Chief Damage Controlman Dennis Cherry II, of Oklahoma City, Okla., conducts a debrief with the response team following an aircraft firefighting drill on the flight deck aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett after an aircraft firefighting drill, Jan. 6, 2025. The Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group is underway conducting routine operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brianna Walker

Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Cameron Todd, from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, mounts a dental model using plaster stone aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 29, 2025. Nimitz is underway in U.S. 3rd fleet conducting routine training operations. photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Caylen McCutcheon

Logistics Specialist Seaman Recruit Ashtyn Burch, from Norman, Oklahoma, bands pallets of hazardous materials in the hangar bay onboard Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, in preparation for Docked Planned Incremental Availability while in-port Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington. Ronald Reagan provides a combat-ready force that protects and defends the United States. photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Kleighton Vitug

Seaman Elijah Meksula, from Oklahoma, City, Oklahoma, stands watch on the bridge wing of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) in the Philippine Sea, Feb. 20. Milius is forward-deployed and assigned to Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 15, the Navy’s largest DESRON and the U.S. 7th Fleet’s principal surface.

It was standing room only at VFW Post 4938, Edmond, on March 1 as retired Navy Master Chief Larry Van Schuyver, Oklahoma’s State Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH) and other members recognized about 42 individuals and groups who volunteered in 2024 and 2025 to make a difference to Oklahoma veterans, including combat wounded veterans. The annual ceremony was a tribute to those who improve veteran’s lives in many ways.
After receiving a plaque, recipients told the 90-person crowd what they do for veterans of all Services. It was quite evident, through tears and quivering voices, how deeply each person felt about their mission to honor veterans. The name of the award and its recipient are in bold font. Remarks by several recipients, edited for brevity, are provided below.

Spirit of Oklahoma Award
Lt. Col. Peter Plank said, “What a nice recognition for what we’ve done over 20 years with the World War II…We formed a Liberty Jump Team, parachute team, 20 plus years ago. And we jump in Normandy, France, Holland, and we do a veteran program in Belgium every year. And we took some Battle of the Bulge veterans back to the battlefields. They fought the villages, they liberated, and one of them…101-year-old Chock Charleston was a Sherman tank driver and we took him back to the villages that he went through and it took him to the Luxembourg American Cemetery and brought closure.”

Purple Heart Business of the Year
Jessie Newell of Shawnee is a photographer and owns Bird Nest Baby Photography. “I photograph war veterans to honor their service with or without their families…I’ve photographed over a thousand veterans…So, my very first veteran was named Dewey Muirhead…So, he comes out and he brings about 20 family members and I photographed them all…Dewey told me what D-Day was like, how terrifying it was to lay on Omaha Beach in the middle of thousands of wounded and dead soldiers, hearing young men yelling out for their mothers, because all of them were between 16 and probably 20 years old or somewhere around there.” She concluded, “It’s a blessing that I would never walk away from.”

Outstanding Mayor of the Year
Matthew Dukes, the Mayor of Midwest City, bested 64 nominees to earn the award. Accepting the plaque, he smiled and told the crowd, “I’m very honored…All I did was make Midwest City a Purple Heart City. I appreciate the recognition and – shock – to Midwest City. We’re on the map now. I appreciate this very much.” Mayor Dukes is a retired Chief Master Sergeant of the Oklahoma Air National Guard.

Purple Heart Veteran of the Year
Don Nichols, Muskogee Adjutant of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (and a Purple Heart recipient), and volunteers came from Muskogee and Tahlequah. He said of them, “They worked to save the (Jack C. Montgonery) VA Hospital in Muskogee…We went out and got together 80,000 signatures and kept them from moving the hospital, and it was that group that did it… We built a National Purple Heart Monument in Tahlequah, Oklahoma (It was dedicated May 25, 2024)…We’re proud of it…We are just in the process of recognizing the 14 historical black towns in the state of Oklahoma as Purple Heart Cities.”

Service Before Self Award
Sixteen members of the (mostly) motorcycle riding group Flag Poles Honoring our Veterans attended. One spokesman said Kevin Blake, the group’s founder, started in March 2020 and added, “Since then, the group has installed 670 flag poles for veterans…Most of us are just patriots (not veterans)…We will raise the flag with the pledge of allegiance, say a prayer over it…We do the 13 folds of the flag and read the meaning of the 13 folds…And then we’ll have a veteran present the flag to the recipient. It’s a moving experience.”

Distinguished Service
Organization of the Year
Vet Chat at Cornerstone Church, Midwest City, has been connecting veterans with local agencies, organizations, and civic groups for advice and assistance since 2018. About 15 members attended the ceremony. Leo Webster, the Executive Director, thanked his volunteers. “You stepped into the life of veterans in need, offering them support, understanding the compassion that they may never have found anywhere else…Let’s be relentless in our pursuit of saving lives and ensuring that no veteran feels alone, abandoned.”

General Pete Costilow Volunteers of the Year
Fat Guys Club. This dedicated group donates countless hours providing cooking demonstrations at the Norman Veterans Center, donating clothing for a special care school in OKC, cooking for children receiving Christmas gifts with the Mafias Motorcycle Club, cooking and delivering Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to needy families, and grilling food on Father’s Day and Valentines Day for veterans at San Marcos Mexican Restaurant, OKC.

Hall of Honor Supporter.
Plaques went to Oklahoma Representative Andy Fugate, Stacy Reddig, Debra Wimpee, and John Meek of the Navy Enlisted Reserve Association-Oklahoma. After Pugate received his plaque, he said, “I’m grateful for the recognition. I’ll stand up for you every day.” Additionally, Dr. Kayse Shrum, Former President of OSU 2021-2025, received the Purple Heart Legacy and Oklahoma Purple Rose Awards.

Lady Purple Rose Award
Melissa Morrison, Heather Rutherford, Sarah Wheatley, Cloris Webster and Rolanna Whitlock received these awards. As he gave them, Schuyver said, …”the Purple Rose to us is the highest form of honor we give those that are members of our family.”
At the end of the ceremony, Jessie Newell of Bird Nest Photography stood up and praised Master Chief Van Schuyver – and guests agreed with thunderous rounds of applause. “As amazing as his military service is, it’s his service after retirement that blows my mind…If he’s not repairing a home, he’s out in a widow’s flower bed, or he’s trying to make money to pay a widow’s bills.” Besides leading the Oklahoma Chapter of the OMHF, she noted his efforts to collect canned goods to fill up VFW pantry shelves.
After the meeting ended, most attendees stayed and donated money to the Fat Guys Club in order to enjoy a good company while eating a hamburger or hot dog. It was evident these volunteers don’t provide hundreds, even thousands, of hours a year to receive plaques – they want to support Oklahoma’s veterans who need and appreciate help and they find a variety of ways to do it. Volunteerism is alive and well in our great state. That’s a good feeling. story by Richard Stephens

Jeff Burch is a Morrison resident and disabled veteran who proudly served his country overseas. During his time in the Army, he was specially trained to see things coming that the average civilian might not be prepared to face. But late last year, he had no way of predicting an emergency situation that left him hospitalized.

He woke up in intense pain with no spinal fluid and no memory of the previous hours. Those hours, he says, are unforgettable for his family, as they rushed him to the Stillwater Medical Emergency Room.

“The process of coming into the hospital itself was traumatic for my wife, as well as my son. The staff at the emergency room were comforting. They tried everything at their disposal to figure out what was going on,” Burch said.

With no clear answers, Burch was admitted to the hospital. His insurance is through Veterans Affairs, so his family feared he may be transferred to another facility before they understood the reason for his condition.

Cooperation enabled Burch to stay put.

“The line of communication from Stillwater Medical to the Oklahoma City VA was completely wide open,” Burch said. “They helped my wife and my family get the paperwork all started, which is key.”

Burch had suffered a stroke and needed time to heal. His military training wasn’t entirely useless to him in hospital. He recognized how the structures he was so familiar with in the military seemed present among the staff caring for him. They each had a clear mission, rank and responsibility. Doctors, nurses, medical technicians, staff in the Central Business Office, all came together to provide care in his time of need. Care that he said he considers heroic.

“All the way from the nurse in the ER room to the top floor of your care, it takes a special kind of person to deal with a sick person. Most people that are sick are in a bad mood. But everyone I interacted with showed nothing but pure compassion, pure understanding. It’s almost as if they knew what I needed before I needed it,” Burch said.

Burch is quick to reject the label of hero for his service. To him, he was just doing the job he signed up for with the help of veterans who came before him and the allies who trained beside him. Others might disagree.

Mirriam-Webster defines a hero as a person admired for achievements and noble qualities. Admiration is certainly what Burch expressed for his care team.

“To summarize my experience as far as the care that I received at Stillwater Medical, it was extraordinary, humbling,” Burch said. “They didn’t have to take that above and beyond, but they did, and it shows. It really shows.”

Bringing to the presidency his vast experience as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the growth of postwar prosperity. In a rare boast he said, “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration…. By God, it didn’t just happen—I’ll tell you that!”
Born in Texas on October 14, 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916. They had two sons, Doud Dwight, who died at two, and John.

ARMY CAREER

In Eisenhower’s early army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington to work on war plans. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was supreme commander of the troops invading France.
After the war, he became president of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for president in 1952. “I like Ike” was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory over Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson.
Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the cold war. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with the Soviet Union.
In Geneva in 1955, Eisenhower met with the leaders of the British, French, and Soviet governments. The president proposed that the United States and Soviet Union exchange blueprints of each other’s military establishments and “provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country.” But the Soviets vetoed his “Open Skies” proposal.
In September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors told him he was well enough to seek a second term, which he won by another landslide over Stevenson.
In domestic policy the president pursued a middle “modern Republican” course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs and seeking a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court but resisted pleas from civil rights champions to welcome publicly the court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.
During his last two years in office, Eisenhower tried to make “a chip in the granite” of the cold war. He welcomed Nikita Khrushchev to Camp David and planned to meet the Soviet leader at a four-power Paris summit the following spring to seek ways to reduce their antagonism. But just before the meeting, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over their territory, which scuttled the summit and reinflamed cold war passions on both sides.
In his Farewell Address, Eisenhower surprised many Americans by warning them to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” which he found a potential danger to American liberties. Disappointed by his failure to turn over the presidency to a Republican successor, he and Mamie retired to their farm beside the Gettysburg battle?eld. After years of cardiac illness, he died in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 1969.

President Eisenhower: The Painter

The only true response to art is to look with an eye like that of a child: unprejudiced, unbiased, clear, and uncommitted. When it is the art of a celebrity, this ideal, always almost unobtainable, becomes progressively difficult. Can we see the work in the dazzle of the artist’s aura? When the paintings of Noel Coward come to auction, they do well enough, but are the buyers interested in Coward himself rather than in his work, bright, confident, and attractive though it is? When Prince Charles, who is a seriously good painter, sends his work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, where it shows to great effect, he sends it under a nom-de-plume, precisely so as to allow the selectors to choose or reject only on artistic merit. The prime example is Winston Churchill, a man whom history has already anointed as great. Is it really possible to make an objective judgment of his pictures?
Churchill the painter, of course, is the closest equivalent we have of Dwight D. Eisenhower as painter. It may well have been seeing his friend at work, lost in the joy of his pigments, that first turned Eisenhower’s mind to the possibility of painting himself. His immediate spur, we know, was observing the artist Thomas E. Stephens painting a portrait of Mamie Eisenhower during their all too brief stay at Columbia University. The future president, at the time only president of the university, was intrigued, and his mind, ever restless and emulative, became fascinated by the challenge of himself “copying” what was before him.

One of the little-realized facts about Eisenhower was the intensity of his need to excel. Ike looked laid-back and affable, and indeed he was, a delightful man. But at heart he was determined always to be in command, never to be bested. This ambition showed with painful rawness in his boyhood, challenging his elder brothers. He learned to hide it under his easy smile and genuine charm, but one can quite imagine him studying Mamie’s portrait and feeling determined to see if he could find within himself skills to match the artist’s.
Before Stephens made his visit to the Eisenhowers, the president seems to have had no encounter with art except as the hobby of Winston Churchill. Since golf was Eisenhower’s hobby, and always would be, his interest in Churchillian landscapes was benignly detached. After the war though, with time on his hands, this strange activity entered significantly into his own space, as it were. While Mamie and Stephens toured the house to find the best place to hang her portrait, Eisenhower got his aide, John Moaney, to help him stretch a white dust cloth for a canvas to the bottom of a box. Then—one can imagine his puzzled but dogged expression—he tried to copy the picture. He showed the group what he had done, he says, describing his efforts as “weird and wonderful to behold,” adding that “we all laughed heartily.”
Stephens asked for this attempt as a keepsake, and was given it without hesitation. Eisenhower, for all his pride, had no false pride.
Painting was not something Eisenhower wanted to be good at or, perhaps, thought he could be good at. Stephens sent him a complete painting kit, which Ike appreciated but thought a “sheer waste of money,” something the boy from a poor home could never accept comfortably. Maybe it was this innate frugality—the desire not to waste a gift—that spurred him to practice. Eisenhower was convinced that to become a painter, he lacked the one thing necessary, “ability.”
But he was interested: he enjoyed experimenting. He would not dream of painting, of course, if there were a chance for golf or, for that matter, if he could find bridge partners or set up a poker game. (His legendary skill at poker, said to have added appreciably to his military earnings throughout his career, meant there were few partners to hand.) But at 58, the age in which painting became a part, however tenuous, of his life, the physical demands of golf and his weakening heart made his idle hours more frequent. The Kennedy successors said that Eisenhower had never read a book, which annoyed Mamie, who knew how assiduously he had pored over military history. But that was reading with a purpose: information a soldier needed. Those days were over, and as president, he read little more than Westerns. Painting, with its inbuilt challenge, its very status of being something he was not naturally good at, was a far more attractive option.
Writing to Churchill in 1950, Eisenhower said, “I have a lot of fun since I took it up, in my somewhat miserable way, your hobby of painting. I have had no instruction, have no talent, and certainly no justification for covering nice, white canvas with the kind of daubs that seem constantly to spring from my brushes. Nevertheless, I like it tremendously, and in fact, have produced two or three things that I like enough to keep.”
This is language rather different from Churchill’s own, which speaks about art in exalted terms: “Soul,” “Contemplation of harmonies,” “Joy and glory.”
But for Churchill, painting genuinely mattered. He had an outdoor hobby, bricklaying, but that satisfied him far less than the aesthetic stimulus he derived from gazing at something beautiful and trying to make visible his personal reaction to it. For Eisenhower, the excitement was in the manual skill in producing a copy, usually of a photograph or a magazine reproduction. (If the weather was fine enough to sit and paint, it was fine enough for golf: no contest!) It was simply the intellectual puzzle of it, how to make on his own canvas what another artist or photographer had captured. His favorite subject was his daughter-in-law with his two grandchildren, but he branched out freely into depictions of landscape, however secondhand, and buildings, with the occasional portrait (remember, copied). He described his portrait paintings as “magnificent audacity,” and burned most of them.
Churchill valued what he had created. Eisenhower did not. It was the making that Eisenhower enjoyed, rather akin to achieving a birdie at golf, and what was made was a means, not an end.

Eisenhower was reticent about his deep emotions. (Of the supreme sorrow of his life, the death in babyhood of his son Icky, he never spoke.) We catch a rare glimpse of his inner nature when we read, in a letter of late adolescence, how he felt about the loss, through injury, of the football career that had been his driving passion. “Life seemed to have little meaning. A need to excel was gone.”
The “need to excel” grew back again, now not rooted in football or boxing—another skill— but in the army and, eventually, in politics. I think it was this same need that drove him in his painting. He would have scorned any thought of objective excellence. He called his works “daubs”: was he right? Or was he overly modest? The dictionary defines a “daub” as a painting that is clumsy or crude, with implications of carelessness. This is not true in Eisenhower’s case. He took infinite care, sometimes, he confessed, spending two hours in getting a color “right.”
Nor was he so unskilled. His first encounter with a professional artist, at Columbia, led to his being given the tools for serious work in this field. Obviously, though he may have laughed with Ike, Stephens was impressed.
What Eisenhower was to produce in the last short third of his life is work that still gives the impartial onlooker pleasure. A daub irritates; these paintings, simple and earnest, rather cause us to wonder at the hidden depths of this reticent president. Notice the scenes to which he was drawn: they are all of the peaceful countryside, a symbol of the unspoiled America in which he had grown to manhood. Naturally, experienced traveler that he was, there are foreign scenes, too: Ann Hathaway’s Cottage in England, a French garden, or an Alpine scene. But he concentrates on views like Rolling Wooded Hills, painted in Denver in 1955. He had a special affection for hills, and here they gently rise and fall. He had an affection, too, for tall trees, often the subject of presidential doodling in the Oval Office. In this work we see two, green and gold, and surging toward them a bright pool of bluebonnets, dazzling in the sunshine. He admitted to a great love of color, and it is delightfully apparent in all his best pictures. I have a fondness for the Mountain Fall Scene, where it is not hills but mountains that seize his attention, splendid peaks, rising in icy splendor, blue and shadowed, while the foreground is alive with the brightness of an American fall. Two small trees are a gleaming yellow, while behind them another two, equally spindly, are deep pink, tipped with crimson. If we really look at this mountain path framed with evergreens, we begin to notice, as the artist did, many stray touches of color, yellows and pinks, that tie the whole picture together tonally. Who but the artist himself would dare call this a “daub”? Not great art, needless to say, but pleasing art, art that has a lyrical sweetness to it, however unassumingly expressed.
Eisenhower was interested in undamaged nature — perhaps the effect of years as a soldier? — and in people. To me, the nature studies are more effective, but sometimes he gets a face exactly right. One of Mamie’s favorite pictures was Mexican, which Ike painted in 1953 from an advertisement. He has caught the man’s vigor, the masculine radiance of his smile, the swagger of his sombrero, the dazzling flash of his teeth against the sunburn of his face. He is interesting, too, on Abraham Lincoln, not so much in the traditional bearded Lincoln, well depicted though it is. He gave this image to the White House staff as their 1953 Christmas card, and I imagine it is still cherished. But there is a more imaginative projection in Melancholy Lincoln, taken from a photograph of the young lawyer, clean shaven and yet inexplicably sad. Eisenhower did not paint to “express” his inner self; he curbed his imagination and resolutely imitated the reproduction before him. Yet there seems to me a personal note in this work, as if he were subliminally seeing in Lincoln’s melancholy a distant awareness of the burden of the presidency.
Because we are so conditioned to overreact to celebrity, most of us will have come to Eisenhower’s paintings with a readiness to scoff. But try to be impartial, and you will be very pleasantly surprised. One final irony. President Eisenhower was a conservative, in art as in many other areas, and he had no time at all for the avant-garde. He felt modern art was morally wrong. Speaking on May Day, 1962, he grieved that “our very art forms [are] so changed that we seem to have forgotten the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci” and went on to excoriate, with unusual eloquence, works like “a piece of canvas that looks like a broken-down Tin Lizzie, loaded with paint, has been driven over it.” “What has happened to our concept of beauty and decency and morality? ”
Here comes the irony. Take up any magazine of contemporary art, or look through a Christie’s or Sotheby’s catalog of such a sale. You will find that, for some of the best-selling contemporary artists, their aim seems to be to create what looks like a “daub.”
The effect of clumsiness that Eisenhower so fought against, untrained and inexperienced as he was, is now sought after by men and women, highly trained and deeply experienced. Their works adorn the walls of galleries that would laugh at the very thought of hanging an Eisenhower. Yet who is the truer artist, these mischievous painters who play with their skill, or Eisenhower, thrilled by color, eager to understand how to create, humble but persevering?
provided by Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home/NARA

For National Vietnam War Veterans Memorial Day, five veterans were honored with patriotic Quilts of Valor: John Wesley Ellis II (U.S. Army), Larry Perdue (U.S. Navy), Raymond McCormick (U.S. Marine Corps), Arthur L. Haizlip (U.S. Navy), George Verstraete (U.S. Army).

The Quilt of Valor Ceremony was held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 29 at the Edmond History Museum. The event was hosted by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR), Cordelia Steen Chapter. There is no admission and all ages are welcome.

The museum remained open during the ceremony.
During the ceremony, each of these veterans received a handmade patriotic quilt made by the Piedmont Quilt of Valor Foundation, whose goal is to cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing of quilts.

“The Quilt of Valor has been going on for quite a few years now. It’s an organization that honors all veterans that have been touched by war,” said Tammy Ross, DAR Service for Veterans chair with the Cordelia Steen Chapter, NSDAR. “The Quilt of Valor Foundation, they make the quilt, but other organizations do the ceremony. It’s my chapter that does the ceremony.”

Ross said her DAR chapter is five years old.

Established in 2020 with a charter membership of 26 ladies, the Cordelia Steen Chapter has grown to a thriving membership of 80 in 5 years. The Chapter was named Cordelia Steen in honor of the first pioneer women of Edmond.

“We’re part of the national society, Daughters of the American Revolution. And our goals are patriotism, education and historic preservation,” she said. “And this is part of our patriotism that we do. We honor our veterans. Last spring we did one for 10 recipients. This year we just honoring five men, and they represent the different branches of the military. Although this year, we don’t have an Air Force guy.”

The five veterans being honored include Verstraete a 1st Lieutenant who served as a Green Beret in Vietnam; McCormick is a Purple Heart recipient who served as a combat trainer in Vietnam; Haizlip served in the JAG; Perdue served as an aviation machinist; and Dr. Ellis served as a helicopter medic.

Ross said the DAR did the pinnings as part of the event.

“Any Vietnam Veteran who came to this ceremony also received a pin,” she said. “Because we’re partners with the 50th anniversary Vietnam War Commemoration Organization, we’re able to give out these pins on behalf of them. We presented these pins to any Vietnam Veteran that was there that has not received one. It was a neat program.”

Ross said it’s important to honor the service and sacrifices that veterans have made serving their country.

“They sacrificed themselves to be able to represent our country to protect it,” she said. “In all the things that the veterans do, and all the different wars that we’ve had that went all the way back to the Revolutionary War, they fought for a cause, and they fought for our freedom, to protect us from different things that could happen to our country.”

The mission of Edmond History Museum is to celebrate Edmond history through preservation and education. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday – Friday, and 1 p.m.- 4 p.m. on Saturday.

For more information visit www.EdmondHistory.org or by calling the museum at (405)-340-0078. Museum admission is free. story by Van Mitchell

As morning sun shone through the stained-glass windows of the beautiful St. Joachim Chapel, sixteen veterans, each adorned with a commemorative medal, took their places to serve as torchbearers in the 2024 Saint Ann Olympic Opening Ceremony. Patriotically-dressed residents and staff eagerly lined the attractive, newly remodeled rooms of Saint Ann Independent and Assisted Living. John Williams’ Olympic fanfare could be heard ringing in the background. Flags waved and onlookers beamed as each veteran passed the torch to the next, each hearing his name and military branch announced to thunderous cheers. The ceremony culminated with the “lighting” of the Olympic cauldron by 101-year-old Delora Mealor, who is well-known as “Rosie the Riveter.” She has been much recognized for her admirable contribution to the war effort as a riveter working on B-17 and B-25 planes during WWII.

The Saint Ann Olympic Games coincided with the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, as live coverage from Paris was streamed on the projector screen in the Grand Theatre. The community, consisting of assisted and independent living, a convent of Carmelite Sisters, and respite care residents, celebrated Team USA while competing for over 150 medals in twenty Olympic-themed events. Games included putting and chipping, chair volleyball, cornhole, wheelchair races, basketball, pool-noodle javelin, and nerf-gun shooting. Challengers faced off in a life-sized “Hungry Hippos” game, sweeping up balls with brooms. Even trivia and bingo winners were awarded medals. As a homage to Paris, residents sampled international wines and croissants while betting on Silver Derby Horse Races, a monthly favorite on campus.

All-Around Silver Medalist, and Vietnam US Air Force Veteran, Jack Jackson, said of the Olympics, “Being a torch bearer was an emotional experience. So many people were teary eyed.” “The games were a lot of fun!” 101-year old, Norman Smith, a WWII Air Force Veteran and chair-volleyball MVP medalist said “The competitions were a blast! I love to play volleyball- but I need to be in the front row!” Deacon Bob Heskamp, US Airforce Veteran who served in Vietnam along with his wife, Kathie, said they were “just tickled” that the Veterans were honored during the ceremony. Regarding their choice to move to Saint Ann, he enthusiastically said “Everyone is great, …we’re all family here,” and “it’s the place to be.”

Stepping onto the campus, one is instantly immersed in a loving, vibrant, culture of kindness and respect. Also known as Saint Ann Retirement Center, the assisted and independent living community is a ministry owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Seniors of all faiths enjoy the community’s fun, affordable, luxurious living. They are free of long-term commitments or buy-in costs, unlike other campuses of this caliber. Families, friends, and pets join in lively social gatherings. Giggles of grandkids often fill the children’s play areas. From top-notch entertainment and Chef Lori’s delicious full-service dining to concierge and housekeeping services, Saint Ann makes elevated living attainable. Lauren Montiero, Campus Life Enrichment Director, said: “Whether being honored for military service or being driven to doctor appointments in a limousine, our residents stand a bit taller, hold their heads a bit higher, and feel the respect and dignity they so deserve. Saint Ann Assisted and Independent Living is located at 7501 W. Britton Road in north Oklahoma City.
… story and photos by Joyce Clark

The Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Health Care System hosts a program called Pathways to Housing- Homeless Program Festival. The Pathways to Housing goals are to collaborate with community partners to ultimately find Veterans without shelter, housing. The Pathways to Housing Homeless Program Festival will be at the OKC VA Medical Center, located at 921 NE 13th St., Oklahoma City on Wednesday, April 16, from 8am – 4pm. The festival will be at the OKC VA, Atrium-area, Ground Floor.

The OKC VA and other homeless community partners are pulling resources together to help Veterans find housing options, employment opportunities, mental health services, medical care, legal assistance, and many other support services for both the Veteran and their families.

This program is hoping to highlight the important work that that VA providers and community partners are doing to help homeless Veterans find housing. If you are a Veteran and struggling to find housing or are at-risk, please come to the OKC VA Main Campus on Wednesday, April 16th from 8am-4pm, located at 921 NE 13th St., Oklahoma City, OK 73104 or call the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans at 877-424-3838.

Born Feb. 14, 1914 in Kemp, OK, Aaron Lloyd McMurtrey called Durant his hometown. After enlisting in Dallas Texas on October 5, 1940 McMurtrey was stationed at Naval Training Station San Diego, California. He was then stationed on the USS California (BB 44) in November.

He became a Seaman Apprentice upon enlistment and then was promoted to Seaman 1st class then later 2nd class. His awards and Decorations include: Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal, American Defense Service Medal (Fleet Clasp), American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (Bronze Star) and the World War II Victory Medal. McMurtrey was member of a gun crew.

Seaman 1st Class McMurtrey was lost in the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th,1941.

The process of identifications for the USS California began with the disinterments of 25 Unknowns associated with the ship between January and March 2018. Given the success of the USS Oklahoma project, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has expanded its work to three other battleships involved in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor: USS West Virginia, USS California, and USS Utah.

There were 103 total casualties from the USS California. At the start of the project, there were 20 unresolved casualties from the ship and 25 associated Unknowns buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Hawaii. Disinterments were completed in March of 2018, and as of January 2004, there have been five identifications from USS California.

Unresolved Casualties are individual service members known to have died in a particular incident but for whom no remains have been recovered or identified. They might also be regarded as “missing in action” or, more formally, “killed in action, body not recovered.”

The main difference between USS California and USS Oklahoma is that the assemblage of remains from each ship shows different patterns of commingling. The strategies to segregate these commingled remains into distinct individuals are slightly different, even though the underlying scientific techniques we use are the same.

Additionally, in many cases the skeletons from the USS California are more complete than those from the USS Oklahoma are. There are additional and different analyses that are conducted to make sure that all the elements go together and represent a single individual. The largest challenge faced are the unresolved individuals that we don’t have any Family Reference Samples for. Not having that DNA information can make it very difficult to demonstrate conclusively that a given set of remains belongs to a specific individual.