Weekly Column: Remembering Paul Harvey...and His Hometown

A few weeks ago, America lost a pioneer broadcaster...and Tulsa, Oklahoma lost a favorite son.

Paul Harvey's relationship with his hometown was not always warm. When he was growing up, the city in Eastern Oklahoma had fewer than 40,000 residents. It was too small for a young man with big dreams. And so he left Tulsa; but Tulsa never left him. The kindness, friendliness and yes, even the voice, all owed to his hometown.

But in later years, Harvey fell out of love with Tulsa. He feared it was more a city than a community; he worried about new developments crowding out old parks. But in mid-life, an event occurred that allowed him to see his old city in a new light. His beloved mother became ill. And during the illness, he came to know his hometown as if for the first time. While he still mourned that Tulsa wasn't as small as it used to be, he came to embrace its growth and change. He began to learn that a community is not defined by its size alone.

Below is an article Harvey wrote in the 1960s paying tribute both the old Tulsa and the new Tulsa. It's a moving description of how a city can change yet remain a community.

No apologies

by: PAUL HARVEY

My hometown is Tulsa. I had never denied it, but in recent years I haven't boasted about it.

If asked I half apologetically said, "...but it doesn't seem like home anymore. Tulsa is a 'little New York' now."

That part was true. The familiar rumble of streetcars has long since ceased along East Fifth Place.

Ike's Chili Parlor had grown from a stool-and-counter diner to two fancy restaurants, one reset in suburban surroundings.

Those were the days when "cold war" was what happened every ice hockey season. Now the old Coliseum is gone and a parking lot marks its place.

"No," I explained, "with the buildings of glass and the sprawling spectacular shopping centers, it doesn't seem like home anymore."

For 25 years I have been in Tulsa only for those rare and brief visits which a busy son allows for the girl who will always be his first and most lasting — but most neglected — love.

The wonderful reassurance that mother and the old house would always be there gave substance to my self-confidence. Whatever storms, there was always a shelter "back home"

Then the phone rang. My "indestructible" mother was going to the hospital.

When the surgery is of a kind where you're playing for keeps, you want the best of everything.

"Fly specialists from everywhere," I instructed. "Move mother to the most modern hospital anywhere," I decreed.

But the thorough check by trusted medical authorities in Chicago revealed a strange and startling thing: Doctors of greater skill, hospitals with more modern equipment, more competent staffs — are not available anywhere.

The best of surgery, facilities and care — the best — is now to be had right in my hometown.

I have watched American towns, so eager to become cities, with much reservation and some foreboding.

Particularly in the South, I (was) saddened to see the parks become used car lots, the live oaks uprooted for industrial expansion, the villages consolidated or annexed or otherwise merged into one big jungle of belching smokestacks.

Suddenly I am aware that it takes such concentration of resources to afford the more complete library, the improved airport, the better-equipped schools and hospitals.

The ultra modern banks and the streamlined post office and the fat phone books and parking meters I have resented for altering the "character" of my old hometown were all part of the progress that had so upgraded this "little New York" that the ultimate in everything is available.

Those were the "good old days"' these are the "good new days!"

And it is interesting that mother had two special wishes for as long as I can remember: that she would live in good health until she died, and that I would someday move closer to Tulsa.

She did and I have.

"What is your hometown?" I expect to be asked again.

I will not apologize again. In the years ahead, I will reply, instead, "I'm from Tulsa. It's a fine, modern city!"

http://www.tulsaworld.com/site/printerfriendlystory.aspx?articleid=20090303_222_A12_Editor306854