A Very OK Podcast
Episode 9: “Oklahoma in the 1950s”
November 17, 2021
Episode Transcript
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 as always, I’m right here with Dr. Bob Blackburn, who is the former executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And we’re back in the studio again, and I’m excited about our show today. We’ve got a very special guest, but I won’t quite reveal who we have right now. But it’s going to be great. And Bob, how have you been doing? You have a little bit of news. There’s exciting times in your family, right?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Yes, thank you, Trait. It’s good to be with you again. Yes, about to have our second grandchild in Denver. So I’ll be in Denver for a full week after the baby is born. But kind of pop culture-oriented, his name is going to be Waylon Blackburn.
Thompson: Okay. Yeah, well, with that, with a name like that, he’s destined to be some sort of country music star, right?
Blackburn: I think so.
Thompson: That’s fantastic. Well, we have the holidays coming up, Thanksgiving, I always go back down to my parents’ ranch down in Texas, and we have our Thanksgiving celebration down there. And I’m looking forward to overeating this month quite a bit. And I know you guys will all be celebrating the birth of your new grandson. So, good times all around. I think we’re going to have a great rest of the fall here and into the winter.
And today, we’ve got a great topic to talk about. We’re going to talk about Oklahoma in the 1950s. And Bob, as we always like to do, we like to talk about movies and things that we love. But first, I want to introduce our guest that we have with us. We have a very special guest today. One of my favorite people in the world to talk to, because he has done so much for the state of Oklahoma. He’s a person who has definitely left his mark and his imprint, but he’s also has some of the best stories that you’ll ever hear about Oklahoma. And it is former Governor of Oklahoma George Nigh. And I’ll introduce him, do the quick bio read here for a second. George Patterson Nigh served four different terms as governor, more than anyone in state history. Born in McAlester, Oklahoma, on June 9, 1927. In 1950, at age 23, he became the youngest member of the state legislature, elected to the House of Representatives from Pittsburg County. In 1953, he introduced the bill that made “Oklahoma!” the official state song. In 1958, at age 31, Nigh was elected lieutenant governor, the youngest in state history and the youngest in the nation at the time. In 1966, he was again elected lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, and served until he was elected governor in the 1978 election. He was reelected for a fourth term in 1982, the only gubernatorial candidate in state history to win all 77 counties in the state, and he served Oklahoma well during his stretch of governor from 1979 to 1987. Later served as the president of the University of Central Oklahoma. Governor Nigh, welcome in the podcast. It’s great to have you today.
Governor George Nigh: Well, it’s great to be here. And I appreciate that wonderful introduction. I was trying to see, did I remember all that stuff you just said?
(laughter)
No, I do appreciate it, and I’m honored to be here. Any time you want to talk about something in Oklahoma, you just give me a cue. I’ll be there because I want, I’m so proud of Oklahoma and so proud of the people from Oklahoma who’ve done so much around the world and brought attention to our state, the country and Western, the athletes, the movie stars, the governmental service politicians, whatever you want to call them. But Academy Award winners in the movies. You like to talk about the movie. We got Academy Award winners from Oklahoma!
Thompson: Absolutely.
Nigh: And it’s just wonderful. And I make a commencement speech at least one a year. I made my first commencement speech in 1950 when I was running for the legislature in McAlester. I was a senior in college at East Central at Ada, and I made my first commencement speech, and I’ve never missed a year since making at least one, sometime at least. And so this year I’m going to be at Oklahoma City Christian College. I’ve already been booked, and I’m going to be there, so it’ll be my 72nd consecutive year. And the reason I’m telling you about it, talking to seniors, either in high school or in college, and generally, I don’t ever use a written speech, but generally the theme has always been you can do it from here. You can do it, whatever you want to be. You don’t have to move to Texas. You don’t have to move to Chicago. You don’t have to go to LA. You don’t have to move somewhere else. You can do it from here. And just how many people started fantastic careers from Oklahoma.
Thompson: Right.
Nigh: Not only urban towns, but just, you know, Reba McEntire from Chockie, and Carrie Underwood and all that. Just think of all the small places in the state that big-time stars have brought attention to Oklahoma. And now the reason I’m telling you that, having been in government so long and as lieutenant governor and governor, trying to bring industry to Oklahoma, you had to work on the image of the state. Why would we go to Oklahoma? Well, first of all, geographically, we’re in the center of the country. So if you’re shipping anywhere in the United States from Oklahoma, you’re in the center of the country. And if people who are traveling from coast to coast, it’s basically equal distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, the actual geographical center of the United States is up just over the Kansas border. But Oklahoma City is the big metropolitan area where the interstate system brings all this traffic and all these people through our state, and many of them end up locating a business here. They just drive through Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, or somewhere like that, and say, oh yeah, we’ll put something in here. But telling the story of Oklahoma is a real honor for me.
Blackburn: Trait, if I might add one little corollary to the introduction, because it doesn’t fit in the ’50s, but because we’re the Oklahoma Historical Society, and we believe in our mission, the governor’s role when he was governor, 1981, he worked with the president of our board at that time, Jack Conn, who was a banker, a political leader very active in the community. And the governor reached out to to Jack and said Jack, there’s a structural problem with the Oklahoma Historical Society. And we had been stagnant for 25 years, had not grown, kind of just stable, but really not going anywhere.
And the governor said, you need more diversity. You need women, minorities on your board. There needs to be some role of state government in the governance side of it, and so they developed a new constitution in 1981. To this day, it has not been changed. Bylaws have, but not the Constitution. And I really believe, because I joined the OHS in ’79, So, I was and eyewitness to that process in every sense. Without that constitution, we would not have the History Center today. We would not be one of the most positive forces in all of state government with collecting, preserving, and sharing our history. And all of the things we’ve been able to do around the state would not be possible without that constitution. In fact, I would guess that we would have had the fate of the Kansas Historical Society. It’s just a small little state agency now without the dynamic nature of the private side. Governor Nigh helped lead the way into that and made those first appointments of African Americans and a lot of women on our board. So he had a hand not just in building the state of Oklahoma, but in the agency, the organization of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Thompson: And for those who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Historical Society, we have 25 board members. And because of that change that Governor Nigh worked to make, we have 12 that are appointed by the governor and 13 that are elected from within the membership. And so the governor does get to have a significant influence into the Oklahoma Historical Society, which, as you mentioned, you know, we are a state agency. And so that is a good thing, and that is the right thing. One of the great things about our board members is there are some qualifications. So, people have to be a member of the Oklahoma Historical Society for two years before you can either be appointed or elected, which is good because it means that the people are coming in have some sort of vested interest in the society itself.
Nigh: Well, see to me, I used to teach, back in the first days when I was in the legislature, from 1950, when I ran for office, took office in ’51 to ’58, legislature only met every other year. And so for a year and a half, you’d come to the Capitol in January, and you’d go home in early May. And then for a year and a half, you weren’t, you know, you were a legislator, but you didn’t have anything to do. So you had to have another job. And most people still to this day have another job. But I got elected while I was a senior in college, and I didn’t have another job. I served in the legislature, and I went home, and I said, okay, the legislature’s adjourned. What am I going to do for the next year and a half? I’d made a commencement speech at Hartshorne. The principal of Hartshorne High School became the principal of McAlester High School. And he came to my daddy’s grocery store where I was helping my dad in his grocery store in McAlester, and he said, you need to be a high school teacher. I said, I don’t want to be a high school teacher. I want to be in government. He said, well, you’re going to be out of out of the way from the legislature for a year and a half, he said. And he said something funny. He said, you gave the commencement speech for me at Hartshorne last year. And I said, yeah. He said, well, anybody that can keep the kids awake at a commencement needs to be a high school teacher.
(laughter)
Nigh: And so I went back to East Central, and they checked all my hours, and I had all the hours I needed to be a teacher except practice teaching. So they created a practice teaching that summer, and I went to East Central and spent the summer and practice taught at Ada High School on the campus of East Central, and then became a teacher at McAlester and taught history and government. And to me, that really helped me stay in office as a legislator, as lieutenant governor or governor because I had studied history. I majored in history. Now I was teaching history, so everything about Oklahoma.
And suddenly I realized, like when I ran for lieutenant governor, I had been in the legislature eight years, but when I ran for lieutenant governor, just stop and think. The second-highest office in the state, a heartbeat away from the governor, a heartbeat. If the governor crosses the state line to go to Dallas to the OU-Texas game, the lieutenant governor is the governor of Oklahoma. And as lieutenant governor, when I first got elected, I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have a driver. I didn’t have security. I had a half-time secretary and shared an office with four state senators, and I was on one state agency as lieutenant governor. I had nothing else to do. Now, a lot of people say George Nigh served as lieutenant governor longer than anybody I know. I served 16 years, but Jim Berry from Stillwater, Oklahoma, served 20 years as lieutenant governor. He was president of a bank, and he ran his bank in Stillwater. And just occasionally, they would send a highway patrolman up to Stillwater and bring him down to the Capitol to attend a meeting.
Blackburn: Break a tie vote.
Nigh: Break a tie, do something like that. Then he’d go back around the bank. And I realized then that having studied Oklahoma history, having taught Oklahoma history, that a great place for the lieutenant governor was to become a spokesman for the state. Because you’re not running the state, you don’t even run as a team member with the governor. We had Democratic governors, Republican lieutenant governors, and vice versa. You don’t even run as a team, but you’re just a heartbeat away. And so I said, the lieutenant governor has to do something. And I decided that the lieutenant governor should become a promoter of Oklahoma, nation and worldwide. And that’s how I got involved in so many activities, telling the story of Oklahoma.
Blackburn: You know, Trait, that was all in the 1950s. That’s a nice transition for us to get back to the ’50s. And normally, I think a lot of our listeners expect us to talk a little bit about our our favorite movies from the topic we’re discussing today. So, let’s get back to the governor on his favorite movie. But let’s start first with yours.
Thompson: Well, I’m a big fan of Westerns, and I would have to say that there’s some great movies in the 1950s that I really love. On the Waterfront, such a good movie; Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. I actually watched that movie for the first time just a few, couple years ago. And just incredible acting, incredible performances. Great story. But I’m going to have to say my favorite movie of the 1950s was 1959, Rio Bravo, and that’s a John Wayne movie. And what’s interesting about that movie is it was a direct response to the movie High Noon. In the movie High Noon, Gary Cooper is trying to get the townspeople to help him against the outlaws that are coming to town, and no one will help him. And in the movie Rio Bravo, it’s the opposite situation. John Wayne actually has more people coming up to him and wanting to help, and John Wayne kind of has to turn them away. But he has this core group of people. He has the Dude played by Dean Martin, who’s kind of the drunk guy in there who eventually sobers up. You’ve got Ricky Nelson, who plays Colorado, Angie Dickinson, who plays the saloon girl, Feathers. And then one of the great performances, one of my favorite is Walter Brennan as Stumpy, his sort of his limping sidekick who has to guard the jail all the time.
Blackburn: Cantankerous all the time.
Thompson: But that’s honestly, not even only just one of my favorite movies in the 1950s. If you have to list one of my favorite John Wayne movies of all time, that’s probably it right there.
Blackburn: Well, for me. Of course, I grew up in the 1950s. I was born in 1951 and was raised on Tarzan movies and, you know, things like that. But there was a movie made in 1951 that I did not see when it was first released, but did, of course, on television. My mom worked at KOCO-TV, and and their cheap way of creating production was just show movies. And so there were a lot of old movies shown in the late ’50s, and one of my favorites, and I wanted to be an athlete. I had all the skills except speed or any one skillset or size. I had everything else except size, speed, and talent. But I wanted to be an athlete.
Thompson: Everything else, right?
Blackburn: Everything else. But I was fanatical about Jim Thorpe. I read a biography of Jim Thorpe when I was eight years old, so I was interested in history. And when I saw the movie Jim Thorpe – All-American, even though it was played by Burt Lancaster in the lead. They used a non-Indian, which would have been typical of that time.
Thompson: Oh yeah, all the time.
Blackburn: Unfortunately. But they still made a movie about Jim Thorpe and his role as an American Indian, his struggles with being, you know, losing his land, being cast into this new culture. And of course, he showed his exploits. But part of the movie was filmed right here in Oklahoma at Bacone College in Muskogee, still a beautiful campus. And it was then, and I can remember those scenes that supposedly Carlisle, but would have been shot here in Oklahoma. But that was an inspirational movie. And I’ve talked about Jim Thorpe in so many speeches over the years, and as Governor Nigh said, you can do it from Oklahoma. Even when you’re pushed down, you’re told your religion, your way of life, is not meaningful anymore. Try to transform an entire culture. People can still rise up and do great things. And Jim Thorpe, of course, with the Olympic medals in 1912, the first president of the National Football League, a baseball star to New York Giants, just on and on. Considered by the AP press corps the greatest athlete of the 20th century, and right here from Oklahoma. And when I talk about him coming out of this Indian culture and this transition period, to me it’s a remarkable story. And it’s still a remarkable movie.
Thompson: Well, governor, how about you?
Nigh: Well, it’s an easy answer for me because I can remember where I was in 1943. I sitting upstairs in McAlester, Oklahoma. I was a sophomore in high school. World War II was going on, and it was Saturday night, and I was the studying for Monday test, and but I had the radio on. Didn’t have TVs, you know, in those days. Excuse me, but we didn’t have TVs. But I had the radio on, and I was listening to the Lucky Strike “Hit Parade,” and they played the 10 most popular songs in America, number 10. (inaudible singing) Number seven. (inaudible singing) Number four. (inaudible singing) And I’m just a sophomore kid in high school. Number one most popular song in the nation, in the world. “Oklahoma, where the wind comes...” And I said, my gosh, they’re singing about my state. The number one most popular song in the world was “Oklahoma!”
The theatre production that had just opened up on Broadway, it was the most popular Broadway show for years. It was the most popular show around, performed around the world, was Oklahoma!, 1943. Now we go to 1953. I’m in the legislature, my second term, 10 years later, I thought “Oklahoma!” I got carried away with that song and that play. And that’s when I introduced the bill making ”Oklahoma!”— the number one song in the world— the official state song of the number one state in the world, Oklahoma. And so in 1953, we introduced the bill to change the state song. And it was tough. And what’s interesting, I would like to tell you, that that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote Oklahoma! or did Oklahoma!, produced Oklahoma!. And of course, there was opposition to getting rid of a song written by an Oklahoma historian that was steeped in tradition and in history, and you were trading it for a song written by two New York Jews who’ve never even been to Oklahoma. But what they didn’t know, or what they didn’t point out, that Rodgers and Hammerstein bought the play rights to Green Grow the Lilacs, written by a guy from Claremore, Oklahoma.
Thompson: Lynn Riggs.
Nigh: Lynn Riggs. And they just changed it into a musical even more. And it was written by an Oklahoman about Oklahoma, and they just added Agnes de Mille to add the dancing scenes and so forth. And they did the songs and so forth, and they opened off-Broadway as Away We Go. And Lynn Riggs wrote the book, but Ridge Bond from McAlester, Oklahoma, that went to high school just three years ahead of me, I think it was, in high school. But Ridge Bond, who went with my three older brothers to high school, and I was tailing along with him from McAlester, is the only Oklahoman to ever star as Curly in Oklahoma! on Broadway.
Thompson: Wow.
Nigh: And Ridge helped me, lobbied the legislature to get the bill passed. But it’s amazing, 1953. So my favorite song of all songs is “Oklahoma!” And they just did it, to be told that it’s the most popular play in the world. But they open as Away We Go. And they said, no, this is not getting much attention or where we’re going to change it from Green Grow the Lilacs. Then they changed it to Away We Go. And on the back of their carriage, as the couple rides off the stage, there’s a little flipping piece of wood that has Away We Go on it, and so they named it Away We Go. And that wasn’t very popular. And so Ridge Bond from McAlester told me this story. He said they were sitting in New York City before the play opened on Broadway, and they said, we need to change the name. We need a name that’s enthusiastic, not Away We Go or Green Grow the Lilacs. We needed enthusiastic. And Mrs. Hammerstein, according to Ridge Bond, my friend from McAlester who played Curly, said that Mrs. Hammerstein said, well, it’s all about Oklahoma. Why don’t we call it Oklahoma? And they said, well, what’s exciting about Oklahoma? 1953—what’s exciting about Oklahoma? Or before that, when they opened on Broadway back in the in the ’40s. So anyway. And Mrs. Hammerstein said, we’ll put an exclamation point after it and call it Oklahoma!
So the name of the song and the name of the play are not the same. The name of the play is Oklahoma! I mean, the name of the song. Let me back up. The name of the song is “Oklahoma.” The name of the play is Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Exclamation point. And so the whole production is exclamation point. And when I make my commencement speeches and I say, you can do it from here, I say, do what Mrs. Hammerstein did. Put an exclamation point behind your life. I’m George Nigh, and I am running for the legislature. I’m George Nigh! I’m Mary Fallin! I’m Kevin Stitt! Not I’m, you know, Joe Jones or Bill Smith. I put an exclamation point behind your life, and you can do it from here. And so to me, of course, my favorite song was “Oklahoma!” My favorite movie was Oklahoma!
Thompson: And that came out in ’55.
Nigh: Yes. Now what’s interesting, excuse me for interrupting you, but you pointed about how many movies were filmed, some of them in Oklahoma. Oklahoma! wasn’t even filmed in Oklahoma, and it offended a lot of people that they filmed a movie about our state and didn’t even film a foot of it in this state. But they explained why they didn’t. We had too many power lines. They said they couldn’t shoot many, they couldn’t find where they could shoot open ranges of cattle on the range and driving the cattle and singing the song without the telephone wires in the.
Thompson: What’s funny is, today, they would just use CGI, and they would erase those out. But they couldn’t do that back in those days.
Nigh: But just think what, just think what the stage play, just think what the song, just think what the movie, has done for this state. It’s helped us put an exclamation point behind it. And I, as lieutenant governor, as a legislator, as governor, went around the world. And I went to Germany one time. The company was looking at putting a national headquarters for America in Tulsa. They were considering Tulsa of the whole United States. A company in Germany was going to open an office in Tulsa. And they said, well, they probably need to be somewhere else. So I went to Germany. I went to Germany to visit with the president of that company. He lived out on a ranch. He had a reception for me at his house. And so they said they’d picked me up at, say, 5 o’clock. Be on time. So they picked me up at 5 o’clock and drove me out to his ranch. And when we turned around a curve or a little hill, there were about 50 Germans dressed in Oklahoma! costumes on the porch of his ranch house. And as I pulled in, they sang “Oklahoma!” in English, and none of them spoke English.
Thompson: Oh, wow.
Nigh: But they all sang the song in English, wearing an Oklahoma! costume. And they moved, and the guy moved to put his corporate headquarters for the United States of America in Tulsa. And he did it, and they sang that song “Oklahoma!” to me in Germany. It’s amazing.
Blackburn: Trait, if our listeners want to hear more about the story of adopting “Oklahoma!” as the state song, we have a recording of Governor Nigh in the gallery upstairs here in the History Center, along with an exhibit on the stage play, Oklahoma! We have original footage from the stage play and the movie, of course, props and worked with the Hammerstein Foundation on that. But there is a video kiosk where you can hear George Nigh’s story from George Nigh, and how he helped push that to the legislature. So I encourage people to come and listen to that story.
Thompson: Bob, will you, since we’re going to talk about the 1950s. It’s always good to set the context. In 1950s, we’re coming out of World War II. You know, this is the time when America is kind of on the move. We’ve got, the economy is humming along. What’s going on in Oklahoma in the 1950s? Can you set the scene for us?
Blackburn: Yeah, it was a transition period. I often talk about the 1950s even more so than the 1940s in a lot of ways, because a lot of the changes happening in the ’40s really start maturing in the ’50s and change politics, settlement patterns. Not many people know that Oklahoma lost more population in the 1940s than we did in the 1930s. People think of the Dust Bowl, of migration to California and oh, we lost all these people. Well, we actually lost more in the ’40s. Then the ’50s hits, and we have the dust storms again. The drought of the 1950s is worse than the drought of the 1930s. So in terms of agriculture, it’s going through all of these changes. So people are still leaving the farm, they’re going to the cities. But both Oklahoma City and Tulsa are growing dynamically, and the state legislature steps in with new ability to issue bonds, to do industrial districts, to recruit business. Our leadership is looking at new ways to get manufacturing Oklahoma in very successfully. And so we’re going from a commodity-based economy based on farm and ranch, oil and gas. More so, oil, not even much on gas. Gas is really a product of the ’70s, but those commodities are suffering, and the people are leaving. But yet we had to find a new way. And so in the 1950s, it’s a moment of transition. Politics is changing. Every county still had one senator in the 1950s. That would not change until the 1960s. So the rural population still dominated state politics to a large degree.
The governors served only one term each in the 1940s, so not a lot of institutional longevity in the governor’s office. And the politics reflected the rural nature of Oklahoma that was suffering. But again, Tulsa was considered the oil capital of the world in the 1950s. After all those years, huge refineries, many of the major oil companies still had headquarters there. Oklahoma City had APCO headquarters. Kerr-McGee was just starting in the 1940s and ’50s, here in the state. But we had some dynamic political leaders at the national level. And Governor Nigh can provide some eyewitness accounts of this, but in the US Senate, Robert S. Kerr would eventually be called “the King of the Senate.” And even Lyndon Johnson would look to Robert S. Kerr for assistance on how to get legislation passed. He was a master. He had been governor of the state in the ’40s. In fact, excuse me for interrupting you. That’s how Lyndon Johnson got to be president of the United States. He ran against John Kennedy, and John Kennedy beat him. Then Bob Kerr had supported Lyndon Johnson, and Bob Kerr and President Kennedy, his brother, and Bob Kerr got together and went and told the newly elected president, nominated candidate for president, if you want to carry Texas and Oklahoma, you need to have Bob Kerr. Excuse me, you need to have Lyndon Johnson as your vice president. So, Bob Kerr personally got Lyndon Johnson as the vice president. Then when the president died, then Johnson became president, and Bob Kerr’s best friend.
Blackburn: And then later, John F. Kennedy came to Robert S. Kerr’s funeral at First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. But the other is Carl Albert, who, like Governor Nigh, was raised in McAlester and would eventually become speaker of the of the United States House of Representatives and almost was president of the United States during Watergate. He was close to being that, but a very modest man in many ways, but a great speaker, a great political leader, strategist. He was there with a lot of the great reforms of the Great Society in the 1960s. People take for granted now that we have Social Security and Medicare and some of these other programs that provide a social safety net. It came out of the 1950s and ’60s, and Carl Albert was there as one of those leaders in Congress, and along with Robert S. Kerr, we’ve never had a similar period in our history when we had two people on the national stage of leadership like we had at that moment. And Governor Nigh, if you would, share your story of Carl Albert when you were a young man.
Nigh: Well, let me just point out that at one time, you can do it from here. At one time, the most powerful man in the US Senate was Robert S. Kerr. His nickname was the uncrowned King of the Senate. And the most powerful man in the United States Congress was Carl Albert. And he went to a two-room schoolhouse. Carl Albert, to show you how things happened in life. When he was born, he didn’t know, you know, when he’s growing up. I don’t know if he knew what he was going to do when he got in politics, or that he was going to get in politics. But he was in a two-room rural schoolhouse, had two teachers for eight years, grades one through four and five through eight. Two teachers for eight years. And then he told me personally, Carl did, that in the eighth grade, the then-congressman from the third Congressional District came and spoke to their grade school out in the country. And the congressman came in a horse and carriage and spoke as the congressman from the third congressional district. And in the eighth grade, Carl Albert said, he told me he told his parents, that’s what I want to be when I grow up, is a congressman. Now the reason I’m pointing this out. There were no issues. He didn’t say raise teacher’s salary. He didn’t say build highways. He didn’t say, you know, do all this. He said, I just want to be congressman.
Blackburn: Public service.
Nigh: Public service. And then it came to McAlester High School in the ninth grade from the rural schools. He came into the ninth grade. And as a senior in high school at McAlester, he became a national high school debate champion, went to OU, became a national collegiate debate champion, went to England.
Blackburn: Oxford.
Nigh: To Oxford and became a debate student there. You mentioned the war in the late ’40s. Well, in the war, Carl Albert joined the army as a private. He came out as a colonel. And in 1948, he ran for the House of Representatives, something that he had the Congress representatives, something he said when he was in eighth grade. That’s what I want to do. I want to run for the House.
Blackburn: Well, tell us your story when you were delivering groceries.
Nigh: Well, okay, so he became my hero. He lived a block and a half from me in McAlester. As I said, I grew up coming home. When I came home from World War II, I was in boot camp when Japan surrendered. But when I came home after being discharged from the navy, I went to junior college at Wilburton. And so I would come home on weekends, and then I went to East Central for two years, and I would come home on weekends and work in the grocery store and deliver groceries. Carl lived a block and a half from our store. He traded with us. They would call and order a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a pound of butter, and that sort of thing. And then either on my bicycle or the back of a truck, I would deliver groceries, and one of them would be to Carl Albert.
They always put on my schedule an extra 30 minutes when I delivered to Carl Albert, because I sat in his breakfast room in McAlester for 30 minutes every time I delivered his groceries, and he talked to me about public service. So he became my hero in public service, and he became my inspiration. But Carl and I were the best of friends. But he was the Little John from Little Dixie. He was short for his, you know, for a man’s stature. He was a short guy, Little John from Little Dixie, and he became the most powerful man in the US House. And when he almost became president, as you mentioned a while ago, twice, the vice presidency became vacant. Well, then the president nominates somebody for the vice president. The Congress has to approve it. Carl Albert told me, he told me personally, I just went blank. Richard Nixon was president.
Blackburn: Spiro Agnew.
Nigh: Spiro Agnew.
Blackburn: And Gerald Ford.
Nigh: Gerald Ford. Anyway, the vice president resigned in kind of semi-disgrace. And the press was covering all the writing, all the names of the people that supposedly Richard Nixon was considering for vice president. Carl Albert, speaker of the US House, went to the White House and told President Nixon that the Congress had to endorse, had to vote for his candidate. And he said, of all the names you’ve mentioned, I cannot get a majority vote. I’m trying. But there’s not a single name that you’ve mentioned. If you would nominate...
Blackburn: Gerald Ford.
Nigh: Gerald Ford, I will get him confirmed as the vice president. That’s how Gerald Ford got to be the vice president. And later, when Nixon resigned, became the president. And under the Constitution, Carl Albert would have been president if something happened.
Nigh: If they had not appointed a vice president and Nixon had had to resign later, there was no vice president, or he had died or, you know, whatever the situation was, resigned or kicked out of office, impeached, removed. Carl Albert as speaker was the heartbeat away from being president of the United States of America, and he was from Bugtussle, Oklahoma. Bugtussle, Oklahoma. And he was a heartbeat away from being president of the United States. But what my point was talking about the ’50s, this guy in ’48 that had come home from World War II went into as a private, came home as a colonel. The Little John from Little Dixie became the most powerful man in the United States Congress. He was from Oklahoma. And when he wanted to be in Congress, to start with, it was not over a single issue of a promise he wanted to make, that if you vote for me, this is what I’m going to do. He just wanted to be a congressman, and I know that feeling because that’s what I wanted to do when I was in high school. I wanted to be governor.
Blackburn: Well, tell that story about in your classroom when the teacher asked everyone what they wanted to do. Well, in the ninth grade at McAlester in the ninth grade, we had a what they called a Vocations class, and you would write down what you wanted to be when you grew up, and then the teacher would bring in speakers and would discuss it. And for the whole semester, we would talk about what each of all those students had written down, what they wanted to be when they grew up. And I wrote down governor, and my ninth-grade teacher said, I don’t know what we’re going to do about this. We’ve never had anyone write that down before.
(laughter)
Nigh: And but, well, when I graduated from high school, I want you to know that my senior class at the Senior Assembly, 1945, just toward the end of World War II, my senior class predicted that, they turned a fishbowl upside down, and one of our teachers put a bed sheet over her head as a long robe and looked into the future of this globe. And she saw where Mary Brown had just become a movie star and won the Academy Award. She saw where Bill Smith had just won the national football. And George Nigh, I see George Nigh has just been elected, and I just sat there as a senior. And I said, oh boy. So my teacher is saying he’s just been elected president. Pause. I said, president? Of the United States! I said, oh my gosh, how can she say that? Then she said, street cleaners association.
(laughter)
Nigh: So the high school assembly predicted that I would become president of the United States street cleaners.
Blackburn: Then in 1950, the first year of the decade we’re talking about today, you decided to run for the legislature.
Nigh: Yeah.
Blackburn: And campaigning was so different in 1950, before, well, before television became a factor. In fact, J. Howard Edmondson would be the first to really use television effectively in ’58, but in ’50 it was still person-to-person. It was going and giving stump speeches on the back of a truck in a little town. It’s walking door-to-door. Talk about that first campaign in 1950.
Nigh: Well, there was, I was a senior in college at East Central, and one of the issues of my campaign was an unusual for me because I’d taken my senior year, I was taking a semester. I had taken a class on a serving in office. Five students in that classroom ran for public office, and all of us were attacked because they said that was a requirement to get a grade. That was your seat. That was your test or your semester exam was that you had to announce that you were running for office, which was not correct. But of the five, three got elected—two to the legislature and one to a county office. The two that did not get elected ran against each other for the same office, and a third person won. But I was, like I said, I didn’t own a car. I was 60 miles from my home county, where I was running for office. So I hitchhiked back and forth every weekend to campaign until after my commencement exercise at the end of May, and the primary in that year was in June. So I just hitchhiked back and forth. But I went to all the towns in Pittsburg County and went door-to-door, door-to-door, door-to-door. And it’s wonderful because I would say that it was, they didn’t think I was going to win at all, but I did.
Thompson: Now I’m curious, in today’s time, you have a list of voters, and you can see how all the voters, what elections that they voted in. And so today you would go, and you would only hit the houses that have voted pretty frequently. Did you have any of that, or were you just going straight door-to-door?
Nigh: I was just going straight door-to-door. And in small towns, I’d go on Main Street. I go from business to business. I don’t know if they can do it anymore, but I would just walk in a cafe. I would just walk in a bank. I just walk in the newspaper or grocery store and just give a card to every customer that we had. I would tell you that, so that anybody who’s thinking about running for office, one of the reasons I won is that my opponent was expected to win, and we would go to rallies, and we’d get up on stage and speak. And then when I got through speaking, I’d go down and start working through the crowd, shaking hands, and kissing babies, and all that sort of stuff. And he just had over on the side, and he didn’t go door-to-door.
Blackburn: And he was an incumbent, wasn’t he?
Nigh: No, no, there was no incumbent, Okay, well, that was funny. The incumbent was Lonnie W. Brown, and he called me at college at East Central and said you need to run for the legislature this year. And I said, well, I’m not ready to run for anything. He said, well, I’m the incumbent. And I said, yeah, I know that. He said, I’m not going to run for election, reelection. And if you’re going to try to make a step up in politics, it’s easier to win a race where there’s no incumbent than it is to run against the incumbent. So he said, now’s the time for you to run. And so it, just I said, okay, so I just filed, and they wrote down occupation. I didn’t even have an occupation. I was a senior in college. But my opponent was a nice guy. He was an attorney, but he just presumed he was going to win. All the polls showed him beating me, etcetera, etcetera. And I beat him. But I didn’t know who voted, how they voted. I just went door-to-door.
Thompson: I would love to hear, and I worked for the state Senate for four years in the pro tem’s office. And of course, you know, now, you know, I’ve been around the legislature for a little over 10 years now. I would love to know what was the legislature like in those, you know, you were elected in 1950. What’s the legislature like in the 1950s? How does it operate? You know, did it surprise you in any way?
Nigh: Yeah. Oh, yes. Now, Mr. Bob Blackburn just was saying that the rural counties dominated the Oklahoma Legislature because of the Constitution. Every county, just like every state, has two United States senators, in those days in Oklahoma, every county had one senator. So Oklahoma County had one senator. Boise City had one senator. Now picture the populations, but they had the same vote. But in the House, the limit was no county could have more than seven. And so generally they had seven and then dropped all the way to three, two, and one. And Pittsburg County had three. And another thing is that when you run for office and when you serve in office, you got to read the small print because the laws are different than you may think they are. And no, not many people remember this. But in 1907, when we joined the Union, and they wrote the, we have the longest constitution in America. The longest constitution, and they wrote it so long because they were trying to to get into individual rights. And so they allocated legislators on population. So Pittsburg County got three, Pottawatomie County got three, etcetera.
But when they wrote the law, some of them ran by district—district one, district two, or district three. So wherever you lived in district one, or you voted in district two or you voted in district three, but in some counties, they were all at-large by group. You ran for the House in group one, group two, or group through three. And in Pittsburg County in 1950, you went to vote for the legislature, you got to vote for three different legislators. Because they all ran county-wide group one, group two, and group three. And so I was, there were two friends that were running, had announced they were going to run, but they had agreed they would not run against each other. And so they said they were going to flip a coin, and the winner got to run against me because they going to beat me as a senior in college. And one of the guys, before they flipped the coin went and filed in the other race. So the guy that it was out, that was his friend, the only place he could run in was against me unless he ran against his friend. He filed against me because it’s so easy to beat. And the other guy had to run against somebody else that it was going to be tough. And what was strange is the guy that filed against me because I was going to be easy. He lost, and the other guy that ran against the guy he couldn’t beat, beat him. But so the small print in the law tells you Pittsburg County had three countywide state representatives, which is ridiculous. But I didn’t attack it because I was representing Pittsburg County. But the legislature was controlled by a rural, excuse me, the state government was controlled by a rural legislature.
Now, keep in mind then, the governors were prohibited from running for reelection. And keep in mind how many nominees that a governor has for members of agency boards and commission require Senate confirmation. And the Senate would tell the governor, we ain’t going to appoint him, confirm him. We ain’t going to do that. We’re not going to do that. And so they had an influence on the governor of who the governor would pick to serve on an agency boards and commissions. Well, what made that interesting, you had two bodies of the legislature, the Senate and the House. The Senate controlled legislation, and the House just basically sucked up to him. So my first eight years in the, my first four years in the legislature under Johnston Murray as governor, was controlled by the Senate. So the House would pass something. But once the House passed the bill and then they went to the other house, the Senate and they passed the bill, and if they didn’t pass it identical, they had to have a joint meeting. Well, the Senate would not give in to two members of the House to try to reach a consensus, or some reach an agreement. That said, it’s going to be the way the Senate wants it.
Blackburn: Well, and too, governor, added to that was the fact that the governor usually selected the Speaker of the House.
Nigh: That’s true. That’s true.
Blackburn: Until in 1960, so the speaker was chosen, and so it was really the Senate against the House where revenue bills all had to originate in the House at that time. So you had revenue control. But the speaker was a friend of the governor, and so it was this balancing act. But another thing, the Senate had patronage. And at that time, if you were a state employee and wanted a job in Washita County, you had to go to your senator, and the senator had veto power over who was hired for state positions.
Nigh: And in those days, the Department of Welfare had the...
Blackburn: Penny sales tax.
Nigh: Yes, they were earmarked with the sales tax, but they could spend it on temporary bonuses for people who might be looking for a job, who were unemployed, or da-da-da-da-da. And the welfare office, if a guy from Okemah or McAlester or wherever you were, you needed three months of a $100 check a month or something. You went to your senator, and he’d call welfare and get you on the payroll. It was terrible.
Blackburn: And of course, that was before term limits. A lot of people today assume that’s always been limited, but in those days, you could be a senator for 50 years and build up a lot of patronage with those jobs.
Nigh: And they control nominees to boards, commissions. Now, let me tell you what happened. And we’re talking about the ’50s and ’54. Raymond Gary became governor after Johnston Murray. But Jim Nance from Purcell had been a state senator, and he’d been a very powerful state senator. He ran for reelection, but he got defeated in his home county. So two years later, he ran for the House of Representatives. He’d been president pro tem of the Senate, as I recall. So he ran for the state legislature and became a freshman member of the legislature. And he told the House, if you elect me speaker of the House, I will take away the Senate domination of state government. I’ll teach them a lesson. In the legislature, the House of Representatives elected Jim Nance as speaker, and he stood up to the Senate and it became a 50-50 deal.
Blackburn: And then J. D. McCarty came in after that as a very strong-willed speaker of the House, who in the House stood up to the governor, said we’re not going to appoint your favorite. We’re going to make J. D. McCarty the speaker. And that was all brewing in the 1950s. It’s another one of those watershed time periods.
Thompson: Yeah, that illustrates that one of the things people I talk about when I get a chance to lecture is you talk about the divides in the state of Oklahoma. And I always tell people that Republican-Democrat is the third- biggest divide in state government. The first is rural versus urban. The second is House versus Senate. And don’t ever forget that, because if you understand the Oklahoma, the legislature truly does hold a lot of power in state government. And that House versus Senate battle between each other for who’s going to assume the power structure, it’s very real.
Nigh: Well, you also have to keep in mind, I would add, too— another division—east versus west. Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma does not want a leader from Oklahoma City to be governor. Any time to just stop and think, Over the years, a governor, a mayor, excuse me, a mayor of Oklahoma City or civic leader of Oklahoma City running for governor has a hard time carrying eastern Oklahoma. They carry Oklahoma County, but Tulsa and Oklahoma City have been in a very big fight, kind of like Dallas and Fort Worth for all those years. They were in a fight over who was controlling what. Well, eastern Oklahoma and western Oklahoma. And of course, keep in mind now where the population is, the population in western Oklahoma is shrinking proportionately. And so now the major vote is Oklahoma City, east. Just think, one Congress, one congressional district has almost one half of the geography of the state of Oklahoma. And so they don’t have, and so a candidate that’s running for office that lives in eastern Oklahoma has a bigger home base from which to campaign statewide. And so I, but back when I was lieutenant governor, I went to all 77. I went to Boise City. I went to Guymon. I went to Erick. I went to Elk City. I went to all the rural towns because I wanted to try to get some votes. But most of the candidates didn’t go to rural towns. So it helped me politically because most of my opponents didn’t go to, when I was running for lieutenant governor, didn’t campaign in rural.
Blackburn: Governor, speaking about moving around the state, you had another campaign or another decision to make in 1958 of whether you’d give up your fairly safe seat in the House of Representatives. You decided to run for lieutenant governor. Tell the story of “Cowboy Pink” Williams, at that time lieutenant governor, and in that particular race.
Nigh: Well, keep in mind, I always wanted to be governor, and I apologize to the people who are listening to this. But I didn’t promise roads. I didn’t promise teacher salary, etcetera, etcetera. I just said I will serve, and I thought the way for me to serve was run for the House, get a base in Pittsburg County. I’ve never wanted to go to Congress. I’ve never wanted to be a US senator. I’ve never wanted to become...Two presidents offered me ambassadorships to Europe. I turned them both down. I do not want to leave Oklahoma.
But I thought, if I’m going to run for governor, I need to run statewide and get a connection going. So I said, well, I’ll run for lieutenant governor, because that’s not really a big, big race. The lieutenant governor didn’t have anything to do, as I pointed out earlier, but Cowboy Pink was a Democrat and was the incumbent. He’d been selected for one term. And I went to Pink, and I said, Pink. That’s his nickname, Cowboy Pink. And I said, I apologize that I’m running against you when you’re running for reelection because we’re friends. But I want to be governor, and I need to start climbing the steps, and I need to move from the House. I don’t want to be a senator. I want to be statewide officer. So not state treasurer, not, you know, any of those, superintendent of education. I want to be lieutenant governor because it would be an easier office to run for. And I apologize for running against you. And so I ran against him and won. But what was funny is that in politics, you study polls, and there was a poll that showed that Cowboy Pink was unbeatable in a race of about five people. He ran way ahead of everybody else running for lieutenant governor. But then they took a poll of all those five if each of them was against Cowboy Pink, and the polls showed that Cowboy Pink would lose to any of those five in a runoff. So, the secret was to be number two in the primary. Quit trying to be number one. Try to be number two in the primary. Don’t make the opponents that you’re beating mad at you, but keep them happy with you, so that when you run against Pink, they’ll be for you and their supporters will be for you instead of Cowboy Pink. And so I kept my relationship with my other four opponents. Cowboy Pink beat me 100,000 in the primary. In the runoff, I beat him 100,000 votes.
But I tell the funniest story. I want to make two more stories here. One, I tell the funniest story, is that how I got statewide, a big support, was Cowboy Pink was a farmer in Caddo, Oklahoma, down by Durant, not Caddo County, but Caddo town, and he was the first lieutenant governor. He didn’t have a driver. He didn’t have security. He drove his own car, but the state bought. He was the first lieutenant governor the state ever bought a car for, and they bought him a Ford pickup truck. So the lieutenant governor’s official car was a Ford pickup. Well, wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you know, I don’t like to attack my opponents, but Pink, Cowboy Pink, ran a full-page ad, paid for by the Ford Motor Company. They ran a picture of him with him leaning on the back of his pickup truck, and the Capitol was in the background, and Pink says, that quotes in the newspaper article, whether I’m on my ranch in Caddo or at the State Capitol, I’m always at home in my Ford pickup truck, either on my ranch or at the state. I’m always at home in my Ford pickup truck, so I just took that full-page ad out of the Daily Oklahoman. And as I traveled the state, when I would go into a town, say, Okarche or Okemah or something. I go to the newspaper editor. Then the next place I went were all the other car dealers in the city that weren’t Ford, and they were all mad that Pink had endorsed a Ford pickup truck as the lieutenant governor. And so, I had many county campaign managers were car salesmen for other car companies other than Ford. But now I want to tell you that then later when I ran for governor, shows you how things work out. Cowboy Pink’s widow was my campaign manager in Caddo, Oklahoma. She had a coffee for me. She had a fundraiser for me. She campaigned for me. She wasn’t mad at me.
Blackburn: I think that’s one of your, the things that define your public service, is that you’ve been able to make friends around the state. You and I spent a lot of time socially the last 25 years, and I’ll go, Trait, I’ll go into a restaurant with the governor, or walk through the History Center, and I can see people’s eyes. They recognize him, and they want, but they don’t want to bother him. And I’ll say, governor, they’re looking at. Governor Nigh, even today in your 90s, if I might say, will veer over, shake their hand, ask where they’re from, engages. And all of a sudden, these people, you can just see the love in their eyes. They appreciate the governor’s service to Oklahoma all these years, and it started in the 1950s.
Thompson: Well, I would say, too, is as even people of my generation, we know who Governor Nigh is, and you know, a lot of times the governor gets out of office, and it doesn’t really matter the governor, you’ve had to make decisions that are hard. You’ve had to make decisions that upset people. But I think the way that you carried yourself and the way that you always, you put faith and trust in the people of Oklahoma. And it’s just like you’ve said today, at the end of the day, everything that you did is because you loved Oklahoma and that is the prevailing thought that has carried us through. And so now whenever I say, oh, I get to go hang out with George Nigh today, everyone is like, oh, he’s one of my favorite people. And they may have never even met you before.
Nigh: Well, you all are very nice, and I’m sorry to be bragging. I don’t want to be braggadocious, but I would just tell you that I’m very fortunate to have served. Now I want to point out— so let me be honest, up front— 1958, I became, as you pointed out, the youngest looked at the governor of the nation. Well, in those days, the governor could not run for reelection. So in 1962, Howard Edmondson couldn’t run for reelection. So I thought, well, I need to take another step. So as lieutenant governor, I ran to replace Howard Edmondson as governor. Well, I got beat. I think I ran fourth in the, or third, or fourth in the Democratic primary, and I was lieutenant governor statewide. But and that’s then, excuse me. And then when I ran for governor, Leo Winters, who worked for the state Senate, ran for lieutenant governor and got elected lieutenant governor. So four years later, I had run for governor and lost, ran terrible in the Democratic primary. And I said, I need to start over. I said, I’ve been climbing the ladder. I need to go back down and start climbing the ladder again. And so instead of running for governor again, I said, I need to run for lieutenant governor again and start building my base and working on the ladder going up. And I went to Leo Winters and I said, Leo, I’m sorry, but I want to be governor of Oklahoma, and I’m going to run next year. And I’m sorry that I’m going to announce against you. You just got elected. And he said, well, I appreciate you coming and tell me. And so instead of running for reelection, he ran for a different statewide office and won.
Blackburn: Treasurer.
Nigh: Yeah, state treasurer, and won. So Leo was still in state government, and but I won. I got to be lieutenant governor again because people in their mind had not thought of me as governor. And they beat my tail, but they had thought of me as lieutenant governor because I tried to make the lieutenant governor something to do in Oklahoma. And they said, he needs to be lieutenant governor. And so I made a comeback and started up the ladder again. I was very fortunate. Now I made mistakes, but everybody does. But most of my mistakes are things that turned out to appear to be mistakes. A lot of them were accidental. And let me give you a classic example, because I think it explains politics.
I’d been in the navy. I was in boot camp when Japan surrendered. My three older brothers had been in World War II. My dad was in World War I, so I was the fifth one, out of five men in our family, who served in the military. Well, when I was running for office, my mother had been president of American Legion Auxiliary in McAlester and said, I’ve been in the Legion, Sons of the Legion and all that. The Legion and the VFW endorsed me running for the legislature. Well, they introduced a bill to give veterans a bonus. And so as I’m running for office, they’re going to have this. And I said, I’m not for veterans bonus. And so the veterans came to us and said, hey, we’re helping you. We’re helping you. I said, I’m not for a drunk weekend in Dallas. I’m for veterans’ healthcare. I’m for veterans’ jobs. I’m for veterans’ assistance. I’m for veterans’ education. It’s ridiculous, I thought. I want to give them something more than just a bonus to celebrate. Well, the Legion and the VFW then, and so after I got elected, I had become vice chairman of the Veterans Committee in the House as a freshman. I was the vice chairman of the Veterans Committee. They had this bill to give them a bonus. I said, I’m not for that bonus. And they said, well, what if we submit it to a vote of the people? And I said, hey, I believe in the people’s right to vote. I’ll support submitting a veterans bonus to the vote of the people. But I want you to know that when it’s on the ballot, I’m going to vote against it. And so they got really upset with me that I had, and they said, why would you vote? You said you were going to submit it. And I said, yes, but let me tell you, I was vice chairman of the committee. Now listen to this. They introduced the bill to pay a veterans’ bonus with a tax on all natural resources— oil, gas, lead, zinc, coal, all natural resources. Gas. All of them would pay a tax, and that would pay for veterans’ bonus. Well, I’m vice chairman of the committee, but I’m just a new member. And so old timers on the committee started making motions to eliminate the tax on coal. No. Excuse me, not the tax on coal. To eliminate the tax on gas, to eliminate the tax on whatever what it was in their county. And it ended up that the whole veterans’ bonus was going to be paid on a tax on coal. They eliminated every other, and so I made a motion to eliminate coal. Well, it failed. Well, I’m from Pittsburg County, and you know where Pittsburg got its name? A railroad guy came through Indian Territory and saw all the coal mines and said, this looks like a little Pittsburgh, a little Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And so they named it Pittsburg County. And there’s a town, Pittsburg, in Pittsburgh County. I said, I can’t, as a representative from Pittsburg County, vote that our county will pay for the bonus of all the veterans of Oklahoma. And they said, you lied to us. I said, yes, but when I promised you I was going to vote for it. It was the tax on lead, zinc, oil coal, gas. Now, you changed what I promised. No, you said you would submit it, vote to submit it to a vote of the people. And I said yes, I did. But you changed the tax structure, and so I was accused of lying.
Years later, they came back and supported me again. But I was just going to say that in politics, many times when you promise something, commit something, support something, when you get in the legislature, it doesn’t come out the way that you were trying to get it. And so do you stay obligated to your commitment, or do you vote differently because they change the subject of the bill? So a lot of times, many of the mistakes, quote, I made in people’s mind was because facts were changed after I had taken office.
Blackburn: Well, governor, one last comment on your years out of public service, even though you said it was a mistake to probably run at that time, something really good came out of those years. You met a young lady who was an airline stewardess, and Donna became part of your life, not just as a wife and mother with you and then grandchildren, great-grandchildren, but really your partner in everything you’ve done since that time. But meeting Donna and bringing her into your inner circle as, and I’ve heard Donna give you advice, and you listen, and you respect her, and you have a great relationship. And I admire Donna so much. And it came out of those years when you were in the wilderness.
Nigh: Well, let me tell you that I say that one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me was I got defeated running for governor in 1962, because I’d never met Donna before, that I remembered, and I met her after I had left, the four years I was out of office, and we got married in 1963, and she became a partner, a real strong partner. And when I got ready to make my comeback, climbing up that ladder, going back and running for lieutenant governor, when we married, she had no idea I was ever going to get back in politics. And I said, I want to talk to my family. I want to run for lieutenant governor again and said, what are you going to do that for? I said because I want some day I want to be governor. And she said, well, she thought that was a great idea and that she would work. But from the best thing that ever happened in my life was I got defeated because I met Donna. Then we had a wonderful son. We had a wonderful daughter. You talked about your grandkids. I got seven grandkids. I got eight great-grandkids. Can you imagine the youngest lieutenant governor in the nation, youngest legislator, I got eight great-grandkids. But Donna has been a fantastic partner, and she assumed the role.
And when I ran for governor, I met with my family, and I said, I want to run for governor. And so all three of them, our son, our daughter, and my wife said, well, I’ll help you if you’ll do this. Each of them gave me an if, and Donna said that she would help me if I would promise to help the developmentally disabled. She said, you make me a commitment right now that as governor, you will do something. I said, okay, and as soon as I got elected, I started talking to the legislature and Donna said, well, you’re having problems. And I said, well, I need your help, and she became my lobbyist. As she as we left office, a group of her friends had a surprise birthday party for her and created the Donna Nigh Foundation that’s in existence still today, that makes contributions to developmentally disabled. But Donna has been a fantastic partner. She’s tolerated me, means I’ve been gone an awful lot. What was funny, two things. What was funny is that after we got married, I said I ran for governor last year. Let me ask you a question. She said, okay. I said, did you vote for me? And Donna says, in Oklahoma we have secret ballots.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, that is a great place to, unfortunately, end our conversation.
Nigh: Thank you all so much.
Thompson: We could do this for another few hours easily. So, governor, thank you so much for being a part of this.
Nigh: You all honored me by having me here, and I appreciate it. And remember, it’s Oklahoma! So in your life, you folks in Oklahoma that are listening to this podcast put an exclamation point behind your life, behind your job, behind your kids, and know that it’s exclamation point exciting. Thank you.
Blackburn: And emulate your dedication to public service. If we all thought about the greater good for the greatest number of people, think of how much better quality of life would be and how much better off we would be if we would all just think about public service and getting engaged, and your life is a good testimony to the benefits of that.
Nigh: Can I give you a closing deal, Mike Williams... Excuse me, I’m going to interrupt you. You know, Mike Williams, who lives in Grand Lake, works at the hotel up on Grand Lake, has a weekly column, and he wrote last week. He said, now he had some advice for all his readers. Be sure and bring up politics at your Thanksgiving dinner, that it will save you a lot of money at Christmas.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, I can’t think of a better way to end our November episode, so thank you all for listening, and we hope you’ll come back and listen to us again in our next one.
Blackburn: Thank you, Trait. Thank you, governor.
Nigh: Thank you.
Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend. We’ll see you next month for our next episode.
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