Jane Jayroe, Clara Luper & Linda Twine in OK Hall of Fame

Last night was the 80th Annual Oklahoma Hall of fame Banquet and Induction Ceremony at Cox Convention Center. Miss America (Oklahoma's own) Lauren Nelson sang. Nurns Hargis and Mike Turpen serves as Masters of Ceremonies. Governor Brad Henry did the close (with a choir humming behind him - was it God Bless America?). But the reason we were all there (and there were a LOT of us!) was to hear the introductions of and remarks by the inductees. Honored this year (and - in parentheses - who they were introduced by) were OKC businessman and Sonics basketball team owner Clayton Bennett (National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern), former Miss America, television news anchor and and past director of the Oklahoma Department of tourism and recreation Jane Jayroe Gamble (founder of Church of the Servant Rev Norman Neeves), singer/song writer Toby Keith (former Supreme Allied Commander/Europe General James L. Jones), former chair of Oklahoma Natural Gas Company David Kyle (former president and CEO of Noble Corporation James C. Day), educator and "mother of the civil rights movement" Clara Luper (Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Tom Colbert), chair and CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corporation Aubrey K McClendon (businessman and philanthropist Breene Kerr), Choctaw Nation Chief Gregory Pyle (US Congressman Dan Boren), and renowned conductor, composer and Broadway and off-Broadway music director (including currently "The Color Purple") Linda Twine (1984 OK Hall of Fame inductee research psychologist Gloria Twine Chisum). More on these remarkable Oklahomans later . . .