Harry "Butch" Beggerly

We received news this morning that Harry “Butch” Beggerly, science teacher and coach at Welch High School, passed away this weekend after he was struck by lightening on a hunting trip in New Mexico. Our condolences to his family, friends, students, and athletes.

We’re working from the new office this week, and we’re still working on it, too. I have carpeted the studio room, and I can highly recommend carpet tiles. Didn’t even have to glue them down. Here’s a pic.

Studio Carpet

There’s been a bit of debate about what our building used to be. We know it was Webster’s Auto in the post-WWII years. Before that, though, has been the subject of  various opinions. We were originally led to believe it was Keener’s Store. The consensus seems to be that Keener’s is a few buildings down. Welch State Bank is currently remodeling it for use as office and conference space. We have a reprint of 1915 Welch Watchman paper, which includes the below picture of W. S. Dowell Dept. Store. From the looks of the ceiling and shelving, I believe that is our building. It’s not the greatest picture in the world, but it’s all we have so far.

W. S. Dowell Department Store

That’s it for now. More updates as we get things situated.

I have been somewhat quieter than usual lately. My blog, Twitter, and Facebook posts have been much less frequent than usual for the past month or so. And there has been a reason.

As of this morning, Wynn-Wynn Media is operating from 361 S. Commercial Street in Welch, Oklahoma, our hometown. By the way, that’s our shipping address only. The mailing address is PO Box 4, Welch, Oklahoma 74369. Our telephone numbers remain unchanged.

Jeane and I are both from Welch. Both of our parents still live here. In fact, her folks live on one side of the Baptist church and mine live on the other. We love this town, and we have always hoped we could come back here someday. That someday is now.

A couple months ago we made the decision that we would move back here for one main reason. Jeane’s parents are 83 and 86. Their minds are sharp as ever, but as they age, they need some physical help from time to time. They certainly aren’t disabled, but they are at the point that they need some occasional help. Their friends and neighbors have been invaluable to us over the last few years, driving them to doctors’ appointments, on shopping trips, and to run errands. But we recognize there’s a time when family has to do its job, and we’re thrilled that we are able to help out. Her parents have a huge old house, built in 1913, that has an upstairs that has been unused for years. We will live there, gradually remodeling our area. That way they’ll have someone with them at night, which is their most pressing need. We will be putting our home in Claremore on the market soon.

As for office space, we’re thrilled to have our own building on Welch’s main street! We are in a storefront that was Webster’s Auto when I was growing up. We’re still trying to learn what it was before that*.

New Office Ceiling

And that is the reason for much of my silence. I have been making moving preparations and working on our building (with the help of my parents and sister, who we can’t thank enough).

Wynn-Wynn Media began in 2001 in a small upstairs room of the tiny house we lived in. From there, we have lived in two other houses, each time running the business out of spare bedrooms. Next month, we will celebrate our eighth year of business. God has blessed us much in the ensuing years. We’re thrilled that Wynn-Wynn Media gets its own office space for its birthday.

We’ll post some pictures soon, but for now I will describe our space to you. It’s approximately 2,000 square feet of space. There are cement floors that we have refinished. The front area is all open space, and it is lined on each side with almost eight-feet-tall bookshelves and counters. This area is where Jeane and I both have our offices. The ceiling is covered with the original metal tiles, which have been repainted white. There is a private office in the back, which —after a bit of acoustic work—will become the new author interview training center and WynnCast studio, among other things. We have an ample store room, which is thrilling because we’ve always just squirreled office supplies away anywhere we could. We also have a bathroom with shower and a large warehouse/garage in the back. We will soon be adding a coffee counter, and there is a large loft area over the studio, store room, and bathroom that will become Jeane’s special project area.

We’re a bit blown away by the notion of finally having enough space for everything. It’s almost surreal to know we’ll have enough shelving for our library and all our project books. And we love that we are finally back home.

We ended up in Claremore because I was then working for a state university. When I joined Jeane in the business full time, we stayed in Claremore because of the availability of certain things, mainly high-speed Internet. We’ve loved Claremore. It’s a sweet community that’s close to Tulsa without being the metro. But we came to see that it placed us unnecessarily an hour away from our families. When I learned we could finally get the Internet connectivity we need to operate in Welch (thank you Rural iNet!), we decided the time was right. So, here we are, back to the home of our youth. We’ve always been Wildcats, and it’s good to be back among our old friends.

For those of you not familiar with Welch, Oklahoma, here’s a bit of info. It’s a community of approximately 600 persons in northeastern Oklahoma. It grew, like many a town, due to the railroad way back in the day, and it was named for a railroad man. It is in Craig County, which is just west of Ottawa County, which is the northeastern-most county in Oklahoma. We’re in what is known locally as the Four States, which consists of the NE corner of Oklahoma, the SE corner of Kansas, the SW corner of Missouri, and the NW corner or Arkansas. Of the five “countries” in Oklahoma, we’re still in Green Country. It’s a small town, with a great school, one of the best banks in the country, one Assembly of God, one Baptist, one Catholic, one Christian, and one Methodist church, a volunteer fire department, a convenience store, a grocery store, and a grain elevator, among other businesses. Additionally, it’s full of our old friends and a lot of just plain good people. And we love it!

All told, we’ll be better able to serve our clients and honor our parents, while being back where we’ve always wanted to be. Talk about a Wynn-Wynn!

Also, after almost five years, I recently resigned my pastorate. We enjoyed being used by God where we were, and I will be forever thankful for the opportunity to see people come to know Christ as a pastor. It was time for that chapter of our lives to come to a close. For now, we will be active and involved in a local church. I will not, however, be serving as a pastor.

*There seems to be some debate among townspeople at to whether our building was originally Keener’s General Store or not. We’ll be researching that. As an interesting side note, Jeane’s parents live in Keener’s former house.

And now, we’re off to lunch at the in-laws’. I think it’s Frito pie day.

KRMG FM Coverage Map (from Radio-Locator.com) - Click for big.

The big announcement from the Big KMR today is that it’s AM signal will now be simulcast on the 50,000-watt 102.3 FM frequency (formerly Spirit 102.3, a contemporary Christian music  jukebox). Though some of my online pals are underwhelmed by the announcement, the concept of an FM talk station makes me giddy (especially in that I don’t live in Tulsa proper). KRMG’s signal is notoriously weak up north (approaching Bartlesville), and both the Tulsa AM talk stations frustrate me when they have to drop their power each evening. I shared on my last WynnCast that we had applied for a non-commercial, educational (NCE) radio license for our home town. Our main format, had we been successful, would have been talk (on FM).

KRMG will be the Tulsa radio king as long as it carries Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, KRMG has a heftier overall lineup of syndicated shows (with the exception of the legend-in-his-own-mind Michael Savage). That said, I am a fan of Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin on KFAQ. But, KFAQ’s real mode of attraction (when it started up) was the passion of the live and local Michael DelGiorno and its running shows live so that listeners could participate (they even ran promos about it). Heck, in the early days of KFAQ, MDG replied to every email he received. The station’s popularity grew so rapidly that he couldn’t keep that up. That was a good thing for the station…and for Tulsa.

With the departure of John Erling (good riddance), we got Joe Kelley in the morning drive on KRMG, and with MDG heading to greener pastures in Nashville (and after the short-lived Freeman-Medlock show), we got Pat Campbell in the morning drive at KFAQ (KFAQ passing over my obvious talent). Joe and Pat are both consummate professionals and good at the mechanics of what they do, but I find them both terribly…bland. I get the real feeling they are trying so hard to walk a line of non-offensiveness that they offend me. But, I don’t get to listen to radio like I used to, so it could be all in my head.

As far as KFAQ goes, it’s not enough merely to be the other talk station in town. Newspapers are learning they can band-aid their dismal situations by cutting local reporters and filling space with nationally syndicated columns, but that doesn’t fix the big issue. Radio, in the same way, can fill time with any number of nationally syndicated hosts, many of them very good, but none of them provide the localism radio must have if it is to be successful in a market. If your national hosts are largely second-tier, if your local news team is second-best, you better out-passion and out-local-issue the other guys.

Further, KFAQ’s handling of the Medlock dismissal betrayed years of positioning. No one buys that the station that claims it is “standing up for what’s right,” did the right thing by dismissing Medlock, the only daily injection of passion and loyal opposition in Tulsa, especially so suddenly. They added insult to injury by not allowing him to say goodbye and then removing every trace of his existence from the station’s website (though it is a fairly typical practice in radio).

So, I am thrilled that KRMG is on the AM dial (and I wish KFAQ would make that leap, too), but it’s not enough merely to broaden your signal. You must broadcast something of interest to the local citizens who you want to dial in. After all, those listeners—and not the generic “they”— are the ones laying down their dollars to buy Thermal Windows, Primeaux Kias, and Inlow Tractors.

[Update @ 5:18 PM]

KXOJ, the Tulsa commercial Christian music station, is already capitalizing on the news. This via their email newsletter:

Dear Friends,

You may have heard the news already but this afternoon Cox Radio decided to change their Christian music station to Newstalk. Certainly we understand that this decision was a difficult one brought on by very real financial pressure in these difficult times. A decision of this magnitude is never easy and we do not think anyone should take it lightly. More people than ever now know how great Christian music is and for that we are very grateful.

As for us, we just want you to know that we are not going anywhere. 32 years ago KXOJ began playing Christian music and we haven’t stopped since. KXOJ represents who we are as a company and who we are as individuals, from top to bottom. In the words of Third Day, “This is who I am”.

If you had gotten used to flipping back and forth between the two stations, welcome back to KXOJ full-time. Let us know how we can serve you better and join us in putting the focus on a God who never changes.

Sincerely,

Bob Thornton
Program Director
100.9 KXOJ

I previously shared with WynnBlog readers about the situation with a rogue school board member at my high school alma mater. The short version is that a group of concerned citizens decided to deal with the matter rather than to ignore it. They formed an unincorporated group and have been working to hold the school board member accountable for his actions.

The only way to deal with an errant school board member in Oklahoma is to petition the district court for a grand jury to investigate. This is an extreme burden in small school districts, in that grand juries are county-wide. In the instant situation, my hometown of Welch, OK, has a total population of approximately 500 persons. The last school board election saw 274 persons cast votes for a school board member. The minimum number of signatures necessary to impanel a grand jury is 500. So, what you have is a small school district with a board member behaving badly that, to deal with the issue, must get the equivalent of the entire population of the town (and almost twice the number of persons who voted in the last school board election) to sign a petition to have the bad behavior addressed. It’s lunacy to require so much from a small community. Most recalls require only a percentage of the last vote for that specific entity, which is a much lower bar. In this case, if the school board recall bill authored by Representatives Toure and Hamilton had passed in 2003, it would require a petition signed by 25% of the number of persons voting in the last school board election, or 69 persons in this case, to set a recall election of just Welch school district voters. The grand jury petition requirement is 7 times that number! That’s a high bar indeed. In the Welch case, 69 signatures were gathered in less than a week if my memory serves. However, the grand jury does ensure that it’s not a popularity contest. The grand jury can subpoena witnesses and look at the evidence and reach an informed conclusion about Mr. McCord’s fitness for office.

All the above notwithstanding, the citizens of Welch have worked their rears off and traveled the county asking fair-minded citizens to sign the petition. The group, WE CARE (Welch Citizens United for Responsible Education), announced earlier today that it now has in excess of the 500 signatures necessary. WE CARE has given the board member’s attorney notice that they have the signatures and intend to file them with the court if he has not resigned by 4:00 p.m. tomorrow. We shall see what transpires.

The larger lesson here is that Oklahoma MUST reform school board accountability. Waiting up to five years to vote a bad board member out of office is simply not feasible; asking a small school district to gather more signatures than it has citizens is an undue burden. Oklahoma school board members should be subject to recall or impeachment. I will be addressing this in the future.

Jeane and I are both proud graduates of Welch Public Schools. It was a great school system to grow up in, and it gave me many of the opportunities that got me where I am today. We are members of the Welch Public Schools enrichment foundation. We support our alma mater with our time and money.

Unfortunately, recent events centering on Welch School Board President Dennis McCord have embarrassed the school system and placed administrators, teachers, and coaches at risk of physical and verbal violence from Mr. McCord.

After seeing the details of the latest embarrassing incident spelled out on the opinion pages of local newspapers, I am happy to hear that a group of local Welch (Craig County) citizens have organized in efforts of seating a grand jury to look into McCord’s behavior. They have retained an excellent attorney from Vinita named Jot Hartley.

I encourage my many friends and readers to visit www.savewelchschools.org and read up on the details. There is a grassroots commitment to see this effort through. If you can spare any amount, please consider contributing financially. The website has details on the “How You Can Help” page. I have contributed, and I encourage you to do the same. whatever amount you can spare.