Tommy Thompson

00:00:00Regan Siler: This is Regan Siler with the Bristow Historical Society in Bristow, Oklahoma. This interview is part of the Historical Society's ongoing oral history project. The date is August 19, 2025 and I'm here with Tommy Thompson at the Bristow Library Annex. He's going to tell us a little bit about his life and what it's been like living and working in the Bristow area. Can you please state your full name?

00:00:24Tommy Thompson: Tommy Ray Thompson.

00:00:26Regan Siler: And do I have permission to record this interview?

00:00:28Tommy Thompson: It depends on what your questions are.

00:00:31Regan Siler: Okay. Well, we'll see how it goes. Please tell me when and where you were born.

00:00:37Regan Siler: So, was that at the, was it the Sissler Clinic? Is that what it was called?

00:00:37Tommy Thompson: I was born on January 20, 1948, and the hospital that used to be located at Eighth and Main.

00:00:51Tommy Thompson: Sissler [indecipherable] or something like that.

00:00:54Regan Siler: Okay, okay, um, well, let's start by talking about your family. Can you tell me your parents full names?

00:01:02Tommy Thompson: My mother's name was Pauline Agnes Hill Thompson. Later she remarried her with most people near as Pauline Clowers. My dad was Ray Junior Thompson, and they divorced when I was in the second grade. So pretty much raised by a single mom.

00:01:26Regan Siler: Single mom, okay. And I have her birth date as April 29, 1923 and she passed away, January 13 of 2020. Is that correct?

00:01:37Tommy Thompson: Yes.

00:01:37Regan Siler: And then I know we had discussed your your dad, and there was, we maybe weren't completely confirmed on his birth date.

00:01:45Tommy Thompson: It's August the, I think it was yesterday, August the 18th, 1927.

00:01:53Regan Siler: Okay. Because I had looked it up and I found August 14, which I thought was odd.

00:01:58Tommy Thompson: I know it's in that

00:01:59Regan Siler: In that general, okay, and that's fine. Did you have any siblings?

00:02:04Tommy Thompson: Yeah, I have a half sister that I found out.

00:02:07Regan Siler: Oh, wow!

00:02:07Tommy Thompson: Years and years later when I graduated high school and made a connection with her after quite a few years, and we're very close now. And she, she she and my wife, Connie, are best friends or sisters, so it's been really a good connection.

00:02:26Regan Siler: Well, good deal.

00:02:29Tommy Thompson: And matter of fact, she and her husband moved here to Bristow, and she was the principal of Washington Elementary before moving on back to her husband, Carrie Tucker's hometown in St James, Missouri, and she went up there as principal and eventually superintendent of schools there.

00:02:50Regan Siler: Wow! Okay, so did you grow up in Bristow your your whole

00:02:55Tommy Thompson: Yep.

00:02:56Regan Siler: Okay. So did you have family living near you growing up?

00:02:59Tommy Thompson: Yeah, I had aunts and uncles posted on every street corner in Bristow.

00:03:05Regan Siler: Well, that's good. You probably couldn't get away with much, could you?

00:03:08Tommy Thompson: Yeah, I got in trouble, but I always got caught. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, I grew up during the elementary years, I stayed with my grandparents a lot, and before school and after school, and one of the best things that happened was the next door neighbor to my grandfather and grandmother was Larry Slawson. And Larry and I knew each other since we were two-years-old. Don't remember what it was like at two-years-old, but I noticed, I know that's about when we we started playing together and still do.

00:03:50Regan Siler: So, where was your house located growing up?

00:03:53Regan Siler: The post office?

00:03:53Tommy Thompson: We lived, being a single mom, we lived in three or four different places. We lived in the post office apartments that Gussie Hayes (ph) and his wife used to own. Gus did vending machines, and we lived

00:04:00Tommy Thompson: It was across the street from the where the police station used to be, on Eighth Street, just a half a block, well, between Main Street and Chestnut.

00:04:26Regan Siler: Okay.

00:04:27Tommy Thompson: And there used to be a cotton gin that was active when we lived there. And Mr. Bishop, I believe, owned it, and some of the bins would be filled with cotton, and he let me go in there and play on these big stacks of cotton. The place where he weighed the wagons that come in with the cotton was a big scale, and our building that we lived in was there and had a big brick wall and went there was no trucks there, I'd go out there with my ball and glove and throw it off the building.

00:05:03Regan Siler: Oh, okay.

00:05:04Tommy Thompson: And Jack Wagner (ph), another good friend of mine, lived down the street, and I still have his nickname, still is Sheriff. He used to ride his bike up to the police station and stand guard outside with his little pistol wrapped around his waist. His dad was Jack Wagner (ph), and that owned Wagner hardware at the time, and Jack was a heck of a musician. He was quite talented with the piano, and

00:05:37Regan Siler: You're the dad or the son?

00:05:39Tommy Thompson: Oh, no, Jack, Jr., yeah.

00:05:42Regan Siler: Your friend, yeah.

00:05:43Tommy Thompson: One of my best friends, yeah. He was very talented, very talented. In fact, the old band that he used to play with when our 50th, 1966 reunion, they all got together again, except for one that had passed away, and played and sang at our reunion. It was pretty cool.

00:06:00Regan Siler: So, then you as a youngster, you had friends around, you were riding your bikes doing all kinds of kid stuff.

00:06:08Tommy Thompson: Yeah, yeah. That's just, I mean

00:06:11Regan Siler: What was your favorite thing to do as a youngster?

00:06:13Tommy Thompson: As a youngster, really, what was great was the Silver Plunge swimming pool out in the city park. Was the biggest swimming pool in the southwest. That was what it was touted as. And my mother was able to get me a season pass, and during the summer, ride my bicycle up Seventh Street and coast in to the Silver Plunge and pat the concession stand, you know you had to have ticket to get in. They knew me. The McCormicks rented at that time, Ken McCormick and BB, his wife and two other daughters, Betty McCormick and Kenna Jean McCormick (ph). And Betty became my aunt. My uncle, Dale Hill, and she got married. And Betty passed away at an early age with cancer, and but swimming all day, you know, all afternoon in swimming pool with all the friends that were there, getting up on the tower and acting like a fool, getting the whistle blown at me by the lifeguard.

00:07:15Regan Siler: Getting in a little bit of trouble.

00:07:16Tommy Thompson: Yeah, but, and then the neatest thing was, when I got through swimming, I had to ride up a little bit of the hill there, and when I hit the top of Seventh Street, is like that Travis can't even Country and Western singer.

00:07:32Regan Siler: Travis Tritt?

00:07:32Regan Siler: Randy Travis, maybe?

00:07:32Tommy Thompson: Yeah, no, no, no, no. He was before Travis Tritt, yeah. But anyway, his song is like this bicycle and, you know, no hands, yeah, going down a big hill, Mrs. Jones.

00:07:43Tommy Thompson: Yeah. Randy Travis, yeah, okay. I love that song. It reminds me. And when I go down Seventh Street Hill, Mrs. Jones had a big mirror hanging up in the front room, and you could see yourself just fly by.

00:08:01Regan Siler: Oh, that's awesome. Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about your school life. I know you told me you attended Bristow Public Schools for 12 years, minus a little stint of about 12 weeks in Texas in the second grade. Can you tell me while at Bristow Public Schools, do you remember having any particular influential teachers?

00:08:24Tommy Thompson: Mr. Reader, Jimmy Reader was the PE teacher. And, you know, I remember almost all my teachers. First grade was Mrs. Jordan. Second grade, Ms. Wilson. Third grade, Ms. Jackson. Fourth grade, Ms. Walters. Fifth grade, Mrs. Reid. Sixth grade, Mrs. Cunningham. Then in between those we had Mrs. Holcomb to teach art so many days a week, and Mrs. Sanders teach music, and probably had a paddle used on me by each and every one of them..

00:09:05Regan Siler: Did you enjoy school?

00:09:07Tommy Thompson: Oh God, it was great going to school in a small town.

00:09:10Regan Siler: Did you have any favorite subjects or things that you really maybe excelled at?

00:09:19Tommy Thompson: I really enjoyed math with our math teachers that we had. And Mrs. Wilson, the second grade teacher was she was just pleasant. She taught like she was one of you.

00:09:36Regan Siler: Right? Did you have Mrs., did you, I I'm thinking about this because I just interviewed Bill Gurley this last time, and his mother was Neva Gurley. Did you have her?

00:09:48Tommy Thompson: Yes and no comment.

00:09:53Regan Siler: Did you struggle in her class?

00:09:55Tommy Thompson: I could not keep my head above the water.

00:09:57Regan Siler: Oh, no. Well, I thought it was funny because she was an older lady at the time, and she was my husband's algebra tutor. Well, I think she taught a lot of kids.

00:10:11Tommy Thompson: Oh, she did, yeah, and she taught fast. It's like you've seen sometimes people on TV were at the chalkboard and they're putting up numbers up there and they're erasing as they go.

00:10:29Regan Siler: Keep up.

00:10:30Tommy Thompson: Actually, my mom thought it would be better for me if I went to her summer school, and it still wasn't better.

00:10:38Regan Siler: Oh no.

00:10:39Tommy Thompson: But I, you know, the teachers that I had at the in school were just, you know, when second grade, part of the year I was in at Edison, and Mrs. Frump (ph) was the second grade teacher, and I, all the teachers in elementary school were just great.

00:10:59Regan Siler: So, on up into, say like, I guess, it was probably junior high at the time, junior high and high school, were you involved in any, like, activities or sports, or anything?

00:11:08Tommy Thompson: Sports, to be quite honest with you, they were like having a dad around. I played football. I played basketball. I ran track. Basketball, and in high school, we had a team my junior year, and we wore the old American Legion baseball uniforms that was probably made in the 40s or 50s, very baggy, heavy.

00:11:39Regan Siler: Probably hot, too.

00:11:41Tommy Thompson: Yeah, and I remember we had a game the same day we had a track meet in Bristow, and I ran track. And as soon as I got my three races down, I put my uniform in and just walked over the through the fence where the baseball field used to be behind the football field.

00:12:00Regan Siler: Because you had to clock in over there.

00:12:03Tommy Thompson: Football and basketball were, you know, that's what I really enjoyed.

00:12:09Regan Siler: Okay, well, thinking back to, like, town life and growing up here, what were some of your favorite community activities? And, you know, a lot of people talk about like Western Heritage days and camps and parades and stuff like that. Is there anything that you can recall community wide that you enjoyed?

00:12:32Tommy Thompson: Well, you know, the parades that we had, Western Heritage days was fun. But, you know, just being in a community was an everyday thing. You know, it was you cross Main Street, I don't know how many times when you were young. One year, my Great Aunt Lorene Mercer (ph), she and Jack Chapman opened up C&M Clothiers, and it was a men's clothing store, and I worked part time for them during the Christmas holidays.

00:13:13Regan Siler: As a teenager?

00:13:14Tommy Thompson: Yeah, yeah. And help a lot of the men in Bristow come in. I'd help them with the sports jackets and things, Yeah, it was fun doing it. Even learned how to wrap packages for Christmas.

00:13:27Regan Siler: Well, that's neat. Well, that was going to be my next question was, what were some of the biggest, or I don't know, most popular businesses, or maybe your some of your favorite businesses around town growing up, like, what are your, what are your memories of that?

00:13:40Tommy Thompson: The first one that flashes to me was Strong's.

00:13:43Regan Siler: Strong's?

00:13:44Tommy Thompson: Yeah, it was a retail store between Eighth and Ninth Street, and you go in and Polly Parrot shoes and Buster Brown shoes, and and you go in there and to get your shoe size, they had an x ray machine that you stood and put your feet up under, and it would measure your feet. And it's really funny to see your feet and bones underneath it.

00:14:09Regan Siler: Wow!

00:14:10Tommy Thompson: And actually, my wife, when she was in high school, she was one of the bookkeepers up there.

00:14:18Regan Siler: Oh, really?

00:14:18Tommy Thompson: And I worked at OG&E as a janitor for my sophomore year through my, till I graduated as cleaning the Main Street office and then their warehouse over on Ninth Street, I believe. It used to be OG&E, and I think it was a beer warehouse once and a feed store, and I don't know what it is now.

00:14:42Regan Siler: So, you had a work ethic from an early age?

00:14:45Tommy Thompson: Yeah, yeah. And actually, the job that I had at OG&E paid for my first year of college.

00:14:52Regan Siler: Wow!

00:14:53Tommy Thompson: And, I mean, I worked for Boerstler Brothers whenever they needed help unloading train cars and so on. Funniest story about Boerstler Brothers is it was Clifford, Spencer, myself, Curtis Gillis and Bruce Phillips. We're unloading a semi truck with the cab gone. They just parked the trailer, and there was five pound bags of sugar and big, you know, cases of pickles and things. And we got dollies, and when we come off the truck trailer, we had a big metal plate that we could go over to get it inside the warehouse. And I'm pulling, I think it was Bruce Phillips, and I'm pulling him across to keep it level. And he's got a, you know, 80 pounds of sugar on it. And we got into the middle of that plate. That trailer started, and all of a sudden, when we got more than halfway, it just flipped. Lost sight of Bruce. Clifford was standing in the back of it, or, you know, towards the front, and he got him, Bruce ended up in the very front end.

00:16:19Regan Siler: Oh my goodness!

00:16:20Tommy Thompson: Billy Farha, Jr was the bookkeeper inside, and he'd come running out, you know, because it sounded like

00:16:27Regan Siler: What the world?! Yeah. Did you have a favorite place to eat out in town?

00:16:33Tommy Thompson: You know, my mother and I, you know, she worked at Safeway for 25 years, wrapping meat. And there were some nights when she got home, she was tired, and it was Grooms Cafe. And when I was in high school, a lot of us in high school would go to their back room and she'd have our order already set out for us. I always had a hamburger and french fries, you know, and it's mostly that, and and my mom would go in every week, like the other parents, and pay for the food and Highway Cafe.

00:17:08Regan Siler: I remember people mentioning Highway Cafe, but Groom's Cafe. Where was that located?

00:17:12Tommy Thompson: It was between Highway Cafe on Eighth Street on the west side of Main, halfway in between the Eighth and Ninth Street. And my favorite place was, obviously, the Anchor Drive In. And years ago, there was Hamburger King at South Main. And between Anchor and Hamburger King, they were the best hamburgers ever.

00:17:40Regan Siler: Yeah, I've heard a lot about Hamburger King too. Yeah. You know, and a lot of restaurants and cafes during that period of time always had bowls of peanuts, you know, as a little appetizer or snack, because we were the peanut capital of the world right back then.

00:17:56Regan Siler: So, did you have a favorite hangout as a teenager?

00:17:59Tommy Thompson: Yeah, Teen Town, teen town.

00:18:02Regan Siler: So, tell me about that.

00:18:03Tommy Thompson: Mrs. Harvey, her son was Leslie Harvey, and a couple years older than I, but she started a teen town.

00:18:11Regan Siler: So, where was that located?

00:18:12Tommy Thompson: The first one was at Eighth and Main, next door to where the hardware store is, and it was in that building and had a little balcony in it, and had pool tables and, or a pool table and music playing.

00:18:30Regan Siler: So, was it just a place for teens to go and hang out.

00:18:33Tommy Thompson: Hang out.

00:18:33Regan Siler: They need something like that now.

00:18:34Tommy Thompson: And then we moved over to Ninth Street. There was, when the Chevrolet building, Cunningham Chevrolet was there, there was the alley, then right next to it, it was an old white building.

00:18:52Regan Siler: Is that where, like, the the retirement community is now, okay.

00:18:56Tommy Thompson: Yeah, there was a white building there, and it had a nice, big room, and had another separate room where there was a pool table. And that's when music started becoming live during our period of time. Jack Wagner (ph) and Billy Sumner (ph).

00:19:13Regan Siler: Oh, so they would come and play?

00:19:14Tommy Thompson: Yeah.

00:19:14Regan Siler: Awesome.

00:19:15Tommy Thompson: They they would play there, and you had to pay $1 or two to get in, and it was fun, yeah.

00:19:22Regan Siler: So, I'm guessing, and they had, like, dancing and stuff like that, too?

00:19:25Tommy Thompson: Yeah, and

00:19:26Regan Siler: That's neat!

00:19:27Tommy Thompson: Oh, it was fun.

00:19:28Regan Siler: I wish they had something like that, that now for kids.

00:19:31Tommy Thompson: It was a big hangout.

00:19:32Regan Siler: Yeah, and it was this, like a teacher that did this?

00:19:35Tommy Thompson: No, she was just a citizen, like, you're volunteering here with the, yeah, with the Historical Society. And she just, I think she may have been paid a little bit because some, you know, we were charged admission, but it was, yeah, and I got to grow up when we had two theaters downtown, The Princess and The Walmur. Then we had a drive in theater out east or west of town. And, a matter of fact, the summer before we got married, I worked during the day with Sinclair Oil Company as a roustabout, and Connie was still working at Strong's. And then we both worked for Bill and Nita Wilkinson that every night at the drive in theater to save up money for a honeymoon. I had a blast. Bill Wilkinson, bless his heart, passed away just a couple three months ago, and Nita is still doing well. But man, we had some great movies out there.

00:20:24Regan Siler: Well, I want to ask, too, because you mentioned music. What, what was your favorite kind of music back then? Like, can you what were some of the artists you listened to?

00:20:43Tommy Thompson: Oh God. [Undecipherable] The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Righteous Brothers, Johnny Rivers. You gotta remember, I'm 77, I'm just fog up here.

00:21:02Regan Siler: No, that's okay. No, that's like all the all the good stuff.

00:21:05Tommy Thompson: And yeah, we used to go to Tulsa to watch them play at the old Convention Center. Simon and Garfunkel really went see them. And the Righteous Brothers were there, and they had a band that warmed up that was just really cool. They played, I I Want Candy or something like that. But Jack Wagner's group, the Drifters, the Drifters, was a warm up band for a big dance at the convention center, and it was Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, which was another popular band back then.

00:21:48Regan Siler: I want to ask, too, do you have happen to have, I mean, I know, and we'll get into this, I know you were the president of the Historical Society for a few years, and I'll ask you about that in in a little bit. But do you have any memories of the train depot as a youngster, or anything, any goings on down there, like, what are your memories of the train depot?

00:22:09Tommy Thompson: Well, we only we lived two apartment buildings west, or, I'm sorry, east, of the Seventh Street, between Seventh and Sixth, where the train station was, and my memory of it is two or three things. Number one, I could count on that train to help me going to sleep every night about 1030. It was just part of coming through town. They used to have a post outside the station with a wire on it, and they would attach a package that was, and as a train would come through, somebody would reach out and grab the package.

00:22:50Regan Siler: Are you serious?

00:22:51Tommy Thompson: Yeah, it was pretty cool. Then there was a elderly gentleman whose brother was killed in action in World War II, and every day when the train came through Bristow, even if, when the passenger train would stop here, and after that, it was just the freight trains going through, he would come down, walk across Main Street near, he lived where Base Funeral Home (ph) next door to it used to be, and walked down to the train station hoping that his brother would be coming in.

00:23:32Regan Siler: I think I remember Kell [Kelly] telling me about him.

00:23:35Tommy Thompson: It was in, he collected string, and I never saw it, but I was told that he had a huge ball of string in his house. He was quiet, nice

00:23:47Regan Siler: But he kept thinking his brother was going to return? Aww.

00:23:50Tommy Thompson: Yeah, yeah.

00:23:53Regan Siler: Well, do you remember, do you happen to remember your first car?

00:24:00Tommy Thompson: Yeah, my dad and I reconnected my first year of college, and he bought me an old 1958 Volkswagen, and it was great, as long as you were going down the hill or flat. When you had to go up a steep hill

00:24:26Regan Siler: Did you have to "Fintstone" it?

00:24:27Tommy Thompson: Get your oars out and start rollin.

00:24:29Regan Siler: Yeah.

00:24:30Tommy Thompson: And one of the things that happened, I swear this happened. I lived in East Bennett Hall at Oklahoma State my first year of college, and a bunch of the guys there went out while I was gone and picked that up and put it up in the bushes. Carried it up a little bit of slope. I don't know how the hell they did it?

00:24:51Regan Siler: Oh, that's funny. Oh, that's a good one. Um, so growing up, do you remember what kind of entertainment you enjoyed? Like, I don't know from maybe TV programs, or I don't know if you listen to the radio a lot?

00:25:10Tommy Thompson: You know, the entertainment was at home, was TV and radio, and during the summer, baseball season, every night, I would listen either to the Cardinals on their station or on KVOO, and listen to the Oilers, Tulsa Oilers baseball team. Lynn Morton, Matt Krieger (ph), and one other gentleman. And I mean, I would listen to those games, especially when they went out to the Western Time Zone or Mountain Time Zone. So, it went a little bit later. But TV every Saturday morning, you know, and all the funny shows. I Love Lucy was a blast, and watched Ed Sullivan Show, yeah, good times.

00:25:58Regan Siler: Okay, as a child or a youngster, do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?

00:26:05Tommy Thompson: Oh, yeah, teacher and a coach.

00:26:07Regan Siler: Really?

00:26:08Tommy Thompson: Yeah.

00:26:09Regan Siler: Well, you managed to achieve that, didn't you? Okay? So, I know we discussed, you attended college, and it was an interesting chain of events of college. So, tell us about your college experience.

00:26:22Tommy Thompson: Do I have to? You could probably asked Barry West. He was my roommate. First year in college, did not go well at all. Was not very smart about attending classes.

00:26:42Regan Siler: You weren't very focused, maybe?

00:26:44Tommy Thompson: No, I wasn't. OSU asked me not to come back. And the next year, I drove back and forth with Bill Sumner and Kenneth Dale to Northern Junior College in Tonkawa, and did, had a lot more focus, and ended, did a lot better. And the next summer, I worked for Sinclair, as I told you, and Connie and I got married September the 6th in 1968. And I was 20. She was 18. Three weeks or so after we were married, I got my draft notice, and so I was starting to TU, and I hadn't, school hadn't started yet. I had to go to TU and, you know, get out.

00:27:40Regan Siler: Right.

00:27:41Tommy Thompson: I stocked at a Safeway store at 51st and Harvard, from 11:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning until through October and November and left for Ft. Polk December 2, 1968.

00:27:53Regan Siler: And how long were you in the service? And you were in the army, correct?

00:27:57Tommy Thompson: Drafted into the army. I served 21 months. If you if your ETS came within 90 days and you were going to go back to college, the army would give you a 60 to 90 day early out. And my enlistment date was December the 2nd, and I started school in early September, so my last station was at Fort Leonard Wood, and that was.

00:28:31Regan Siler: And then when you came back, did you go to TJC? Is that what you said? Yeah, it's TCC now, but back then, and it was TJC, right? Yeah.

00:28:43Tommy Thompson: You know, I learned my lesson. I mean, every night that I was in Vietnam, I thought about why didn't you go to class? And married now, and I was going to go back to TU, but during that period of time, from the spring until I got out in the fall, Tulsa Junior College (Tulsa Community College) opened. And it was in the old Sinclair building at about 11th and Main, I think, or Boston. And, it was like a reunion of Vietnam veterans all going there on the GI Bill. It was crazy, right? And maybe I was in their first graduating class. There's 22 of us. And from there, I went to Northeastern State University and got my BS degree and in psychology and counseling, business education.

00:29:45Regan Siler: And you were there a couple years, correct?

00:29:47Tommy Thompson: I was at Northeastern two years.

00:29:48Regan Siler: Two years.

00:29:49Tommy Thompson: And then I went back and drove for another year and not quite a half, and got my Master's Degree there.

00:29:56Regan Siler: Okay, okay, well, I know when we had visited before, I know you've had a lot of different teaching jobs. So, if you could touch on your earlier teaching jobs with maybe more of an emphasis on, you know, when you landed in Bristow and what you taught here.

00:30:17Tommy Thompson: Yeah, I'd been coached, taught and coached for two years at Nathan Hale High School, and ended up going to Edison, transferred over there, and to get the assistant football job I wanted, I had to take the head swimming coach's job. And there's, yeah. There was Bristow ties, believe it or not, coaching swimming. The head swimming coach at Memorial was the son of Frank Sanders, Jim Sanders, and Mr. Sanders was our principal. And respected him, and I was afraid of him, too. I really respected him, and I knew Jim, and on my swim team, my first swim team, Christian Wagner's (ph), mother, was the daughter of my junior English teacher, Mrs. Lipe (ph), and it was just a and Christian was

00:31:20Regan Siler: So, you're saying like the stars aligned for you to come back to Bristow just because you had all the different connections there?

00:31:26Tommy Thompson: No, it's because I loved Edison. I wouldn't trade it for the world and, hell, as a matter of fact, I still got kids that keep in touch with me. But in '84 in April, I had a heart attack, two heart attacks, and first one was at home, got to the hospital. Second one was when I was in the hospital and ended up having a bypass and didn't go back to school to finish the year. And, the next year, I got out of coaching and went back to teaching, and we're already making plans on moving to Bristow, and wasn't planning on taking a high school counselor's job because I didn't know it was open at the time. We took over the 7-11 on South Main.

00:32:19Regan Siler: And, see, I even forgot about that.

00:32:22Tommy Thompson: Yeah, we we ran it, and there was a, Darold Ritchie was promoted to assistant superintendent, and I got a call from Dr. Carmichael asked me to come up and interview for the counseling job and assistant girl's basketball, and I told him flat out, you know, I coached for so many years, and I just don't want to do it again because of my health. And, so, I turned walk out and Darold Ritchie caught me when I was getting into the car to go back to the store, and Dr. C wants to see you again. Go back in, he said, you got a counseling job.

00:33:03Regan Siler: Well, good, and and in talking to you about the counseling job, I know you said that that was like a great time for you, like I was in school at the time you were a counselor, and you said you really enjoyed your your time doing that.

00:33:16Tommy Thompson: I enjoyed teaching and interacting with the classes, and I enjoyed coaching football, swimming and then back to basketball after the swim, my first five years in swimming and but when I got to be a high school counselor, my job was to know every student if I could. I don't know if you remember, but I had three yellow legal pads, and I tried to call in every student, sophomore, junior and senior, and had columns made, you know, make sure, you know, make start making plans and what your interests would be. Make sure you take the ACT if you're going to go to college, and PSAT when you're a junior, and this and that. And each year, I would try to talk to each one that came in. And, you know, it's just helping kids.

00:34:17Regan Siler: You felt like you were able to maybe connect or help with them better in a counseling position?

00:34:21Tommy Thompson: You know, I remember telling them, there's only a few things you can do once you graduate. Number one, you can go to college. Two, you can go to trade school. Three, you can join the service. Four, you can get a job. Five, you can just stay at home with your mom and dad. Those are about what you have to choose and you need to decide. And a good handful of kids went into the service. A lot of them went to college, trade or technical schools. Some of them got some jobs, and have done very well since then, and watching, you know, the ones that I really liked helping, and it wasn't because they were, I like them more than I like the others. It was they had more intense things they had to do, like the the academies, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy, and West Point, and was able to get some kids in, and I was also able to help a good group of kids like, my mind's going blank, I'll get back to them.

00:35:43Regan Siler: Yeah, that's okay.

00:35:44Tommy Thompson: And, you know, one of them called me about four years ago, when we were on our way to Fort Worth to watch the Sweet 16 basketball. I was with my brother and sister and my wife, my brother in law, sister and wife and I get a call, and it was Calvin Foster. He said, I wanted you to know you helped me so much to get into the Naval Academy. I just got nominated to be an admiral, and it has to be approved by the Senate, and both of us got tears.

00:36:19Regan Siler: Yeah, that's a big deal.

00:36:20Tommy Thompson: That's that was huge.

00:36:22Regan Siler: Yeah.

00:36:28Tommy Thompson: I swear I would get brain fog.

00:36:32Regan Siler: No, it's okay. It's okay. If you think of it, we'll come back to it. But, I would like to move on to and talk about your family a little bit. I know you mentioned your wife, Connie. Can you tell me her full name and date of birth?

00:36:45Tommy Thompson: Her full name is Connie Marie Mann. She was born July 29, 1950.

00:36:51Regan Siler: July 29th?

00:36:53Tommy Thompson: Yes.

00:36:54Regan Siler: Okay. What was your first impression of her when you met her?

00:37:00Tommy Thompson: It was at Sixth and Main Street. I was in my little red '65 Mustang, and I was in the outside lane going south. Richard Worley (ph), and a group of people were in his car, and Connie was in there. And, so, I had Richard Worley later, if he had introduced me, and that's the way it all started.

00:37:24Regan Siler: Oh, okay, okay.

00:37:25Tommy Thompson: That was in '67.

00:37:27Regan Siler: In 1967 okay, and you had mentioned that you'd gotten married September 6, 1968 and that was at the First Baptist Church in Bristow. Okay. Well, can you tell me about what your first year for, like, the early years of marriage was like? I know you were, you were in

00:37:47Tommy Thompson: Listen, we got married September the 6th.

00:37:48Regan Siler: And then you were drafted.

00:37:51Tommy Thompson: We lived together September, October and November, and I was working all night, and she's working days, and I left December the 2nd. So, I was in the Army a lot longer than I was with Connie.

00:38:06Regan Siler: Yeah, so where did she stay while you were gone?

00:38:09Tommy Thompson: She stayed, she stayed with Larry Slawson (ph), his wife, Gail Greer. Gail's, Larry was had gone away for basic training in Marines, and while he was gone, well, she and Connie lived together in Tulsa. Then when Larry was injured and got a discharge, physical discharge, she moved back home with her mom and dad.

00:38:35Regan Siler: Okay, okay. And so whenever you got out, where did you guys end up living, when you got out of the service?

00:38:45Tommy Thompson: Yeah, we bought a mobile home. Lived in Tulsa. I started going to TJC [Tulsa Community College], and she was working at that at Bank of Oklahoma, or actually, it was National Bank of Tulsa at that time. And you know, we just struggled through early years of marriage.

00:39:08Regan Siler: Right, right, and then you have, I know you have, two children. Can you tell me their names and dates of birth?

00:39:16Tommy Thompson: Heather and Hayley. Heather [Heather Thompson Charles] is the oldest. Her birthday is November the 27th.

00:39:26Regan Siler: I have November 28,1972.

00:39:28Tommy Thompson: I'm one day off.

00:39:29Regan Siler: Yeah, yeah.

00:39:29Tommy Thompson: And Hayley [Hayley Rae Woodson] was October the 8th. How close?

00:39:35Regan Siler: October 9, 1980?

00:39:37Tommy Thompson: I'm one day off.

00:39:37Regan Siler: Okay. And then you have, I know you said Heather has, uh, two daughters, and then Haley has one son.

00:39:47Tommy Thompson: Yeah, two granddaughters are Emily and Megan, and grandson is Tyler. And you'll you're going to start learning how great it is to have a grandkid. And boy did I, we got to watch him grow up. You have a Schnauzer, and we had a Schnauzer back then. It was just a puppy, and his name was Gibbs, or Buster. And Buster grew up with those kids. And Emily now is a lawyer, an attorney working for Oklahoma County as a district in the District Attorney's office, and she handles all the juvenile cases. Megan just graduated and has started as an RN at a woman's hospital that deals with obstetrics and those things in Oklahoma City. Tyler is in his senior year, starting at Central University in Edmond.

00:40:50Regan Siler: Do you remember any challenges in the early years of being a dad? Any challenges you had?

00:41:00Tommy Thompson: You know, both my kids were they were disciplined, but I never had any challenges.

00:41:10Regan Siler: Didn't have any challenges. No, that's good. That's a good deal. Have you enjoyed being retired? Do you have any hobbies?

00:41:18Tommy Thompson: Yeah, when I retired from education, I worked at American National Bank, Spirit Bank, now for four years or so. And it, it was okay. I was making a good, a lot of, definitely a lot more money than being in education, and somebody from Express Personnel called me and asked me if I'd be interested in opening an Express office in Bristow. So, I left banking and did, and did that for six or seven years, and ended up being a region manager, and, you know, I just, education is what I loved, and I just couldn't get into it, and I had a fall and back of my head, and ended up, about six months later, having a hematoma taken off, so I left Express. And a year later, I started with the Jim Thorpe Association, which also has the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. And I did that for three years, and we started our own organization, the guys that were on my board, called Tulsa Sports Charities. We did that for about 14 years, or I did it for 14 years, until I retired from it, and I didn't take a salary from it, and I was able to do other things to do it, but God, we had so much fun. Our our goal was to make a lot of money, have fun doing it and give it all away. We gave away.

00:43:21Regan Siler: That sounds fun!

00:43:22Tommy Thompson: We gave away over $1.7 million to different charities and organizations, to Fellowship of Christian Athletes to Special Olympics. We had Tom Osborne and Barry Switzer do a legends dinner. And we donated $10,000 each to those two charities because they were in on them. And we, I mean, Ronald McDonald House, I don't know there's a list out.

00:44:04Regan Siler: A whole list, well, you, you

00:44:07Tommy Thompson: And we, one of the things I insisted on, here we go, memory, thank you. We endowed a scholarship at University Oklahoma in Tulsa, called the Wayman Tisdale scholarship, and they give it to freshmen. Then at Oklahoma State University and at TU, we endowed two scholarships, one each at those two universities and one at Oklahoma State was in Bill and Anita Connors name. Bill graduated from Oklahoma State and was a renowned sports editor and writer for the Tulsa World for years, and that scholarship goes to a junior who has successfully made it further than I did at Oklahoma State. And in their junior year, if they're majoring in journalism, they can apply for the scholarship. That way we know they're going to, probably graduate.

00:45:18Regan Siler: Right, right.

00:45:19Tommy Thompson: And then the one at TU was in Dr. George Mauerman's name. He was a team doctor at Memorial High School with his partner, Dr. White at Edison, and that's how I got to know both of them. And they started Eastern Oklahoma Orthopedic Center, which is now Advanced Orthopedics, and he became the team doctor at TU for 44 years, traveled with the basketball and the football team.

00:45:47Regan Siler: Wow!

00:45:48Tommy Thompson: And was on the sidelines for all of them. And we did it in his name. And it goes to a junior who is entering into sports medicine to become a trainer or or, you know, so they can apply for the scholarship.

00:46:03Regan Siler: Well, that's cool. Well, I want to talk a little bit about your local accomplishments,too. I know you mentioned you were president of the Bristow Historical Society for three years. And, I know I asked about the depot in your early memories. What about your, your memories during that time at the depot?

00:46:24Tommy Thompson: You know, we were just in the beginning, and it was just organizing the meetings.

00:46:34Regan Siler: Trying to get everything set up?

00:46:37Tommy Thompson: You know, and people agreeing to do this. We had a great committee. I mean, Mrs. Chadderdon was on it. Dang, here I go. I don't want to start giving names I can't remember.

00:46:48Regan Siler: No, it's okay.

00:46:49Tommy Thompson: We had a really good group of people who, honestly, love Bristow.

00:46:54Regan Siler: Yes, Mrs. Chadderdon was definitely one that was a supporter of the depot.

00:46:59Tommy Thompson: Yeah, and and I would bring in some speakers, and we'd do it out at the high school in the big open foyer. And it was just so much fun watching how we did the bricks.

00:47:13Regan Siler: Right.

00:47:14Tommy Thompson: Selling bricks out there and and just trying to grow the interest and try to bring in money to the group. And that was just reaching out in the community and and doing things that they could come to the depot and see. When we first started, the museum, you know, had a picture of Gene Autry and just, it was just the beginning and then the Chamber moved to the Historical Society. I don't know if they're still part of it there now, but that was, you know, is this a good deal.

00:47:51Regan Siler: Right, right.

00:47:52Tommy Thompson: And, yeah, it was fun times.

00:47:54Regan Siler: Well, you also told me that after your heart attack, that within six months you had run the Tulsa Run, and then tell me about your, you got into running, and then tell me about your friendship, running here and the Wildflower Run, and how all that came about.

00:48:13Tommy Thompson: I had a heart attack in '84 and went through Saint Francis Cardiac Care Unit, where the you had people that were trainers that knew, and it was treadmill or bicycle, and then you had class on how to change your diet and just easy things to get you involved to make a change.

00:48:40Regan Siler: A positive change.

00:48:42Tommy Thompson: And I remember, when I first got out of the hospital, I went home, and I was told to walk three minutes away, you know, at home. And, so, I would go out, and I'd walk a minute and a half to this one piece of wooden fence and turn around, and I had a mark on it, and I'd walk back home, get there in another minute. And every day, I increased three or four lumber pitches, until I was on a treadmill going through the rehab and and six months later, I ran the full Tulsa Run with a good friend of mine. It was Dr. Earl Bachenberg, is a dermatologist, and he paced me. We did a 10 minute mile, and we moved to Bristow, and I just started jogging and met Kell Kelly and Chip Cooper and said, you guys need to start running with me. And the furthest either one of them could run was one mile. I got him to do three miles, and we ran together.

00:49:48Regan Siler: You were a good influence on them.

00:49:50Tommy Thompson: We ran together for 17 years.

00:49:52Regan Siler: That's crazy.

00:49:53Tommy Thompson: Just and, and

00:49:54Regan Siler: You said that every, every week you ran together, right?

00:49:57Tommy Thompson: Yeah, there's some nights that one of us couldn't go and most of it was at night, and some of the best memories are sitting out on Kell's driveway when he lived over on east Sixth Street and just laying there on the driveway and visit.

00:50:15Regan Siler: Right.

00:50:16Tommy Thompson: And then when he moved over at the end of Main by the bank and the Kelly home, finish over there and have a beer, and then we'd stop at my house and have a beer after we ran, but talked all the way that we ran and sit down and talk about. It was just

00:50:33Regan Siler: Well, good.

00:50:34Tommy Thompson: And, one of the things I asked him that first year was I know that a friend of mine was assistant principal at Edison Middle School, and he came and ran in a race in Bristow and won a pair of shoes. And I said, y'all, we remembered it, and I but it wasn't very well organized. And I said, well, let's start at 5k and Cooper said if we're going to do it, we're going to do it first class. And, you know how Chip is. At the time, he didn't know I was the same way. We started it, Bristow Wildflower Run in 1988.

00:51:13Regan Siler: 1988.

00:51:14Tommy Thompson: It's still going.

00:51:15Regan Siler: Still going strong,

00:51:16Tommy Thompson: Yeah. And lot of kids ended up doing well.

00:51:21Regan Siler: Yeah, and then you had also mentioned, I wanted you to tell me, just touch on the Bristow Education Foundation, and I know we talked about, like the free throw contest, Cadet Lawman. Can you tell me about those few things?

00:51:37Tommy Thompson: There's two things that I was really proud of is, number one, is the Bristow Education Foundation. I was a counselor to high school, and you get a monthly newsletter from the technology centers, and I got one from Tulsa Tech, and there was, going up there, was going to have a seminar on how to start an Education Foundation. And I went in and talked to Bill Stephens, the principal, about going to that. And I said, you know, I think the best person I can think of right now that would be a good to help me with it would be Jim Masters. So, we got permission from Dr. Carmichael to look at the possibility. That's the way it started. Jim and I got it started, and before that, the other thing I was really proud of, is the dressing facilities out at the football field were still the same as when I was there back and, I mean, it was almost like a place where you put POWs. I mean, that's how,

00:52:52Regan Siler: Yeah, right.

00:52:53Tommy Thompson: The facilities had degraded and, and I got Tom Alexander to help me, and he gave me a box, two boxes, of his information on who played football at Bristow High School, and I wrote letters to as many of the families that had sons play football at Bristow, and asked for $100 donation. And we raised about $50,000.

00:53:26Regan Siler: Oh, wow!

00:53:27Tommy Thompson: But some people, we'd get a $5,000 check from one and $1000, and we started a Ring of Honor, and all the people that donated would put their son, or, you know, their names up there, and the school was able through much, I want to say, argument, but they were able to put the maximum amount they could put into it was $39,000, and then from that point on, the whole air conditioning system was given to us by a company out of Tulsa, heating and air. And we bought, I mean, the whole thing was done, heated and air and had bigger dressing room, a bigger weight room, a nicer place for the visitors.

00:54:16Regan Siler: A definite upgrade.

00:54:18Tommy Thompson: And Calvin Gentry and Tommy Herman and myself, we more or less organized it. Calvin knew how to build and Tommy, I mean, he's like a Swiss pocket knife. He can do anything. And, me, I can follow directions and do anything that I'm told to do. And we had volunteers come up [unknown caller], oh, I had potential spam. And I mean, one night we're roofing the whole facility. Dr Carmichael is there with Bill Stephens is there, Bobby Ledbetter and his crew that roofed and Herman and Gentry, and I can't tell you how many others. I mean, there must have been a dozen of us out here. We worked till 11:00 throwing shingles.

00:55:17Regan Siler: Wow!

00:55:18Tommy Thompson: I mean that the whole community got behind it.

00:55:21Regan Siler: I love it!

00:55:23Tommy Thompson: And it, now it, they built that new facility, and they said everything is still good. Ring of Honor, I think they might have moved it, but now it's a dressing facility for the girls track. They have a place to go, that's nice.

00:55:41Regan Siler: Right, right.

00:55:42Tommy Thompson: You know, it's still kept up and clean.

00:55:44Regan Siler: Right. So that's a huge accomplishment.

00:55:47Tommy Thompson: Well, the well, we also we raise money from doing a dinner for Chuck West.

00:55:52Regan Siler: Is this going to be the story about naming the chuck West Field House?

00:55:57Tommy Thompson: Yes.

00:55:57Regan Siler: Because that's gonna, okay, so I was gonna ask you about that.

00:55:59Tommy Thompson: Well, the field house had already been named Chuck West, and we got together Larry Parish and Tommy Parish and Tommy Herman and Eddie Weiberdink and I, and got that approved by the board. And, so, when we, one of the things we did was have a banquet for him to raise money for the facility, football dressing room, and I got Barry Switzer to come. And he said, I'll do it, but you have to write the speech. And, so, I put together a nice outline for him. Ken McCormick talked. Switzer talked. And I think, oh, another wrestling coach for years in Tulsa, because was had the Chuck West wrestling tournament came and spoke and Onions Martin spoke. Onion was a wrestling referee. And in there, I put a little deal about Onions. My favorite memory of Onions Martin, I was a senior in high school and couldn't have basketball practice because they had wrestling tournament going on, and I'm sitting on like the bottom bleacher in the LeForce Field House on the north end, Onions is refereeing, and all sudden, he slaps a mat, blows his whistle and screams, this kid is disqualified for biting. He got up and talked a little bit, but Switzer said, who would name your kid Onions?

00:57:10Tommy Thompson: I got him to come to Bristow and speak. No! He did the Fosters. He did the Fosters. And I think, no, and then we, we did the Fosters and Farha. And both those dinners raised a lot of money. I mean, we had the whole Chuck West Field House Gymnasium down below was filled with round tables

00:58:20Regan Siler: Right, packed out.

00:58:21Tommy Thompson: Yeah.

00:58:23Regan Siler: Well, tell me real quickly, too, about Cadet Lawman. Were you the one that got that?

00:58:29Tommy Thompson: No, no, no. Jim Masters.

00:58:31Regan Siler: Oh, okay.

00:58:31Tommy Thompson: Jim was so active in the Elks Lodge here, and he did two things. He did the national free throw shooting contest, where all the Elks Lodge on a certain day, Saturday, had free throw shooting contest. I helped him with that, and he also worked with the counselor before me, Darold Ritchie, and you could send four kids or two kids, but we always ended up getting four, at least four kids, which most schools didn't. And what it was, it was a Cadet Law Academy out in Burns Flat, Oklahoma. It was a at an old Air Force Base, and there was plenty of housing, and the kids went through a similar training. Did you go to it?

00:59:29Regan Siler: I was actually invited to go, and I had a car wreck that summer, so I didn't get to go. I know I was so disappointed, because I was really looking forward to it.

00:59:37Tommy Thompson: And, I mean, they treat you like you're in the military.

00:59:41Regan Siler: Yes, yes, but everybody ends up loving it.

00:59:43Tommy Thompson: Oh, it's you get up early. You march in formation. You say a cadence, you know? And you get on an air boat on a lake, and you fly up in a plane, and Teresa Westhaver got sick and had to use a little bag. And she fell and hurt herself, and had to come home, bless her heart, but she was there when Heather went and Hayley went, but just seeing those kids, watching your daughters march in formation, doing, you know, saying cadence, like I did in basic training.

01:00:02Regan Siler: say that they loved it.

01:00:29Regan Siler: Yeah, oh, I know. I agree.

01:00:31Tommy Thompson: And you Jim, would work with the school on recommendations.

01:00:36Regan Siler: Yeah, okay, well, I'm going to switch gears just a little bit. Um, I would like to ask you, um, how do you feel the world is different now than when you were a kid or younger?

01:00:52Tommy Thompson: It's not a good world right now. There's just too many, too much hate going on. It makes me sad.

01:01:05Regan Siler: Well, even listening to you talk about the community getting involved in the activities of like, the what you did at the football field, like, I miss that. I miss the involvement. So I

01:01:18Tommy Thompson: You're doing it right now.

01:01:19Regan Siler: Well

01:01:21Tommy Thompson: You're know part of it.

01:01:22Regan Siler: Yeah, yeah.

01:01:23Tommy Thompson: It's something, you know.

01:01:25Regan Siler: How do you feel like that, would, do you have any ideas of how that could be corrected?

01:01:35Tommy Thompson: Yeah, I don't know. You know, when I grew up, there was an old saying you never lock your doors. Kids played at night without worrying. But life changes. These things [holding up cell phone] have changed lives so much. I can't imagine having a computer or this over in Vietnam like they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the thing is, you go to dinner with your friends, and one of them starts talking really bad about another person who's in office, and you don't want to hear it right, because you're on the other side. It was just like when Trump gave the okay to bomb Iraq, you know, or, yeah, Iran. I'm kind of like old country singer, I don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran.

01:02:39Regan Siler: Right.

01:02:40Tommy Thompson: Jackson.

01:02:41Regan Siler: Yeah.

01:02:42Tommy Thompson: And, you know, somebody asked me as I was walking by them at Andee Cooper's son's Kan, yes, that musical. What a night. What a great story. And I come back from the restroom at one of the breaks and somebody said, did you hear about our idiot president bombing Iran? And I bit my tongue, and I didn't want to get, I mean, those are the things, yeah, that are happening today. The media is always pushing this and that, right? And it's pushed people to the point of being hateful.

01:03:34Regan Siler: Major division for sure.

01:03:36Tommy Thompson: The, you know, the border crisis, you know, I, it's just, you have one side saying the borders closed. You have the other side saying, no, it's not. And then, boom, boom, boom. You know?

01:03:55Regan Siler: Well, I feel like for you, I feel like you're a great example of you lived, you've lived your life well to help in areas where you can help.

01:04:06Tommy Thompson: Well, I mean this, and I'm not trying to pat myself on the back or brag, but obviously God put me on earth to help people,

01:04:17Regan Siler: Right, I agree. I agree. And you've done that.

01:04:22Tommy Thompson: You know, it's what I like to do. It's just, and you do good things for people. And here I'm, I shouldn't tell this story, but last week, Connie has a board meeting. She's the vice president of our homeowners association. When she goes to her meeting, well, I go to Fish Daddy's and have dinner. And Julie was, is the bartender there Fish Daddy's, and it's busy and she's pregnant and she's, and I said, Julie, I'm not going to come here to eat, but all I all I need to do is just get a go order of coleslaw before I go. I want an old fashioned and I was going to go home and eat some brisket. Oh, God, I love brisket. So, I went home and I took that little piece of brisket off and ate it, and took the whole thing to her. And because she has three or four boys, and she's pregnant with another one that was unexpected, and she just looked tired. And I took and took her that brisket and gave it to her. And last night, I, I'm back there. She's she's working the afternoon shift, getting ready to go home. Came over, gave me a big hug.

01:05:38Regan Siler: And you know, that's the good stuff. That's the good stuff.

01:05:41Tommy Thompson: You do things for people.

01:05:42Regan Siler: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, so on that note, I'm going to ask you one final question. Is there any thing else that you would like to tell us about or share any wisdom that you would like to share with for future generations?

01:05:57Tommy Thompson: Just listen to the song by Louis Armstrong. What a Wonderful World. You listen to that song. If you don't get goose bumps, if you don't get a tear in your eye, you know, that tells you everything.

01:06:10Regan Siler: Right. You know, I like it. Well, you've given us a great interview. I appreciate it. Your interview will be an important part of the Oral History Archives for the museum. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us. We really appreciate it.

01:06:24Tommy Thompson: Can I add one thing?

01:06:25Regan Siler: Absolutely.

01:06:26Tommy Thompson: I sure wish we could get a kiosk or a place for veterans. People could go to the kiosk and type in a name, see what their relative did in WWI or WWII, even as far back to the Civil War.

01:06:46Regan Siler: That's a great idea!

01:06:47Tommy Thompson: And I'd really love to see that for the veterans. One of the things that I got to do, well, I didn't have to do it. I did it because Ledbetter, Mr. Ledbetter, wanted to he's afraid he had missed veterans graves when he puts the flags out. So, I've gone through and researched every cemetery and came up with a pretty accurate list that had to get veterans that did not have a marked grave as a veteran.

01:07:15Regan Siler: Wow.

01:07:15Tommy Thompson: And you know, there's so many heroes.

01:07:18Regan Siler: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

01:07:20Tommy Thompson: In Bristow that, you know, if you'd like to know the story about Klingensmith Park that's named after the first Bristow person killed in WWI.

01:07:31Regan Siler: Right, right.

01:07:34Tommy Thompson: So, yeah, twist an arm and get that done.

01:07:37Regan Siler: Okay, well, thank you very much.