April 6-12, 2021

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OU faculty look for new, equitable review system

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Ozzie’s leaves lasting legacy Norman restaurant owners reflect on over 3 decades of memories made, emptiness left behind after COVID-19 pandemic forces closure

PARKER PRIMROSE @parker_primrose

Gene, or Generino as Debi Van Nostrand liked to call him, was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War and a frequent flyer at OU’s Westheimer Airport.

Gene, however, wasn’t flying a plane to the airport. He was coming to eat at Ozzie’s Diner, where Debi would brew him a pot of coffee, and he could watch the planes take off and land on the runway.

The 800-square-foot restaurant tucked into the corner of the airport was a hidden gem, a popular spot to eat both its food and for its view. Ozzie’s was owned and operated by the Van Nostrand family — Debi, her husband Mart and their son Derek. Together, the family ran the restaurant for 34 years.

“We worked hard and we brought it up from nothing to something,” Debi said.

Derek said the family had hoped for Ozzie’s to operate much longer, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating effects on the restaurant industry and national economy, the restaurant was forced to close its doors permanently last summer.

As a result, a Norman staple has disappeared, and the Van Nostrand family has been left to grapple with what they lost.

“To work so hard and then not to have it anymore,” Debi said. “(It) hurts.”

‘IT JUST BROUGHT YOU BACK HOME.’ Max Westheimer Airport, which is owned and operated by the University of Oklahoma, was originally home to a doughnut and coffee shop that was coowned by Mart and a business partner. The menu consisted of a few hamburgers and two sandwiches, and the restaurant was open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. five to six days a week.

Mart’s business partner later decided he wasn’t interested in running the restaurant anymore,

TREY YOUNG/THE DAILY

A closing sign posted outside Ozzie’s Diner on Aug. 24.

so Mart traded him some equipment and a truck from his food distribution business in exchange for sole ownership over the restaurant.

“I traded some things to him for that unit because I had some visions,” Mart said. “And all OU really wanted was just a sandwich shop.”

Once Mart had sole ownership of the unit in 1986, he and Debi got to work re-imagining what the restaurant could be.

“We sent surveys out and spent a lot of time visiting with people in Norman, people that flew in and out and around, and asked them what they liked, what they envisioned,” Mart said. “‘What do you want to see here?’”

The couple ultimately decided on their goal — to create a homestyle restaurant and to “bring the ’60s back,” Debi said. As such,

they needed a name that would reflect their aspirations.

“I tried to think back to the wholesome-type TV shows that were on, and (“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”) was one,” Debi said. “So I thought that Ozzie’s would be a great name.

Ozzie’s Diner.”

The hit T V sitcom “ The A d v e n t u re s o f O z z i e a n d Harriet” aired on television from 1952 to 1966 and depicted Ozzie and Harriet Nelson as they raised their two sons, Ricky and David. “(‘The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet’) just brought you back home,” Mart said. “We wanted people to feel that again.”

Mart and Debi worked to make the restaurant reflect the TV sitcom’s era by hanging up bright neon lights and having the waitresses wear bouffant hairdos with pencils in their hair.

Mart said the biggest priority, however, was the food.

“We did not use anything premade,” Mart said. “Everything was made from scratch. About 96 percent of everything was done from recipes and my family.”

The Van Nostrand family had classic staples, such as their fried catfish, but Debi said they also weren’t afraid to try new things.

“I’d dream up something like a baked potato with fresh cooked chicken strips that stuck out with cream gravy all over it,” Debi said. “And then we’d just make it and set it up there under the heat light. And people would come in and say, ‘Well, I want one of those.’”

Ozzie’s defining menu option was its all-you-can-eat breakfast, which began in 1988 at just $2.29.

“It was cooked to order,” Mart said. “It’s not a buffet or

anything, and that made it really unique. The people cooked out in front, and you could see them.”

Along the way, Derek began working at Ozzie’s as well, bringing the whole Van Nostrand family into the restaurant.

“I started whenever I was in fifth or sixth grade,” Derek said. “I got into a little trouble in school, so open to close for free, washing dishes was what (I) did for (my) punishment.”

Derek worked at the restaurant through college and remained there for a few years after graduation until leaving for other opportunities. He eventually returned in 2013, but in the meantime, Ozzie’s continued to grow and thrive.

“We just took the ball and ran with it,” Mart said. “It made us see OZZIES page 3

OU plants tree dedicated to Harroz family Memorial ceremony held to honor late Dr. Joseph Harroz Sr. TAYLOR JONES @wrongtailor

The OU Office for Student Affairs hosted a memorial ceremony and planted a tree on the south side of the Bizzell Memorial Library in support of OU President Joseph Harroz and the Harroz family.

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Associate D e a n o f Stu d e nt s K r i st e n Partridge said the ceremony and tree dedication were a way to honor President Harroz and his family after his father, an OU graduate, died of COVID19 on Sept. 24, 2020.

During the ceremony, Partridge said the tradition of planting trees on OU’s campus has survived since OU’s first president, David Ross Boyd, arrived in Norman with a nursery of tree saplings. The tree that previously stood in the area was removed in January 2020 after it was infected with a fungus.

“In support (of ) and great esteem for the family, including our newest president, we

BLAKE DOUGLAS/THE DAILY

OU President Joseph Harroz poses with his mother, Mary Ann Harroz, other family members and OU administrators in front of the tree planted in support of Harroz and the Harroz family.

can think of no better way to continue this tradition in his name and to bring more beauty to our campus,” Partridge said during the ceremony.

D r. J o s e p h H a r r o z S r. , President Harroz’s father, was a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist. He was a

first-generation student who received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from OU. Harroz said his father — born to a family of Lebanese immigrants who arrived in the United States in the late 1800s, the youngest of eight

children and later a captain in the United States Air Force — serves as an example and inspiration to him and his family.

“My dad’s my hero,” Harroz said. “The way he approached life, the way he taught us and the way he interacted with his patients and people in our

community makes him my hero since the beginning.”

Harroz’s family, including his mother, Mary Ann Harroz, attended the ceremony. Mary Ann Harroz said she and her husband were extremely happy after their son was named president of his father’s alma mater.

“My husband Joe was so very proud,” Mary Ann Harroz said. “(OU) was his alma mater. He didn’t think there was any other school besides OU. If Joe even considered going anywhere else (for college), he wouldn’t have paid.”

Harroz said he hopes the memory of his father will be an inspiration to every student passing into the library.

“In terms of the life of the university, (my dad) is just one story,” Harroz said. “But it is a story that I think is representative of what we can do. I think it also allows, hopefully, for some level of inspiration to our students that don’t have a big family history of going to college. And so for me, it’s personally meaningful in the ability to communicate the message that we hope people receive and hopefully lead lives that help more people.”

Taylor Jones

taylor.p.jones-1@ou.edu

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NEWS

• April 6-12, 2021

Faculty scrutinize evaluations OU professors call out systemic biases in eValuate system GABRIELA TUMANI @GabrielaTumani

RAY BAHNER/THE DAILY

Student on OU course eValuate website March 31.

student teaching evaluations should never be the only way we are evaluating a teacher, and that’s why we’ve pushed more peer evaluation, but understand that’s flawed too.

None of these are perfect.”

As someone who “probably read more student teaching evaluations than anyone on campus,” Harper said the student teaching evaluations were flawed but still provided some useful insights. “(Teaching evaluations) empower students. In an ideally functioning system, faculty are reading them, (and) using them for self improvement. Nobody advocates

“

very useful at the extremes,” Harper said in the 2019 meeting. “Generally, the people who are regularly in the top five percent are generally the people who … students say, ‘This person really changed my life, this person spent a lot of time with me, this person was a mentor,’ and generally the people who are regularly in the bottom 10 to 20 percent, generally need some kind of professional development — there’s something flawed. So there’s valuable information.”

Warmker has implemented her own student evaluation survey in her classes. She said she doesn’t believe it is effec-

Working Group was established in January 2019 by the Office of the Provost and Faculty Senate for the OU Norman campus when both students and faculty expressed dissatisfaction with the current class evaluation system.

The group is made up of “experienced faculty and staff members” who have the “necessary expertise” and represent a range of disciplines. They were selected to be part of the committee by the Faculty Senate Faculty Welfare Committee and OU Interim Senior Vice President and Provost Jill Irvine, accord-

(Teaching evaluations) empower students. In an ideally functioning system, faculty are reading them, using them for self-improvement. Nobody advocates (for) just getting rid of student teaching evaluations. It’s all about, ‘How do you improve them? How (to) make them better? It provides an important means of self assessment and self improvement for faculty, and it’s an anonymous voice for students who might not otherwise feel empowered if it were not anonymous to say.

-Kyle Harper, Professor of Classics and Letters and Provost Emeritus at The University of Oklahoma, according to a transcript provided by Warmker of the Multicultural Advancement Committee meeting in April 2019

(for) just getting rid of student teaching evaluations. It’s all about, ‘How do you improve them? How (to) make them better?’” Harper said in the meeting. “It provides an important means of self-assessment and self-improvement for faculty, and it’s an anonymous voice for students who might not otherwise feel empowered if it were not anonymous to say.”

Givel said the anonymity of class evaluations is good in the sense that it allows for “unhindered surveys.” He said, however, if the survey contains “controversial comments,” the anonymity allows for less accountability.

Harper also said context is important to interpret numbers, as the size of classes can influence the scores they will receive. Small classes can get higher scores than big classes, major classes can get higher scores than required general education courses and electives can get higher scores than required courses, Harper said.

“Anybody who thinks that being in the 60th percentile versus being in the 50th percentile in a teaching evaluation is particularly meaningful, I think, is wrong. They are

tive to ask students to fill out teachers’ evaluations when the class ends. Her survey is sent out at the beginning of her class, asking students about their good and bad experiences with language learning, and she then does a midterm evaluation “just to check in.” “(Course evaluations) can be very influential in things like hiring processes,” Warmker said. “If I were to apply to teach somewhere else, sometimes other institutions will ask for copies of the course teaching evaluations.

So, they can have a huge impact on someone’s teaching career and can even get you put on probation (if) you have a low response rate.”

Warmker said it is “pretty mind-blowing” that OU has not updated the course evaluations during the pandemic even though the learning situation has changed so much.

In an email to The Daily, the Teaching Evaluation Working Group wrote that it gathered answers in a collaborative effort to identify “some of the ways the traditional course survey system is in need of an update” and “recent efforts to improve the system.”

The Teaching Evaluation

“

A system that has long been used in several universities across the country to evaluate teachers’ in-class performance has also continually caused doubts about its effectiveness and parity among OU faculty members.

OU professors and instructors said the class evaluation system employed at OU and other institutions can result in significant biases, and the numerical system used is not effective in telling them how to improve their teaching skills.

Some professors have implemented their own solutions, while another group at OU is preparing for larger institutional change.

Michael Givel, a political science professor and president of the OU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said he believes the current evaluation system is “more of a customer survey” than an effective professional development tool.

Givel said there are “numerous” s cientific and peer-reviewed articles reflecting that the current class evaluation system contains “significant” biases for several reasons.

“Being a woman or (from an) underrepresented group, or teaching a topic that is not in the comfort zone of some students, can result in adverse ratings,” Givel said.

According to a Wake Forest study on assessment and evaluation in higher education, “biased student evaluations of teaching could disadvantage faculty from underrepresented minority groups or punish faculty members who teach unpopular required courses.”

Sarah Warmker, a Spanish instructor, also said the numerical part of the system — the one through five rankings — is likely to reflect biases students might have based on professors’ race, gender or age.

“My own belief is that using a numerical system to evaluate teaching effectiveness is ultimately more harmful than helpful, especially to people with marginalized identities.

But the university is using that as a shortcut,” Warmker said. “Just the same way that grades are used as a shortcut, as a way to compare people to each other as if the playing fields were equal, but we all know that it really isn’t.”

Warmker said she has worked closely with the OU Multicultural Advancement Committee as a graduate student to analyze class evaluations, and a subgroup in the committee analyzed course evaluations as part of diversity considerations, curriculum and student experiences. “ W h e n I w a s w o r king with the Multicultural Advancement Committee, even the provost at the time — Kyle Harper— acknowledged that the course evaluation system wasn’t really a reliable or a scientific way of evaluating performance and that the way the university really used it was to identify the outliers,” Warmker said.

According to a transcript provided by Warmker of the Multicultural Advancement Committee meeting in April 2019 discussing student teaching evaluations, Harper said four to five years of research has raised concerns about discrimination and bias — both unintentional and intentional — in the class evaluations, specifically among faculty who hold marginalized identities.

“There are genuine reasons to be concerned that bias does affect evaluation, and so one of the things we’re looking at is how do you correct (and) control that,” Harper said in the meeting. “I really fundamentally believe that

ing to OU Director of Media Relations Kesha Keith.

According to the group, the current student evaluation — the Student Teaching Evaluation — has been in place for years and is widely used in colleges and universities across the country.

Designed many years ago, little about the survey has changed in the last 20 years, the group wrote.

TEWG also found numerous studies demonstrating traditional STEs, such as the one used at OU, “are prone to bias and are not aligned with student learning.”

“Professors whose students learn the most and who are doing the work of adapting their courses to use techniques proven to enhance learning are often not getting the highest evaluations,” the group wrote in the email.

“This is particularly true when that professor is a woman or is from a historically underrepresented group. The traditional STE is not designed to give instructors the kind of feedback they can use to improve their courses and is not well-suited to hybrid or online courses.”

Warmker and Givel also agreed that biases in student

evaluations can happen based on the grade the student has received in the course. They said it is common for students to evaluate the class poorly regardless of instructional quality if they receive an undesired grade.

“Grades hold such a huge weight in students’ mind of how they feel about the class that sometimes they’re not even really evaluating the teaching effectiveness or whether they learned, but they’re really focused on whether they feel the grade they got was fair, and that there’s a huge sense of injustice,” Warmker said. “So, I think just the same as there (are) equity problems in evaluations of professors, there (are) equity problems in the way that grades are assigned as well.”

Givel suggested the establishment of a “mid-course feedback” in which the results are only available to the instructor to consider in terms of teaching goals and tweaking areas of teaching for the class. He said the evaluations must focus on learning progress and skills by replacing “numerical ratings that could be biased” with qualitative feedback.

In the email, TEWG wrote it has created a new tool to gather student feedback — the Student Experience Survey — to address growing dissatisfaction with current teaching evaluations.

“The SES is designed to ask students concrete questions about what they experience in the classroom, (which) gives students a chance to reflect on the course and give more effective feedback, targeted in a way that gives instructors information they can use to assess their course and improve it,” the group said. “The ultimate goal of the TEWG is to use teaching evaluation to create a culture that encourages development of teaching skills and that rewards the use of evidence-based, effective teaching practices. “ The TEWG ran a pilot project in summer 2020 in over 500 course sections using an early draft of the new SES end-of-course survey in addition to the current STE so students and faculty could provide feedback with references to both. With the feedback received, the new pilot — which will take place at the end of the spring 2021 semester — has shown some departments across campus, such as the OU Extended Campus, the Biomedical Engineering, Drama, Health and Exercise Science, and Library and Information studies departments, have opted to use the SES as their primary end-ofcourse survey.

According to TWEG, SES is different from the current class evaluations in the sense that it gives students a chance

to reflect on their experience in the course and provides “targeted feedback” for instructors and professors to improve their courses.

SES was also designed to minimize the potential biases that have been observed in the traditional student teaching evaluations. TWEG wrote instead of asking students to evaluate or compare instructors, SES asks specific questions about student perceptions and experiences within the course.

“This gives students the opportunity to share their unique and valuable perspectives in areas where they are the experts — their personal learning experiences,” the group wrote.

Additionally, the new class evaluation system is designed to include different types of courses and modes of teaching such as in-person, hybrid, online classes, discussion, lecture, laboratory, field, and performance-based courses.

TWEG wrote the SES asks the same core questions for all courses, unlike the eValuate survey questions which vary significantly between colleges and types of courses.

“The faculty response so far has been overwhelmingly positive,” the group said.

“Our colleagues have helped us craft the questions so that they are broadly applicable across disciplines and mode of delivery. They have also suggested places where the survey could be shortened or simplified.”

TWEG wrote OU plans to implement the SES campuswide in the fall 2021 semester.

Ultimately, Warmker said the university needs to fix deep-rooted equity issues at OU before problems in the evaluation system can be effectively addressed.

“I think the course evaluations are really just a symptom of deeper problems,” Warmker said. “Until the deeper problems of equity are addressed both for students and for the people who do the work of teaching in the university, there will always be people (who) will never feel that the course evaluation system is fair because the conditions that people are teaching and learning in are not fair.”

Gabriela Tumani

gabrielatumani@ou.edu

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CULTURE

April 6-12, 2021 •

OZZIE’S:

‘I FEEL LIKE I WANT TO CRY RIGHT NOW.’

continued from page 1

feel really special. And we liked to see people happy. …

I don’t know any other place in the country that put out as much product as we did in that small of a kitchen.”

As Ozzie’s grew in stature and popularity, it began to attract some unique guests.

Visitors over the years included Chuck Norris, Britney Spears, members of the band Van Halen, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Baker Mayfield and former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“We’d just treat them like regular people,” Debi said.

“Didn’t go out of our way to look at them or anything.”

Debi said a memory that sticks out to her is when Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, had Ozzie’s cook for his staff. “(Gorbachev) flew in and we washed all the dishes that he had on the plane,” Mart said. “And, of course, people inspected everything. And then he ordered some dinners to go for his people that were on the plane.”

With Gorbachev’s secret service watching, Debi said she wasn’t too keen on helping with the dishwashing process.

“I didn’t wash the dishes,” Debi said. “I didn’t touch them. I might have broken them.”

Former OU President David Boren was also a frequent customer, coming to Ozzie’s every weekend with his family and sitting at the six-top table in the back of the restaurant.

“Boren was sold,” Derek said. “He called it ‘the gateway to OU.’” Although Ozzie’s drew its fair share of celebrities, it was the regulars who truly defined the character of the restaurant. Many days the line would be out the door, and Debi would have to seat strangers together in order to make room for everyone.

“I said, ‘You want to make some friends today? You want a seat?’ And they would sit down with other people and just talk and share and have breakfast or lunch or whatever,” Debi said.

The Van Nostrands got to know several of their customers personally, making their family feel even bigger.

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Patrons eat in Ozzie’s Diner Feb. 7, 2017. Ozzie’s was a Norman staple located in the University of Oklahoma’s Max Westheimer Airport before closing in fall 2020.

“I’d go to the restroom and there’d be a line and someone would say my name, and it was someone that I had met,” Debi said. “It was just wonderful. … A lot of good people came through those doors.”

Derek came back to Ozzie’s in 2013, as Mart was ready to step away from the business and wanted to give Derek the opportunity to take over. Within four years, Ozzie’s was reaching even greater heights.

“2017 was a record year for us in every facet,” Derek said. “I mean, gross, net, you name it. Any area of that restaurant, we were just blowing things out of the water.”

Ozzie’s seemed like it would last forever. ‘(COVID-19) JUST RUINED EVERYTHING.’ The Van Nostrand family has always been in the kitchen.

Both D erek and Mar t graduated from Oklahoma State with degrees in culinary arts, and Derek’s grandfather, Sonny, cooked while he was in the Army and ran his own restaurant and bar.

“It’s just kind of instilled within our blood,” Derek said.

In 2019, Derek finally got the chance to run Ozzie’s himself. He’d been managing day-to-day operations since he came back in 2013, but Mart was ready to turn

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full ownership over to his son. “‘It’s just your baby. You take and see what you can do with it,’” Derek recalled Mart telling him.

Mart originally wanted to shift ownership to Derek in 2018 when his contract with OU was set to expire, but Mart said OU was experiencing staffing changes and put Ozzie’s on month-to-month extensions without offering a new contract.

As 2018 turned into 2019, Mart said OU still had not offered Ozzie’s a new contract.

“We would see all these other contracts come up for the food service at (Jimmie) Austin Golf Course and all these different areas,” Derek said. “And we were like ‘How come ours isn’t coming up?’”

Mart ultimately got tired of waiting, and in May 2019, he notified the university that he was terminating his contract. Mart’s goal was to get OU to finally present a new contract so Derek could officially become the owner.

“When I gave a 90-day notice on my closure, I put in there that my son knows more than anyone in the country about that place, and he could keep it going exactly where it was,” Mart said. “He knows this business really well, and he could have gone a long way with it.”

Derek was eventually granted control, but because of the change in ownership, Ozzie’s had to go through

a new code inspection and make chang es in order to remain open. Because the restaurant had never changed ownership before, it had 33 years’ worth of new city codes and regulations to meet. As a result, Derek had to temporarily close the restaurant for renovations in October 2019.

“I had invested ever y penny I had into getting this place up to where it needed to be code-wise,” Derek said.

O z z i e ’s r e o p e n e d i n November 2019, and Derek was officially the owner of the restaurant he had been working at since he was a kid.

But his time in charge was short-lived, as the COVID-19 pandemic quickly shuttered Ozzie’s doors in March 2020.

Since the restaurant was in an OU facility, it closed along with the rest of the Norman campus in mid-March and was unable to reopen until the summer.

At that point, it was too late for Ozzie’s to recover.

“COVID-19 came along just as (Derek) was getting his feet on the ground,” Mart said. “It just ruined everything. He was lost before he got started because even if I’d been there, I wouldn’t have made it.”

According to emails bet w e e n D e re k a n d B e au Jennings, OU’s director of real estate operations, OU notified Derek on June 4 that he had 30 days to pay Ozzie’s outstanding rent, which

HOROSCOPE

By Eugenia Last

Copyright 2020, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2021 ASTROGRAPH by Eugenia Last Set your sights on what excites you. Be innovative, believe in yourself and do whatever it takes to achieve happiness. Put your heart and soul into life, love and being the best you can be. Love and selfimprovement are favored. Embrace the future with optimism.

ARIES (March 21-April 19) -- Call on those you trust for input. Running your ideas by people who offer encouragement along with common sense will help you navigate your way through any pitfalls you encounter.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) -Keep your thoughts to yourself until you have a clear picture of how you want to proceed. A change made in haste will be met with obstacles.

Thorough research will prevent negative results.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) -- Don’t waste time. Size up your situation and make things happen.

A chance to get ahead is coming, and preparation will help build the confidence you need to dazzle the powers-that-be.

CANCER (June 21-July 22) -- Concentrate on what you need to do to succeed. Refuse to let personal matters interfere with your professional responsibilities. Focus on contracts, money and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) -- Press people for answers. Use your communication skills to your advantage.

Get the lowdown, and make decisions based on the facts you receive.

A partnership that can help you advance looks promising.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) -- Take a virtual class or set up an online

interview. Take action if you want to bring about change. Don’t make excuses when it’s up to you to make things happen. Don’t play the blame game.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) -- Take care of responsibilities, and free up time to enjoy with a loved one.

Don’t make unnecessary purchases.

Fitness and physical improvements are favored.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) -- Put everything in place before you leap into action. Understanding what’s possible will help you avoid a costly mistake. An innovative plan will require a strict budget.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21) -- An emotional matter will cause you to overreact if you aren’t careful. Size up whatever situation you face, and put a strategy in place that will eliminate outside interference.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) -You’ll face opposition if you initiate a change without going through the proper channels. Look for a positive way to get others on board, and you’ll get the support and assistance you need.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) -- Focus on what you can do to add to your security. A moneymaking opportunity looks promising. Don’t miss out because you’ve taken on responsibilities that don’t belong to you.

PISCES (Feb. 20-March 20) -- Keep your plans secret, and you’ll avoid a disagreement. Do something energetic if you feel stressed or anxious. Don’t make a premature move in an emotional situation.

Time is on your side.

totaled at least $10,300 and included payments for February, March, April and May. Article 17.6 of the contract between Ozzie’s and OU stated that “if, because of riots, war, public emergenc y or calamity, fire, flood, earthquake, act of God, government restriction, University labor disturbance or strike, business operations at the University are interrupted or stopped, performance of this contract, with the exception of monies already due and owing, shall be suspended and excused to the extent commensurate with such interrupting occurrence.”

Derek interpreted Article 17.6 to mean that he was no longer responsible for paying rent during the time his restaurant was forcibly shut down. In an email from Jennings to Derek on August 20, Jennings said Ozzie’s rent was considered “monies already due and owing,” meaning that OU still intended for Derek to pay.

In an email from Jennings on July 2, he said Derek had “neither paid rent for five months nor made any effort to” and that Derek had until July 14 to make the payments.

Derek, who had spent his savings renovating the restaurant eight months earlier to get it up to code, could not pay. As a result, the lease was terminated.

Ozzie’s was gone.

For a restaurant that had meant so much to their family, saying goodbye to Ozzie’s hasn’t been easy for the Van Nostrands.

“I feel like I want to cry right now,” said Debi, who is now retired. “It’s all gone.”

When Derek took what was left of Ozzie’s to be auctioned, he took his 11-yearold daughter Danica with him. Much like Derek, she had grown up inside Ozzie’s.

“My daughter was crying when she saw some of the stuff being taken out,” Derek said. “She said, ‘This has been part of my life since I’ve been alive.’ And I was like, ‘Danica, it has for me too.’”

After Ozzie’s closed for good, Derek sold his house to downsize and give himself distance from a place that had meant so much to him. And although Ozzie’s appears to be finished at the Max Westheimer Airport, Derek hasn’t given up hope of it coming back.

“I would love to have an opportunity to get back in there,” Derek said. “I would love it more than anything.

My daughter had a dream.

She’s like, ‘I had a dream that we were back at our old house, and we were running Ozzie’s again.’”

The family is now scattered across Oklahoma and Texas, and the space that used to be occupied by Ozzie’s is now vacant and undergoing maintenance.

The emptiness left by the longtime business leaves Mart hoping that former customers keep its memory alive.

“I just want (Ozzie’s) to be remembered as what it was,” Mart said. “A good place to eat at reasonable prices. We used the best of everything.

We all worked as hard as we could to make it what it was.”

The Van Nostrands and the people of Norman may not have Ozzie’s anymore, but they’ll always have the time they shared in the 800-square-foot ’60s diner that was nestled into the corner of the airport.

“It just has a special place in my heart, in my wife’s heart, and a lot of people’s hearts,” Mart said. “I just thought it was great. I just don’t think you’re ever gonna see one again.”

Parker Primrose

parker.primrose@ou.edu

Universal Crossword Edited by David Steinberg April 6, 2021 ACROSS 1 Encyclopedic range of knowledge?

5 Speed for some game highlights 10 Treasure hunter’s need 13 Igneous rock source 14 Herculean work 15 Destiny 16 *Tag sale task 18 “Now it’s clear” 19 Must 20 Hollywood statuette 21 “Snowden” org.

24 The end of the English language?

25 *Misplace 27 *Supporting 29 Fully processed 30 Ancient Greek instrument 31 Kama ___ 32 *Swap 37 Makes sopping wet 38 Hertz alternative 41 Soldiers’ sets with utensils 45 *Flushed 47 *Bathroom surface 48 On a winning streak 49 Sch. near Washington Square Park 50 “Mission Impossible” protagonist Hunt

51 Streaming platform for peterparkTV 54 Long journey 55 “Stop pretending!” ... or a hint to answering each starred clue 59 Identify 60 Al ___ (not too soft) 61 Younger sister of Bart 62 Wonder-full feeling 63 Determined to do 64 Melt, like a candle DOWN 1 German peak 2 Paving supply 3 Egg cells 4 Braff who co-hosts “Fake Doctors, Real Friends” 5 Thin portion 6 Spiked, as punch 7 Sad notice in the paper, briefly 8 Stonehenge structures 9 NPR’s URL ending 10 Costumed figure at a game 11 “Relax, soldier!”

12 Took a long, hard look 15 Clenched hands

17 Tea brand with a London Fog Latte flavor 20 Where to see sea stars 21 Org. for Lions and Bears 22 Put into words 23 Parcel unit?

26 Taj Mahal site 28 Stereotypical cowboy’s nickname 29 Avoids a punch, perhaps 31 Sugar maple, for New York 33 Invite over the threshold 34 Tightly wind 35 Wander (about) 36 ___ Rachel Wood of “Westworld” 39 Frigid

40 Nickname that drops “art” 41 Sicilian peak, for short 42 Have a meal without cooking?

43 Crafty plan 44 What’s being risked 45 Far from fresh 46 Carve in granite 48 Aware of, slangily 52 “This ___ take long!”

53 Grasped 55 Deg. for one working on fillings 56 Word after “in the” or “on the” 57 Long-running forensic series 58 Keg part

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Takeout Order by Zachary David Levy and Joanne Sullivan

4

SPORTS

• April 6-12, 2021

PHOTO PROVIDED BY JACK DEMPSEY/NCAA PHOTOS

Porter Moser during the second round of the 2021 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament held at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on March 21, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Sooners welcome Porter Moser

New head coach brings wealth of experience to role AUSTIN CURTRIGHT @AustinCurtright

MASON YOUNG @Mason_Young_0

Oklahoma has hired Porter Moser to be its next men’s basketball coach, the university announced April 3.

Moser coached Loyola University Chicago for 10 seasons before leaving for Norman. He replaces Lon Kruger, who announced his retirement March 25 after 10 seasons leading the Sooners.

Here are five things to know about the Sooners’ new coach: LEGENDARY COACHING TREE

Moser was an assistant coach at St. Louis under the late Rick Majerus from 2007-11. Majerus, who died in 2012, won 517 games in his career, was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019 and took Utah to the 1998 National Championship.

Majerus was also an assistant for Team USA in 1994, when it won the gold medal in the FIBA B a s k e t b a l l Wo r l d Cu p.

Majerus ranks No. 65 in alltime wins in college basketball history.

NOTABLE PUPILS

During his time at Loyola Chicago, Moser helped produce All-Missouri Valley guard Milton Doyle, who became the program’s first NBA player in 30 years.

Doyle joined the Brooklyn Nets — current team of former OU forward Blake

Griffin — as an undrafted free agent during the 201718 season.

After averaging 13.3 points and 4.1 rebounds per game in four years with Moser’s Ramblers, Doyle delivered 3.4 points per game across 10 games with Brooklyn. He now plays for Pallacanestro Trieste of the Italian Lega Basket Serie A. He’s averaging 12 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.3 assists during the 2020-21 season.

During the 2020-21 season, Moser coached center Cameron Krutwig, who was named the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year. Krutwig averaged 15 points, seven rebounds and three assists per game. He has yet to announce whether he will return to Loyola Chicago for another season or pursue professional opportunities. Krutwig was a third-team All-American this season after receiving

just two offers out of high prior to the season’s start. school, according to Rivals. M o s t r e c e n t l y , L o y o l a Chicago upset No. 1 seed NCAA TOURNAMENT Illinois in the second SUCCESS round of the 2020-21 NCAA Tournament.

A s L o y o l a C h i c a g o’s head coach, Moser led the ILLINOIS STATE Ramblers to a Final Four FAILURES ap p ea ra n c e d u r i ng t h e 2017-18 season and a Sweet Moser helmed Illinois 16 berth in 2020-21. Moser State from 2003-07, and went 7-23 in his first season compiled a 51-67 record at the helm and improved before being fired. The to 15-16 during his second team fired the entire staff season. Then, when Loyola a f t e r a 1 5 - 1 6 re c o rd i n Chicago transitioned from 2007, seeking a change “in the Horizon League to the the overall direction of the Missouri Valley Conference program,” Illinois State in the 2013-14 season, the athletics director Sheahon Ramblers finished 10-22.

Zenger said in a 2007 L a t e r, u n d e r M o s e r, statement.

Loyola Chicago improved Zenger was fired from to a 32-6 record and was the the same role at Kansas in 11 seed of the South Region 2018 and is now the athletin the NCAA Tournament ics director at New Haven. during its Final Four run. The Redbirds had a 22-50 The Ramblers had 500,000- re c o rd i n t h e Mi s s o u r i 1 odds to win the nation- Valley Conference under a l c ha mp i o n s h i p ga m e Moser.

OTHER TIDBITS

Moser ’s a Naper ville, Illinois, native who played guard at Benet Academy, helping the squad to a 70-14 record in his three varsity seasons from 198386. He went on to play at Creighton from 1986-90, averaging 4.6 points and 1.7 assists in 102 career games.

During the 2019 NCAA To u r n a m e n t , M o s e r worked as a TV studio analyst for CBS and Turner Sports. He joined the broadcasting team after Loyola Chicago was defeated by his alma mater, Creighton, in the first round of the 2019 National Invitational Tournament.

Austin Curtright

austincurtright@ou.edu

Mason Young

mason.e.young-1@ou.edu

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