VillagesOKC has announced a collaboration with Navigating Medicare to offer that agency’s services to provide answers to individual Medicare questions in the VillagesOKC office during business hours – 10 am-3 pm on Mondays through Thursdays. The consultations are free.
“For six years, Navigating Medicare has been the trusted Medicare educator for VillagesOKC members,” said Executive Director Marilyn Olson. “Now we are able to make it even easier by providing space for them in our Bethany office.”
Olson said local hospitals such as Mercy Health and Integris also trust the agents at Navigating Medicare to provide the truth about Medicare Supplements, Advantage plans, and the impact of financial, healthcare, and specific physician selections.
“Because of the experience and integrity of Ginny Curtis-Gillespie, founder and owner of Navigating Medicare, many VillagesOKC members have found solutions that matched their unique health, dental, travel, financial, and location needs – even when they first purchased from another Medicare agent,” Olson said.
Curtis-Gillespie said, “So much of insurance these days is made to seem complex, difficult, and tricky. At Navigating Medicare, we strive to make insurance decisions simple. Our agency is built on our family values which are a commitment to honesty, integrity, togetherness, and support.”
Olson explained that since questions come at age 57- 65, it is important to have honest advice that is easily accessible. Medicare plans change every year, and 2025 has more changes than typically. Doctors and dentists also change plans – even mid-year.
“Staying informed is essential for everyone as they age,” Olson said. “Empowering adults to make good decisions about their lives is a key component of our mission to help everyone age with vitality and purpose.”
In addition the onsite availability of Navigating Medicare agents, VillagesOKC and Navigating Medicare are holding free information meetings to address the many changes coming next year.
“Navigating Medicare: Truth and Changes for 2025” will be presented at VillagesOKC, 3908 N. Peniel Ave, Suite 400, on the following dates June 8: 10-11 am, June 15: 10-11 am, June 18: 6-7 pm, June 29: 10-11 am, July 13: 10-11 am, July 16: 6-7 pm and July 27: 10-11 am.

The sessions are free with RSVP at [email protected] or (405) 990-6637.

Collective Arts Productions, a Norman-based performing arts group dedicated to the incubation of emerging Oklahoma theater artists, presents its fourth season of new plays. The season of five plays spans June through October. Tickets for each play are priced on a sliding scale, allowing theater lovers to pay at a level that makes sense for them.
To purchase tickets, visit coartsproductions.com/tickets
First up is Where the Rabbits Roam No More by playwright Olivia Akers and directed by S M Boyer. “When Vel is knocked out by an unknown disaster, he awakes to find himself trapped underground and surrounded by four strangers. Facing the constant threat of starvation, Vel must soon decide who he is, who he loves, and, most importantly, who will help him escape.“ June 7-9 at The University of Oklahoma’s Old Science Hall.
Then, Co.Arts presents staged readings of two cutting-edge plays-in-development. First, The Fading People by playwright Lilia Ruiz Cruz and directed by Elise Bear explores a dystopic reality where loss of language separates us from our ancestors. Then, Influenced by playwright Anna Sofia McGuire, directed by Jenna Rowell, questions fame and consent in a coming-of-age story about an elite boarding school for creating online starlets. June 28-29 at The University of Oklahoma’s Old Science Hall.
Next is playwright Avery Ann Wolfe’s new play Lascaux, a historical fiction directed by Co.Arts Artistic Manager Morgan Simon. “In September of 1940 in Nazi-occupied France, just outside a rural village, two teenage boys discover a cave filled with the mark of early humanity; wall to wall, it brims with paleolithic art. Moved by what they find inside, two of these boys decide to return to guard the cave’s entrance. Lascaux imagines what those nights in the December cold might have looked like, at the confluence of pre-history and history.“ August 23-25 at Resonator Institute in Norman.
Finally, Co.Arts presents its sophomore creation from The Co.Hort, a form and genre-bending new play collaboratively written and performed by OKC’s most innovative emerging performance artists. Following last year’s inaugural Co.Hort creation, The Co.llective Arts Puppet Circus for Oklahoma, the 2024 Co.Hort promises to deliver an exciting, experimental creation. Stay tuned for more details!
To learn more about Co.llective Arts Productions, visit
https://coartsproductions.com/, follow on social media @coartspro, or email [email protected]

Longtime Oklahoma City resident Patty Kelly Stevens faithfully displays the U.S. flag outside her Nichols Hills home for most holidays. But Flag Day, June 14, is extra special to the 99-year-old American patriot, who at an early age lived through shattering experiences that bonded her with her country’s flag.
Watching recent televised reports of students protesting on U.S. college campuses and taking down the American flag has shocked and upset her. “Yeah, that flag means a lot to me,” she says. “For me, it’s mostly about freedom.” As for those protesting students taking down U.S. flags and replacing them with other flags: “They need to ship ‘em out.”
Her impatience with the protesters’ lack of respect for the U.S. flag is better understood in context with her experiences in 1941 as a 17-year-old American high school senior in the Philippine Islands. Abruptly arrested by Japanese soldiers when World War II began, she was classified as an “enemy alien” and sent to the infamous Santo Tomás Internment Camp in Manila. After three years at Santo Tomás with thousands of other American civilian prisoners and suffering badly from malnutrition, she and her mother volunteered to transfer to another internment camp, Los Baños, thirty miles south of Manila.
Patty and her mother had hoped for better conditions at the new camp, but by January 1945 they and the Los Baños camp’s 2,150 other prisoners were on the verge of starvation and a possible mass execution. To their surprise and delight, the captives awakened one morning to find their Japanese guards gone. Thinking the Japanese soldiers had fled from approaching American troops, the prisoners began a celebration.
“We broke into the guards’ food warehouses-we called them bodegas-and started eating like kings and queens,” Patty recalled. “Then someone asked if anyone had an American flag to put up. I was shocked when my mother pulled out the large American flag that had been presented to my father by Philippine Governor-General Leonard Wood around 1921. It had been a family heirloom since way before the war. I didn’t even know my mother had smuggled it into our camp and was hiding it.”
As someone played a recording of the “Star Spangled Banner” over the camp’s loudspeakers, the captives sang along while saluting the raised 48-star flag, many weeping openly. They renamed their former prison “Camp Freedom.”
The gorging and celebrating went on for several days-until the Japanese guards unexpectedly returned one night. “They were furious when they found out someone had put up an American flag,” Patty said.
Fortunately for Patty and her mother, their flag had been taken down as a precaution and hidden before the Japanese returned. “The guards searched our barracks three or four times trying to find it,” Patty recalled. “I remember sitting outside the barracks when they searched and getting so upset. My mother kept telling me, ‘Don’t get all worked up, Patty, don’t get all worked up. They won’t find it.’ They would have killed us if they found that American flag.”
She never learned where her mother had hidden the flag. With conditions worsening in the camp, in the early morning hours of February 23, 1945, Patty and the prisoners were stunned to see a company of U.S. paratroopers from the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment drifting down just outside their camp. The troopers had been ordered by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to rescue the suffering civilians in a special operation. MacArthur and other officials worried the captives would be executed by their Japanese guards in the closing months of the war.
“God, those parachutes falling were a wonderful sight,” Patty says nearly 80 years later. “I’ll never forget it. Whenever I’m a little down or depressed, I just think about that sight.”
The famous airborne rescue of these 2,150 civilians behind enemy lines at Los Baños was described in 1993 by Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell as “the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies.” The complex operation was the subject of a 2004 documentary, Rescue at Dawn-The Los Baños Raid, which aired as recently as last summer on the television network History (formerly The History Channel).
Barely 20 years old when freed by U.S. troops, Patty was soon to meet her future husband, Paul J. Kelly, a 22-year-old first lieutenant from Oklahoma City who had dropped out of the University of Oklahoma to join the war effort. Paul was serving with the First Cavalry Division, which had liberated Santo Tomás Internment Camp in early February 1945 and was stationed in Manila in the closing months of the war. After a whirlwind courtship following the war, the two were wed in Oklahoma City on February 24, 1946, one year and a day after Patty’s liberation from Los Baños.
Long after the war, Paul Kelly founded Guaranty Bank and Trust in Oklahoma City. The couple had two children who grew up in the city, Paul Jr. and Carole. At her husband’s funeral in 1971, Patty had his coffin covered with the U.S. flag that had flown at “Camp Freedom” in January 1945.
With the storied flag nearing 100 years old in 2018, Patty and Paul Jr. found a permanent home for the flag at the U.S. Airborne and Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, N. Carolina. Patty and her family delivered the flag to the museum where it was honored in a ceremony around a special display in the museum’s front lobby.
Reciting the flag’s proud history, museum director Jim Bartlinski said at the ceremony, “We have an obligation to care for that flag until the end of time.”
Still active and regularly driving herself to an exercise class in north Oklahoma City, Patty finally decided to put in book format the story of her family’s famous flag, her early fraught years as a Japanese prisoner, and her dramatic rescue by U.S. airborne troops. She worked with a local historian and author to complete Waiting for America: A Civilian Prisoner of Japan in the Philippines, published in late February.
As one of the last living witnesses to these historic events, she has recounted parts of her story at several local book signings and is excited about several more planned around the state. And she gets a special thrill displaying her American flag outside her home.
“Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, the Fourth of July-these are all holidays I take special pride in flying my Stars and Stripes,” Patty says. “Those few of us still around who lived through those hard war years have a special connection with that flag. I wish more Americans did. But most have never lost their freedom for more than three years and been denied the right to fly that flag.”

Harold Flasch

(Right) 100 years old. US Military Veteran of Guthrie. His many years of wisdom for us: Love and Honor God; Be A Christian; Love your Wife/Spouse and Family; Honor your Parents and Enjoy the Comradeship of Friends; Participate in Sports; Stay Active and Eat Healthy; Count Your Blessings Every Day and Have a Sense of Humor.

Margaret Moore

(Left) 100 years old. Broken Arrow – She was born in Mississippi but lived on four continents with her husband Don and two daughters. Margaret dedicated her life to volunteering for many organizations including the Salvation Army, Girl Scouts, Church, PEO and DAR.

Al Rutledge

(Right) 100 years old. A lifetime of achievements, including a degree from OSU, serving in the US Navy, and being a beef cattle producer, he shared his wisdom, saying, ‘Listen more than you talk.’

Hank Warren

(Right) 100 years old. He graduated from Central High School in 1942 and won an award for 12 years of perfect attendance. He attended Wheaton College, OCU and University of Oklahoma, earning a BS degree in Geology. Hank had a career as a Geologist until he retired in 2008. Hank is a US military veteran of the Army Air Corp, serving from 1942-1946 and Air Force Reserve, serving from 1946-1949. As a child, Hank was only allowed to play one sport in Junior High and High School. As an athletic trainer in the service, he played baseball, softball, volleyball, golf and football.

Dee Delgado has served the head and neck population for her 35-year career as a registered nurse. She is the nurse navigator for head and neck patient population at the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences.
She advocates for head and neck patients living with cancer by educating them through the course of their health care needs.
Most patients have been diagnosed with cancer before she meets them. She helps patients decrease barriers they might otherwise encounter without her help.
“It’s an opportunity to meet with them and introduce myself and identify with them so they don’t feel like they’re lost and they’re just a number,” Delgado said.
During the 20-30 minutes she spends with a patient, Delgado sees them transition from being highly anxious to feeling more comfortable. Earning the confidence of each patient enriches her life.
“I feel like a cheerleader. I’m trying to encourage them, give them hope, and let them know they’re in a very good place,” Delgado said.
Oral cancer usually causes patients to lose a lot of weight. So, Delgado works closely with a dietician and makes referrals to speech pathology when the issue is throat cancer.
“I’m educating them on their surgeries or chemo and radiation, I’m educating them how the radiation and chemo process works,” she continued.
Delgado explained the importance of making sure head and neck patients have been to their dentist recently. Tooth decay could complicate issues for the jawbone. Patients may also have a compromised airway. Delgado understands the speech of her patients with cancer of the tongue.
“We have a lot of trachs and laryngectomy patients, so I’ve gotten good at reading lips. I can teach you anything about a trach,” she said.
Cancer is not always a death sentence. Many times, her patients may have had a relative or a friend several years ago who had a bad experience.
“I try to educate them that things have really changed in 20 years,” she explained.
For example, OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center is one of two cancer centers in Oklahoma offering proton therapy.
Warning signs of a head or neck malignancy may vary. Early detection is crucial. A lot of times patients will get a little sore in their mouth or on a lip. They sometimes mistake it for small ulcer or canker sore. Elderly patients will recall that their dentures started to not fit right.
She sees a lot of skin cancers, too. OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center will consult with the Dean McGee Eye Institute plastic surgeons when the cancer is near the eye or orbit. They also work closely with endocrinologists when the issue is thyroid cancer.
Her range of observation, communication skills, and curious intellect came with hard work and a concern for the welfare of others. In 1989 Delgado earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing at the University of Central Oklahoma. She has worked at OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center for 10 years and served at OU Health University of Oklahoma Medical Center for 25 years.
“I used to take care of these patients post-op. I worked on a med/surg floor, and I really admired the doctors, and just fell in love with this patient population,” Delgado said.
Experience has developed a network of close relationships among diagnostic professionals. She makes sure all the scans and biopsy slides are received from pathology and radiology so they may be presented at the Tumor Board.
Delgado informs patients of the results of every new scan after the Tumor Board — what the next steps are, and schedules appointments for either surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. Not every patient lives in Oklahoma City, so at times she will refer patients all over the state.
She does this not by seeing persons living with cancer as objects. Delgado brings her empathetic nature with her to work each morning or when returning home.
“Whenever a stressor pops up in our life — whatever it may be — if you start to feel sorry for yourself, all you have to do is come to work and you say, ‘No, I am blessed,’ because you see what these people are going through. And you’re like, ‘No, I’ve got this.’ It puts it in perspective. It humbles you. You’re just like, ‘Oh, my problems are nothing,’” she said.
Delgado might work a jigsaw puzzle at home after work. It has a calming effect, she said.
“You kind of disconnect and focus on that,” she said. “I like to meditate. I like to go walking or ride my bike. I enjoy being outside. I enjoy God’s creation — you know it’s beautiful.”

Angela Maness

Currently training to become a certified Post Veteran Service Officer at American Legion Post in Norman.

Story by Van Mitchell, Staff Writer

(Retired) U.S. Marine Corps SgtMaj Angela Maness joined the Marine Corps in 1987, graduating as the platoon honor recruit from Parris Island, S.C.
Her journey includes duty stations across the globe, from Camp Lejeune to Okinawa, Japan, and multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recognized for her outstanding service, Maness holds multiple personal awards including the Meritorious Service Medal (2 stars), Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal (3 stars) and more.
Maness is currently training to become a certified Post Veteran Service Officer through the American Legion Post in Norman.
“I’ve been a member of the American Legion for five or six years, but when I came up here in 2020 because of COVID, I saw the Norman (American Legion) Post and decided to check it out,” she said.
Maness walked through the front door of the Norman American Legion and saw they had just two service officers, and only was credentialled.
Accredited American Legion service officers are specially trained to provide expert assistance, free of charge, to veterans and their families. While the majority of a service officer’s work involves application for VA disability benefits, these compassionate professionals also provide information, referrals and resources on education, employment and business, death benefits and other important topics.
The American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic veteran’s organization. Focusing on service to veterans, servicemembers and communities, the Legion evolved from a group of war-weary veterans of World War I into one of the most influential nonprofit groups in the United States. Membership swiftly grew to over 1 million, and local posts sprang up across the country. Today, membership stands at nearly 2 million in more than 13,000 posts worldwide. The posts are organized into 55 departments: one each for the 50 states, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, France, Mexico and the Philippines.
Maness is engaged to her fiancé Sal Cenicacelaya, a US Marine Veteran who served from 1983-1989 as a 0311 Infantryman.
The duo was asked by Master Chief Petty Officer Larry Van Schuyver, the State Commander of the Department of Oklahoma Military Order of the Purple Heart, to become Ambassadors to the MOPH.
“He invited Sal and I to become Ambassadors to the MOPH and we gladly accepted about six months ago,” Maness said. “He later informed us that we were also nominated for volunteer “Veteran of the Year” and female “Veteran of the Year.” Master Chief has informed us that we will receive the plaque and official recognition sometime early August 2024 when they have their organizational meeting.”
Maness is also working to become a certified motorcycle rider instructor.
“I’m taking this course to become certified as a coach here in the state of Oklahoma,” she said. “It’s a rider’s coach course teaching the coaches themselves how to prepare the class for the basic rider course, and we’re in the advanced portion of it. It takes a lot of my time, but it’s worth it to me.”
Maness and her fiancé help give back as members of the Flag Poles Honors our Veterans (FPHOV) which erects flagpoles for veterans around the state of Oklahoma.
“It’s just so much fun,” she said. “If you’ve never had the privilege to witness what these outstanding Patriots do every Sunday, you’re missing out.”
FPHOV installs 5-10 flag poles around the state of Oklahoma and arrive at each home with a parade of motorcycles.
“The majority of the “Red, White and Blue Team” are civilians who just happen to own motorcycles and have a deep appreciation for Veterans who have sacrificed for this country. The best part – it’s all free for the veteran,” Maness said.
“Maness continued “Every Sunday they go out and they pick a town or region in Oklahoma, and they all ride to the veteran’s home. They show up on 10, 12 Harley’s making loud noise through the neighborhood, so it wakes everybody up and they park in front of the home. They go and place the flagpole. It’s an amazing process to watch. It’s about the ceremony that they perform, about the prayer service that they actually do right there in the Veterans front yard.”
Maness said the flag pole ceremony becomes a community affair.
“All the neighbors usually come out to watch and ask questions,” she said. “They are usually very excited to be part of the process and some actually participate in helping us dig the hole and perform the dedication. We always explain why we are here, why we are honoring this veteran, his service, his family, and his dedication to this country. Then, we recite the 13-folds of the flag and we hand it to him while the cement dries and we ask him to fly the flag the very next day. At this point, there is usually not a dry eye – so we get back on our bikes and make our way to the next home. It is an honor to give back in this fashion and I hope to continue as much as my schedule will allow.”
Maness comes from a military family. She and several of her siblings followed suit and joined the military. Her father was a Marine for 27 years, and her mother was in the United States Navy.
Maness said her parents both met while serving at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1960.
“There are five kids in my family. One has already passed. Of the four left, three of us have served in the Armed Forces (two Marines and one Army) while the other is a military supporter who works with Marines as a government employee,” she said. “This is just something that my family takes pride in doing – serving our country in some fashion.”

As Paula Poundstone continues her 2024 U.S. tour, audiences can be assured of an evening of hilarity as the comedian launches into a string of humorous stories typical of most observational stand-up comics. But at some point into her routine, the sharp-witted Poundstone will seamlessly morph into her trademark banter with audience members – a part of the show fans have come to expect and adore. It’s a style that evolved out of necessity.
“I’ve been doing stand-up for over 40 years, but have a terrible memory,” said Poundstone by phone from Florida recently, while preparing for an evening event. “I started out doing the five-minute open mic thing and spent years trying to memorize an act. Then I just began talking with the audience. My first thought was that it might be a liability, but one night I realized it was kind of the heart and soul of the whole show. Now it’s my favorite part of the evening.”
How she selects audience members to engage varies from venue to venue as the blinding house lights will often obscure distant individual faces. Sometimes she’ll spot a guest arriving late, or perhaps someone getting up to leave temporarily, while others grab her attention by yelling out answers to her rhetorical questions – and Poundstone pounces.
“I’ll often start with the time-honored question of asking what they do for a living,” she explained. “In this way, little biographies of audience members come up and I use that to set my sails! Their profession might remind me of a piece of material I have stored away in my mind and I’ll run with it.”
A memorable interaction occurred in 2006 during a show recorded for the Bravo cable network. About a half-hour into her performance, Poundstone began questioning an engaged couple who revealed the woman worked for an insurance company and the man was in banking. A seemingly innocuous inquiry about who proposed to whom brought a response from the gentleman, “What kind of a question is that?” prompting immediate gasps from the audience – an opening for the comedian to fire off her frequently heard laugh-inducing response to the crowd’s reaction: “I’ll handle it!”
And she did, brilliantly, with lightning-fast improvisational skills during a sidesplitting 6-minute interaction with the pair.
“People still come up to me and ask about that one and to this day I wonder whatever happened to the couple and if they did get married,” said Poundstone. “And every now and then, someone will ask me if it’s all planned – that the people somehow know they will be picked. That always makes me laugh and my response is how would that even be possible? It would require a lot of effort and I wouldn’t even know how to begin. This is why my shows are never exactly the same wherever I go.”
Like many entertainers with a busy tour schedule, Poundstone has little time for sightseeing (see www.paulapoundstone.com for cities and tour dates).
“I don’t get a chance to look around much since the touring only allows me to fly in for a show and then I’m off again,” she says. “But I still think it’s the best job in the world.”
Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama and writes features, columns, and interviews for newspapers and magazines around the country. See https://www.getnickt.org.