Holiday favorites

Tulsa World Supplement, Sunday, December 7, 2014

Holiday F avorites

Memories Well-Known Local Leaders Reminisce

Gift Ideas to Please Her

Win a Trip of a Lifetime

tulsaworld.com/holidays

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

Take care of your holiday shopping, and win your dream vacation!

Each time you visit one of the participating advertisers, you can enter to win the trip of a lifetime.

Look for the entry forms at participating stores Nov. 12 through Dec. 24.

The winner’s name will be drawn in January.

Entries from every store will be gathered together, and one lucky reader will win a $3,000 travel voucher to take the trip of his or her dreams from Tulsa World Media Company.

No purchase is necessary. For complete contest details, visit tulsaworld.com/holidays.

Enter for a chance to win a $3,000 vacation simply for visiting one of these participating retailers: Avon Beauty Center Bahama Sun of Brookside Celebrity Attractions Emy Couture Garbe’s Honda of Tulsa Sportscenter Ida Red

John Daniel’s Footwear Miss Jackson’s Queenie’s Cafe & Bakery Star Jewelers The Market at Walnut Creek Tulsa Symphony

Find more great seasonal ideas in Tulsa World’s Holiday special section: Holiday Region of Giving — Sunday, December 14

DECEMBER 7, 2014

TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

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HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Zach Swon

Oklahoma Celebrities Reminisce Tulsa World invited leaders from the area’s corporate world as well as sports, entertainment, cultural arts, government andeducation communities to share a favorite holiday memory from their personal lives.

You will find them, written in their own words, spread throughout this special section.

We hope you enjoy reading them while making memories of your own with family and friends this season.

Cover photo: Tulsa World

Country music duo

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Allister Ann photo

The Swon Brothers are from Muskogee and got their big break by finishing in the top three finalists on NBC’s show “The Voice” in 2013.

Colton Swon

Country music duo

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When Zach and I were really young children, we traveled with our parents’ music show riding a tour bus and performing. At Christmas, I remember opening gifts, but not like

every other family. When we opened gifts, it was always Christmas Eve, and usually at midnight because we are musicians.

So we’d open gifts, and then mom would cook breakfast, and then we’d be up until 3 in the morning eating breakfast and playing with our gifts.

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I think one of my coolest Christmas memories ever is when our dad surprised us both with our own set of in-ear monitors for our live shows.

It meant alot to us because he knew that we wanted those because that’s what all of the pros used. It’s not your average kid Christmas gift, so when we got them, we felt really professional and like we had stepped up in the music game. That was really cool.

Another memory… I had always wanted one of those Talk Boy recording machines, like you see in the movie ‘Home Alone,’ and finally one Christmas I got one!

I was so excited I took it to school the first day back from Christmas break, and I got into trouble using it. The teacher took it away from me and kept it the entire year!

Seriously!

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Chet Cadieux

Fred Williams

QuikTrip CEO

My favorite holiday memory is not one about receiving a gift but giving one.

In 2013, I promised myself that if my team made it to the WNBA Finals, I would donate half of my bonus check to an organization that feeds the homeless. When my team made it to the 2013 WNBA Finals in October, I was able to accomplish that goal. I donated to Take The Time Foundation, an organization in Atlanta, Georgia, that helps feed homeless people in the Atlanta area.

It was a great Christmas gift to give but a greater gift to know I gave people a good meal for a day. It is my favorite Tulsa World memory because I helped Fred Williams is a California native who hundreds of people have a holiday meal. became the Shock’s coach a year ago. He has

Tulsa Shock Head Coach

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I have very fond childhood memories of being at our church on Christmas Eve. Each year, at the end of the service, the entire congregation would sing the hymn “Silent Night” a capella.

For whatever reason, the words of that hymn have always been special to me. To this day, I tend to tear up when I hear it.

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Tulsa World

Chet Cadieux has chaired the River Parks Authority Board, Chamber of Commerce and United Way campaign.

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coached in three WNBA Finals.

DECEMBER 7, 2014

TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Alex Eppler

Miss Oklahoma 2014

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Leigh Thompson

Alex Eppler is from Enid and is a 2012 graduate of the University of Oklahoma.

For Christmas, my family usually gathered at my Memaw’s house.

Her living room was always saturated with Christmas lights and adorned with sparkly trinkets. I always anticipated the flood of a fresh pine smell as we walked in the front door.

Christmas Eve was always spent opening one present, which we all knew would be pajamas. It is an Eppler family tradition — pajamas on Christmas Eve. As kids, my brother, sister and I would scurry into our rooms to change into our comfy new pj’s.

Christmas morning, my Memaw always dusted her countertop with flour to make homemade buttermilk biscuits. She always used a water glass to cut a perfect circle shape out of the dough, but as the biscuits baked, they always became perfectly lumpy. Our freshly baked and browned biscuits were always topped with may-haw jelly, which was only served at Memaw’s house. Pajamas and biscuits ... who could ask for a better family tradition?!

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DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Jarod Mendenhall

Broken Arrow Public Schools Superintendent

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My favorite holiday memory is the abundance of time spent with family. Each year, we traveled to my grandparents’ home on Christmas Eve to have dinner and open gifts with my father’s family, and on Christmas night, we would do the same with my mother’s family.

I have fond memories of food, fun Courtesy and laughter, but more than anything, Jarod Mendenhall grew up in Enid and has I cherished time with my grandparents.

Aside from my parents, my maternal led Broken Arrow Public Schools since 2010. grandmother has been the most influto this day, her writing is an accurate account ential person in my life, and during her last of who they are as young women.

Christmas with us, she gave my family the Because of moments such as this, time greatest gift she could ever have given. with family is still what I love most about She wrote poems for each of her great the holidays. My daughters, now 20 and grandchildren, including my two daughters, 15 years old, still wake up early to see what Jessica and Allie. When our girls opened the Santa brought on Christmas morning, and poems, which my grandmother had carefully we spend several days enjoying the comwrapped and placed under the tree, there pany of family. During this holiday season, I was not a dry eye in the Mendenhall house. look forward once again to celebrating old In her own beautiful words, my grandmother traditions and making new memhad precisely described each of my girls, and ories with my family.

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

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HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Paula Marshall

John Wooley

BAMA Companies CEO

Author, historian, radio host

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As Christmas 1973 approached, I was serving as a yeoman on the USS New Orleans, a helicopter carrier that transported Marines to Vietnam. It marked the first time in my 24 years that I hadn’t spent the holidays with family; even though I’d been on active duty for more than a year, I’d been in San Diego awaiting assignment the previous December, and I’d managed to grab a bus to my aunt and uncle’s house in the San Fernando Valley in time to celebrate with them.

This time, however, I was floating on an ocean half a world away from my home country, a tiny cog in the military machine that had rattled into this battle many years earlier. I can’t say that I felt any sort of cosmic sadness as the holiday season rolled around; I can tell you that I was awfully happy to get a big package from my mother in Chelsea, Oklahoma, full of homemade cookies and some wooden rods that, assembled, made a 3-foot tall Christmas tree. My pals and I reduced the cookies to crumbs in a twinkling, but everyone seemed to treat the little tree with a certain respect and affection.

My favorite Christmas memories will always have my family in them.

Since both my parents have passed, I will share what it was like around our house growing up here in Tulsa.

My dad used to sing Bing Crosby songs like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Jingle Bells,” and I used to sit on his lap and try to sing with him while my mom played the organ. Then we decorated the tree.

Our Christmas tree had to be perfect before presents went under, and this usually had one of us in tears while dad barked instructions to my brother and me. But when it was all done, we had a 10-foot-tall, sparkling, colorful piece of magnificence in our living room.

Christmas morning was

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Paula Marshall has grown a family business into a $300 million company. full of wonderment, smiles, joy and a plate of cookie crumbs and an empty glass of milk where Santa had been.

As my brother and I stared at the empty plate and glass, I imagine the smiles on my mom and dad’s faces and how much they loved making us believe in the miracle they called Santa Claus.

I never will forget those days.

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Courtesy

John Wooley (holding the tree) and crew members aboard the USS New Orleans in 1973.

If memory serves, it was occupying a corner of the ship’s office when we steamed out of the Gulf of Tonkin toward Hong Kong, where we ended up spending Christmas Eve in an Australian bar on the Kowloon Peninsula. Some of the Aussie sailors cried when we all sang “White Christmas.”

I realized later it was a pretty good bet many of those weeping Australians had never seen a snowflake in their lives. That didn’t matter, though. The song — and the little tree from home — reminded us that even in the midst of war, the joy and peace of the season remained indestructible.

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Jim Taylor

April Taylor

Salvation Army Area commander

Salvation Army assistant area commander

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I was a “Cherub” in the Jr. Choir, and each year we would sing in the Christmas Eve service at church. I’m not sure we sang very well, but we looked cute in our white robes with scarlet bows under our chins.

As the service came to its climatic conclusion, the sanctuary lights would dim, and we would all light the little Courtesy white candles that had been distributed, from one central Majors Jim and April Taylor returned to Tulsa in 2012 candle. At such a young age, I to lead the Salvation Army’s Area Command after having didn’t understand the symbol- served here from 1997 to 2000. ism, I just thought the room candle represented Jesus — the Light of the looked neat in candle light. Plus, I got to drip world — who came to remind us of God’s love melted candle on my hand like a figure at a wax for mankind, and that we little “candles” are lit by museum.

I also remember going from house to house in His grace to be beacons of hope.

As a Salvation Army officer, I have the honor of the neighborhood “making spirits bright” singdoing that every day of the year, and especially ing Christmas carols to those not in the makeat Christmas as we minister to shift choir. thousands in His name.

As I matured, I discovered that the central

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The week before Christmas, my dad would always walk in with a big box of oranges, nuts, cookies, candy and candy canes. Our family would sit at the table and make little baskets that we called “Sunshine Baskets.”

My dad would take all of the Sunshine Baskets and give them to people who were shut-in and couldn’t leave their homes. My dad would do this alone. He was a Salvation Army officer and later a minister.

What he did with these Sunshine Baskets made a huge impact on me and what I do now for The Salvation Army.

Last year, a lady was helping me sort toys at The Salvation Army before Christmas. I was thanking her for her assistance when she pulled me aside and said “I used to be one of those kids on the Angel Tree.” She is now an attorney. She then pointed to her daughter, who was also helping sort toys, and said, “I just want her to know what people have to go through who don’t have anything, like I did when I was her age.”

It reminded me of the lesson my father taught me with the Sunshine Baskets. We’re thankful for what we have, but we must also remember those who are struggling and help them, especially this time of year.

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DECEMBER 7, 2014

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HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Joan Marcus

Courtesy

Jenks Mayor Lonnie Sims and his wife, Lea Ann, have a daughter named Laney.

Lonnie Sims Jenks mayor

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One of our family’s favorite Christmas traditions began when my daughter was 4 and celebrating her fifth Christmas. As Christmas Eve was approaching, I asked my wife to call her parents to see if they wanted to come stay with us.

Expecting to hear the same answer as the last four years, “No thanks,” my wife and I were shocked when the response was an immediate, “Yes.” With a look of panic on her face, my wife yelled, “We don’t even have a guest bed!”

The scramble was on to make ready.

Still surprised by the sudden interest in coming to stay, we were further confused by the less than joyful greeting received upon their arrival. Fortunately, we soon learned why.

A bad habit my wife and

I had carried on from the days when we first started dating was to say, “Must have been your other girlfriend or boyfriend,” when one of us was telling a story the other couldn’t remember. Unaware our little 4-year-old was in earshot one day, my wife barked out, “Must have been your other girlfriend.”

On an overnight trip to her grandparents’ house soon thereafter, she started giggling at dinner that evening and let them know that, “Daddy has a girlfriend.. “Who told you that?” pressed my mother in-law. “Mommy.”

Well, that set the wheels in motion and the short of the story is that soon after their arrival, the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up. We all shared a big laugh and an even bigger hug with our little girl who brought the grandparents over to stay that Christmas -- a family tradition that has continued every year since!

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Hannibal Johnson

Attorney, author, consultant

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It’s been six years since my oldest sister, Joan, died — seven Christmases this month. Without her, without Jo, as we called her, Christmas has never been, and will likely never be, quite the same.

For me, and for the rest of the family, she was the gleaming angel atop the freshly-cut Christmas tree, overseeing all that was right and good and true about this special season.

Perhaps because she grew up modestly — poor, by some definitions — the word “moderation” rested comfortably only in the dark recesses of her mind. When she had more, she gave more. At Christmas, that everything-in-excess philosophy shone with blinding brilliance.

I miss my Jo’s over-the-top Christmases.

There always seemed to be just a bit too much of everything — gifts, food, photographs, and all the other traditional trappings of Christmas.

Her gift of bringing people together at Christmas — family, friends, co-workers, and the occasional stranger — was like no other.

She asked nothing in return.

I miss those days. Mostly, I miss her joy and

Courtesy

Hannibal Johnson is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has authored several books on African-American history in Tulsa and elsewhere. her smiles and her spirit; her fascination with fascinating others.

Now that she’s no longer with us, what once seemed sharply overdone strikes me as pitch perfect. I’m grateful for the memories, but left wondering whether I fully expressed that gratitude in the moments.

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DECEMBER 7, 2014

TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Justin Thompson Chef, restaurateur

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Early in my cooking career, I experimented with all kinds of cooking and baking techniques and styles. My kitchen at home became a catchall for cookbooks, recipe cards, handwritten notes and sample menus I’d written.

From this chaos, and attempt in training myself to be a great cook, came a passion for baking breads. I’ve always loved the yeasty smell of bread rising and baking. I’ve always loved the puff of steam that escapes when tearing into a freshly baked brioche roll.

One year for Christmas, I decided this passion for baking and breads should be shared with my family. I spent hours a day for a week in advance of the holiday, baking when I wasn’t working, and taking short naps in the middle of the night so I could wake up when it was time to punch down my dough for the second rise. With breads wrapped in paper and butchers twine (singing “brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few or my favorite things . . .” in my head all the way), and loaded in my car, I drove the 100-mile trek to my grandparents’ house in Oklahoma City. As wonderful as all of my

Courtesy

Justin Thompson, holding his daughter Isla, is an accomplished chef who owns three Tulsa restaurants and a catering business/party venue. holidays with my family have been, none of them makes me as happy as when I think of the smile on my Granddad’s face when I handed him his very own loaf of sweet cranberry orange bread. We ate great food that night, some decent breads by me, drank wine and spiked eggnog, and celebrated each other. That’s a good memory.

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DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

S. Joe Crittenden

Cherokee Nation deputy chief

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I’ve had Christmas in Oklahoma, California, Guam and on a ship in the Navy, but every Christmas was special to me.

As a child, I remember going around the Christmas tree shaking packages until Mom got smart and quit putting names on them. We got simple things like a pair of gloves or shoes for school.

Not like today when we get things we don’t need.

My daughters and I enjoyed watching “Little House on the Prairie,” which brings a memory about one of the episodes where one of the girls receives a tin cup and shiny penny as a Christmas gift because that’s all they could afford.

So when my grandsons came along, they would ask over and over, “What’re you going to get us, Pa?” I would let them know

Jimmie Tramel

Jeremy Charles

S. Joe Crittenden lives in the Peavine community in Adair County. how times were tough and they might only get a tin cup and a penny. So one Christmas, I did that. I got them a tin cup and a shiny penny. A few years later they paid me back and got me a tin cup, and they had to look hard to find one. It’s one of my favorite gifts.

The season is about caring for what matters most, which is family. It’s important we remember our Heavenly father has blessed us with so much.

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Newspaper writer

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Favorite Christmas memories?

Let’s count them: 1. You know what’s better than Christmas dinner? Christmas breakfast.

It’s a tradition at my parents’ house. Biscuits. Gravy. Sausage. Eggs. Bacon. Fringe benefit: You can stretch your stomach for the bird that comes later.

Jimmie Tramel, 2. Games. If you’re young and nimble a Locust Grove enough, backyard football games with native, has been cousins should be mandatory. If you’re a writer at Tulsa no spring chicken, feel obligated to World since 1989. rough up your Aunt Jan in backgammon.

3. You know what’s better than a plate of food on Christmas dinner? Seconds. The first plate should be viewed only as an audition for food items which are vying to be on your plate the second time around. Mashed potatoes is always a lock to advance to the next level.

4. In the age of DVDs and Netflix, it’s easy to watch whatever you want any time you want. But it’s just plain better if you catch something like “Rudolph” in real time with everybody else. Back in the day, if you missed the Abominable Snow Monster, you had to wait a whole year for another sighting.

5, Embrace your own traditions. Cousin Paula has a birthday on Christmas Eve. She’s getting an Archie Comics digest on the night before Christmas. Again.

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

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HOLIDAY MEMORIES

John Scott

Jake Henry Jr.

Performing Arts Center director

Saint Francis Health System CEO

Many years ago when I worked for the Tulsa Philharmonic, our offices were in the Harwelden mansion. One particular holiday season, we had a significant snowfall overnight and although the next morning dawned crisp and clear, schools were closed. After slipping and sliding my way to work, I finally reached my office. I settled in and was working on the orchestra payroll when I started hearing laughter and other loud noises outside the window behind my desk. I looked out to find the source of this disturbance and what I saw was dozens of kids playing in the snow. They were using all sorts of fun winter devices to slide down the near-perfect hill. It was the perfect winter scene.

After I joined the Performing Arts Center staff, it didn’t take long to acquire my other favorite Christmas memory. My first exposures to American Theatre Company’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol”

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2014 NBAE

Andre Roberson, a 6-foot-7 forward, is now playing guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Andre Roberson OKC Thunder guard

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My favorite memory of a Christmas gift was when I was 6 years old and I got a police-themed motorized threewheeler from Santa.

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Tulsa World

John Scott is an accomplished oboe player who has directed the PAC since 1987. and Tulsa Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” as a spectator were truly memorable. Ironically, even though I had played in the pit orchestra for many performances of “Nutcracker, “I had never actually seen the production.

Between the awesome sets and music for “A Christmas Carol” and seeing for the first time the dancers perform “The Nutcracker, “ those experiences produced memories I’ve cherished since.

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I grew up in west Texas, oldest of five kids. My dad was a tool pusher/driller who worked for contract drilling companies. When the rigs were down, he didn’t work.

We had a trailer house and moved whenever the rigs moved. So there was no singing of Christmas carols by the fireplace or ski trips to Colorado. My parents were more concerned with feeding all of us.

As young adults, there are memories of our two daughters seeing Christmas lights for the first time, putting together toys at midnight that required hundreds of screws, lots of Christmas parties and eating too much. Sometimes there was midnight Mass for the adults.

Today, I am more mindful that Christmas is a hopeful and comforting time, reminding me of the unconditional love Christ has for us and we for our own families. I think Christmas focuses our thoughts on what’s important, where we have

Courtesy

Kathy and Jake Henry Jr. have been married for 46 years and have two granddaughters. been and where we are going.

At the end of that hectic day, the best part is not the gifts. Rather, it is a warm home, enough food and being with family and friends. It is a granddaughter sitting in your lap telling you a story, cooking together, telling old stories, everyone around the table as we pray for God’s blessing on our food and family — this is the best part, loving and being loved.

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014

HOLIDAY MEMORIES

Joe Andoe

And that’s what Joe and Lois got me. The only Christmas 1960, we lived problem was on 29th Street North. I it needed aswas 5, and my parents, sembling. They Lois and Joe, were both 25. wanted it standShe worked downtown at ing beside the First National Bank of Tulsa tree when I woke as a page, and Joe was a for maximum full-time math and physics effect as if Santa major at TU and repaired brought it.

TVs for Pete Quick. They This was a busy did their best with what Courtes Christmas Eve, and y Joe Andoe, shown they had, and they didn’t my gift needed to have much, but they totally here in Tulsa in1959 with his be assembled. After mother, is an an artist who now I had been put to were unprepared for me.

I wasn’t an easy kid. lives and works in New York City. bed and finally went They were young. I was to sleep, my father big. I was curious. I asked difficult questions. opened the skeleton kit and discovered 206 I pointed to embarrassing discrepancies. hard-baked plastic bones. With Lois’ encourAnd Joe and Lois were proud and private. agement, dad put it all together. He built But I said inappropriate things about those each hand, each foot just right, then hooked discrepancies and most anything. them up to legs, then to the hips, and hips And I always had a knack of wanting to the vertebrae, etc. weird and hard-to-find things for Christmas.

I woke up to the 2-foot skeleton that Bless their hearts, they always wanted me to took my mom and dad nearly all night to have a good Christmas. construct. I understand it was underFor Christmas 1960, I asked for a skeleton. appreciated then, but it’s not now.

Artist, painter, author

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Philip Phillips Food truck chef, owner

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When I think of the holiday season, I always am Tulsa World taken back to Danielle and Philip Phillips own my childhood. and operate the Lone Wolf Banh Mi I was born in 1982, so you food truck. This will the first Christhave a refermas for their son Philip, the eighth ence point. My generation to carry on the name. mom and dad would take our family to Utica Square every year just before Christmas to see the animatronic Nutcracker display.

As a child, it was the most fascinating part of the Christmas season for me. Just as it would mystify me, it would also terrify me. Those rats would haunt my dreams in such a wonderful way!

The shopping center still keeps a panel or two each year, but I wish they would bring it back in full display so I can pass the memory on to my son. Utica Square means Christmas in my family still to this day.

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DECEMBER 7, 2014

TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

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GIFT GUIDE

Gifts for Her Emy Couture is a South Tulsa boutique offering stylish women’s apparel, including the outfit at left. The store, near 93rd Street and Sheridan Road, bills itself as a “Fun & Fab” boutique.

Star Jewelers on Main Street in Broken Arrow offers many gifts for the woman in your life, including this heart shape diamond emotion pendant (above) in sterling silver with a chain.

The diamond at the center glitters with every motion of the wearer, including her heartbeat.

Joan Marcus

Celebrity Attractions is offering a four-show Broadway package for the holidays. It includes the musical romance “Once” (above).

Tulsa Symphony invites you to give someone you know the gift of music this holiday season. You can customize your ticket package to include one or more performances. The Simply Classical concert in January will feature the music of Beethoven and Mozart, while the Simply Cinematic concert in May will showcase the modern work of John Williams.

Tatermash Oilcloth (below) offers aprons, bibs, placemats, lunch bags, tote bags and more items that can be embroidered.

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TULSA WORLD SUPPLEMENT

DECEMBER 7, 2014