A Very OK Podcast
Episode 62: “An Oasis of Hope in Bethany”
October 27, 2026
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, it’s great to be with you. We’re coming to you a little bit late this time around. We normally try to release these episodes on the third Tuesday of each month. But Bob, we’ve been some traveling fools lately, and we haven’t been able to align our schedules. So I know this episode is going to be one well worth waiting for, though. So, how have your travels been?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, good. I had a good little trip to Bentonville of all places. Saw the new expansion of the of the Crystal Bridges Museum and got a tour with Kenyon Morgan, who is a local architect who designed some places up there and met interesting people. The architecture of Bentonville is incredible, and if you’re an outdoors person, that’s the place to go for hiking, biking, being outdoors, parks. The Walton family, which has roots in Oklahoma, Sam Walton, born in Kingfisher, and Helen, born in Claremore. So there are a lot of Oklahoma connections there with their charities, philanthropies, kind of ties in with today’s themes. But other than that, I just got back from Denver, five days of taking care of grandkids, and that’s the most cherished duty I could have.
Thompson: Yeah, and you were kind of on your own because your son had a lot of weddings to do, and your daughter-in-law was out of out of the country.
Blackburn: She was in Mexico at a wedding. And so, Beau shot weddings Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and until 10:30, 11 o’clock at night. So I had them, and so we did great. So the Blackburn boys were all, you know, romping together.
Thompson: I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you this. What’s your grandpa name?
Blackburn: I’m Papa.
Thompson: Papa. Oh, that’s a good one.
Blackburn: And you hear that a lot when they want milk or, you know, they need to do something. Papa? Papa?
Thompson: I love it, I love it. Well, my wife and I just got back from a nine-day tour of New England, and we were up there touring the fall foliage, and we had a wonderful time. We flew into Boston. We spent a little bit of time in Salem. I did a night tour of Salem, got the history of the witch trials in that whole area, which was fantastic. Then we traveled up through New Hampshire, and then over to Vermont, and then back into Massachusetts. But the locals told us the fall colors this year were as spectacular as they’ve been in probably 20 years, and so we were really loving it up there. We had a great time, did a little bit of history touring. I toured Ethan Allen’s homestead near Burlington, Vermont, which was really interesting. Interestingly enough, they had a farmhouse there that over the years, they had modernized and added on to, and somebody discovered about 25 or 30 years ago that the farmhouse was actually Ethan Allen’s. And so they were able to take off the addition and strip it back down to what it looked like when he lived there in the 1780s, and it was incredible. My tour guide was actually, he was a man named John, and he was actually stationed at Fort Sill in the 1960s. So we had a good time talking about Oklahoma and him reminiscing about his time here. And then going down through Vermont some more, we stumbled upon the Calvin Coolidge birthplace, and that was really interesting because all of the buildings on his father’s farm there were still in their exact locations, and even the house where he was born had the same furniture. And right across the street was the house they built later, and that was where Calvin Coolidge took his oath of office from his father, who was a notary public, right after Warren Harding died. And so that was really fun and really interesting. So, that was about all I could talk my wife into doing from a history perspective. You know, we did a lot of fun things, did some hikes, and ate a lot of great food. So I’m glad to be back. Glad to be here and recording the podcast.
Blackburn: And now we have this beautiful spring, or fall season now, it’s like spring out there, just most beautiful week. After a summer of 100 degree temperatures, 78 is near perfect.
Thompson: We deserve whatever fall we’re going to get, and I hope we get more than our usual 15 minutes or so of fall. Because usually, about this time, we start looking for our next ice storm. But let’s hope for a nice fall for everybody. The other thing I want to talk about is, Bob, I don’t know if you know, but we are now the award-winning A Very OK Podcast. And I found out today that we had put in for the Signal Awards, which is really the Oscars of the podcasting community, and we got second place. We submitted our episode on The Grapes of Wrath, and so now we’re the award-winning podcast.
Blackburn: So a national award, right?
Thompson: Yes, it’s a national award. There were about ten other podcasts that were in our category. Those people up in Minnesota at the Minnesota Historical Society, they got first place. So when I see Kent Wentworth, who is the head of the Minnesota Historical Society later this year at our annual meeting, I’m going to gig him a little for that, for beating us. But really, this was our first time to go out for these awards. So, really, really glad that we were able to get this award. And I just appreciate you for being a part of this podcast for so long, and for us being able to do this together, and for all the people that listen to us.
Blackburn: Well, thank you, Trait. It’s a good opportunity to share history and stories with even more people, which has been my entire career and most of my life.
Thompson: Well, we’ve got a great story to talk about today. I’m really excited to get into it. You know, one of the things that, you know, we drive around town, we drive around this state, we see these institutions in our state, and very rarely do we ever stop to think about how did they start, how did, how did they get here? And one of those is the Bethany Children’s Health Center out in Bethany on Route 66. Remember, we’re talking about Route 66 this year. And so I wanted to dive into that story because the more I learned about it, the more fascinated I was. And so to help us talk about that story today, we have Nico Gomez. Now, Nico Gomez has served as the chief executive officer of the Bethany Children’s Health Center since July of 2020. The 160-bed hospital is the state’s only inpatient rehabilitation and long-term care facility for children and teenagers with complex medical conditions or traumatic injuries. Previously, Nico served as the president and chief executive officer of Care Providers of Oklahoma, the state’s largest long-term care trade association, advocating on behalf of residents and professionals working in Oklahoma’s long-term care facilities. For more than 15 years, he served as the leader at the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the state’s Medicaid agency. He’s a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a degree in journalism and public relations, and he has a master’s in business administration with an emphasis in health care administration from Southern Nazarene University. He’s been married for more than 30 years, and he and his wife, Karen, have two adult children and two grandchildren and live in Oklahoma City. Nico, welcome to the podcast.
Nico Gomez: Well, thank you, and congratulations for that award-winning podcast. I’m honored to even be here with such an astute group of, man, talk about a standard that’s been set that for any guest that comes and follows that.
Thompson: Well, Bob and I will sign autographs later for anybody. It is kind of funny though, because occasionally, this happened not too long ago. Bob and I were at an event together, which we often are, and somebody said, hey, I listen to your podcast. Can I take a picture with both of you? And that’s still kind of weird to me.
Blackburn: We have our groupies now.
Thompson: We do.
Gomez: Well deserved, well deserved. But we’ve had a lot of fun with this podcast. But my favorite thing, my favorite compliment I get is when people tell me I’ve lived in Oklahoma all my life, and I’ve never heard that story before. And I suspect that the story we’re going to tell today is going to elicit that same response, because the story of the founding of what was the Oklahoma Orphanage by Mattie Mallory, and right after statehood, and then the transition to the Bethany Children’s Health Center is a fascinating story, and I really, really want to get into that. So, Bob, I thought if we could set the scene, you know, it’s statehood. You know, we’re talking about 1907, 8, and 9, right after we become a state. We are in that era. What is the social situation look like? And of course, we have Kate Barnard, who’s the head of the Charities and Corrections department in Oklahoma. She’s the first statewide elected official to be female in our state’s history, right out of the gate. And so what are we looking at in terms of the conditions on the ground here in terms of, you know, people’s indigent care, in terms of the orphan issue and those kinds of things?
Blackburn: Well, let me start first with the problem and then how people were trying to come up with solutions to deal with the problems. A lot of the problem was that 1907 and 8 and 9 in Oklahoma was a period of social upheaval. People are leaving farms. Most people who came here to homestead 160 acres or try to claim a lot in a town, about half came to towns. Half came to be farmers. Generally, they were suffering where they came from or they wouldn’t have left home. They wouldn’t have left their families, their church, their communities that they knew so well. And coming out to this land that’s so far out on the frontier, if they hadn’t been pretty desperate. When they get here, families are breaking down. People are not finding the jobs. Husbands are leaving families behind. But women, their death rate in childbirth was so much higher then, so you have a lot of orphans. You have kids, you know, shunted back and forth to family members. And when Kate Barnard got involved with what we now call United Way, it was called the Provident Association at the time, about 1903–4.
There was a study done, and there were up to 1,000 homeless people in Oklahoma City alone, and Oklahoma City by 1910 is only 64,000 people. So at that time, probably closer to somewhere around 50,000 people. So, a fairly small town. But things are changing quickly. People are coming to get jobs in the packing plants. They’re coming in to get jobs in the old industrial sector of what we now call Bricktown. And across the state, same things are happening. People are being attracted to the oil patch. People are trying to bring their families, sometimes left behind. And so you have a lot of social upheaval. Well, the effort to deal with those problems are not run by the government. There’s no Social Security. That would not be until 1935. At the county level, which is where you have county poor farms. So if your family is destitute, homeless, you theoretically can go to the county poor farm and work and get at least some food. But the state has no orphanages. They have no hospitals specializing in children’s care. The first state-run children’s hospital would not open until 1928 here in what’s now the OU Medical Center. And so, it was up to people and their idea of we’ve got to be good public servants. We have to reach out. We have to help those who can’t help themselves. Kate Barnard was definitely one of those. She was raised Catholic on a farm, never married, but she had this sense of social justice and got involved with labor organizing. And there’s a lot of exploitation in the state. She got involved with trying to take care of homeless people and orphans, and then, as a reward, she was listened to when she really lobbied the Constitutional Convention for ways to help people. And so a lot of people call it a progressive. I call it more populist. Let’s reach out and help people if we can. But we had the State Commission for Charities and Charities...
Thompson: And Corrections.
Blackburn: And Corrections. Thank you. And she became the first director, even though women couldn’t vote at the time. She was elected. She got the largest plurality of any office seeker at the time. And so she was there to help a little bit. But then churches tended to step up. And one of the examples that I’ve written about in some of my books is that in 1907, I. M. Putnam, after whom Putnam City is named—close to the to Bethany that we’re talking about today. I. M. Putnam was into land development, and he bought a full section of land between 50th and 63rd streets on the north side between Western and Pennsylvania, and he went to the Baptist Convention at the time and said, we want, I would like to give you the land to start a Baptist college, similar to what the Methodist had done with Epworth College down on 18th Street. And he said, I’ll give you the land. I’ll help subsidize it. We’ll get a Baptist university started. They turned him down. Instead, they went to Shawnee. Well, he said, okay, I still want to give this land to the Baptists. Let’s have an orphanage. And so, I. M. Putnam donates the land to the Baptist Convention. They then open the Baptist orphanage. A lot of us, I remember that as a kid. It was still there until the 1970s. And that was where people could go, you know, children who needed help.
But churches and individuals were the ones who had to step up and deal with these social issues, and no one else around. By the 1930s, things were just as bad. At one point, they think there are over 5,000 people living in along the North Canadian River in shantytowns and caves in the banks of the river. And we had a city manager who said, we got to do something about it. He put together what they called community camp, using some state resources, trying to get some federal resources, and they set up community camp along the river, north of the river, along Pennsylvania, where the county poor farm had been. And they actually put in streets. They have a health clinic. They open a school. They have water. They have, you know, sewage, and trying to do something about the homelessness and people who really needed help. And later in the ’30s was Social Security. We basically have that for the elderly. We have other programs with the welfare department created in Oklahoma with the very first penny sales tax. So we had no sales tax. We had a gas tax on gas, but nothing like a sales tax that we would think of today. But that first penny sales tax was for the welfare department. People in Oklahoma says, yes, we will approve that as an amendment to the Constitution, create this new department, so we can help those people who need help. But before that, and even then, it wasn’t all that as an effective system. We still needed individuals. We needed our churches. We needed groups that would reach out and try to help if they could. And so a lot of the evangelical churches, especially, would have mission societies, and the mission societies would either start a branch somewhere in a growing part of town or in a community that was underserved by the faith leaders. And they would help at times. But again, it came back to Oklahoma’s sense of responsibility that, you know, we have to help take care of others who can’t take care of themselves. It’s still pretty much a part of the DNA of Oklahoma. I think nationally, Oklahomans give more per capita to charities than any other state. We may not have the big bucks that you have in Texas, or California, or New York, but in terms of what we can give, it’s a very generous culture here. And you can trace that right back to the beginning of the 20th century with Kate Barnard and the lady we’re going to talk about here in a minute, starting the Bethany Orphanage.
Thompson: You know, I think one of the things that’s important to realize too, is people’s attitudes towards the poor and the homeless in the 1800s and the early 1900s. And this is something that Kate Barnard fought against, and I’m sure that Mattie Mallory fought against it as well, is there was a prevailing attitude that if you were poor or you were homeless, it was because of something that you did. It was your fault. Either something your family did, something that you did, or it was God’s judgment against you. And so, that made it to where a lot of people felt like you deserved whatever circumstances you were in. And there was a lot of this, and I want to get into this when we talk about Mattie’s story too, is there was a sense of the reason so many churches were involved in this work is because we want to save their soul while we’re saving their body. And so this was an opportunity to say, hey, we’re going to help you out. We’re going to come. And I’m not saying that they had ulterior motives. I’m not casting it in a negative light. I’m just saying they felt like that people’s souls were in danger, and they wanted to come address their physical needs while they were addressing their spiritual needs as well. And it wouldn’t be, as you mentioned, for several more decades, until government kind of catches up and said, hey, there’s a positive good to be gained by helping people get on their feet and become productive members of society. Now, Nico, you came and spoke to my Rotary Club a year or so ago, and you told the story of Mattie Mallory, and I was just fascinated by it, and I put it on my list and said, we need to do a podcast about this. So let’s get into her story a little bit. Who was she?
Gomez: Mattie was a schoolteacher, and that was, you know, she was a part of the Pentecostal Holiness movement, again, another church-based ministry. She was actually assigned to the Dawes Academy, which was, I understand, operating around Ardmore, Oklahoma. And she was there teaching the children of freed slaves. And she was, you know, she was in her calling. She was born in Kansas, and she was again working for the church. And her assignment, she was, you know, wherever the church told her to go, that’s where she would go. And then she was called to another assignment in Canada back in the late 1800s. And then when the train stopped in what was soon to be Oklahoma City, her heart was just broken by the kids who she saw living homeless near the station. She did go ahead and go up to Canada, but she just kept feeling like God was calling her back to Oklahoma City to open an orphanage. And she got that opportunity a few years ago, and then she, 1897 and 1898, when she came back at late 1897 and then opened up the orphanage in 1898 in Beulah Heights, which my understanding is around 27th and Classen in Oklahoma City. And she was there for about 10 years operating the orphanage. And really, it was for her is like making sure the kids had a warm place to stay, had an opportunity to get education, and get them off the streets. And, you know, she has testimony, after testimony, after testimony, where she really didn’t have any funds to do it. She relied on generosity of the community, and I think Bob talked about that earlier. We have a very generous community from the very beginning of our statehood. And even prior to that, people felt like they were going to give to her ministry to help her orphanage survive, and grow, and be open, and take care of the kids. So there was a shared responsibility, and so she thrived in Beulah Heights.
And then in 1909, again after statehood, 1909, the Inner Urban Railroad Company came knocking and said, hey, we’re getting ready to build this, you know, line from Oklahoma City to El Reno. Hey, by the way, your orphanage is kind of in the way. And so we’re going to buy this, buy the land from you. And we’re going to give you these 80 acres right nearby. But she’s a savvy businesswoman, and she says, okay, I hear your deal, but I think I’ve got a better plan, and I’ll take the money, but I’m going to go buy 200 acres over here on what is now Bethany to try to align three of the ministries that they were dealing with. They were dealing with the orphanage, but they also had a school, and then they also had a home for unwed mothers. And so over there in that part of the community is where the Nazarenes were gathering and getting organized. And that’s when the city of Bethany started to evolve into that little space, and was in 1909, I believe. And so she was critical, not only opening up the state’s first orphanage in Oklahoma City to take care of the kids. She was savvy enough.
I mean, we had, man, the amount of women who were just dynamic pioneers in this state that shaped us, both culturally, spiritually, you know, from all the civic, all the civic activity they were doing, as you mentioned, despite not having the opportunity to vote and despite not having a lot of the resources, they rolled up their sleeves and just made it happen. And so that was the beauty of that start in Bethany. She was a part of that city. She helped name the city. She helped named the eastern edge of the orphanage was named after George Müller, which George was, Mr. Müller was opening up orphanages in England. It was kind of like the father of the orphanage. And so it was a tremendous time. And I always think about the story, you know, when the railroad company approached her, she rode by horseback over to Bethany and or what is now Bethany, and it was just a grove of blackjack trees. And she just said, yeah, this is the place. This is, I’m not sure what she saw, other than she felt a peace that God gave her that said, nope, this is the place we’re going to start this. Yeah.
Thompson: And I want to go unpack a little bit of what you said to go back a little bit. You know, she was born in 1865, in Ottawa, Kansas. Her parents were free staters who were abolitionists, who came to Kansas and set up. And we all know the 1860s in Bleeding Kansas was not an easy place to be raised. But she ultimately, she went to Baker University, which was a Methodist university. And so she was Methodist. That was her background in terms of her religious faith. But when she got assigned to the Dawes Academy near Ardmore, and she was ministering to, and that was a Baptist mission out of New York who had set that up. Now we have to remember also that the enslaved people who were enslaved by the Chickasaws, they were not grafted into the tribe like others of the Five Tribes’ former enslaved persons had been. And so these formerly enslaved people were kind of on their own. And so, she was down there ministering as a part of this, as a part of this ministry with the Baptists. And it’s interesting that while she’s down there in Ardmore, she comes in contact with people from what’s called the Holiness movement in north Texas. And that’s when she really starts to kind of change her religion to really identify with this.
And I want to explain to people, because the Holiness movement, I did a little bit of a dive into this, so we could explain to people what this is. It’s a Christian movement that emerged primarily in, it’s an offshoot of 19th-century Methodism, and churches aligned with the Holiness movement they teach that the life of the born-again Christian should be free from sin. The movement is historically distinguished by its emphasis on the doctrine of a second work of grace, which is called the entire sanctification or Christian perfection. And the word holiness refers to this belief that it’s an instantaneous, definite second work of grace, and the church of the Nazarene became the largest denomination to embrace that Holiness tradition, which explains why, later, they really align with Mattie Mallory and her whole mission at Beulah Heights. And to give some perspective, Beulah Heights was located right around the Belle Isle area in Oklahoma City, back when it was far enough away from Oklahoma City. In fact, the reason Mattie liked Belle Isle so much, or that area, is because it was a streetcar ride into Oklahoma City, but they were far enough removed from Oklahoma City to be removed from the sins. The evils, which were the gambling houses, the pool halls, the dance halls, the movie theaters, and all of those things. So think of this when they go to set up Bethany, and when they go to set up Bethany, guess what’s not allowed in Bethany? Any of the evils and the sins. In fact, public pools were not allowed in Bethany due to the covenants at the time. And so this is the Pentecostal Holiness movement, and this is what she really embraces as her religious motivation, at the time. And yes, as you mentioned, she was on a at a train stop in Indian Territory on her way to Canada, and she saw. It just hit her in the heart, and she saw the homelessness and the kids that were left behind. And she was determined that she felt like she had to do something about it.
Gomez: Yeah.
Thompson: And so, explaining her mission, she says this: “The children have been gathered from the homes of penury and want and dire distress. The boys must be taught to work. To rear them in idleness is to give them to the devil. We recommend that our ministers do missionary work in the gathering up of these children, hundreds of whom are wandering the streets in our own towns and cities without a chance to make men and women of them. Let us work, pray, and pay until we meet God’s ideal in this matter.” And this is that whole practice of getting to that second perfection of we’re working to become sinless, working to become that second sanctification, which I’m not a theologian, I dabble, but I’m not a theologian. So we’ll leave you all out there to go research a little bit more about that. Now, interestingly enough, in their education activities, their primary resource for education was what? Anybody want to guess?
Gomez: The Bible.
Thompson: The Bible. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. That’s what they use.
Gomez: Just one book.
Thompson: That was it. And the salvation of the children was foremost on their minds when they were doing all of this work. But like I said before, she liked the idea of being far enough away from civilization so that they wouldn’t have all of its influences, but close enough where they could get into town if they needed to get into town. And so, in May of 1909, she approaches the school board with the prospect of moving that four miles from the Belle Isle area in Beulah Heights over to Bethany. They purchased the property, and in December of 1909, they began construction of the first structure that would become the orphanage there in Bethany. And you’re exactly right. So she’s responsible not only for, they’re going to build an orphanage, they’re going to be build a home for unwed mothers. And there’s also another thing that they’re going to build, which is the Holiness University. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Gomez: Yeah. I mean, that school was I mean, again, it’s that piece of the organization. She was trying to marry these three ministries together, and she was, education was her burden and her opportunity to help educate and help lead people to Christ. That was her, that was her motive. And so that’s what actually is now today, Southern Nazarene University, because when she then took over the orphanage in 1909, basically solely responsible for the orphanage, she actually then transferred the operation of the home for unwed mothers and the school over to the Nazarenes. And so that’s where you get a lot of those roots that are kind of intermixed together. The other thing that I always found interesting, a reason why she wanted to move it, again, when she when she had the opportunity to move, and she had the opportunity to get more land. She really wanted the orphanage to be self-sustaining. And so she wanted to create a space to where there was agriculture. There was industry. I think she wanted to open up a creative print shop. Again, these are just businesses that she wanted to help create or help support that actually then supported the operation of the orphanage.
Blackburn: One of the things that’s happening at the time that’s helping her is that 1909 would be one of the biggest boom years in Oklahoma history. Those of us who grew up in Oklahoma from the ’50s on, we remember 1981–82. It was a boom period. Everyone was coming to Oklahoma. People were investing. Banks were doing well. Homes were being built, plenty of jobs. And that’s what 1909 was. So she was riding a wave of prosperity at the time. Farmers were doing very well. Most of those who had homesteaded had proven up on their lands they could borrow. Banks were beginning to grow. The stockyards had just been established in 1909. Streetcars were expanding in all direction. Housing additions, what’s now Heritage Hills in Oklahoma City, would have been, you know, well underway by that time. The oldest homes there would have been seven, eight years old, at that point. But people are building and growing. And so a lot of the women’s clubs in town, and a lot of people forget about the women’s clubs before women could really enter the workforce.
Thompson: Or politics.
Blackburn: Or politics, exactly, is that they would band together, and they would do good deeds. They would raise money for orphans, and libraries, and things that would help people, you know, break the cycle of poverty and find a better life. And so, 1909 was important for her because it was a year of prosperity. Now, two years later, 1911, total crop failure across the state. She suffers just like everybody else. Raising money is more difficult. More people are homeless, more orphans being sent out on the street. And so she would have been both the beneficiary and a victim of her times when she’s getting started.
Thompson: Well, 1909 was a recovery from the Panic of 1907. So, you know, one of the interesting thought exercises that I did in preparing for this podcast is a compare and contrast of Mattie Mallory and Kate Barnard, and I find both of them to be fascinating, and both of them were extremely driven by their religious faith. Kate Barnard was Catholic, and Mattie Mallory was a part of this Holiness movement, which later became Southern Nazarene. But both of them were motivated to do these works because they felt like that their faith drove them to it. Kate Barnard chose to tackle the problem from a macro perspective. Kate says, because Kate initially started by helping the individual homeless and the individual poor. But she said, I can’t do enough good work just helping the individual. I need to do something more. That’s when she got involved in the labor movement, and she really gained the power to get political power because she said, I want to help from a macro perspective and becomes the head of Charities and Corrections. So she said, I’m tackling the problem this way. Mattie Mallory is tackling at the ground level. And so they’re both, they both see the problem. They’re both tackling it in the ways that they think is best. Neither one is wrong, but I find that really interesting.
Gomez: You read a lot of Mattie’s writing. I’m so thankful that Mattie wrote a lot. She presented a lot of her own history in her present-day writings at the time, and she felt very much this call from God. I mean, she felt very much this was a spirit-led action that she was called to do, and to do something different would have been disobedient to to the God that she serves. And so, it was very strongly in her being that she was here to do this. She was here to open up and serve kids and making sure that they had, again, not only just the basics, but also the opportunity to read the Bible, learn the Bible, and give their life to Christ.
Thompson: Yeah. And you know, I wrote an email, Bob, to our friend Connie Cronley, who wrote the book about Kate Barnard, A Life on Fire, because I was really curious. I asked Connie if she’d ever come across in any of her research that Mattie and that Kate met, which I would have to think they would. They were of a contemporary time with each other. They were of a same mission. Kate Barnard would have been responsible for inspecting orphanages, so they had to have met. Now, Connie said she didn’t see anything in her research that says that they did. But I would love, love, love, love to just hear both of them have a conversation together, wouldn’t you?
Gomez: Absolutely.
Thompson: It would have been pretty fascinating. Well, let’s take a quick break, and we’ll come back, and then let’s talk about where we go after the orphanage moves to Bethany.
Announcer: Route 66 is turning 100, and Oklahoma has a story to tell. Join the Oklahoma Historical Society on Monday, November 2, for a free screening of the new documentary, Crossroads of America: Oklahoma’s Route 66 at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. The film explores the history of America’s Mother Road from the Dust Bowl era to the golden age of family road trips, and the people and communities that made Route 66 famous. Before the screening, meet acclaimed Route 66 authors Michael Wallace, Jim Ross, and Shellee Graham for a special book signing beginning at 6 p.m. Doors open at 5:30, and the film begins at 7. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. For more information, visit okhistory.org and click on the events calendar. Celebrate 100 years of the Mother Road with the Oklahoma Historical Society on November 2.
Thompson: So let’s get into where we go from here. Now, Mattie Mallory, ultimately she gets married in 1912. She’s 47 years old. She marries a guy that’s about 20 years old. His name is Robert Morgan. Maybe 27, I think 27. Sorry, I have that in my notes somewhere. But anyway, he’s in his 20s, and they get married together. In 1915, they buy a hotel in the Packing Town section, which is the stockyards section of Oklahoma City. And they also run a mission, and that’s adjunct to that hotel. And she continues to be superintendent, and she runs the orphanage. But in 1920, they turn over the management of the orphanage to five Oklahoma City Club women. Bob, to your point, who were to become the nucleus of the Children’s Welfare League and would help run the orphanage for the next 50 years of its tenure. She ultimately dies from cancer in 1938. So in her obituary, it said that she helped an estimated 425 orphans during her time managing the Oklahoma Orphanage, which is no small number. So, Nico, let’s talk about how do we get from an orphanage to a children’s hospital?
Gomez: Yeah, you know, when she gave up control to the Children’s Welfare League and the women, these are women that she worked with. So she had a trust with them, and they eventually became what is today Sunbeam. So again, you see these common roots.
Thompson: Fascinating.
Gomez: Yeah. So there’s a whole, and they’ve done some, again, Jim Priest wrote a book around that history. I think actually you were with and I think in all the there was a lot of history written around Sunbeam and some of some of those roots with what is today Bethany Children’s Health Center actually are intertwined. So the orphans start being taken care of in a different way. And then you have this old farmhouse that’s still in Bethany, Oklahoma, that starts to take care of kids who are in need of convalescence. Again, we don’t get the hospital until I think the 1920s, the ’28, the children’s hospital in ’28. And so it starts to become a partnership with the kids who are no longer need to be in the hospital, but they don’t can’t go home. And so they come to a convalescent home.
Thompson: That’s in 1946 is when that transitioned.
Gomez: So these are that period of 20 years when, when you start to transition away from the orphanage. Well, the next evolution of that is the convalescent home, eventually convalescent hospital and the timeline. But it’s really about that identity. They were trying to find the identity. And the identity always was around kids, taking care of kids who had no other place to go. And it was no longer the welfare side of it, the orphanage room and board side of it. It became kind of that medical need. At the time, it wasn’t licensed in that space because it was not such a license to have. However, it started to kind of feel like a place of respite, almost a place of hospice for kids whose future was really dim. And then we had the, you had the pandemics of the time. You had the Spanish flu and then eventually polio and all these things that were happening in the time in which this was the place where the kids would go and convalesce. And it was an incredible transition. But again, the opportunity to have kind of that community support. I believe in the 1950s, that’s when the Oklahoma City Rotary Club helped actually build a new building for what is then they convalescent, now hospital. And so it starts to evolve from an orphanage to a convalescent home to a convalescent hospital over the course of about 50 years, the first 50 years.
Thompson: In the 1970s, there was real danger of it closing down. They got into a financial crisis, and that was almost the end of it. Yeah, that’s really the story of where Carol Gray and Albert Gray, brother-sister team, kind of start to come into the picture. It had a great part of the 1950s and 1960s, a great transition, really had the new facility that was built, really built around again, taking care of kids who had no other place to go, who were there for a convalescent home. And then it started in the 1970s, started to deal with an identity crisis and also a financial crisis. And in that, they were looking to actually close the facility. The Holiness church at the time was like in a position where they could no longer afford to keep it open. Carol Gray happened to be working there as a volunteer coordinator in 1977. And I always joke that, you know, God called Carol, much like God called Mattie, God called Carol. And this became her ministry when they needed somebody come close the facility, they needed somebody who actually had a nursing home license to close it. And so I always joked that Carol called Albert because he was building nursing homes around the state of Oklahoma. The family was a very entrepreneurial family, peanut farmers in western Oklahoma. And he came to the center, which was then the children’s center. And then that’s where their story picks up again, filling the call of God, depending on the local churches, depending on local families. They rolled up their sleeves and then kept the facility open and operating until it was able to get a transformational grant in the late, or in late 1898, not 1890, 1995. They got a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, which was transformational.
Thompson: $9.77 million to build the Donald W. Reynolds complex, which added 100 inpatient beds for children and teenagers.
Blackburn: If I might just add an anecdote there, this is a personal aside, is that my mother, and I’ve talked about her on this podcast before, had a television show, the Ida B Show. By 1992, she had an advertising agency, the first owned by a woman in Oklahoma, but she met and really fell in love with both Albert and Carol and understood their mission. And my mom, she’d been a Methodist, a choir director at one point in her life and career, and was raised in the Methodist Church. And she understood what they were doing. And so she, I doubt if she charged anything of much, but she put together a campaign for them in ’92 and ’93, and I still have somewhere in my collection, a shirt where she took one of the little infants who were premature, probably no more than an inch long handprint of a baby, and put it in red on a shirt with a heart. It was really well done. And she wrote a jingle that Carol can still sing. When I saw Carol this last year, we were talking about a little museum project there. I mentioned that jingle. Well, she just starts singing it. She still knows that jingle to this day. That’s ’92. So 40, almost 50 years ago. And mom both enjoyed that and was disappointed because she could she felt like everyone should help with that project. If they could just see those children and their needs over there and the care and the love that they needed, she thought everyone should, and she would come to me and she’d say, this person, you know, a philanthropic leader in the community, she said, why do they even keep these babies alive? There’s no hope. And she would be so disappointed because people would not see why Joel and Carol were doing what they were doing. And so that was my first experience with them. And over the years, you know, tried to help when I can. But my mother really adored both of those people who were doing really good work.
Gomez: Well, I know they adored her as well, because I hear the stories, and I think that’s what’s great about having. Carol is still around the organization. Next spring, spring of 2027, she will celebrate 50 years with the organization.
Thompson: Wow.
Gomez: This is a woman. This was her ministry. This, to me, this is the second coming of Mattie Mallory, is Carol Gray, who had a heart for these kids, had a heart to make sure that their, her standard of care is bar none. I mean, it’s hard to keep up her standard. I’m thankful to have it, frankly, to learn from her and to and to see her. But she now has taken on this role of historian. And so she’s done yeoman’s work to catch, look for all of Mattie’s writings and all the things from Mr. Venable, who was the executive director back in the 1950s, to, you know, Albert’s leadership in 1978 when he was the CEO, and that those were big shoes to fill for me just to replace Albert in 2020. And both of those folks who just have come along with us and to make sure that the story continues, understanding that everything that we had from this organization was a blessing from God and that our lean is to him. We’re a faith-based organization, very open about that. And it’s that faith in God that allows us to continue to keep the ministry open.
Thompson: Yeah. So, by 2008, you have a new $7 million, 20-bed unit that you open. By 2020, you’re serving 287 children and teenagers with complex medical and physical disabilities through inpatient programs, while serving over 2,800 children from across Oklahoma. And then in 2022, you rebrand. It was the Children’s Center Rehabilitation Hospital, and it becomes Bethany Children’s Health Center. And in 2024, you have a groundbreaking for a $178 million, 200,000-square-foot new outpatient Center of Excellence. And so let’s catch us up.
Gomez: A leap of faith.
Thompson: Because you came on board in 2020.
Gomez: Yeah. And then all I’ve done is spend a lot of money.
Thompson: And 2020 was an easy time to come on board for a new job, right?
Gomez: Oh, you know, coming out of the COVID pandemic and, you know, the team did amazing because I remember, you know, we were scared, like everybody was. We were really scared, concerned for the kids who were fragile in their own health as it was, to deal with COVID, which we at the time didn’t know. So we were just trying to protect the kids. And we did not have our first child become positive with COVID until like the third variant, which I’m thankful for. That team did amazing.
It does amazing today, and it’s really the team that does amazing work, we wanted to expand access to that team. And you know, we went from 100-bed facility to 160-bed facility. So we have plenty of inpatient. Now we see kids from all over the country now, not just Oklahoma, but we see kids from all over the country. The challenge was, as we were discharging kids back home, we were actually creating a waiting list for outpatient services that they needed in order to thrive back home in community, whether that was a pediatric physiatry, which is a muscle rehab specialty, or pediatric neurology, some of our subspecialties. But to speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, all the things that we really need a child to thrive.
And so we really embarked on this opportunity that we saw, and we really want to build for the future. And again, that’s God’s blessing to an organization who didn’t deserve it but tries to work really hard to serve the kids. And we’ve been, we’re excited about opening up a facility that happens to be on Route 66, right? So we come back to Route 66. And for a guy who started out my career after I graduated with my undergraduate degree, the Department of Transportation, working on Route 66-type projects, even then, it kind of came home for me to be where we are. And then I drive by that facility, and that was the challenge. People would always cough and say, when they after they came and took a tour, I didn’t know you were here. We were back off the road, and if you didn’t have a child that was involved with us or you didn’t know somebody that employed, now we’re probably largest employer in Bethany, now. We’re over 900 people. You know, you really didn’t know who we were.
And I’ve learned now, we’ve had generations of, I have generations of donors going back to the ’50s and ’60s because they had a family member involved. You know, I have people who, I used to work there back in the, you know, ’50s, and ’60s, and ’70s, and I’m seeing all these stories that come back and understanding the legacy of where we’ve come, and then the responsibility of where we’re trying to go. And the responsibility, the mission hasn’t changed. Taking care of kids, complex medical needs, or complex situations that had no really other place to go. But now we’re trying to grow that to where we can actually support them living in community, not just staying at the hospital.
Thompson: I’d love to, if you could talk a little bit about some of the cases that you guys work on, your doctor’s work on, some of the things you see, and maybe just a couple of the success stories that you guys have. Because when you, and people can go to their website, and I encourage you to do that. But when you came to our Rotary Club, you showed some videos of some kids who had some really severe injuries that had, you guys had helped them to overcome those. And the quality of life that you’re able to give these kids is astounding.
Gomez: Well, we really reframe the phrase that we kind of coined around the landmark, because we’re a new landmark on Route 66, and really, this is a landmark of hope because we want when people come into the facility is to feel hopeful, to, you know, miracles do happen there. Not because of our work, but just the work that happens through us. And I think that’s always kind of a challenge to, as an aside, because you know, not everybody gets the miracle they are hoping for or wanting. But we have some tremendous stories where kids are just resilient and coming in broken and and walking out of the facility. And, you know, I think about a young man who recently discharged, who was injured, I believe, in a fireworks accident in the Tulsa area this past summer. Came to us, lost his sight, lost, you know, part of his limbs. And I never met a kid with more joy. It’s been fascinating to watch him grow and evolve with a team who gave him hope, an opportunity to understand his new condition is not a limitation.
It’s just an opportunity to be able to experience life differently. And I, you know, if it were me, I’m not sure I would face life in the same joy that he is. So we learn. We get blessed by these kids so much because I look at some really tough situations, and I’m going, how in the world are they going to make it? And then they make it, and you go, wow, I had so much little faith that they’re going to be able to do it. And God has blessed us with a wonderful team who deals with kids with cerebral palsy, that come broken, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury. I can’t even really explain how it happens, but it’s an opportunity to witness just the opportunity, of a transformational opportunity, that we see that the kids now have that, had they been, had they not had that opportunity, I’m not sure they would have the same hope.
Thompson: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. And so, you know, you guys, where are you at right now in terms of your massive building project you started?
Gomez: Well, it’s a 30-month project. We’re getting ready to wrap up here in December. We’ll get the keys in December, and we’ll hopefully be operating it in March. And really we’re going to be, it’s really built around our outpatient services expanding. Our desire is that no child has to wait for an inpatient bed. If they need us from around the country, if it’s a referral-based hospital, that we have a bed for them. The other part is, we don’t want a child to have to wait years, hopefully not months. But you know, we don’t want them to have to wait a long time. You know, hopefully it’s a couple of months, a couple of weeks, before they can get in with a specialist or before they can get in on therapies, because the sooner we can get, you know, to kids, then typically the better the outcomes can be. So, for us, it’s about creating access. We are at a partnership. We love the partnership with Oklahoma Children’s because they do amazing work of getting these kids ready for the intense rehabilitation that we’re going to do out in Bethany, Oklahoma. It’s a great community partnership. We don’t do that by ourselves, because it’s those, it goes back to even the history of the organization. All these, all these roots are kind of grown together. And we’re still doing that same work today. We’re just doing it in the form of healthcare versus, you know, an orphanage.
Thompson: Now, is it, you said you’re still faith-based. Are you associated with any particular denomination now?
Gomez: Great question. No, we’re not not actually affiliated officially with any denomination. We’re completely independent of that. But it is a complete faith-based organization. Now our board is made up of, you know, different denominations, but it’s a Christian faith-based organization as it’s been since its beginning.
Thompson: Okay. Very good.
Blackburn: Trait, on a recent visit, I was out there a couple of months ago and walking to the facility with Joel and Carol, and getting a tour of what’s going on. And I’ll never forget is that there might be a wheelchair being pushed through a common area with a child who, you know, looks like they’re, to an outsider, looks like there’s no hope. But Joel or Carol would call them by their first name and see the joy on the little child’s face. And this sense of hope and that connection, it’s really something to see. And I would encourage people to take a tour. You should be on their donors list. You should be in their will. So people need to get out and see what’s happening there. It’s really a remarkable place.
Gomez: I love you, Bob. I appreciate that. No, I really, I mean, you know, BethanyChildrens.org, and I think that’s, what I really love about this new project is we could have built it on the back side of the property. We got great advice from a couple of architects who said, you’re on Route 66, you need to take advantage of the route because you’re going to invite people into this transformational story that would have no other reason to stop. And so, going back to my highway days, you know, I thought one thing we need to do is create a historical marker drive on Route 66. So we’re actually creating a drive off the route so people can, going eastbound, can pull over, pull off the road. And we’ve applied for a granite historical marker and tells us tells the story about Mattie.
And it’s a way for people to come off the road, and they’re going to have a reason to come off the road. We haven’t really even talked about is we’re going to have a new landmark, a new roadside icon on Route 66, and it’s going to be this 90-foot colorful, fun, friendly caterpillar that’s going to be anchored to the north side of that building. And that caterpillar’s named Kal, short for kaleidoscope. And you know, and Kal’s going to tell the story of transformation. So you come into the chapel. Next to the chapel is our little history center that Carol Gray’s working on. And the chapel is going to have a tree that’s a live oak tree that’s been formed into this cross, and it’s going to look like a chrysalis. The chapel is going to look like a chrysalis, and you can come out in the lobby, and you’re going to see this beautiful art feature of butterflies, a flight of butterflies, which I didn’t know before this project. A large group of butterflies was called the kaleidoscope. So you’re going to call this kaleidoscope of butterflies, and it’s going to be a wonderful experience for the community. And this is a way for us to kind of tell that story, because they’ll have a chance to pull off the side of the road, take their photo with Kal the caterpillar, learn a little bit about the hospital, and maybe be intrigued to learn more.
Blackburn: Well, then you’re also going to have a special events place that’ll bring people together. And, you know, if there’s some kind of message and everything we’ve talked about today, it’s community, that we have to take care of each other, and that we have to come together, and that we’re stronger together than we are individually. And you might mention the special events auditorium that is going to be an interactive, immersive space.
Gomez: Everything we do is around kids, around the kids that we have, and a lot of our kids have physical limitations on their movement and whatnot. And so we wanted to have an auditorium space, but not like a traditional auditorium with a slant floor. We wanted to create an experience for them because some of our kids, by very various circumstances, may never get a chance to go on a field trip to the zoo. I’m probably never going to go to space, but this is actually creating what we call Moe’s Imaginarium, named after Moe Anderson, one of our donors, an imaginarium. It’s a multi-purpose room, and it’s going to look... The National Western Heritage Museum has the cowboy exhibit. It’s an immersive, and it’s a beautiful opportunity for us to transport kids in the space to faraway places that they may never have a chance to go, and we can also share that with the community. And I think, from a multi-purpose standpoint, but a multi-audience standpoint, we built it around the kids’ experience, and it’s something that our community is going to be able to experience and learn more, too.
Thompson: Nico, I have to say, I got to know you when I was working in the pro tem’s office, and you were at the Health Care Authority many years ago. Too many years to count. But you know, your work that you’ve done in healthcare in Oklahoma, you’ve left a lasting legacy here. And Oklahomans are better off for the work that you’ve done during your career. And I just want to say thank you for being so passionate about this work and passionate about the people. It just comes through in your eyes and in your voice that this is not just a job to you. This is a calling, and I appreciate you doing what you do because you make all of our lives better for what you do.
Gomez: . Thank you. Humbling. Very kind. It’s what Bob said. It’s community. I’m one member of the community who partners with others to really make a difference, and we don’t do this by ourselves. I’m incredibly blessed to be where I am. I never would have thought that’s where I’d be when I was planning out my future. I didn’t know that’s where I was going to end up.
Thompson: I didn’t know I’d be here.
Gomez: You know, it can be intimidating at times because you and I, Trait, both follow legendary people, legendary leaders in these spaces. And how do you live up to that? Well, you only live up to that by, you know, standing on their shoulders and keeping pushing for better. And I thank you for keeping pushing for better, because you help keep the story alive. This gentleman sitting across from you, Dr. Blackburn, has, you know, sparked this interest and love for history and story in Oklahoma, unlike anybody I’ve never met, like anybody I’ve ever met. And you’ve taken that and continue to grow it. So you and I have had really similar paths together. And I’m so thankful that we get to do that together in this community.
Thompson: Me, too. Well, friends and neighbors, as you’re driving Route 66 and you’re going through Bethany, Oklahoma, I want you to glance over to the south side of the road, and I want you to think about the story that you’ve learned here today, and that one woman back in the 1890s felt a calling, and the legacy of that is that thousands of kids from Oklahoma and around the world are getting treatment and healthcare that otherwise they might not have gotten. And that’s a pretty cool story.
Blackburn: Well, it’s a lesson that each of us can make a difference, and that history is not written anywhere. It is made by people making decisions, facing the challenges, seizing opportunities, and making a difference. Both of you have done that. Thank you for all your career, again. Thank you for being with us today.
Gomez: Thank you.
Thompson: Yeah. Thanks so much, Niko. Well, folks, that about wraps it up for us today, and we’ll look forward to telling some more stories on our next episode.
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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.
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