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Reflections on Tulsa: Twelve months of nostalgia times 22.
Wright with his latest calendar project, which commemorates and chronicles 70 years of Will Rogers High School history.
Steve Wright is to nostalgia in Tulsa as George Kaiser is to philanthropy, Chuck Lamson is to baseball and Billy Parker is to radio. He may know more about Tulsa (trivia and otherwise) than Clayton Vaughn and Jack Frank combined. Vaughn, of course, is the longtime newsman-turned-Tulsa Historical Society executive director, now emeritus, and Frank has made as many films about Tulsa as Hitchcock made mysteries.
Wright’s claim to the title of Nabob of Nostalgia goes back to Tulsa’s centennial in 1998. He viewed the landscape and saw various businesses finding tie-ins to the centennial, and like any enterprising entrepreneur, Wright wondered how he could play a part.
His answer was the Tulsa History Calendar — a valuable piece of nostalgia that told the Tulsa story on a daily basis. It was so thorough that TulsaPeople, which produced a souvenir edition celebrating 100 Tulsans who made a difference, used Wright’s calendar as a “tip sheet” for a series of monthly columns on Tulsa history. Wright says he selected this medium because it was original and the proverbial: It seemed like a good idea at the time. A good idea that today seems timeless.
Wright had more than a flair for capitalism with his nostalgia calendar. Translating his idea took a multitude of talents that, fortunately, Wright has.
A 1962 University of Tulsa journalism graduate, Wright put in three years with the Tulsa World before seeing a lot of the world as a U.S. Army newspaper editor and serving with Cities Services/OXY USA.
His oil company postings in New York City, Oklahoma City and Tulsa were only part of the story, as he ultimately was promoted to manager of the 25-member Creative Service Department at OXY USA in Tulsa — a unit that served corporate headquarters in Los Angeles and the oil giant’s worldwide operations.
His department provided all the services you would expect from a full-service advertising agency as well as land mapping and logo merchandising. When offered another move by OXY USA, this time to L.A., he decided to stay in Tulsa and opened, in 1996, his own creative services shop, which he calls Yellow Pad.
With the success of the Tulsa History Calendar, Wright figured that he was on to something. Today, 22 calendars later, he admits that he is. Building upon the success of his first Tulsa calendar, Wright has produced calendars for the Oklahoma centennial and the sports programs at the Universities of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa and Arkansas.
His three latest projects return to a Tulsa theme. One is a 113-year retrospective of University of Tulsa athletics that, as Wright notes, “includes short stories with information about little-known, forgotten and interesting facts for fans and alumni.”
Also current is a comprehensive almanac/calendar on Will Rogers High School that has 70 years of historic photos and facts. He credits a dozen Rogers graduates and administrators, notably librarian Carrie Fleharty, with assistance in making the calendar a reality — “it takes the help of many people to find the nooks and crannies that have important information,” Wright says.
His latest creation, his eighth with Mark Bahlinger of Bahlinger Advertising and Graphics, is a celebration of Central High School — another epic production that includes a 123-year timeline, stories about the school’s former building on East Sixth Street (now PSO’s headquarters), its more than 100 state sports championships and, well, a ton of history about its legions of notable alumni.
His latest projects? Preliminary discussions have started for two additional Tulsa-themed projects as well as a 50th anniversary calendar for Memorial High School — that institution welcomed its first students in September 1962.
Nostalgia on a daily basis by Steve Wright.
