KEEP OKLAHOMA BEAUTIFUL SPEECH 11/8/02

I want to thank Keep Oklahoma Beautiful for allowing me the honor to speak at this year's breakfast and I want to express my sincere feeling of charm in the room because of the added presence of First Lady Kathy Keating. Many of us where here a year ago, for breakfast and listened to her wonderful speech about living in Oklahoma and what she and her friends say to outsiders about our beautiful state. Her comments were an inspiration for this speech, for which I was convinced to give by K.O.B.'s Executive Director Gail Ederer. Thank you Gail, for all you have done for this conference and for making me write a speech for today. I hope my comments reflect my passion for Oklahoma and its beauty and I hope I do as good a job as the First Lady did in 2001. My story today is tinged with personal reflections. I am proud to be a member of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful and I believe strongly in its core mission of anti-litter. Fighting litter is one of my deepest and strongest passions in my life. It started in 1970 on April 22nd, the first Earth Day when I was eleven years old. I had received a letter from Tulsa's Mayor Jim Hewgley, who asked me to organize a litter cleanup in my neighborhood park in Tulsa. The letter said that if we picked up trash for 1 hour, we would be rewarded with all the Pepsi we could drink. I hate to admit that my life was changed by a soft drink, but it was pretty new and my mother did not let us drink very much of it. Me and my runnin' buddies, mostly 5th graders, picked up trash for one hour and when we were finished, just sitting around with big, carbonated bellies, something snapped in me. When I was looking at this bunch of full plastic bags, something stirred in me, and I got angry. I was quoted in the Tulsa Tribune saying, "If you litter, you are not my friend!" I still feel that way today. You have to realize I was a 5th grader living in an urban environment where most of my world was concrete and hard floors. In fact even the school I went to, Franklin Elementary had a completely paved parking lot with bases and out-of-bounds painted on the concrete in yellow. A park, or any public space, can be a place for all, especially young children, to gather and explore and make a connection with nature and community and people just like them. I caught frogs in the creek, played among the tall trees, and most days couldn't wait to ride my bike there to see my friends. In my eyes, and to the eyes of most children and park users, this was a Garden of Eden and Disney Land combined. But to other people, it was a trashcan. Here I am 33 years later still vowing to do something about trash and litter. It has recently dawned on me that I focused too much on the ugly wrappers of picnic lunches and fast food that the park-goers left behind and not enough on the park and what public places mean to people. When communities utilize its public spaces, a real sense of community can begin. Parks, be it city parks, county parks, state parks, or national parks can become not only a place to grow and experience nature but a place to join together to solve community problems. Oklahoma has many beautiful places besides the places titled "park." They include private homes and Gardens, majestic and historic buildings like courthouses and city halls and new buildings like the wonderful ballpark here in Oklahoma City. We Oklahomans are surrounded by beauty, both natural and man-made. Oklahomans have done many things to make Oklahoma a more livable and lovable place. Many were done because people wanted to improve the quality of life in their communities. The sessions we had yesterday were wonderful. Oklahomans talked about how to become a tree city and how communities like Ardmore organize massive garden projects, as well as anti- litter messages. I hope we all caught our guests from Louisiana, Ann and Betty, whom I consider to be visionaries on organizing community pride. Today's sessions are equally inspiring. The main street stories of Okmulgee and Enid are wonderful and Cheryl Cheadle's water efforts are so educational. I urge you to take advantage of our speakers today. All of this is what has inspired our theme for this conference, Livable, Lovable Communities. We are today, and in this room for breakfast, and in our homes tomorrow, a community. It is a community love that gets to us, that makes us try to improve our places. I now know that my passion as an eleven year wasn't in fact the negative messages such as "you can't be my friend if you litter or simply hating trash" but the positive feelings were for where I live, here in Oklahoma. I am caught up in a community; I love my church, love my neighbors, love my coworkers, and even the friends that my children play with. Our lives can be a big group hug with our community. I want to keep improving the areas where I live and work to make it more livable and lovable, the theme of our conference this year. We are all a big village. I hate to think that Hillary Clinton was right when she said that it takes a village. I've always thought my town of Tulsa was too big to be a village. I mean a town the size of Tulsa needs at least three village idiots, you know, we have to work shifts. When we feel the sense of pride in where we live, we want to do ALL we can to make it better. All sometimes means great individual efforts and we are gathered here to share and award these community heroes. All of the award winners tonight at the banquet have shown us in very positive and replicable ways how to do this. such as my favorite award winner, Jim Costas, who is winning the Individual Achievement for Beautification and Landscaping Award. Jim does so much for Up with Trees and Up with Trees does so much for my community. The simple slogan of Up with trees to "make our freeways tree-ways" has lead to a 26-year history of planting a thousand trees a year - all to help keep Tulsa beautiful. Tulsa was founded under a tree. The Council oak tree on the banks of the Arkansas River is where the tribal leaders met before Tulsa was conceived. That tree is still alive and is now a city park. I urge everyone here at this conference and at this breakfast to go and plant a tree in Oklahoma like Jim and his organization are doing again this month. Fall in Oklahoma is the perfect time to plant a tree. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago - the second best time is today. This tree-mendous effort is found all over our beautiful state. in Shawnee, Oklahoma with the Chamber of Commerce working with third graders in Shawnee to plant redbud trees, the official state tree in Oklahoma. And it is also found in the Tree Bank Foundation of Oklahoma who has planted over 50,000 trees in the last 15 years. And everyone should go to Claremore and find out what the city has done in partnership with the school system. And the most spectacular tree program in 2002 has to be the one done by the greater Oklahoma City Tree Bank with their partnership called Tornado Re-leaf to restore trees lost by the spring 1999 tornado. Trees can be such a central part of what we experience and how we experience nature. I love living in Oklahoma. I have to leave Oklahoma often because of my job for meetings or speeches. Sometimes I go to Washington state or Washington D.C....sometimes even Texas.. I don't like going to Texas. I tell them I'm from Oklahoma. and Texans are beneath me. but I'll have to say that last week's trip to Texas made me appreciate southeast Oklahoma. The fall foliage of the Kiamichis and surrounding bits of Oklahoma are so impressive this time of year. It is a brilliant, colorful quilt of beauty. Don't listen to the nay Sayers who don't see the beauty in Oklahoma. This is the part where I tell some silly story to make a point - the story goes that when God was creating the earth, an angel stood over his shoulder watching every move he made as if he were observing a great painting being created before his eyes. The angel said to God, "this one spot. you've made it real flat; and the soil seems to have a lot of red in it, and there doesn't seem to have much shade. Why did you do that God? And God replied, just wait. Now I'm going to make them a strong group of people who like it that way. and they will be some of my best work - I'll call them Oklahomans". What do we do when we are really proud of a place that we live? We try to maintain and add to its beauty. We clean up and restore buildings. I'm so happy that Tulsa is beginning to remodel the Mayo hotel downtown. My town and many of yours are graced with gorgeous examples of art deco and exotic architecture. Examples of beauty include the original state capital in Guthrie, the downtowns of Oklahoma towns like Muskogee and Sapulpa and Hooker. It includes the renovated courthouses in towns like Pawhuska and Wagoner and Kiowa County and the incredible architecture found in both Norman and Stillwater on our university campuses, and the newly renovated Pavilion at the Tulsa Fairgrounds. We add gardens.like the gardens in downtown Bethany and the Centennial Park in the town of Hobart and the azaleas that require an annual trip with my family to Muskogee. We volunteer to beautify our community by organizing every person possible to help. A great example of this is found in Idabel for their program called Project Ready. The sentimental favorite tonight has to be the Town of Medford whose kindergarten class planned and produced their own project titled "Every Day is Earth Day". When we are really proud of where we work and live, we strive to add to our homes. our businesses. our freeways. and our classrooms.. I saved for last the one thing I'm most proud of in Oklahoma in 2002 .the completion of the dome on the state capital. I want to thank the Keating's for their super efforts to make the dome possible. Our capital was designed for a dome has needed a dome for generations. For decades people said that we couldn't raise the money to get it done. The Keatings and some other wonderful Oklahomans got it done. This gift to all visitors to our state and to all Oklahomans has got to be the most spectacular example in 2002 of how we add beauty to where we live or work. When you're really proud of where you work or live in Oklahoma.you put a dome over it! Thank you Mrs. Keating, thank you to this conference and thank you Oklahoma. Keep Oklahoma Beautiful and keep up the good work.