Ending of an Era: Eddetta Beier Grant Retires Eddetta Beier Grant provided dedicated service to the Tulsa County District Court for over 45 years. Eddetta retired from her lengthy career with the court system as of May 1, 2021. She began as a deputy court clerk for then Court Clerk Don Austin on August 25, 1975, before the time of computers. Eddetta’s assigned tasks were to transfer court minutes on to docket sheets, wait the counter, and process civil appeals.
employees were marched into the restaurant freezer and shot, and, the Brett Harris/Paula Stringer case in which defense counsel Pat Williams was successful in an acquittal for Harris.
In 1993, Eddetta returned to Court Clerk Sally Howe Smith’s office entering county warrants, bench warrants, and recalls into the City TRACIS computer system. In 1997, Eddetta transferred to the cost In 1980, she was transferred by the Court administration division supporting the cost docket Clerk to become area supervisor in Arraignments handled by Special Judges Rick Clark, Todd Singer, and Preliminary Hearings on the third floor of the and Kyle Haskins. Courthouse. In that capacity, she worked with then Eddetta in 2000 was assigned to the Protective Special Judges Tony Graham, Jerry Perigo, Ron Order docket and parenting plan conferences; the Shaffer, John Reif, David Peterson, Don Lane, and parenting conferences then utilized referees, first Mark Sharon Bubenik. Subsequently, Eddetta served District Barcus followed by Rodney Sparkman, and then Mary Judge Jay Dalton as his minute clerk for nine years on Fitzgerald, all of whom became judges. Protective a criminal docket, experiencing at close range some Orders were on a judge rotation system allowing notable criminal trials of the time. She recalls the Eddetta to work with then Special Judges: Damon infamous Lee’s Chicken murder case in which several
Eddetta Beier Grant, sitting, and from left to right, Eddetta’s last judges: Judge Rodney Sparkman, Judge Wilma Palmer, Judge Kevin Morrison, Judge Theresa Dreiling, & Judge Martha Rupp Carter.
18 Tulsa Lawyer
