Inside:
• Stitches of Love, Page 2
• John Marshall Foundation, the history, Page 3
• Bob West ‘57 and Ken Davidson ‘70 continue to support John Marshall, Page 4
• John Brooks is an innovator in the world of broadcasting, Page 5
• John Marshall Paver Supporters, Pages 6 & 7
• Bear goes from Prop 48 student to football to pastor, Page 8
• Endowment established in former John Marshall Latin teacher’s honor, Page 9
• John Marshall through the decades, Page 11
It started with quilts for two of her granddaughters and grew into a quilt made of love for the JMHS 75th anniversary celebra‐tion.
Janet Harris worked at JMHS for several years as the princi‐pal’s secretary and all three of her children graduated from John Marshall as well. Jeremy received his diploma in 1993, Jeff in 1995 and Theresa in 1997. Janet had lots of t‐shirts stored in the clos‐et. As it became clear they needed a new home and to be seen by alumni, as well as future students, she decided to sew them together to connect the decades of the
1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
The quilt includes several championship shirts, senior class‐es, as well as lots of Bear designs. It is to hang in the main hallway to show incoming students some of the many successes from the past. The goal is to make sure new students see the rich history, while showing that they can achieve anything at John Marshall high school if they are willing to work hard enough.
“We hope to have enough t‐shirts from the 60s, 70s and 80s to do a quilt for the 76th Anniversary Celebration,” Harris said.
The John Marshall High School Foundation has donated over $2 mil‐lion to the school since 1998.
It gives over $20,000 annually in student scholarships and has helped over 300 students pursue their dream of a higher education. In addi‐tion, it provides technolo‐gy improvements, sup‐plemental curriculum resources and classroom supplies, support for the athletic and fine arts pro‐grams, campus improve‐ments, additional com‐pensation for excellent educators and incentives to develop student lead‐ership and academic suc‐cess.
The foundation is
operated by an all‐volun‐teer board.
John Marshall High School was originally opened in 1950 at 9017 N. University Ave. in what was then far northwest Oklahoma City to replace Britton High School. The new John Marshall was considered one of the best Oklahoma City schools. It had two gyms, tennis courts, football fields, library and an auditorium.
It served junior and senior high school stu‐dents in Britton, The Village and Nichols Hills. The first class to receive a John Marshall diploma was in 1951. The class of 1950 requested that its diplomas read Britton
High School out of loyalty to their former school.
John Marshall High School moved to its new location at 11201 N. Portland Ave. in 2005 as part of the Maps for Kids initiative. The school has ties to its beginnings however, through a 100‐year‐old flag pole that is currently flying over the athletic fields.
The 50‐foot tall flag pole originally flew over Britton High school in 1923 and was moved to the original John Marshall in 1950.
The John Marshall Museum is located inside the high school. To sched‐ule a tour, contact Terry Harris at (405) 642‐7871.
Donors Bob West, left, and Ken Davidson announce plans in May 2018 to help build a new athletic training facility at John Marshall High School. Standing in back are, from left, football players Nigel Brannon, Javier Morales, along with head coach Rashaun Woods.
lights working, they purchased a 25‐year warranty which has come in handy many times over the years. During this time, Bob and Ken contin‐ued to feed the football kids during the summer and throughout the winter season, including basketball tourna‐ment meals at a cost of about $15,000 a year.
Besides feeding the kids, Rashaun Woods needed additional coaches since he only had three assistant coaches, as well as a sideline trainer. Bob and Ken paid for two more coaches along with a trainer. They purchased a trailer to haul equipment to Taft Stadium and for away games at a cost of $26,000.
Not ready to give up on the kids, Bob and Ken met Rashaun and asked him what else they needed. Rashaun asked for a training facility, with a locker room, laundry room, training room, large restrooms and coaches office. Architect and JMHS alumnus, David Hornbeek designed a new facility. Bob and Ken hired a contractor, worked with the district and found a way to get it completed for a cost of over $1,300,000, which included college‐level workout equipment.
After dealing with the fact that the district couldn’t guarantee keeping the
JMHS alumni Bob West ‘57 and Ken Davidson ‘70, were long‐time friends in the oil field and shared a love for help‐ing kids and especially kids from their alma mater John Marshall High School. They helped feed kids and provided some needed equipment at the original JMHS, but when they saw all that the kids were lacking at the new school, they kicked into another gear complete‐ly. When the new school building opened, JM only had a four‐lane asphalt track. The two friends decided to team up and build a six‐lane college quality synthetic track. It included changing the starting blocks to the north side of the field, they added a long jump, ham‐mer & discuss area. They also decided to include a sprinkler system on the football field, and all new Bermuda sod. The cost was over $335,000. Next, they decided to put lights on the field so the football and soccer teams could practice after 6 p.m. in the winter and play JV football games and varsity soccer games. They went with the best field lights in the industry, Musco lighting, at a cost over $190,000, completing the project in 2015.
After winning the football champi‐onship, they also paid for all the kids and coaches’ rings. Ken and his wife Jeri decided the kids and their parents deserved a sit‐down steak dinner at Crossings Community Center where they handed out the championship rings.
Even after Rashaun moved on to Enid, they continued to give to the needs of the kids. In their spare time, Bob and Ken individually helped lots of kids with money to get through college. They also donated to the needs of Principal Aspasia Carlson for classroom needs, such as calming rooms, bonuses and gift cards. Between these two men they have donated over $2,000,000
See SUPPORT, Page 5
Spanning 50 years in sports‐casting, John Brooks has been a true innovator in the production and play‐by‐play of Oklahoma sports.
Starting in 1958, John was the first to host a radio show for OU coach Bud Wilkinson and his list of accomplishments is unparal‐leled since then.
While best known as the voice of the University of Oklahoma Sooners from 1974‐1991, John also took the title of the voice of Oklahoma City Blazers hockey from 1965‐2005. John has also broadcast University of Tulsa football and basketball, Northeastern State University and East Central University football and Oklahoma City University basketball. John called over 2,900 events and is a six‐time recipient
of Oklahoma Sportscaster of the Year. His “Oklahoma Classic Memories” garnered the Coca‐Cola/Powerade National
Sportscast of the Year in 2000. John has always been known as a leader and a versatile play‐by‐play sportscaster for virtually every sport on radio and televi‐sion.
John has also boasted stints as the sports director in radio at KTOK and in television at KWTV.
Since 1971, his company, Sportscast Productions, produced hundreds of award winning sports specials for local and national sporting events.
Through his innovation and tal‐ent, John changed the face of sportscasting. To this day, fans throughout the state pride them‐selves in their rendition of the most famous call in Oklahoma sports, the signature phrase of John Brooks —”Geeminy Christmas!”
From Page 4
from the late 90s through today. Never in the history of the OKCPS have two men donated more from their own personal funds to a school.
More about West and Davidson: 1957 graduate Bob West, whose father, Harry A. West, was the first John Marshall principal in the 1950s and 60s, and his longtime friend, JM 1970 graduate, Ken Davidson, announced that they were continuing their personal pledges to their alma mater with a donation of over $1,250,000 for a new state‑of‑the‑art Terry Harris Athletic Training facility, plus weight equipment and a rubber court floor.
West, a successful oilman, founded and headed for decades, Anchor Drilling Fluids USA, the largest inde pendent drilling fluids company in the United States.
He was an all state quarterback in 1956 and the first John Marshall player to make the Oil Bowl team. He followed that success with an outstanding career as the starting quarterback for three years at the University of Tulsa.
Davidson is also a highly successful oilman and cattle rancher. He is co owner of 7451 Cattle Company and one of three owners who founded Crescent Services in 2006, a well site support and logistics services company.
At left: John Marshall High School as it looks today. Below, left, Onestory JMHS one story as it opened in 1950. Below: The building after the second story addition was constructed a few years later.
— Drawing by David Moody
Editor’s Note: Michael McDaniel is the senior pastor today at Northeast Missionary Baptist Church. This arti cle is reprinted with permission from The Oklahoman.
By Jenni Carlson
The
Oklahoman
July 2011
Michael McDaniel keeps the 20‐year‐old piece of paper in his desk. It was given to him in high school, a report called the Individualized Education Program, an evaluation given to every student with disabilities. At John Marshall High, the big guy excelled in sports but struggled with books. They said he had a learning disability. “We recommend that Mike go to trade school or vo‐tech school,” the piece of paper declared. College? Not so much.
No one has made the most of our forefathers' promise of the pursuit of happiness quite like McDaniel. He not only went to college on a football scholarship at Oklahoma, but also earned a bachelor's degree, then added a master's degree even though he was originally a partial academic qualifier. The former Prop 48's diplomas hang on the wall of his office at the
Northeast Missionary Baptist Church, where he is the pastor.
He grew up in the Musgrave neigh‐borhood, an eight‐block‐by‐eight‐block area less than a mile east of Broadway Extension between Wilshire and Britton. Many of the neighborhood's residents lived in an apartment com‐plex that housed low‐income, govern‐ment‐subsidized Section 8 tenants.
McDaniel lived in both the apartments and the nearby houses. He was the second of five children in a single‐mother household, so his family bounced around. Nothing came easily.
“My mom, she did what mothers do,” McDaniel said. “She squeezed the lemon as hard as she could and added some sweetener.” He chuckled.
MICHAEL McDANIEL Senior Pastor
Northeast Missionary Baptist Church
“It's amazing — how can financially challenged people be spoiled in any way? — but she found a way to do it, found a way to love us to the point where we thought we had some stuff.” Because the truth was, they had little materially. McDaniel remembers wear‐
ing clothes with strange brand names and buying shoes from Payless. He remembers his mom bringing him shoes before a middle school basketball game in Guthrie. The soles were plastic, and he ended up sliding all over the place.
Summertime is rough in many low‐income areas. School is out. Supervision is limited. The thing is, basketball kept McDaniel away from home and away from trouble much of the summer.
Once while he was gone, a good friend shot and killed a man only a couple doors down from where McDaniel grew up.
People in the neighborhood sensed that McDaniel was different from most.
“There were even men in our neighbor‐hood that sold dope that saw something different in me,” McDaniel said, “so when bad things were getting ready to happen ... they would say,
See McDANIEL, Page 10
Editor’s note: Geraldine Gesell was a Latin teacher in 1955-65 and 1966-67 at John Marshall High School. She left John Marshall to continue on to greater things in the world of ancient civilizations. Working in Greece and Crete, Dr. Gesell is still going strong in her 90s. The University of Tennessee Knoxville honored her by funding the Dr. Geraldine C. Gesell Aegean Prehistory Endowment. She often returns to Oklahoma to visit her students. This article is from the University of Tennessee Knoxville website, posted in May 2023.
Now in her 90s, UT professor emerita Geraldine Gesell still travels to Crete twice a year to research archaeological artifacts found in the Kavousi area.
GERALDINE GESELL
So, it’s only fitting that the Dr. Geraldine C. Gesell Aegean Prehistory Endowment will ensure her lifelong passion continues into the future. The endowment — established by Gesell’s friend, Richard Sias, with Gesell planning to add funds via a bequest—will provide funding for an
See TEACHER, Page 10
From Page 8
‘You go home. You're not going to be a part of this today.'”
When McDaniel scored a football scholarship to OU, he took full advantage of the opportunity, both on the field and in the classroom. He led the Sooners in receptions, receiving yards and touchdown receptions as a senior in the fall of 1996. But more than anything, he was a beacon in some of the Sooners' darkest years, becoming a spokesman for a team that went 3 ‐8, then the worst in more than a century of football, and becoming a role model for a program that has often lacked the kind of class that he displayed. And in the process, he graduated in only four and a half years.
Michael McDaniel wanted to play in the NFL. Every football player does.
But after several tryouts that ended without contract offers, McDaniel set out on a new dream of becoming an athletic director. He returned to OU, hired to work in development but quickly moving to academic support. A couple years later, Oral Roberts University hired him as the assistant director of academics in the athletics department. He even taught a few classes as an adjunct. Yes, the former prop became an adjunct
From Page 9
Aegean prehistorian who can direct or assist with a field project and train students to work with the Kavousi records.
Gesell earned her bachelor’s degree in Latin at Vassar College and her master’s degree in Latin and ancient Greek at the University of Oklahoma.
While teaching Latin at an Oklahoma high school, she attended summer archaeology programs at the American Academy in Rome and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. Inspired by these experiences, she earned her doctorate in classical archaeology at the University of
Michael McDaniel, circa 1991, at Northeast Missionary Baptist Church.
prof. “'Prop to Prof' — that's the name of my book,” McDaniel said. “But I just haven't written the book yet.”
McDaniel had every intention of staying in col ‐lege athletics, hoping to one day become an ath ‐letic director. While he was working at ORU, he pastored a church in Muskogee, and as important as his faith has always been, challenges at that church steeled his resolve to make college ath‐letics his career path.
Preaching occasionally? Ministering sporadi‐cally? Sure. But he never wanted to pastor another church.
Then, McDaniel filled the pulpit one Sunday at the Northeast Missionary Baptist Church. The Forest Park congregation had been without a pastor for nearly a year, but the search commit‐tee was on the verge of calling a new pastor the morning McDaniel preached. “But we were all so
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1972 and was immediately hired as UT’s first classical archaeologist. She stayed until she retired in 2002.
“Dr. Gesell developed a curriculum of archaeology courses that covered all of Greek and Roman antiquity, from the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman empire,” said Aleydis Van de Moortel, who is a Chancellor’s Professor, the Lindsay Young Professor, and head of the Department of Classics. “Classical archaeology is now a popular concentration in our department, and our archaeology curriculum builds on Dr. Gesell’s courses. We are also indebted to her for building a wonderful research library collection together with the dedicated librarians of Hodges Library.”
Gesell began working in
impressed that the committee came together and ... “Committee member Tom Morris chuckled as he told the story.
“ ... said we need to reopen the process.”
Even though McDaniel is now in the business of saving souls, he is ever mindful of the salva‐tion he received. The married father of three believes his divine intervention came in the form of an oblong pigskin and a hundred yards of sod. Athletics in America is maligned by some who see only its pitfalls, scandals and extravagances among them.
“It can be a hindrance for those whose per‐spective is a bit warped ...” McDaniel said, “but I think if you use it for what it can help you to do, I think you're better off for it. I know I was. “For me, it was the vehicle to other and different things in life.”
That's why he still keeps that 20 ‐year‐old report from Individualized Education Program in his desk. So many people believed he would have few opportunities in life. So many doubters thought he would be limited in what he could do and be and become.
Sports gave him the opportunity to prove them wrong, and he took advantage of it. “I got way more out of life than I even expected,” he said. “But now that I'm here, there's a lot more things that I think I can do.”
Kavousi—a historic village at the eastern end of the Gulf of Mirabello in East Crete, Greece—in 1974. She wanted to locate ancient sites investigated by early American archaeologists. After several years mapping the sites and studying excavated relics, Gesell began directing new excavations in 1987. Excavations continued until 1992 and then work turned to studying artifacts found.
Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Geographic Society allowed UT archaeology, agriculture, anthropology, geology, and art students to participate in the project, which has provided a glimpse into life at the end of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age (12th-10th century B.C.).
Gesell has continued her work in
Greece in retirement.
“I usually come to Crete in spring and fall for about three months each. I do research and write at the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete in Pacheia Ammos, Crete. It is a study and research center for archaeologists interested in East Crete and stores the artifacts found in excavations,” she said. “I am currently working on the publication of the shrine material of Vronda, a site above the modern village of Kavousi, which the UT team excavated between 1987–1992. We have published four volumes of the Kavousi series with more to come.”
“My interest in this project drives me forward,” the nonagenarian said. “I am eager to fulfill my research and give the knowledge out to the archaeological world.”
1960s — Senior Life, 1963. It takes a tall ladder to reach the top of John Marshall’s football victories. Nanette Keller, Ann cooper, Carol Setterberg and Susan Scheffel add another victory.
