal came up and, you know, came up the phrase Bricktown, a lot of people thought he was crazy. Bricktown, what’s what? And that name really, really took a hold. And you see Bricktown Brewery, you use that, you see that term all over the place. for the name. He should have patented or copyrighted that or something.

Blackburn: And, you know, the leap of faith is hard to appreciate now because it looks so prosperous over there. But at the time, there literally was grass growing in the brick streets. There was so little traffic over there, and it was largely a place for the homeless. A few businesses had some storage there because, you know, you could probably get $10 a square foot. You could buy a lot of those old buildings. No one wanted them. And they’d been vacated with the development of of industrial districts after World War II. So when they put in the Santa Fe Industrial District, Industrial District near the airport, and then the trucking companies all had to go out to the suburbs because trucks couldn’t get down there, because everything went by rail in Bricktown. So things had changed. And Neal saw really a pile of junk and saw a dream there. And so he died in poverty. And a few businessmen here in Oklahoma City were paying his hotel bill when he, he finally, wrapped up his life. But, I admire people like Neal Horton, who saw something out of nothing and made it work. Ultimately, he didn’t make it work, but others would follow in his vision would eventually become a reality.

Thompson: Yeah, transformed the city. Don, tell me a little bit about your history and what made you interested in becoming an architect, and how did you get here?

Beck: Well, I grew up on a farm in northeast Iowa. Then my family moved to the Quad Cities in, Illinois, Moline, Rock Island area. So I, in high school, I was looking for an, you know, easy class to take. So I took architectural drafting, and I thought, well, this would be an easy A, but it wasn’t. It was tough. I got the A, but I really had to work hard for it. So I thought, well, hey, you know, I got an A in this class, I could be an architect. So I told my high school counselor about that, and he laughed. He said, no, no, you just need to be a ditch digger. You know, you’ll never amount. You could never get accepted into a college, let alone an architectural program. That’s a tough degree to get. So I walked down there, and I thought, I’m not going to let him tell me what to do. Hell, you know, I’m 18 years old. I know everything. You know how we are when we’re 18. So I thought, you know, I can, if I go to college, I will. And then I thought, well, what if he’s right? So I went to an architectural firm. I thought I’ll just try it out. I’ll try before I buy. So I went to a firm in Rock Island, Illinois and said, I’m here to apply for a job. I wanted to work for an architect to find out what it was like. And they said, well, we’re not hiring. I said I’ll make you a deal. Let me work here one week free. It won’t cost you anything. And at the end of the week, if you think I’m worth keeping, you have to hire me. And you decide what you want to pay me. You pay whatever I’m worth. But at the end of the week, you know, if I can’t cut the mustard, if I’m no good, you just tell me, and we’ll go on our way, and you don’t owe me anything. And you got a whole week’s worth of work free. But if you if you think I have potential, you got to hire me. So we shook hands, and I ended up working there about a year and a half. That was a great experience.

Thompson: That is what we call pluck. Well, that is bold. So at the end of the week, I’m assuming that you felt like you liked that profession.

Beck: I did, and one of the partners in the firm, it was a firm called Parkhurst, Appier, Marolf. And, the senior partner, Parkhurst, Howard Parkhurst, was also a licensed structural engineer and a licensed architect. So I learned a lot about structural engineering from him before I went to architecture school. So working for a firm, I actually designed a couple of buildings before I went to architecture school, and they gave me a huge head start. So I fell in love with and I thought, well, at least this is something I can do.

Thompson: Now what brought you to Oklahoma?

Beck: Well, I met an individual late one night, at a bar up in Rock Island, Illinois, and he was going to school at OU, Jay Larson, and he had convinced me to come down to Oklahoma. And I was looking at north and northeast schools. And, you know, I got down here and I loved it. And I loved the people. Didn’t care a lot for the weather. I’d never been in temperatures over 100 degrees coming from northern Illinois, but the people in Oklahoma are wonderful. They just have a good soul. And so I just really kind of fell in love with the place. And I had this opportunity to study under Bruce Goff. He came back my last semester, and so I just always seem like I’ve been in the right place at the right time. I’ve been really, really lucky.

Blackburn: And Trait, if our listeners don’t know the name Bruce Goff, they should. Bruce Goff was kind of run out of the state, in my opinion, unfairly, but it was a sign of the times of the 1960s. But Bruce Goff cut his teeth in Tulsa as a young architect apprentice. At that time, he didn’t have to go to school to be an architect. But he was significantly involved with designing Boston Avenue Methodist, which is still, it’s NHL, known around the world. And then he would work in a variety of offices around the region and end up at OU as a professor. And there’s so many architects, Don, you would be one of the youngest of his students, but, Bill Peever, who worked for the Historical Society for years, one of my heroes, studied with Bruce Goff, Jim Loftis, another architect here in town, studied with Bruce. Well, Bruce Goff was a genius, a creative genius. His specialty was design. Not so much building buildings that don’t leak, or work, but our beautiful pieces of art. And he would play music in the classroom. We have his record player in our collections. I was able to get that from his last partner, who was in north Texas at the time. He would play records during design class, and he would say, let your minds roam free, and you’ll be listening you know, to Debussy, and orchestral pieces and designing. And he liked the weirder the better. He wanted you to stretch your imagination. So Bruce Goff was very important, probably the greatest architectural designer, at least in Oklahoma history. You know, Solomon Layton, his firm would be more successful financially. And, you know, 72 buildings are on the National Register, but Bruce Goff only has a few. But to do it, his designs were exceptional, world class.

Thompson: Yeah. So let’s fast forward a little bit and let’s get to this project here. Don, how did this project to build this iconic building, the Oklahoma History Center, how did it come into your lap? How did you become aware of it?

Beck: Well, we first were notified when the an advertisement went out for the project and in requesting submittals, submissions from qualified firms of interest. And as I recall, I think there were 44 submissions. And we went through an interview process of eight and got down to the final three. But when it first came in the office, I looked and thought, wow, this is a dream project. This is what this is why you become an architect is to work on a project like this, and we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to win something like this. And, but then there was also a request to team with a nationally recognized architect who specialized in museums. And so we finally, we connected with Gyo Obata with HOK. And, Gyo and I became close friends, and we really worked on the design together. And, you know, we were just talking about Bruce Goff. A lot of the things I learned from Goff on how to how to approach a design project, the form giver, problem solving, a lot of those things that really came into play for this project, I learned from Bruce Goff.

And then they were just enhanced with working with Gyo Obata. Gyo was just an internationally famous and extremely talented design architect and so Gyo and I were working on the project, and we teamed up, and on the design competition, I got to the final three. And so Gyo and I were working together. So I flew to St. Louis to Gyo’s office and walked in to HOK. Now they’re like the large, one of the largest firms in the world, over 3,000 people. And we had at that time, maybe 20 or 25. His marketing department was larger than our whole firm. So I walked in his conference room, and there were like nine suits in there. And then this one Japanese-American individual very casually dressed. So I knew I’m going straight to see Gyo. Sat down. We became instant friends, and all the suits were there because they wanted to talk about splitting the money and the responsibility, and who’s liable for what. But Gyo and I got down to, you know, right down to the design concepts. And he said, have you looked at the site? And I said, yes. I’d been out to the site. He said let’s talk about the site parameters. And he said, so what do you think? How do you think the building shapes up? And I said, well, Gyo, you know, we’ve got this curved off and on ramp. The State Capitol is right there at the southwest. It currently does not have a dome, but there’s a lot of talk, and I think the dome is going to get built. And that could be a great backdrop to our project. And I think, you know, director Bob Blackburn has an interest to really showcase the Winnie Mae, because we have two famous Oklahomans that need to be profiled.

Blackburn: And that was in the project brief that Don received, like the other architects.

Beck: Yes, and so that was a great working tool that must have been 200 or 300 pages of kind of a direction, or almost like a set of instructions of what needs to go in the building. So Gyo and I talked about it, and our approach was that the building should be more like a memory box for all the Oklahoma special events that happened. Not really a building, but a place to hold special memories. So in talking about the site and I said, you know, we got this curve. And what if we faced the building southwest in, in right on the axis of the Capitol. So if you draw a line from the center line of the dome right through the center line of your main hall, they line up perfectly. And then you extend that line and, and focus on downtown Oklahoma City. So I said, Gyo, why don’t we just wrap it around that cloverleaf? And we thought that was a good idea. And that was the approach we took. Built the model, did the drawings. On the selection committee was the dean of the architecture school from OU and and OSU, and Frank Lloyd Wright was kind of a big friend and fan of Bruce Goff, so he had visited OSU. So Gyo and I, we talked about, well, how do we win this design competition? So we talked about the drawings and I said, well, why don’t we do this? We know we got two architects on the selection committee, and we know they’re Frank Lloyd Wright fans. And Frank Lloyd Wright always rendered Prismacolor on sepia paper. So let’s design, let’s do our drawings in that style. So we did, and I have those here today. I brought them back with me. And so that’s how we rendered. And that’s kind of how the design concept came about. You know, every building has a form giver. And then on the exterior materials, we looked at the, you know, the exterior curves south facing as kind of drumsticks, representing some of the Oklahoma heritage. The shaping of the dome over the main hall is really kind of an Indian headdress, and a lot of the materials and colors we looked at, what would you know, what are the kind of colors of northwest Oklahoma, the wheat and the colors, and so that’s kind of how it pulled together, and it was really kind of a brainstorming session and a really exciting opportunity. Not anything we thought we had a chance to be able to do and kind of hit a home run teaming up with Gyo Obata on the project.

Blackburn: And really Trait, Don had two advantages when he walked into that room. We put together the committee with the two deans, and we had several historians, a couple of elected officials. And, when they came in, one was Gyo Abata. For the listeners who had never heard that name, Gyo had already designed the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. He had designed, he was designing the Lincoln Memorial in Springfield, Illinois, at the time, and he had just done the Japanese American Pavilion in LA. And so he came in with the resumé that was just, you know, premier. Secondly, the other asset was Don Beck, his personality. Don came in, and we had several civilians. Yeah, we have the two architects. And of course they were going to be instrumental in the conversation afterwards as we all tried to grade the three. But Don’s personality came on that Midwestern kind of slow-talking a little bit, but to the point, sincere, clear, responding to what we said we wanted and, and then the design, I guess I’d need to say three things. The design itself was unique among the three submittals. The other two submissions that came from two other firms with national experts had the building at the back of the lot, with a parking between the Capitol and the building. And when I saw their model, hey, what do they think? Well, Don pushed it. In fact, we’re on highway right away. Yeah, we had to get permission from ODOT. They keep reminding me, remember, that’s still our land. Well, repossess it then.

Thompson: Come and get it.

Blackburn: Yeah. That’s right. So we were on highway land, and Don pushed it right up to the edge. And he also, another thing that I liked, knowing about the future and the past, the past is that we had outgrown the historical building that was built 1930. And, gosh, by the 1960s, we were out of space. No one ever thought we would be out of space there. Well, Don designed into this expandability. So the wings that go out either side of the central atrium curve, it’s actually, there’s not a straight line in this building, and partly so you could add another pod

Thompson: And just as an aside, I know that because one time when I first arrived here, I wanted to hang a whiteboard in my office, and I couldn’t find a flat wall hanging on. So, I learned that very quickly.

Beck: Well, we did make a mistake in the design of the building because there is a square corner, and I know where it is. (laughter)

Blackburn: You never told me that. But then, that process went real well. And the model, we still have the model somewhere down in the bowels of the of the collections.

Thompson: Actually, Don was just telling us he has it.

Beck: We do have it. We borrowed it back a couple months ago, and then for your event tomorrow, we thought it might be nice to bring it back. And we had the original hand renderings if you wanted to set that up as a display for the 20th, but you know, it’s on loan to us, the model, like when you borrow something from the Smithsonian, we’re happy to loan it back to you. Well see, we actually bought it. Part of the deal was we wanted to own the good ideas that might be part of the three submissions. And so we paid, I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t much. Probably paid for your travel would be my guess. Not your time. But we wanted to own it. So in the in the contract was, once you make the final three, whatever you come up with, we own it. So I want to be able to pick and choose what we needed to. Didn’t have to. Don’s and Gyo’s design just nailed it. We did not really change anything substantially. You know, interior, we probably did. But on the exterior, the onyx walls, you know, the drum sticks there. The it all worked very well. The precast was going to save us money over using limestone or some other material, and probably the only thing if I, if there’s only one mistake in that is that that southwest sun from 3:00 to 5:00 in the summer was a killer. But we went in, and Don worked with us to add the shades that we had today. Yeah. Within a year, we added them. It was just you almost had to give sunglasses to people coming in that time of day. But, other than that, the design worked beautifully and, you know, we have an image that was created by Don Beck and Gyo Abata.

Beck: Well, on that glass, we designed a ceramic frit to go on that glass. So at the top and I think that glass is 104 feet tall, but at the top of it, it was about 95% dense coverage. And then as it filtered down to the bottom, it was supposed to go down to zero. Well, the manufacturer’s ceramic frit didn’t work as well as what they were telling us. But the, the roller shades do the job. Yeah, well, I was convinced that was going to work as well. So. And Bob Thomas, we have to put Bob because Trait and I have talked about him. Bob Thomas, an architect on our staff working with you and your staff and Gyo and Sammy. Yeah, we need to mention Sam. Sammy, what was his last name?

Beck: Dominco. Sammy Dominco. He was part of Gyo’s team and very instrumental in, working with us on the design.

Blackburn: After that, I maybe saw Gyo once or twice before the opening, but we saw Sammy a lot. He was here meeting with Don and his staff. And because the details continue to unfold for that first year, and that first phase, the state had not yet adopted a design build concept or even a construction management concept. It was design bid. And so, and we only had enough money for phase one. So Don found a way to break out components of the project to do just phase one, and it came in under budget. Manhattan went low. I don’t know that Manhattan ever made any money on that project because they wanted it badly, because they, you know, the oldest state corporation, you know, built so many courthouses, and Francis Rooney just wanted it. So he said boy, get it, and they got it. And by the time we got to the second phase and we got the money that we were talking about, Don and his team finished up the interior, and a lot of things I would say changed, as, you know, to fit the budget. But you were very good about saying, you know, how much money we had work with? What kind of materials can we use in getting the best we could at the time.

Beck: And Manhattan was a great partner.

Thompson: Oh, and Bob, you wrote in your Chronicles article that, particularly about the dome on this building, it was tilted toward the State Capitol. So it was asymmetrical and with horizontally concentric bands of steel tubes that weighed 40 tons. And the steel worker firm said, I don’t know that we’ve ever come across such a complex design. So there were elements of this building that are, that are pretty difficult to actually put into practice.

Beck: Well, originally we designed the dome, it was erected rectilinear tubes, you know, basically square or rectangle tubes. And when we started to roll those tubes on the radius, then they would start the pucker and fold and crimp, and it just wasn’t working. So we worked and worked and tried to figure out how would we do that. And then the idea came up that, well, if you’re down at Six Flags, and you’re on one of those roller coasters like the corkscrew, those are big round tubes rolled. So actually the way that dome came about, there was a roller coaster manufacturer up in, I think it was Washington state, and they rolled those big ten, 12-diameter-inch tubes and built that basket, that frame up there. And then they made a template for all the columns and anchor bolts for it to set on. So they made the template, sent it down here, Manhattan built all the port and placed concrete columns and placed all the anchor bolts. Then that dome, it was it was assembled up there like a big basket, then taken apart, disassembled, shipped down, I think on three flatbed trailers, reassembled here on the ground, picked it up with a crane and dropped it over, and it fit perfectly over the anchor bolts.

Blackburn: Yeah, it was a miracle. Yeah.

Beck: So here we had a roller coaster manufacturer building the building. I've never done that before. Or since.

Thompson: That's phenomenal. Were there any other challenges you came across when it came to putting the design that's on paper actually into practice?

Beck: Well, there was when we were working on the design, we built the model. We had this idea of this backlit onyx for the drumsticks on the west side of the building. Well, backlit onyx was very expensive. And back then, LED lighting really hadn't come out yet. So we thought, well, if we backlight this, eventually those lights are going to have to be replaced or the transformer. So how do we get in there? And then all materials expand and contract as they heat up, expansion contraction. And so there weren't any tables to tell us how much backlit, or how much onyx would expand and contract. So when you put that in the frame, so when it's 105 degrees outside, that has to have a place to move. And so that was a real challenge guessing because of that. That was just kind of pioneering. You know, what's our best guess on how much this is going to expand and contract? Because if you don't give it room to do that, all that's going to crack, you know, and just drop out of its frame. So we were custom designing still frames to hold that, and then find a way to get in there and work out so that one, we kind of sweat, we're sweating bullets over that because there's a lot of liability with it. And there weren’t really any guidelines or rules or regulations on that type of detailing. So there were a lot of interesting challenges. And then dimensioning the building, you know, how do you dimension a curved building. So if you move the dimension line three feet over, the dimensions change. So we had to do special dimensioning off the center line of the columns, and then every beam was rolled on a radius. So we had to predetermine all the curves and the length of the beam and had those rolled in the steel factory. They’re come out and you put them in place, and they fit perfect, but it was just a lot of coordination on this, on this building.

Blackburn: Yeah.

Beck: It’s a unique, one-of-a-kind project.

Thompson: How is the relationship working with Manhattan?

Beck: It was great. They were a great team. They would call and say, hey, we think we may have an issue here, and we’d sit down together and work it out. And, you know, I’ve worked a lot of construction. My dad was a superintendent for 30 years, so I grew up working construction. So I related really well to all the guys in the field, you know, and how we’re going to build it. And, you know, I told Manhattan right upfront, look, there’s no such thing as a perfect set of drawings. This is one way to build a building, but it may not be the best way. And as you guys are moving through the construction process, I’m counting on you to find a better way or a way to improve upon what we’ve done, and they did on several places. So it was a really it was a great team effort.

Thompson: Yeah, yeah. And that’s great. That’s not always the case, particularly in the construction style that Bob mentioned. The design, bid, build.

Blackburn: Yeah.

Thompson: Sometimes the architect and the contractors are actually put as adversaries in projects like that. That’s one of those things that the design build process was meant to eliminate, to make the architect and the contractor partners on projects. And that's the way we did it on the Capitol Restoration Project. So it’s great that you all had that relationship, and I worked with Manhattan for almost seven years on the Capitol Restoration Project, and, a lot of great contractors I’ve worked with over the years. And, Manhattan, I loved working with them because there was, there’s no challenge too big. You know, they really take a challenge head on. And it’s almost like, yeah, we can figure that out.

Blackburn: And Trait, one thing we knew going in is that the way the state had always done this, which is always design, bid, build, is that a lot of contractors would just try to cover their cost with the original bid, and then their real profit would be change orders, and then they’d have you over a barrel. Well, the plans didn’t solve this. When we got a problem, and we’ll solve it for you. But for an amount of money. We had almost none of that. And part of that was Bob Thomas on our staff working with Don and his staff and Manhattan that was willing to step up. Fortunately, the second phase, we were able to do a construction management. That saved our bacon. I don’t think we ever could have brought everything in under budget, including the exhibits. Manhattan ended up doing a lot of the partitions within the galleries, and we couldn’t, we didn’t have time or the money to go out and bid it. And, you know, those drywall people, you know, they knew we had to get things done, and they would have jacked their price up. Well, Don and his staff was there every turn. We had several trailers there. We had, OHS had a trailer on site. And then Manhattan had at least two. I remember two. I still had my hard hat that I used. When you went on the site, if you didn’t have that hard hat on, you were going to get scolded. So I learned to put that hard hat on going over there. But I think Bob was over there every day, you know, and Jerry, his friend, who was on site every day on the project.

Beck: We were out here a lot. We would eat, breathe, and drink this project, and it took it and needed it. I mean, with the complexity of the curves. And to Manhattan’s credit, we sat down with Manhattan really like on phase two before the drawings were finished and went through and worked together as a team, as a partner, so there were very little change orders. But that’s part of the issue you mentioned earlier. It’s unfortunate that a lot of architects have never worked construction and then and I grew up, you know, I went through my carpenter apprenticeship and worked with, you know, steel erectors and concrete people. So that construction knowledge. I had worked in several years of construction helped tremendously on how do you put together a set of drawings and how do you where does the building expand and contract? And what about flashing and doing roofing details? Things like that. So to me, it was a natural fit dealing with Manhattan Construction and then having Bob Thomas and others and another group of set of eyes reviewing your work because, you know, we’re really good at what we do, but we can become better, and and so that was always the goal looking for the best solution for whatever we were working on. And so the more people involved really helped the project come along faster and better quality drawings, nad minimal, really minimal change orders.

Blackburn: Trait, one thing and impressed me about Don and his team is that they were very, they were peaking at that time, and now maybe it can continue to grow. But they had received the contract for the Jim Norick Library downtown, part of MAPS. They had received the contract to build a new business college at OCU. And I don’t know what else you had. Those are two visible, because one was right before us and one was kind of going on as we were finishing. But Don was able to keep focus. And sometimes you go to the next client because architects typically will get a lot of their profit up front, and then they try to try to make enough money in the latter stages to pay the bills. , And then you go on to the next one because you got to have that profit margin going up on the first part of a project on design. And so, but Don kept focus, and we never lost his focus on the whole thing.

Thompson: Now, Don, you’ve designed a lot of incredible buildings over the course of your career. You don’t get 200-something awards if you haven’t. How do you rank this project in comparison? You know, I know every building is different, but in your own personal account, how do you rank this in comparison to some of your other work you’ve done?

Beck: For me, this is a special project. I mean, I’ll never design another history center, certainly not a building like this ever. So really, for me, this was kind of like winning, you know, the Olympics or an Oscar to be involved this project. So it’s special. I love the project. I have a lot of, you know, I spend a lot of personal time on this, so it’s really special to me. We have designed a lot of other important projects, but this one is special in the regard that what’s inside of it, what it holds. You know, the artifacts here are replaced, irreplaceable. And when we were going through the design, Bob took us through at the old building. We’re looking at that, so much of the collection that was in storage. And I learned a lot about Oklahoma history by working on this project, so that meant a lot to me. You know, I say I, you know, I didn’t grow up in Oklahoma, but I wish, I wish I did. I mean, I came here in 1976, and I think the history of Oklahoma is fascinating, and so this project opened that up for me. So in that regard, it’s probably the most unique project I’ve ever worked on.

Thompson: Well, I can say, you know, as someone who wasn’t born here but got here as fast as I could, you’re a true Oklahoman, and your heart is in Oklahoma, and it shows in the work that you do, for sure. Well, Don, I want to thank you for being a part of this episode and for coming to visit with us today.

Beck: Thank you for having me. It’s just really a pleasure. It’s an honor to be here and be back in this building after 20 years and be with all of you that inspired us to do this. You know, we’ve talked about the design quite a bit, but a lot of the ideas and concepts came from Bob Blackburn because he challenged me early on. Don, can you find a special place for the Winnie Mae? And I thought, I can’t let Bob down. Can’t let Bob down. And so we worked really hard, and that’s what drove the design. But you may not realize that, Bob, but you were really the architect on the project.

Blackburn: Well, thank you as well. We owe so much to you and the whole team. And it was truly a team effort. And can you take any one part out that was there? We don’t have the quality project that we have. So thank you for not just for your professional delivering all of this but your friendship. And you’ve stuck with us all this time. Any time we ask you to come back and do something, yeah, I’ll be right there. So thank you for being Don Beck.

Beck: Well, thanks for having me.

Thompson: Well, thanks. We’ll talk to you soon. Well, Bob, it’s fascinating story about the Oklahoma History Center and everything it took. Eight years, from 1997 to 2005, to get this thing built, and it’s a testament to you. As you mentioned, it’s a team effort. So many people that worked here for the OHS, so many people that are part of the community in Oklahoma City and all throughout the state of Oklahoma contributed to making this a reality. And this building today is as vibrant and as vital as it was back in 2005.

Blackburn: Yes, and Don Beck was a big part of that. Bob Thomas, Dan Provo, Sandy Stratton, it goes on. Bill Welge, Chad Williams, Laura Martin, and we had such a great team. And it was just fun to be there with them as we just rushed into, you know, we didn’t know what was ahead of us, but we were rushing into it anyway. And I think that we had to make a lot of detours and a lot of, you know, shuffles sideways. But we were able to get it done despite, you know, a lot of losses along with a lot of victories. But in the end, I think it came out okay, and I’m very proud of the place, and thank you for taking care of it now. It looks as good now as it did when we opened.

Thompson: Well, I’m so excited. You know, we’ve been able to put, continue to invest in this building, not only in the exhibits and the things that people see, but in taking care of it. And just this last legislative session, we were able to get $2.8 million out of the legislature to completely replace the HVAC system in this building, so that we continue to maintain those standards for the Smithsonian and the National Archives, in which we’re storing all of our important historical artifacts. So we continue to stand on your shoulders and the shoulders of those who came before us and continue to make this a viable building well into the future.

Blackburn: Thank you for all that you’re doing.

Thompson: Bob, it’s been great talking to you as always, and we’ll talk to you soon. 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.

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