Gov. George Nigh was back in Norman this past week. He was the featured speaker at a luncheon celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Norman Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mr. Nigh, often considered the father of Oklahoma tourism, shared that he once lived in a converted sorority house near the OU campus while he served as lieutenant governor. He recalls taking shifts selling parking spaces for football games in order to pay the rent. Not bad extra income for the state's lieutenant governor.
Even before his Norman parking lot monitor days, the governor was a law student here for a brief time. Someone told him to be successful in politics he needed to get a law degree from OU.
He had a degree from a junior college in Eastern Oklahoma. At that time, anyone could attend law school if they had three years of college. Administrators would give you a year's credit if you had military service which Nigh had.
Early in the semester, a law professor told Mr. Nigh's class that half the students would be gone by the end of the year. "I thought I'll save them the trouble and leave on my own," Nigh said.
Nowadays, law schools don't want to have to weed out the class over three years. They'd rather be more selective about who they admit and retain all those who enter.
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A little bit of Norman's history passed away last week. Graveside funeral services were held Thursday for Patricia Ann "Pat" Laughlin, who died at age 73 in an assisted living center in Phoenix.
"Pat" was the late-night waitress at the Denco Cafe on Main Street. For many years, Denco was Norman's only late-night and early-morning dining option. It originally catered to the bus station across the street. When that moved west, Denco's found a new audience in the late-night college party crowd.
During my college years, she kept order among the rowdies while she served those "Denco Darlin'" plates full of spaghetti, fried eggs, salad with Green Goddess dressing and some other things we couldn't identify.
Pat knew many of us by first name but we never knew much about her other than not to cross her late at night.
She grew up in Wanette and then moved to Bakersfield, Calif., where she graduated from high school. She returned to Oklahoma in 1955 and worked at Denco for about 23 years. She later worked at Griffin Memorial Hospital until she retired in 2000. She was buried Thursday at the Box Cemetery.
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It's Father's Day, and a day set aside to celebrate that lofty title. My dad's been gone for a dozen Father's Days but he's still often in my thoughts.
Sometimes, the thought comes from a joke or a funny story that I know he'd appreciate. Cherish those times when you know someone well enough that you can appreciate their sense of humor.
One memory that's not humorous but was never mentioned growing up. It was included in a tattered newpaper clipping found among his papers. The newspaper in Minot, N.D., put the young lieutenant on the front page for talking the pilot of a fighter jet down after the plane lost its ability to navigate.
The pilot was off course and radioed for help into the SAC base tower where dad was an air traffic controller on duty that night. Using local landmarks, speed and distance calculations and a little bit of luck, the pilot landed safely. He may have been a father himself, now with children of my vintage, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. It's a story that I'll share with my own children today as we celebrate and remember.
Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com
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Gov. Nigh once sold parking spaces for OU football games
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