Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is now nine forty five and it is time now for our community connection. We got Joe Sears in the studio today and it's always fun when we have Joel board, So Joe, I know. It is the holidays season and the hotel in Dewey.
Yes, we were carrying.
We're kind of reintroducing a little bit of a tradition, I guess.
Well.
Yeah, well, some new, some old, some new and some old. Well, the Dewey Hotel has been the center of Dewey's whole being. It was the in the whole area, the icon of history around. Yeah, and thank goodness, somebody had the good sense to save the old hotel. It was turned into a museum in the mid sixties. But the Jake and Nanny Bartles built the hotel back in eighteen ninety nine. As for the wheat business, that's beautiful New England hotel out in the middle of the prairie. But it's like
Frank Phillips and wool Rock. You know, he wooed people in the oil business with that beautiful ranch. Mister Bartow's and Nanny wooed people in the wheat business with that New England hotel out in the middle of the park. But they had arrange for a stage line to come in from Coffee Bill Kansas. It would get their customers
from the east right up to the front door. And when they opened the stagecoach and there was this New England, beautiful place, hey you know, yeah, and good cooking featured wild game and so that's been the nucleus of entertainment for many years. So we're trying to bring a lot of that back with new modern day. And so we're getting ready to have our Santa visits at the hotel and it coincides with the City of Dewey and their
Christmas Tree lighting, which takes place Thursday. Is coming Thursday at six o'clock, and they planted the City Dewey planted Christmas tree years ago across the street from the hotel in that city park in hopes that someday it would be big enough to decorate them.
Well it is.
It's finally big enough and they put lights on it and Santa throws his hand and magically the lights all pop on and the Dewey High School choir pops into Joy to the world and it's just goodness, theatrical.
Fun. Well, it is in force.
We call it celebrating the small town Christmas. And all the little northern communities of Want and Copan and Uh and all the country people come in to Dewey with their kids and grandkids and wait their turn inside the lobby and we take pictures of them in the parlor and give them how Coco and it's just a special thing we do for the families up in that area. Now Bartlesville's welcome, but it's really celebrating the small town Christmas understood.
And you know, Dewey is one of those communities where it looks like just about everybody's little small hometown that they have remembered from childhood, wherever they come from across the United States.
It just kind of fits that mold. It does. And as one of the those is there's still this thing that kind of draws.
Off and when they come back from other places as residents, they bring their friends with them and they bring him.
To the hotel. But they always say, you know, I've been here all my life and I never went in.
The hotel and it's like my last time you did there, you go and once they do it now a lot.
We now bring kids in from the school.
Just a block away is the school and they come down and re educate them as to how do he got his name? And Dewey was named by Jake Bartles. The Battle of Manila, the Spanish American War was taking place as the hotel was being built and mister Bartle's named his new town after Admiral Dewey and the Battle of Vanila, and so he's just, well, how wonderful is a town named after one of the latest American hero So it's got all.
Those uniqueness things to it.
But the city of Dewey has gone all out and supporting our efforts to know, do these activities that we do, our family Film Festival, and that's been very successful.
I've been hearing great reviews.
Yeah, everybody gathers, we have a good time. We have heaters outside that warms people up with the popcorn. But it's really taken off. I mean you drive by and there you see this big crowd out there watching a movie beside the hotel. And now we've got and then we had our Haunted House for kids, and that took a lot of doings. You know, it's you don't disturb the spirits of the hotel. They've been there forever and they're very nice spirits, and they do exist, and we
just leave them alone. But during COVID, we had to figure out ways to come up with money, so we opened the doors for the first time in over one hundred years to paranormal tours, and nobody went away disappointed. But the spirits did their share of clocking in and making sure everybody got their money's worth. But you know, they don't scare people, but wonderful things happen and telling stories, and we've got great stories. We got the little girl
who died there of mosquito bites. She was on her way from Ohio back to Colorado, and they swung down through Dewey because they had all these Fourth of July activities and it was an entertainment place. But I guess she had gotten lost somewhere along these river bottoms. But parents don't allow their children to get eaten up by mosquito bites, so we just think she probably got lost. The newspaper article didn't really say, but she died in the hotel from too many mosquito bites.
The doctors couldn't save her, but her little spirit is.
There and we didn't know about it for years, but the clairvoyance would come through and they would say, do you have a little girl in here? It's like, what, we don't know. We don't have any records of it. And so someone sent us a newspaper article on there. It was the story of the little girl and the whole town of Dewey came to her funeral.
I thought that was very touching.
So it's got wonderful stories and so all of these activities that we're doing were very careful that we have first class way of doing it so that it's people who are very traditional in the area. People didn't like mausolem stories at the cemetery, even though it was handled
very respectfully. They're extra things that people do to anyway, the hotel is make doing its share to keep the doors open, to make things happen for the community, but really to raise the awareness that to young people in particular.
I guess if you get used to a museum, going to the symphony, going to a play or a ballet, the same thing as going to a football game, you learn the process of supporting it and that's how the arts continue indeed, and that's how the Dewey Hotel will survive one hundred years from now, is you know, promoting it to young people who want to come there, who want to bring their guests.
There, and it works.
It's working it and making the place special for you know, our families in the area, which are mainly blue collar workers, you know, who just regular everyday people, and they feel very special when they come in there and they're treated very special. They want to dress up. It's not in Macy's. It's just a very comfortable place to go visit center.
You know. I go to the hotel a couple of times a year, one just goof around, you know and having fun, and then the other I do the from upstairs of the balcony, we do the radio bronches of the parade. And every time I go through there, I tes my mind just races with what kind of stories, what kind of folks were staying in those rooms that I passed by, What was their purpose for being in town, what did they do for a living, how did they
entertain themselves? And you know something, every time you go in there, different thoughts go through there, and your imagination kind of takes hold and you know that there. For me, it's never going to get old going to the hotel and just walking around and hearing the.
Stories and hearing the stories and feeling them. I've been there eight years. The lobby is just that is so rich, rich with history. It is, and I'll tell some of the visitors, some of the visitors are really into the history thing, and this history of Indian territory. It's not even Oklahoma's history. It's Indian territory, sure, but where the lobby.
The sinking of the Lusitania that helped start World War One, Harbor nine to eleven, Insurrection Day, all the major events in our history have been discussed in that lobby, and that just it's saturated with stories and sides and discussions. And that big porch now, I love that part of the building. It's just alive with history and you can feel it. And then you hear some of the stories. We were talking today about the rodeo days and oh yes, from eight to forty.
Eight, nineteen o eight to nineteen forty.
Nine, Yes, and seventy five years ago, a rainstorm, a biblical rainstorm that only Cessiped the Mial could come up with, send it our way, and it saturated the rodeo grounds and made it sand and mud, and all those people in the stand the horses were tied to the pilings. A clown shot off a gun in a clown act and the horses bolted and it started a shimmy.
An effect, and the whole thing just collapsed on people.
But nobody died, you know, it was just a lot of injured. But the city decided, you know, we're just not going to rebuild. I think it was probably because of insurance and my abilities.
But you know, that was the.
Third largest rodeo in North America for for many years. Yes, and everybody camped. Forty thousand people came to three rodeos over the fourth and they all camped.
You know, I can see them. We're going to the rodeo. Don't forget the skellet, all.
The good cookie and they wanted to They look forward to it every year. And I think that's a to see all the pictures of those people. And the old rodeo grounds are down where the high school is now along the Highway seventy five. But Dewey's a rich community and it's always been very separated from Bartlesville.
It's never been a suburb of Bartlesville, No, it never.
I remember years ago, I think the two towns were separated. In football. Little old Dewey was tough. You know, you cannot play Bartlesville anymore. And I think that's that rivalry is there. But the rivalry that was started by Jake Bartleson. You know, he had a very successful grocery store in Bartlesville and he put it on rollers and moved it
five miles north to do Yea, his own town. Well, he had managed to bring the railroad through the area and the stagecoach and then they changed the railroad route, and I said, you know, I'll just move up north five miles. And then when he put his store down where the Tom Mixed Museum is now, he was just a block from a railroad stop. Easy psy, easy pasy and very smart man. And Nanny, lets not forget her. She was the chief of the Delaware's daughter.
She was.
Educated, had money and that was her land allotment. And back then women were not allowed to own property or of business until the eighteen seventies. That woman was ready to be an entrepreneur. And so the two of them made excellent business decisions anyway, we're getting ready to celebrate that.
This year Thursday. What time do we want folks to start huddling around, Well.
They throw the switch at six pm. Santa throws the switch, he goes inside the and the business begin. So you want to be there before six pm. And it's not an entertainment thing. They just open up the Christmas tree and then the highlight is you get to go visit Satday a beautiful hotel.
Oh my gosh. But you know what, it's a celebration of small town is and you bring a little history to life, and you bring a lot of smiles to them, but a lot of little ones.
I take pictures and then I put them out on Facebook. Because the parents that bring their kids, even in the there's nothing going on, they bring them just to experience it.
You know, those are smart parents.
Kids that go to museums and attend events. They make better grades, better citizens of the community. They just it's all all well around and good citizen ry.
Well, when you get around things like that and you start asking questions of that next thing, you know, you're asking questions of everything, which makes you a real good student.
Well, we've got some neighborhood boys that just don't have anything to do. And I recruited them one day and see, you guys want to help out.
Yeah, And now a year and a half.
Later, we have a crew of high school students that just come down to help. We started off with two and we're built up to seven of them, and so things will recruit themselves, but they kind of look upon it as their hotels in their neighborhood. They invested in it, they are and it gives them self esteem a project, you know, the rewards of applause and look what you did, and we.
Did it together.
And you know, some of them, you know, even had they been in with the police at any time, you got the chief Jimmy Gray and people looking at him going, you know, I've never seen that side of you.
So it's all, it's all good. It's all very good.
Joe. I want to thank you for coming in as always, thank you for sharing with us today. If folks get out to Dey, get there a little bit before six, light up the tree and you get to visit Santa Claus.
Yes, it's it's worth it. Presidential and Commercial Plumbing, Colin Mason's Plumbing, we're serving you with their Priority
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