COMMENTARY: In praise of the Okies...

This November, the State of Oklahoma becomes a senior citizen.

It’s our 100th birthday.

And what a century it’s been.

Born amid the flurry of horse’s hooves and billowing dust clouds, the Sooner State came into the union as an awkward, rough-and-tumble child.

We started out with a “boom.”

The agriculture and oil industries flexed their financial muscles and the 46th state of the union quickly took off.

We fought over a capital and even today, continue the argument.

By the 1930s, the rains would stop.

And the fields — like the oil and agricultural revenue — would dry up and, literally, blow away.

Some would migrate to California.

Those who remained became Okies.

And whether you agreed with John Steinbeck or not, it seemed — at the time — that the Almighty was angry with us; still we continued. Slowly, we regained our footing and rebuilt what we had lost.

We’ve had our share of saints and scoundrels — men and women who, for better or worse, left their mark on the Land of the Red Man.

The legacy continues.

By the 1950s, Oklahoma began to take its place on the national stage; from our borders came global leaders with new ideas and the iron will put see them accomplished.

But the poorest of us remained the same.

Illiteracy, hunger and gut-wrenching poverty hovered like a plague, dampening our spirits and slowing — or stopping — the progress we’d worked so hard to accomplish.

Still, we stood firm.

Despite the dust bowls, floods or the prairie’s version of the hurricane, we picked ourselves up, dusted off our bluejeans, and started over.

“We’re the people,” Ma Joad said.

It wasn’t an insult but a statement of fact.

Seventy years later, on a bright, cool spring day, a twisted, sick terrorist would try to destroy those people.

A building bombed, hundreds — including, small, helpless children — were killed. Hundreds more injured.

We survived.

Timothy McVeigh’s expression of contempt failed.

And, instead, the down-to-earth goodness and decency of the average Oklahoman, was viewed on a global scale.

With tears in our eyes, we buried our dead.

Then turned our attention toward the living.

We prayed.

And somewhere, deep inside us, we found the will to, once again, stand and go forward.

We’d need that strength.

Less than a decade later, nature would throw her worst at us — Okies living in Moore, Bridge Creek, Del City and in other towns, would experience the fastest winds ever recorded on the face of the earth.

Once again they stood firm.

Churches took in storm refugees and opened their buildings and their hearts to help. Our leaders put aside politics and embraced people.

We took that “love thy neighbor” thing seriously.

And now, it’s 2007.

One hundred years have passed since President Roosevelt put pen to paper and signed our birth certificate.

For the rest of this year, Okies of every stripe, creed and faith will pause and look back at the past. There, they will find our successes, our failures, our accomplishments and our mistakes.

And there, they will also find the underlying core, the foundation of what makes this wind-blown, just-wait-the-weather-will-change state: Its people.

Each and every one us, from the poorest of the poor to the millionaires in Nichols Hill, have discovered their Okie DNA — a gene that, no matter what, simply keeps trying.

I’m not sure how in evolved.

And I certainly don’t know where it came from.

But I do know that we Okies are unique.

And, just like Ma Joad said, we are “the people.”