Wednesday May 22nd, 2013 • 1:11:54am
Mardi Repasy said that seeing the tornado form in Moore while she was returning home with her husband Matthew to Lawton Monday afternoon was an "unbelievable" sight.
"It's just wild, we could see the debris in the air and it was so clear," Repasy said. "God got us through there before it hit. If we'd been 10 minutes later, I don't know."
The Repasys were returning from a road trip to Atlanta, Ga. and had been traveling along Interstate 44 when it began to hail heavily near the highway's junction with Oklahoma 277. She said they drove through and when they hit the south side of Moore, the funnel began to form.
"We got on going to get away from it," Repasy said.
Repasy said that while en route to the Oklahoma City metro area they could see the damage in Shawnee from Sunday's tornado strike. She said it gave them a greater sense of urgency to get away from Monday's oncoming catastrophe.
Two Lawton men have been charged in connection with the city's two most recent homicides.
Kenneth B. Noles, 18, appeared Monday in Comanche County District Court, where he was charged with second-degree murder in the May 13 shooting death of Jonathan E. Shepherd. He was ordered held in lieu of a $100,000 bond.
Klayton J. Kitchens, 23, is charged with first-degree manslaughter in Wednesday's shooting death of Christopher B. Moore. He was released on a $25,000 bond.
Noles was arrested Tuesday after witnesses at the shooting at 1304 NW Taylor identified two suspects in the case. Noles was arrested in a traffic stop; a 31-year-old man was arrested at a city hotel. The second man, whom the prosecution says will testify he was with Nobles when Shepherd was shot and left the scene with Nobles, was ordered held on a $5,000 bond as a material witness.
Police Chief James Smith last week said the two men had gone to Shepherd's house Shepherd and Noles were next-door neighbors and an argument ensued. Shepherd was shot in the abdomen before the two visitors fled.
Police said Shepherd's death appears to be an isolated incident and investigators say there does not appear to be any link between his death and any sort of gang activity.
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) Texas Tech hired Oklahoma State associate head coach Candi Whitaker on Monday to coach its women's basketball team.
The former Lady Raiders player returns to her alma mater as the program's sixth coach. The move comes about a week after Kristy Curry left for Alabama.
Whitaker's return marks the second time in the past six months the school has hired a former athlete as a coach. In December, Kliff Kingsbury was hired to replace football coach Tommy Tuberville, who went to Cincinnati.
"It is indeed special to have a former student-athlete return to lead a program that they were a significant part of," athletic director Kirby Hocutt said. "Her leadership characteristics as a starting point guard and coach, her ties to West Texas, her experience as a Division I head coach, as well as the fact that she is a Red Raider makes her the perfect fit."
Whitaker will be introduced at a news conference Wednesday. She did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
As the starting point guard from 2000-2002, Whitaker helped lead the Lady Raiders to the NCAA round of 16 twice. Prior to her stint in Lubbock, the Texas native played two seasons for current OSU head coach Jim Littell at Seward County Community College in Kansas, where she led the nation in assists.
With their seasons going in opposite directions, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State will continue vying for position in the NCAA tournament when the schools begin the Big 12 tournament on Wednesday at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma State (39-14, 13-10) earned the conference tournament's No. 2 seed and faces seventh-seeded Texas Christian, which won the regular-season series between the teams, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. OSU has been on a tear recently, winning 11 of its past 14 games and finishing second behind conference regular-season champion Kansas State.
The Sooners (36-19, 13-11) are on a different path, having lost seven of their past 10 games and three straight conference series. The recent slide gave OU the No. 4 seed, matching it with No. 5 Baylor in the event's first game at 9 a.m. Wednesday. For all its recent struggles, OU managed to seize some momentum on Sunday with a 7-3 win at K-State.
The Big 12 tournament winner earns the conferences automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. FOX Sports Media Group will televise the entire championship to a national audience for the first time, while FOX Sports Networks (FSN) will televise the championship final. All games leading up to the final will air on FOX College Sports (FCS).
Fort Sill and the management of Corvias Military Living cut the ribbon on Monday to the Southern Plains Community Center, the first of three Corvias is building to serve military families who live on post.
Corvias was formerly known as Picerne Military Housing. This is the 27th community center it has built on the installations where it oversees post housing, but it's the first for Fort Sill, according to Laura Rudicel, communications manager for Corvias.
The center, located at 5703 Geronimo Road, boasts such first-class amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with beach entry, a fitness center with an attached playroom for children, a computer lab, an Oklahoma sports-themed video lounge, a Grand Ole Opry Clubroom influenced by Oklahoma country music, a multipurpose room and a full kitchen. The building is 9,500 square feet in area.
Guests who toured the facility saw walls covered with historic photos of the 5th Army Band practicing outside the Old Post Chapel in 1913 and others of soldiers clowning around at social functions and cookouts. Photo murals covered the entryway and one wall of the clubroom, where knotty pine paneling and rustic wooden benches lent a folksy atmosphere.
Joe Gallagher, deputy commanding general, said he's proud to have Corvias Military Living as Fort Sill's Residential Community Living (RCI) partner.
HOBART A storm that rolled through the area Saturday night brought some much welcome rainfall to Hobart and other drought-stricken areas of Southwest Oklahoma. However, it also brought an unwelcome guest in the form of lightning that struck an air conditioning unit and sparked a damaging fire to a downtown machine shop.
The fire was reported at around 8 p.m. at Tools and Troubleshooting, Inc., 425 S. Main. Owner Phil Fischer said he was at his residence two miles west of Hobart when he received a call from the Hobart Fire Department about the blaze at his business. He said that upon arrival, firefighters had nearly extinguished the fire, but were still fighting a few hot spots. However, damage to equipment inside the building was quite extensive. Also damaged by the fire were portions of the roof, the air conditioning unit, computers and related network and the building's alarm system for which he said little evidence existed as it was located in the middle of the fire.
"We lost most of our equipment and machine tools, and there was smoke damage to everything else. The air and water lines were melted," he said. "But some of the equipment that was away from the fire suffered no damage."
On the one-year anniversary of their sons' deaths, two mothers joined the leadership of 214th Fires Brigade in rededicating a memorial in Monument Park.
The names of Capt. Jesse A. Ozbat and 2nd Lt. Tobias C. Alexander now join the list of other "Leader Brigade" soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country since 9/11. The brigade conference room in Building 3440 was also dedicated to their memory Monday.
Unquestioned heroism
"The officers who were killed and wounded that fateful day by a suicide bomber had volunteered to deploy as soon as the request went out. That's what these officers absolutely represent: Leaders who move toward the sound of the guns and not away from it," Col. Timothy Daugherty, commander of the 214th Fires Brigade, said.
"They all knew the danger, and to a man they all raised their hands quickly and proudly once the deployment was offered, because that is what soldiers do. The men we're honoring today chose to roll up their sleeves and get to work to be part of the solution and attempt to make a difference. Not just write about it or pontificate on the overall desired end-state of the deployment, because to do that takes away from the essence of what being a leader is. And that essence is to show tremendous care for our soldiers and to accomplish the mission you have been given.
"There was never a doubt the team was going to be in harm's way. Yet it was that desire to help others and to teach the Afghan Security Forces how to lead that drove them to this tough mission," Daugherty said.
Maybe it was the fact she was an avid reader, but Mary McClure said she knew even as a child that segregation is wrong.
"I grew up in that atmosphere" of a segregated America, she said, explaining that she was a small-town girl from northwestern Oklahoma in an era when there was only one African-American in her home county and no Native Americans.
That's why she and her husband Kinley enjoyed the mixture of people to be found in Lawton and on Fort Sill in the 1950s, when they arrived to begin Kinley McClure's job as a teacher. And that's why she and her husband, another product of small-town western Oklahoma, were thrilled when Kinley McClure was invited to attend a meeting whose members evolved into the entity simply known as The Group.
Despite the influence of the integrated post at Fort Sill, Lawton was a segregated city, McClure said. Dr. Charles Owens (a founding member of The Group) was the only black physician in town, "and he could not use the hospital," McClure noted. Black residents lived in one of two neighborhoods. Everything was segregated by skin color: schools, restaurants, buses, recreation. But there were changes coming.
Time of change
While Douglass School didn't close until the 1960s (when its students were transferred into other schools), there had been African-American students in Lawton's secondary schools since the 1950s. And while there were many who were satisfied with the baby steps the community might be taking, there were others who wanted to push integration and accomplish it before more radical actions brought the strife that was evident in cities across the nation.
"Fort Sill was integrated," McClure said, noting she thinks that may have aided the efforts of leaders in the black and white communities determined to integrate the city.
For singer-songwriter Ali Harter, being a musician was always what she wanted to do with her life.
"I liked the way the lifestyle looked," Harter said. "I eventually learned the business aspects of being a musician and I liked the challenge of that too. Eventually, you get so involved and so much time goes by that you can't think of yourself as being anything else. It's pretty consuming."
Harter will perform twice at the Mayor's Red Dirt Ball this weekend in Medicine Park. A Choctaw native, the cobblestone community is in Harter's backyard. She said she loves coming to the resort town because it offers an environment like no other and the people are one of a kind.
"There are no other people in the world like the 'parkies,'" she said. "It's such a change of head space to be out there. People are grateful and respectful and are just good people. I consider a great deal of them my friends."
The 27-year-old singer first signed with a label in 2006, but had been singing since she was 15 years old. She said she was just pursuing a passion to sing. After two albums and a calendar booked with performances, she's now recognized both nationally and internationally. Looking back at when she first got her feet wet in the scene more than seven years ago, Harter said she never thought she would be as successful as she's become, but she knew she wanted to try.
"Little Mafia is not a 'label' the way people tend to think of the word 'label,'" she said. "They are definitely a cog in my machine, but I knew I would have to keep working to attain more than what I had."
Dig out the dancing boots, jeans and cowboy hats, because the Mayor's Red Dirt Ball is around the corner.
The annual Memorial Day music festival was started by Medicine Park Mayor Dwight Cope, who has embraced music and shared it with the community. This year, about 15 bands and singers will perform on three stages across Medicine Park, with the kickoff party at 7 p.m. Friday at the Main Stage. Cope said he's proud of the gamut of talent the town was able to secure for this year's festival.
"You look at the list of who's playing and there's not a lot of big names," he said. "But every one of them are great performers and they've got a lot of talent. I think that's what's more important. I'd rather have tremendous talent than big names."
Oklahoma native singer-songwriter Ali Harter will lead off the kickoff party. The Quaker City Night Hawks, based in Fort Worth, Texas, will perform at 10 p.m. Saturday. Festival favorites The Bobby Dale Band and The Damn Quails are also scheduled to perform.
Cope said the music this weekend is something that won't be heard at any other Medicine Park festival.
