TULSA TRAILBLAZERS: William Skelly was integral in the growth of oil industry and Tulsa football.

TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE W.G. Skelly, the founder of Skelly Oil Co., was an enthusiastic booster of the city and its welfare. He donated money for Skelly Stadium at the University of Tulsa and many other projects in the city.

Generous DONOR

William Skelly was integral in growth of oil industry, Tulsa football

Michael Overall // Tulsa World Magazine

The right-fi eld fence, abutting the Midland Valley Railroad tracks in the southeast corner of downtown Tulsa, stood just 274 feet from home plate at McNulty Park, home of the city’s fi rst minor league baseball team.

The short fi eld helped the Tulsa Oilers win fi ve pennants and six batting titles in the 1920s. But it caused serious problems for the University of Tulsa football team, which also played home games at the stadium.

A full-length gridiron wouldn’t fi t, so the playing fi eld measured only 90 yards. Once the ball got close to the end zone, the refs would move it back 10 yards to make up the di erence. And if somebody broke a big play, it was a judgment call on whether to count it as a touchdown.

Sometimes the refs decided a player would have been tackled short of the goal line if the goal line had been where it was supposed to be. But fans didn’t always agree, and hardly a game passed without controversy.

Tulsa fi nally got a proper football stadium after oil tycoon William Skelly pledged $125,000 if another $175,000 could be raised for the project.

As a teenager in Pennsylvania in the 1890s, Skelly had helped his father haul oil-fi eld supplies in a horse-drawn wagon. He later went to work as a tool dresser, making $2.50 a day in the state’s famous Venango Oil Field.

He moved to Tulsa in 1912 to build a career as an independent producer until he incorporated Skelly Oil in 1919, building a fully integrated company that pumped oil from its own wells and sold gasoline at its own service stations.

A lot of his fortune came from developing the Burbank Field in Osage County, where Skelly developed a special relationship with the Osage Nation. The tribe made him an honorary member and gave him an Osage name, Wah-Tah-In-Kah, which means “sassy chief.”

He preferred it to his other nickname, “Mr. Tulsa,” a title that is said to have made him grimace from modesty. But he earned it with seemingly ubiquitous support of every major charity and good cause in town, especially the University of Tulsa.

Construction of Skelly Stadium began

TOM GILBERT, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE

An aerial view of turf being installed at Skelly Field at the University of Tulsa’s H.A. Chapman Stadium.

COURTESY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TULSA More than 13,000 football fans packed the new Skelly Stadium for the University of Tulsa’s season opener and for a dedication of the new $300,000 facility to “the youth of eastern Oklahoma.”

on May 11, 1930, and was finished in time for an Oct. 4 game against Arkansas. TU recovered a Razorback fumble on the opening kickoff then scored a touchdown in the north end zone on the first play from scrimmage in stadium history.

Tulsa won 26–6.

The stadium now seats 30,000, roughly twice its original capacity. The name changed to Skelly Field at H.A. Chapman Stadium in 2007 during an $18 million renovation.

COURTESY

Skelly Stadium at the University of Tulsa in 1948.