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M G A z I N E Volume 23 Number FALL 2002 The Schuste an Center ----------------------.---------------- _ ... _. --- SOONER M A G A z I N E co ts Fall 2002 Volume 23 • Number 1 4 TULSA TIME The University of Oklahoma has had programs in Tulsa since the 1950s, but only with the acquisition of the Schusterman Center has the OU presence in that city achieved a visibility in keeping with its mission. 12 THROUGH THE GATEWAY It isn't easy being the new kid on campus, as incoming freshmen can attest, but adjustment to University life is made a lot easier through participation in creative orientation classes that get them up and running. PROLOGUE • INSIDEFRONTCOVER 15 SELDOM DISAPPOINTED Tony Hillerman didn't want to be a farmer, but he did want LETTERS • PAGE2 to go to war-an experience that shaped his life and set him on a path to OU and life as a journalist, educator and SOONER SPOTLIGHT· ALEX KONDONASSIS one of America's best-selling novelists. (A review of Tony PAGE29 Hillerman's autobiography, Seldom Disappointed, appears on Page 21.) BOOKS • PAGE31 "CALENDAR ART" • INSIDE BACKCOVER 19 A WORD TO WORRIED PARENTS Author Tony Hillerman recounts the au career of ON THE COVER • Framed in the window J-School classmate Lew Thompson, a fellow WWII vet overlooking the Schusterman Center's main en- who overcame obstacles with aplomb and had a darn trance, au sculptor Paul Moore's "The Seed Sower" good time along the way. stands watch over the University of Oklahoma- Tulsa campus. Story on Page 4. Photo by Robert Taylor 22 WINDOW TO THE WEST For 75 years the words, images and voices of this region's past have been painstakingly acquired, carefully archived EDITOR and skillfully preserved in the University's distinguished Carol J. Burr Western History Collections- ASSOCIATE EDITOR Margaret French 27 THE TANTLINGERS' TALE ART DIRECTOR Illustrative of treasures among WHC holdings is the George T. Dotson diary of Edith Tantlinger, Wild West Show rider, roper PUBLISHER and sharpshooter who with husband Vern toured the The University of Oklahoma Foundation Inc. country in the early 1900s. Ron D. Burton, President Sooner Magazine is published quarterly by the University of Oklahoma Foundation Inc. with private funds at no cost to the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma. The maqezine is printed by the Transcript Press, Norman, Oklahoma, and is intended primarily for private donors to the University of Oklahoma and members 01 the University of Oklahoma Alumni Association. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the University of Oklahoma or the University of Oklahoma Foundation Inc. Address all inquiries and changes of address to the Editor, 1OOTimberdell Road, Norman, OK 73019-0685. Letters-to-the-editor must be signed. Leiters not intended for publication should be so marked. Phone: 405/321-1174; email. [email protected] That much he knew from growing up the youngest of three the end of the war when an explosion left him with two broken children in the tiny farming community of Sacred Heart, legs, a mangled foot and ankle, facial burns and temporary Oklahoma. His family was one of farmers and shopkeepers who blindness. Discharged with the Silver Star, Bronze Star with never made much money at either. When his father died the Oak Leaf Cluster and Purple Heart, the young soldier still was same year he graduated from high school, there was onlyenough nor quite sure what to do with the rest of his life. money to send Hillerman ro Oklahoma A&M College (now As providence would have it, when The Daily Oklahoman- Oklahoma State University)-chosen because it was the least the newspaper in Oklahoma City where his mother, Lucy, then expensive alternative-for one semester. lived-was notified by the Army about his medals of valor, a reporter contacted her. One thing led to another, and Lucy He immediately sought part-time employment ro help make shared with the reporter, Beatrice Stahl, some of the letters her ends meet, working variously as a dishwasher in a boarding son had written from France and Italy. When he arrived home, house, a janiror in a dentist's office, in the university's ROTC he paid a visit to Stahl, who suggested he become a writer. , unit where he stored equipment after drills, and in the College Shortly thereafter, he visited Larry Grove, his cousin and best of Agriculture where he earned the fantastic wage-for the friend, who was recuperating from war injuries in the Navy J time-of 35 cents an hour. hospital in nearby Norman. Still, his earnings were not enough ro cover the costs of "Larry wanted to be a surgeon," Hillerman explains, "but he got tuition, books, room and board, and he returned ro Sacred one hand pretty shor up in rhe war and had only pan ofir left. So "It was a patnonc war, and I was so afraid it would be over before I could get .. " III It. As with most members of "the greatest generation," military service ended Tony Hillerman's youth and profoundly influenced the rest of his life. Shown in a French village with part of Fourth we both decided to become writ- lh Platoon, C Company, 410 Infantry, looking uncharacteristically tidy, Tony (grenade in lapel) is ers and thought we'd go to the on the jeep hood at center. Photos courtesy Tony HilJerman University of Oklahoma." At OU, his journey to be- 1 coming a writer began in ear- Heart. "My brother was in the Air Force, leaving me the last son nest. He was influenced particularly by H. H. Herberr, from J who could run the family business, so I went home and tried to whom he took an ethics class. "No one made the impression on be a farmer," he recalls. "I raised cattle and did about as well as me professionally that Herbert did," Hillerman says of the man anybody else, but there wasn't any rain." for whom the School ofJournalism was later named. "He taught Besides, the war was raging in Europe and Asia, and Hillerman me that a community newspaper's news side preempted its was eager ro join up. "It was a patrioric war," he says, "and I was adverrising revenue-the paper had a responsibility to the so afraid ir would beaver before I could get in it. My mother was community; it had to be the watchdog. 'Look at the police a very understanding woman, and she signed the papers to bl~rter,' Herbe-r told us, 'and alwaysknow who's in jail because it permit me to enlist." might be someone you don't expect, and you'll have to tell rhe He saw combat in Europe and was seriously wounded near community about it.' " IE SOONER MAGAZINE Those lessons carried Hillerman through his years as a reporter and editor at small and medium-sized newspapers throughout the Southwest, be- ginning with the Borger(Texas) News-Herald, and ending with The New Mexican in Santa Fe, where he was a general assign- ment and statehouse reporter. Years later, as a professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, he, too, taught ethics. "I only repeated to my students the lessons I learned from Herbert," he says. In 1963, Hillerman deserted journalism for academia when • the chairman of the UNM jour- nalism department, who was • ). planning to retire, suggested he earn a master's degree and Returning from World War II, Tony enrolled in the University of Oklahoma. Here he assumes the eventually take over the de- role of the caddy in photojournalism class. The golfer at left is Dick Wharton, and at right, partment. At the same time, surreptitiously improving his lie, is Bill Shelton. Hillerman's itch to write nov- els was growing. With a family to support, however, he needed a source of income while he The Bard's work made such an impact that themes of Othello pursued his studies and his writing. He landed a job as an assistant are woven throughout Hillerman's latest novel, The Wailing to UNM's president, Tom Popejoy, where he discovered just how Wind. Released in May 2002, it reached the No.3 SpOt on The different academia was from the newspaper business. New York Times bestseller list and No.8 on The International "It was like stepping into a different world," he says. "1 went Herald Tribune bestseller lise from a six-day workweek and getting a story written every minute to an environment of thinkers. Time no longer mat- After earning his master's degree in 1966, Hillerman made tered. I was both impressed and horrified." good on his promise to take on the UNM chairmanship. He taught there until 1987. On one occasion, he was handed an inch-thick stack of During those years, he wrote a slew of well-received mystery proposals written by various UNM science departments that novels-among them Listening Woman, Dance Hall of the Dead, wanted a few thousand acres owned by the university to conduct The Fly on the Wall, The Blessing Way, The Dark Wind and research. He was asked to condense the proposals, which Skin walkers-many of which revolved around Navajo Tribal explained why each department felt it should get the land, into Police detectives Joe Leaphom and Jim Chee. Some years back, a short report. The Dark Wind was made into a film that Hillerman says did "I figured I'd review the proposals that night and write better in Europe than in the United States.

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