Looking Back

Gary Chew, (from left), Lee Woodward, and Gailard Sartain are pictured in a publicity still from News On 6. The three on-air personalities worked together at Channel 6 in the early 1970s.

A publicity photo for the children’s show “Big Bill and Oom-A Gog” starring Bill Blair and his painted cardboard robot friend on KVOO-TV Channel 2, circa 1960. Betty Boyd (second from right) and another anchor interview two women on the set of KTUL-TV Channel 8 on March 15, 1973. Paula Unruh, the first woman chair of the Oklahoma Republican party, is second from left.

KTUL-TV Channel 8 builds a new television transmitter and tower in 1965.

“Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. They took their famous name after signing with Berry Gordy’s fledgling Motown Records in 1961 and placed 38 hit records in the pop top 40. Now celebrating their 60th Anniversary in 2022, they released a new album on January 28, 2022. Otis Williams, the sole surviving member of the original lineup, turned 80 in 2021.

The Enron Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, sparking one of the largest corporate scandals in U.S. history. Formed in 1985, Enron was listed seventh on Fortune’s top 500 companies. In 2000, they had revenues of $111 billion. Then Enron’s stock price began a dramatic slide, plunging from $90.75 in August 2000 to $0.26 by November 2001. By year end, Enron’s collapse cost investors billions and liquidated almost $2.1 billion in pension plans.

After nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured. Saddam’s downfall began March 20, 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. During his 24 years in power, Saddam’s secret police terrorized the public. Many of his people faced poverty while he lived in incredible luxury at more than 20 palaces throughout the country. U.S. soldiers eventually found Saddam hiding in a hole, just nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit.

President Calvin Coolidge touched a button and lit up the first national Christmas tree on the White House grounds. The nation’s first “community” tree was also the first to be decorated with electric lights of red, white, and green bulbs. The balsam fir came from Coolidge’s home state of Vermont and stood 48 feet tall. Coolidge’s “inauguration” of the first outdoor national Christmas tree initiated a tradition that has been repeated with every administration.

Author Stephenie Meyer’s fame came when she wrote the “Twilight” vampire romance series which became a literary phenomenon. Born in Hartford, Connecticut and a Brigham Young University graduate, Meyer was a stay-at-home mother of three in 2003 when she says “Twilight” came to her in a dream. A manuscript was completed three months later. After multiple rejections, the young-adult novel was released in 2005, and the “Twilight” series sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

Former teen idol Rick Nelson died in a plane crash in De Kalb, Texas. The teenage Nelson launched his pop career in 1957 by singing at the end of an episode on his parents’ show, “The Adventures of Ozzie And Harriet,” establishing a template for pop-music stardom that inspired many imitators. Fans say Ricky Nelson possessed what so many other actors who failed as pop stars didn’t have: musical talent.