0:00:00
Jim has coerced me into reading this thing.

It’s not my idea, but here it goes. And I quote, All the bars were closed in Missoula, Montana. Nine months later, Jim was born. His first mother didn’t like the way her baby looked, so she put him up for adoption. For the first 11 days, there were no takers, and Jim thought about hiring an attorney. He didn’t know who to sue. The parents who made the mistake of adopting him moved to Salem, Oregon, and Jim decided to go with them.

Second grade, Jim was disciplined by a teacher for talking too much and disrupting class. Teacher came up with a solution. For the whole class, she walked where Jim was sitting, opened his mouth, and stuck paper in his mouth. This worked. He couldn’t talk with paper in his mouth. When he was 13, he played baseball, pitched no hit, run, game. His athletic career went downhill from there. Somehow, he became senior class president of his high school, and somehow, he was admitted to Stanford, the law school at the University of California in Berkeley, and became captain in the army, serving in West Germany.

His first job as a lawyer was deputy district attorney for the county of Sacramento, where he learned how not to try a jury case. Eventually specialized in defensive aviation accidents, he became a single engine land private pilot. In 1982, elected president of the Los Angeles chapter of Aviation Insurance Association. He was not re-elected. Today is the fifth time Jim’s been selected to be speaker of our OFA conference. Hopefully, it will be the last.

Jim retired three years ago at age of 82. We’re not completely turned off by now, but we’re still awake. I present our next speaker, Jim.

0:02:03
In conclusion. . . .

This is a baseball town.

Johnny Bench, this might even be the Johnny Bench meeting room. that Johnny, the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds was born in Oklahoma.

Warren Spahn, who you young guys probably never heard of, but he was a big baseball player. Warren Spahn was not born in Oklahoma, but he retired here.

And of course, the most famous of the baseball players from Oklahoma is Mickey Mantle. Around Oklahoma City, there is Mickey Mantle Drive, Mickey Mantle Restaurant, Mickey Mantle this, Mickey Mantle that. his quote-unquote sports hall of fame. The elephant in the room, the last time I was a speaker, the conference was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The elephant in the room there was the Los Alamos National Laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. And since then, the film Oppenheimer has come out.

The elephant in the room here in Oklahoma is Native Americans. 42% of the land of Oklahoma, it seems kind of high to me, but that’s what I read, 42% of the land of Oklahoma is in the hands of Native American towns,

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis to assemble the framework for the science laboratories of tomorrow. Houston, how’s it going? Houston, how’s it going? I’m going to go ahead and get started.

Right there is a baseball field, and facing that is our hotel. Oklahoma was first made famous nationwide by the 1943 Broadway play by that name. And in 1955, that Broadway play was made into a movie, starring the beautiful Shirley Jones and the handsome Gorton McRae. I’m sweeping that away.

So. If you flew into the Oklahoma City airport to get here, this is a picture right in front of the elevators that is some very beautiful artwork. Any sports fans in here? Raise your hand if you’re a sports fan. A few weeks ago, the Oklahoma University football team was ranked number one in the nation. They’re now ranked about number seven or so, but they were ranked number one in Sylvania, Texas. That’s very impressive. And of course, we are adjacent to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Oklahoma City Dodgers. Baseball field, a subsidiary or affiliated with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And I think we talked earlier about Johnny Mitch and Warren Spahn.

0:07:02
The Oklahoma City Thunder, the NBA team, has a rising star, Chet Holmgren, 7’1″, who can do everything. I watched him when he was a person at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.

I watched him on television.  He’s possibly going to be the MVP of the NBA someday, perhaps. Okay, close five.

We’re on the National Stockyards. And a few years ago, the authorities permitted cattle to run wild down the street like this.  I think that’s probably not permitted today.

I don’t really know. Probably the lawyers squashed it with liability. Having been a lawyer, I understand that. Cattleman’s Cafe. Ask how many of you have been to the Cattleman’s Cafe? One, two, all right. I ate there a few days ago. Great service, great foods. Super Western attire back there. Okay, we’re going to Oklahoma history and Oklahoma fun. We’ll change that for that introduction.

Here’s the state flag, the state bird, the scissor tail flycatcher. Same animal as the bison, otherwise known as the buffalo.

A couple of interesting firsts in the state of Oklahoma, first of the nation. One is the very first Boy Scout troop in the entire United United States was started here in 1909. Is that the Oklahoma First? Thanks for the wait, Lewis. Pointing to you. United States. Well, that was achieved by sense. I’m glad you said that. Those in the back probably can’t see this, but right in there, from 7 a.m. 6 p.m. is a nickel. Yeah, I think it’s more expensive than a nickel today.

Okay, let’s talk about some famous people from Oklahoma. Let’s start with Will Rogers. He flew in here. He landed at the Will Rogers Airport. He was a humorous social commentator in the 1930s. One of the quotes that he is famous for is, oh, he was in one case a jerk. So he was born in Indian territory before 1879, the week before this area became a state. Anyway, he’s quoted as saying that my ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat. Asked if there should be presidential debates, he says, yes, joint debates, in any joint you thought. And then he says, a humorist entertains, a lecturer annoys, and I hope that you won’t regard me as a lecturer.

0:11:13
He also said, if we don’t get it all together, we pay for it.

Will Rogers, here’s currently an unlimited number of funny things that he said. That’s what made it popular. Will Rogers and Wally Post became friends. Two little friends, because they died together on August 15, 1935 near Point Barrow, Alaska. He died in the storm. When a Monty Post aircraft had some difficulties taking off from a lake and it plunged upside down into the lake and they both were killed instantly. At Point Barrow, there is a monument. If you want to go all the way to Point Barrow, Alaska, which is like in the north end of Alaska, you can witness the memorial for this accident.

Jim Thorpe is an Oklahoman. He was born in Indian Territory. Jim Thorpe is regarded still as one of the best athletes ever in the United States. He was the first Native American to win a gold medal in the Olympics. We’re talking about the 1912 Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden. The King said to Jim Thorpe, Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world. And Jim Thorpe replied, Thank you. There’s a Jim Thorpe Museum within walking distance of here. It’s a little section of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. I want to see the Jim Thorpe Museum in the Hall of Fame. It’s very worthwhile to visit. There’s a statue of Jim Thorpe that you can see just a block or so from here.

0:13:28
He played professional baseball for the New York Giants, played basketball, and of course, he won the decathlon, ten events. Another famous Oklahoma is Maria Tallchief, from the Wausau Nation. She became a prima donna ballerina. A prima donna  ballerina, I learned is the highest rank or category of ballerinas. And the last part of the movie, A Tall Tale.

Patty Page was from Oklahoma. And for those of you who are over 70, here in the room, you might remember the song, Tennessee Waltz. If you’re younger, you’ve probably never heard of this guy. Bill Polk, that’s how I pronounce his last name, an astronaut in Oklahoma. In 1974, he spent 84 days in space on Skylab 4. Of course, Mickey Mantle. I think we’ve talked about Mickey Mantle enough. There’s a statue of him outside the local sports hall of fame, near the Ken Forrest statue. Another famous local woman is Walter Miller, who was made famous by one of my favorite songs. Vince Gill, apparently he was with the Eagles before he went on his own. And has a beautiful voice and right outside the hotel, perpendicular, is Vince Gill Avenue. All right, Brooks. See if we can get some sound here. A lot of people are name droppers and talk about famous people that they knew.

0:16:13
Here’s Goroff Brooks talking about all the people he knew who are in those places.

0:16:18
I love that stuff. is from Oklahoma and she came out with a book just in the last year or so. And to my surprise, the foreword to Reboot Magnetires book is written by of Stephen Kellenberg, that’s three-handed, you’ve heard of him? One person? Two persons? Two persons, okay. He was born at Fort Sill, and he was the inventor of this. children, or children became a fan of Spongebob Squarepants. Just him saying that.

And Brad Pitt, the ugly Hollywood actor, was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Let’s talk about the concept of the dream of manifest destiny. Manifest destiny was a belief that white settlers were ordinarily justified in going west and taking over lands that had been occupied by Native Americans for hundreds and hundreds of years. And Man of His Destiny is a colonial concept that was used by white Europeans throughout the world just to try to take it over people and countries and other places. Here is something that, raise your hand if you read this book, Sex and Manifest Destiny. Just kidding.

Here is a beautiful painting of the concept of manifest destiny. This lady is carrying a Bible in her right hand and in her left hand she’s carrying a sharing telegraph wire, expanding the telegraph communication westward as everybody went west. I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying, go west, young man. That’s part of Manifest Destiny. Okay, this is the way the United States looked in 1822. You will see that Oklahoma is not mentioned anywhere on this map because it didn’t exist then. Another interesting thing, interesting to me, is right here. This is Russian America. was owned by Russia and I think Secretary of State Seward, CWI, at least, may have negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Okay, before Oklahoma became a state, it was called, the area The area we’re in is called Indian Territory. And the Indian Territory is the lower right, Oklahoma Territory upper, and the rest of it is far apart. Indian tribes occupy the land.

0:21:06
And right up here is the Osage tribe.

0:21:07
We’re going to be talking about the Boshan Nation, the Boshan tribe, later on. Okay, this is what the white settlers regarded when they moved westward and found some farmland that they liked. and they would just say, it’s mine. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was an act of Congress signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830. removal of Native American tribes from primarily the Southeast to Indian territory. It’s called the Trail of Tears. And there were many trails of tears, not just a few of them. where I’m from, were forced to move, to walk over 2,000 miles to Oklahoma Indian. In 1831, a French citizen by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States just to observe what was going on in 1831. And he wrote a paper or a book called Democracy in America. Bill Anson actually in 1931 witnessed the removal of the Choctaw tribe from Tennessee and here’s what he said about what he witnessed. In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction. One couldn’t watch without feeling one’s And a soldier who participated in the removal said as follows, I’ve fought through wars and seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands. The Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew. Fast forward to 1987, the National Park Service established a trail of over 2,000 miles long and it covers nine states. Okay, this is a map showing several of the trail of tears are seminals from Central Florida, also went by boat up to Mississippi or Louisiana. And all these yellow lines in this map here are trails of tears of various tribes to the Oklahoma area. Here’s a dramatic, sad painting showing the Native Americans being herded by…

0:25:10
What happened?

0:25:14
Let’s talk about proper leaves to fill a hockey hoop instead of the mustard. I’ll get back on the touch here.

0:25:24
Let’s see. Okay, I might need some technical help here.

0:25:34
It’s a little bit, not sure. Yeah.

0:25:37
Thank you. Yep. You did it.

0:25:40
Thank you very much.

0:26:02
Okay

0:26:04
Many of the Native Americans who were forced to leave their homelands to go to the Oklahoma area died on the way. I’m sure there’s snow on the ground here. They didn’t have adequate clothing or food. Some of them starved to death on the way. Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907. It was the 46th state. And the reason why it became a state so late is because there were some controversies in Congress. Eastern states, the representatives and senators of Eastern states disagreed with the representatives and senators from the Southern states. And another factor in delaying the statehood was that the Native Americans living in the area wanted to create their own state. They wanted to call it Sequoia. State of Sequoia, named after the Cherokee member who invented the Sequoia alphabet. In any event, in 1907, it did become a state, rather than two states, starting in the upper left-hand corner, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Mexico. And today in the United States Congress, to give you some perspective here, Oklahoma has five representatives, New York 26, and California 52. That last one, yes. Let’s talk about oil in Oklahoma. Oil became, and still is, a big deal, to say the least, as an understatement, in the state of Oklahoma. For about 30 years, Oklahoma was the top oil producer in the entire United States. John Paul Getty got his start with a little tiny oil well in Oklahoma and his, you’ve heard of Getty Oil Company, started right here. In Tulsa, there’s a 70 foot high statue of an oil worker. I’ve never been to Tulsa, but if I go over there, that’s the only person I’m going to 70 foot tall oil workers. And in the name of the Oklahoma, of the Tulsa, my only baseball team is the Drillers. Okay, now I get into another dark, black-hot chapter in Oklahoma history. And just to let you know, I’m going to be talking about some positive, happy things that occurred in Oklahoma after I get through the negative things. So, not all negative. The oil was discovered on a reservation of the Osage Nation. The oil belonged to the Osage tribal members because they were able to negotiate in such a way that the mineral rights of their land belonged to them. They negotiated that before they even knew there was any oil underneath their land. Oil was discovered on the boats of that nation. Here’s where the Osaq tribe and nation is located. This is their seal. The Osage tribal members became very, very rich. They, per capita, they were the richest group of people in the entire United In one year, the royalties paid to the Osage tribal members was $30 million, which translates in current dollars to about $400 million. The Osage tribal members had chauffeurs, they built mansions, they sent their children to private schools, including schools in Europe. And here’s a picture of a… This is a self explanatory… A man with a featherless cap there, driving a convertible. And there are others of Saatchi that have been, and still are, some very famous members

0:31:45
of the Osage Nation.

0:31:46
I think you might find this interesting. One of them became the Vice President of the United States. His name was Charles Curtis, and he was Vice President under President Herbert Hoover, 1929 to 1933. Another famous OSAD tribal member was Jerry Elliot, who was a physicist and one of the first Native Americans in NASA. And he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his the early afterthoughts of the war of Apollo 13. The current mayor of Oklahoma City, where we are right now, is a Osage tribal member named David Holt. We talked about Maria Tallchief, the ballerina. tribal member that I came across during this, Charles Tinker. Ever heard of Tinker Air Force Base? Came after him. Charles Tinker was an aviation officer who died during World War II, of Midway. He achieved the rank of Major General. He’s the first American in Native America. however, talking about how wealthy the Osage native members were, however, they began to be murdered one by one. The book was written about it called Killers of the Flower Moon, and last week, October 20, I believe, a movie by the same name came out. Killin’ is the Power of Movement, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robin De Niro, and Lillian Bladstone. And at first, no one knew who was murdering the Osage tribal members. members, if it’s one a week or one a month. The Oklahoma justice system and law enforcement personnel did not investigate. They were asked to investigate by the OSOT and they refused. So, for years, no one was held accountable. Eventually, the Osage tribal members went to Washington, D.C. and asked for the assistance of the new federal Bureau of Investigation. G. Edgar Hoover was just a young man at that time. He got his start because of the killings in Oklahoma, the Hossack. Okay, here’s another terrible part of Oklahoma history. The Tulsa Race Massacre of black people in 1921. In Tulsa, there was and maybe still is an area, a recession called Greenville became known as the Black Wall Street because there were many successful African-American businessmen residing in the Greenville district of Tulsa who became quite wealthy and that’s where the name came from, the In 1921, a little incident occurred that exploded into a big incident. A black elevator operator, a teenager, was on duty, and a young, white girl got into and an altercation of some kind took place between them. It never was really determined what exactly happened. But in any event, the young lady complained that she was assaulted by this black teenager, and the white residents of Tulsa went berserk. They created a mob and they burned the Greenville black district to the ground. They even used airplanes that would fly over and drop flaming trip and time falls on the tops of the roofs of the buildings that held the black businesses. And the buildings would burn from the top downwards. It was a terrible thing. And it’s not just past history, even though it occurred in 1921. Just this year, there have been three newspaper articles about the Tulsa Race Massacre. The New York Times had one in April called, In Tulsa, Clues to Massacre Lawsuit, Statute of Limitations. And there was a survivor of 102 years old who did not receive any compensation. His case was dismissed because of the statute of limitations. And then on July 31, the New York Times had another article about the Tulsa Grace Massacre called, Delayed Justice for Survivors of the Tulsa Grace Massacre. Here’s a picture of the Greenwood area after the devastation. And then we get to the Dust Bowl.

0:39:11
It lasted about 10 years.

0:39:15
Ken Burns, a fabulous documentarian, made a movie, a film on PBS about the Dust Bowl. Oklahoma, but it covered Kansas and surrounding states. It was created by several factors. One was improper farming methods. Before the natural state of the grasslands, the plains, the topsoil was covered by what’s known as prairie grass. The farmers came in and plowed up the prairie grass and planted crops. The crops did not do a good job of holding down the topsoil like the prairie grasses did. And then a year’s long drought occurred and a tremendous windstorm and the topsoil was blown away. This black cloud consists of topsoil. Oklahoma residents in their javapios. No place to escape to. And this picture is was taken after the dust and the wind settled. You can see wagons and automobiles covered with what was topsoil. A book was written about this by John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. The title comes from the first verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. He is trampling out the vintage, or the grapes of wrath, our story. I had to look up the definition of the word wrath. It’s not a word that I use very much. It means extreme anger or rage. The Graves of Wrath is a very unhappy story about the migrants of Oklahoma who were left penniless and homeless. Many of the farmers had financed the purchase of their land or financed the purchase of a tractor or even a horses. When their farms were devastated, they couldn’t make their payments. The banks and grow it. I’ll get to that in a sec. This is the most famous picture taken by a lady photographer by the name of Dorothea Lange. Dorothea Lange was hired by the federal government to go around during the Depression and the Dust Bowl and document, take pictures of people who were down and out. And this, of this mother with two little kids hanging on to her, is Dorothea Lange’s most famous photographer of that era. Okay. Woody Guthrie wrote at least two ballads about the Dust Bowl. of 1935. There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky. You could see that dust storm coming, the cloud looked it like black, and through our mighty nation it left From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line. On top of the Dust Bowl occurring simultaneously was the Great Depression, the nationwide financial

0:44:06
economic depression.

0:44:07
People were hit with a double whammy, the dust ball in the Great Depression. My father, who grew up in Idaho, and many people who were teenagers at that time, rode the rails, which means he and his brother would find an open boxcar on a train, hop into the boxcar, not knowing where the train was going, and just ride it to the next stop, get off and lift to work in that town.

0:45:01
If they didn’t find any work in that town,

0:45:03
they get into another boxcar, and it’s called riding the rails. And my father, who eventually became a CPA, started out as a guy who was riding the rails. Okay. Let’s fast forward to 1995. And if you’re still, if you’re not too depressed, still sitting here, nobody’s left, we’ll talk about a terrible thing that occurred right here in Oklahoma City in 1995. The bombings of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. How many people have heard of a person by the name of Timothy McVeigh?

0:45:55
Everybody.

0:45:56
Standard everybody. I was there. What’s that? I was there. You were? After the explosion, the Detroit summit. Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay.

0:46:16
Ouch.

0:46:20
So, Timothy Lefebvre and another guy, Army veterans, but he went from the 8th ID. They became pissed off at the federal government for what occurred in Texas, in something called the Branch Davidian situation. On the second anniversary, I guess the FBI came in and squelched some kind of a riot, killed a lot of people. Timothy and a lot of Americans became very angry at the FBI for doing that. On the second anniversary of the He rented a Ryder truck in Kansas, drove down, his assistant drove a getaway car. He loaded the truck with explosives, parked it in front of the federal building, escaped, had a timer, and the bomb went off. 160 people were killed, including 19 children under the age of six. In addition to the 160 who were killed, 680 people were injured. The building was so damaged it had to be torn down. It couldn’t be repaired, as you can obviously see that. interesting how Timothy and Clay was caught. The blast was so ferocious that truck parts of the engine, transmission, everything else were blown for blocks around. Investigators found the part with a serial number on it. And somehow they traced that serval number to the Ryder truck agency in Kansas that McVeigh ran under under an alias. That’s how they tied the truck to that Ryder truck agency. Only 90 minutes, an hour and a half after the blast, Timothy McVeigh was driving northward in his escape car, getaway car, and he was stopped by a local policeman because the back of the vehicle didn’t know, Timothy McVeigh, had a concealed weapon. Didn’t have a license for it. So he arrested McVeigh that caused this bombing of the federal bill. And that’s how he was caught. Case, he was prosecuted, obviously. The case went to a jury. The jury did not decide the guilty voted quickly. They deliberated for 23 hours. And that tells me it’s like three days, eight hours a day. He was found guilty, and about five years after the incident, he was killed by a lethal injection at a prison in India. Here is a very sad picture of a Oklahoma City fireman holding an injured baby. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive. A memorial, a monument memorial museum has been constructed in Oklahoma City, not very far from where we are today. When OFA had its first Oklahoma City conference here, I went to the bombing museum. It’s worthwhile going to see. And I have put a paper and pencil on the table, on each table, if you’re interested, you write down the address of the Bombay Museum. Two hundred and one. Well, that’s great. OK, another. Now we’re starting to get into some positive things. Forget all the negative stuff. Let’s take positively. I understand that the spouse of the tour yesterday included a tour of this natural cowboy at the Western Heritage Museum. Here’s the North American Museum. And in the southwest of the state are the Wichita Mountains. And it’s a wildlife refuge where buffalo and elk roam freely without any fences around freely. The tallest mountain in the Wichita Mountains is Mount Scott. Right across the street from us, towards the fondue restaurant, is the American Banjo Museum. It’s very worthwhile. See? Okay, finally, we’re going to talk about aviation.

0:53:19
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been a passenger on OP Airlines.

0:53:48
We have created some paper airplanes with the name Hokie Airlines on the side.

0:53:59
And Rob Cheek has…

0:54:04
Rob Cheek has… I thought you were going to do some contests. or your grandson’s granddaughter would like to have a paper airplane, a Bokey Airline. We definitely want one, Rob.

0:54:19
We definitely want one, Rob.

0:54:21
They’re great flyers.

0:54:23
One of the great students. Woo! Rob, back there, Rob. The word Okie, a derogatory term for residents of Oklahoma, was created by Californians. When thousands of displaced, broke, destitute Oklahoma residents traveled to us around 66 in California find work and start anew. The California residents were not very happy with all these strangers coming into the state. For every one job available in California in the 1930s or so, there were about a thousand people, of Oklahoma residents trying to get that one job. The California residents came up with the derogatory term bogey, I believe that’s the derogation of that name. Okay, let’s talk about Fort Sill, the birthplace of army combat aviation. navigation. Fort Sill started in 1869. It was a fort that was, an army fort that was created to help control the Indian wars. It’s named after this gentleman here, Joshua Sill, who became a regular general, probably posthumously, he was killed during the Civil War fighting for the Union at age 31. Army combat aviation began at Fort Sill, which by the way is located southwest of here, about 85 miles near the town of Lawton, Oklahoma. And one of the things that I was very surprised to learn is that the flight instructors for the first CFIs. No one said the thing of the CFI at the time.

0:57:23
Anyway, they were the right founders.

0:57:25
Oatsil is one of four basic training Army bases. Another one used to be Fort Worth in California. In 1922, the busiest airfield in the United States was the airfield at Fort Sill. The Army aviation section eventually in 1954, we was transferred to Fort Booker. A lot of Army helicopter pilots, fixed-wing pilots, who got over to Vietnam received their training at Corso. Okay, in 1942, well let’s talk about something that occurred nationwide here. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, an executive order signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt, established internment camps for Japanese Americans. Internment is a nice word for a concentration camp. And there were many locations on the West Coast, and there was even one here at Fort Sill. There were several hundred Japanese Americans. We’re talking about people who were citizens of the United States. Some were like second-generation citizens. And I recall hearing about a young man who had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. He’d been admitted to medical school and he never got there because he was interned in one of the camps. Fort Sill. Fast forward to 1967 at Fort Sill. Friends and family of a fallen soldier gathered for a funeral. A First Sergeant had been killed in Dam, as he tried to drag one of his men off the battlefield. He had been awarded 42 medals that he had earned for his service in World War II, Korea, and posthumously in Vietnam. He, this first sergeant, he and his sons, Native Americans, he and his three sons, were among 42,000 Native Americans who served in Vietnam. Okay. Spartan Navy agent, this is his, founded headquarters in Tulsa. I’m past my time a little bit here. I’ll speed it up. I guess, John, why don’t you have a Zoom maybe?

1:01:21
Right.

1:01:22
Yeah, okay. FAA Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center is located adjacent to the the Rogers Air Force, 7,500 employees work at the FAA there. It covers almost every aspect of the FAA Act of 1958 that was signed into law and the FAA replaced the CAA, the Civil Aviation Administration, in 1958. Here’s a photograph of a mythical or typical air traffic controller in a tower. The reason why I have this is because one of the things I learned, and this is a suggestion, is that the FAA employs speech pathologists. Why? to teach ATC people to speak so damn fast. And that result in this typical message from the pilot. Okay, let’s talk about some flying machines

1:02:59
just for fun that have absolutely nothing to do

1:03:01
with Oklahoma, but are interesting. As you know, this airship is flying around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The very first aviation fatalities occurred in 1908 when Lieutenant Paulson, a soldier, somehow fell from the surface. Here’s a weird contraption there. I don’t know whether it ever came off the ground. And this is one of my favorite photographs. In England in 1911, they were having an air show, preparing for an air show at the Hinden Airfield somewhere outside of London. And the spectators were prohibited from going inside to see the airplane. So, this guy cheated and they dressed up in suits and put hats on and stood on the seats of their bicycles to look over the fence to see what was on the other side. Airplanes are now… There’s an aircraft landing on a battleship deck in 1911. Here’s where it all began, the White Cycle Company. Wing walkers on the Cessna aircraft. I counted, there’s 28 men standing on these wings. Well, this would be something to brag on how strong the wings were. NASA, an early NASA wind tunnel, and right there you can see how big it is, there’s men at the top of the ladder there.

1:04:55
Is that you?

1:04:57
Jimmy Doolittle taking off from aircraft carrier Hornet to bomb Tokyo. Very impressive statistic or not, a very impressive thing is that this bombing run occurred like three or four months after Pearl Harbor. So the Americans were able to train these pilots to do stall takeoffs and the white lines right there on the left side of the carrier deck are intended to guide the pilots as they did their takeoff from all the deck. So the tip of the right wing would not hit the island of the aircraft carrier. The reason why I have a picture of a perfectly good B-52 is because about five years ago I was a tourist in Vietnam. I came across this. Wow. A B-52 wreckage in Hanoi. They built a concrete pad below it, but the only thing you can recognize is the tail. And the Vietnam are very proud of the This aircraft landed like that and apparently just was stuck. It didn’t fall forward or backwards. This is not a real photograph. I’m glad you recognized that.

1:06:38
A live airline.

1:06:40
And you probably can figure out what this is. It works.

1:06:52
Yeah.

1:06:54
Take your child to work.

1:06:56
Poor little boy.

1:06:58
I was.

1:07:00
If things could fly.

1:07:02
That’s a favorite saying of this gentleman over here.

1:07:04
F. Arnold.

1:07:06
Is that correct Hap? I don’t think so. Who’s this guy? It’s our leader Hap Arnold. Oh my gosh. Hap, if you would please tell us.

1:07:36
Wow. Tell us half what you were trying, where this was taken and so forth.

1:07:38
I think it was probably in Michigan. It’s the longest my hair has ever been in my life. F4C. Yeah.

1:07:50
Okay.

1:07:50
And then I’m closing off with some of America’s

1:07:53
most famous persons in aviation. The most famous American is a chimpanzee.

1:07:59
His name was Ham.

1:08:00
And he was a perfect chimpanzee in space in 1961. I believe the purpose of transporting this poor monkey into space to see whether he could survive under the conditions. And if he could survive, maybe human beings could survive. They used a chimpanzee as a guinea pig or as a guinea chimpanzee, did survive. He was given an award. He was given an apple. You see him reaching for the apple and surviving with a thick grin on his face. Wally Post, when he made… Wally Post was the first American, maybe the first person worldwide to fly, circumnavigate the globe. The time he did this in 1930, the record for circumnavigating the globe was not held by an airplane. It was held by the Graf Zeppelin. That took 29 days for the Graf Zeppelin to go around the earth and took Wally Poe’s time. It is.

1:09:42
Here’s Vlad Sesa.

1:09:43
His company was eventually acquired by Textron.

1:09:44
Piper Aircraft.

1:09:45
Anybody know the current owner of Piper Aircraft? The government of Brunei. Anybody know the current owner of the Piper aircraft? The government of Brunei. It will be interviewed in the EY.

1:09:56
I had to look up on a map.

1:09:57
Where the hell is Brunei? Okay. While they’re being issued these candidates, his company was also acquired, and I think it’s now part of Boeing, if I’m not mistaken.

1:10:28
Extra. Extra.

1:10:30
Extra.

1:10:31
Okay.

1:10:32
No, Zelda is the founder of Douglas Aircraft Company. The DC-3s, for the most part, they were built in several states, including Kansas and Santa Monica Airport. In the early 70s, a law firm in its office at the San Juan Airport on the south side of the runway, on the north side of the runway, was abandoned big green buildings and that was where the DC-3s were made on the west coast. submarines would surface off the coast of California and Oregon and Washington and shoot artillery shells into the United States mainland. In anticipation of that, the entire Douglas Aircraft factory at the Santa Monica airport was camouflaged. Giant tarps and fabrics and so forth were put over the buildings so it would not be apparent that it was an aircraft factory. Santa Monica airport, for those of you who don’t know, us. That’s why they’re deployed. Okay, William Laird, the founder of Lairjet, started out with inventing the car radio. Burt Rutan, who eventually created scaled composites, very creative aeronautical engineer. Amelia Earhart, In their part, of course, I mentioned her, famous American aviator, aviatrice, whatever the word is. And we have Curtis LeMay, who among many of General Curtis LeMay’s achievements and positions of responsibility is, he was the coordinator of the Berlin Airlift occurred in 1948 and 1949. It lasted for 15 months. As many of you know, the city of Berlin in 1948 was completely surrounded by land controlled by Russia. And there was, the only way that you could get to Berlin was by train or truck. Well, Zobias closed those avenues off and Curtis LeMay became the coordinator of the famous Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift was an amazing achievement. Over 270,000 flights occurred during the 15th century. This gentleman here is nodding his head in agreement. That is a Temple Hawk, a lot of the cities have. Okay, great.

1:13:45
What are the key buildings to get in there?

1:13:47
It was so amazing that aircraft loaded with supplies, even including a few aircraft loaded with coal, imagine an aircraft loaded with coal. in the air, aircraft were landing at Tempelhof and maybe one or two other airports in Berlin every 30 seconds. It was an incredible achievement. Aircraft from England, France, and the United States. And he was the guy who coordinated it. Chris Lemay passed away at age 83 near March Air Force Base at a retirement community located, maybe a retirement community for Air Force officers, located adjacent to March Air Force Base. Sally Ride, the first woman in space. Unfortunately, she died at a relatively young age, age 61. And I’m almost done here. You’ll be pleased to know. We’ll end with four very famous American aviators. Linder, Yeager, and Nister.

1:15:13
And these two. Bob, I said I told you to burn the evidence.

1:15:20
Okay, one more slide, but before I get to that, I wanted to thank OFA for providing with the motivation to learn a lot of history about Oklahoma, Kansas, and other states. I learned more about history, preparing for these OFA history things, much more history than I ever learned in college. Thank you Jim McHale.

1:16:04
Applause. Mr. McHale, that’s all. Laughter. Way to go Jim. Laughter.

1:16:16
Good job man.

1:16:18
I’m a good agent. I’m a good agent.

1:16:20
Laughter.