Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome into his time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust. And today it's a it's a very special day today because we're going to be talking about a gentleman who did so much for our community.
And uh, the legacy is going to live on. Jonah christ nine is with us here and we're going to talk about father. How are you doing today? I'm great, Well, that's great. Now Vasu. Everybody knows him as Vasu and it was just, you know, it just fed and such a right and energetic fella. And we're gonna be remembering him in a special occasion, are we not.
Yes, much of Bartlesfield does know that Kaivasudevin passed on September sixth, on a Friday, and for us from India and who are Hindus.
Friday is a very good day.
And it happened to be also a very special celebration on that day, so worldwide people were praying and Dad passed that evening. So yeah, I hope I won't get emotional. I was very much a daddy's girl and was his and it was his shadow for many, many many years and so I.
Miss him, and we all do, but you especially because of being Daddy's girl.
Yeah, and we understand and unlike a lot of people, if everyone's attached to their parents, but I spent well all but ten years of my life with my parents, you know, growing up, and then typically you go to college, right, so that's four years, and then you get married, and you know, the normal way of going is you get married and then you have a independent house.
Of your own and.
Then you got on with your life, and of course you're connected to your parents, but there's that amount of distance. But my story is a little different in that I was married when I was eighteen, and Kumar and I were pretty much an arranged marriage, but not totally. And we had known each other before, the families had known each other before, which isn't uncommon. And he had already had a degree and I was getting ready to go
into college. So he went back to get his engineering degree at Wichita State University, and I went and got my undergraduate in business and then a master's in business. And then afterwards we moved back to Bartlesville because Dad had a dream of owning a family home and he called my brother my sister in law and Kumar and
I and my brothers. As many of you know, is doctor Gopie Voster Davin, who was the gastin gerologist here in town for twenty six or twenty two years, and called us all together and say, hey, I have this vision. I have this dream of owning a big house. And it's very much more of a traditional We're from the state of Katala, Katala home where there's extended family who
all lives together. And it's a beautiful situation in that when the kids are growing up, you have grandma and grandpa's influence, where it has been shown that children who are around their grandparents they just do so well that you know, they get a difference perspective than that mean old mom and dad, you know. And then as the parents get older, in turn you take care of them.
And some of even in Europe and stuff. I remember Gail came brought over a bunch of her a bunch of people from her congregation, and they were talking about in the old days in Israel and other places that you know, traditionally this was not uncommon.
So we live that way.
And so I lived with my parents for forty five years and it's then it's really tough. You guys can imagine it. It's really tough because they become not just your mom and dad. They become your friends and people you look up to highly.
You know what I saying.
The relationship changes for the better as you age.
Yeah, I feel lucky.
Sometimes people find it hard to let go of being.
Mom and dad. Like Dad. You know, people who.
Knew Vasu he was a very He was a very bright and living guy. But he was also a go getter and a no nonsense man. People who dealt with him in business knew that, and so sometimes there were little conversations about Dad, you need to kind of back off a little bit here, and he would smile and say, okay. But whether that really happened or not, I leave it up to the audience to decide.
We're gonna have a very nice remembrance of Vasu coming up on Tuesday, October eighth. Tell us where we're going to hold this.
That's going to be at the Service and Technology or STC building. Dad started three companies, for sure. He had a vision to start like two or three more. Gave it names and everything. It was in the process, and then the Good Lord took him when he was eighty
six years old. But it's going to be at the STC Building one five South penn And for those of you who are not too savvy about, you know, using your phones or other stuff, if you go down Frank Phillips, you know that where the Frontier pool is, well one block west of Virginia. You'll make a right turn and we own that whole block, so you will come back more towards the Texio side and you'll see the main
entrance to the building and they'll be parking there. But there's also parking around on the other side on Roger Street in the back, so there's plenty of parking. And we just welcome anybody to the bartles of the Bartlesville community who would like to come and pay respects to Vasu. There's no set program as such. It's more of a come and go. As we were talking about this morning, Dad was and our families, but mostly Dad. It was Dad that was selected into the Legacy Hall of Fame.
I shouldn't say dad, because Mom was just as much a part of his success as as he was. Mom and Dad were selected him of course. With the legacy that means your family is typically involved as well, so Gopi and I were honored as well. But we have a little tape of his that they interview the person who's getting the Legacy award and others from around the community, and myself and Gopy talk about him.
We might play that in the background.
I haven't really talked to Kumar about it, but having talked to you, I think that might be a great idea.
It will be a great idea. I really think it'd be nice to hear the voice again and everything.
It would be nice, but it's also kind of hard, you know, I know, I mean, it's comforting, you know, it's a bittersweet sit situation.
It's comforting, but it's kind of hard.
To be a little bit now your story with your entire family. It's an immigrant experience. It's interesting because so many people whose families have been here in the United States for a long time really have no comprehension of what it's like to pick up your family from halfway across the planet and move them someplace else where. The cultures, the languages, and expectations might be a little different, if not completely different.
You're absolutely right, you know. The migrations started in the fourteen hundreds, to find America with good old Christopher Columbus in fourteen ninety two, and you know, the experience. Although we've had technology and times have changed, there are some things that ring true through the centuries. And one of those things for us is the immigrant Dixon experience. And just basically, well let me explain. In any case, I
can give you an example. You know, when I went to school at Bartlesville High School and it came time to take the PSATs, the SAT the Act and.
Gopy my older brother.
He's eight years older than I am, and for all purposes, he's a third parent. And a lot of that is just because of Gopi's nature, but also because Gopi went through the school system and he was just brilliant. I mean, people who talk about me being smart in Bartlesville, I always my friends are so kind to me and say you are so smart.
I was nothing compared to Gopi.
And in Pittsburgh, where we migrated to, if he goes back there, if there are people who have actually lived in the community for a long time, they will remember Gopi because he was on the rate. I mean, he would do things like these kind of interviews. He was just, you know, so active in school and in the community. He was student body president and he was part of the school board and just at a young age, you know.
But again the immigrant experience adds to that. In any case, Gopie was in the Prima at Pittsburgh State University in Pittsburgh, Kansas, and we had moved to Bartlesville. And in all honesty, a lot of people don't know, Dad didn't want to come to Bartlesville. Oh really, no, yeah, I mean because this community, you know, it's like the Garth Brooks song, thank God for unanswered prayers.
You know, the good Lord knows what's best.
But it was a horrible time for Vasu because he was with a company for over ten years in Pittsburgh and there was a kind of a conflict of thinking between the old regime and the new regime. A lot of people have experienced that, and he decided he wanted to change jobs. And so he was actually unemployed for like, I think eight months or something, six months eight months, and he went into a real depression. And all he wanted at that point was to start his own company.
But he would put things together and it just didn't work out, you know, and so fine. One day he was talking to one of his very close friends, Keith Thayer and Houston, who had worked with him before at Atkinson's. You know, it was a client, and he said, well, I'm starting a new operation there in Bartlesville, an engineering company. Why don't you come work for me? And so that's
how Dad came to Bartlesville. But he told my mom before he left, don't start backing anything, because my intention is to be back in Pittsburgh because we had built you know, again back to.
This immigrant experience.
We migrated in nineteen and those who have seen the legacy bear with me, they've heard this before, but we migrated in nineteen seventy. Dad was in this sense, we were not a typical immigrant family in that you know, Dad is his lineage is actual royalty in South India, like the people who met Vosco di Gama, the Indians who met Vosco di Gama, That sovereign or the quote unquote king of that region was Dad's. I mean Dad
was a descendant of that family. Okay, so we are in our part of India, we're very well known, we're very prominent. And Dad was educated and he wanted to come to college in the nineteen sixties, and so with the help of his brother in law, who is doctor Gobal if you all know doctor Gopal, the pediatrician in town, his father who is already studying here. In those days, immigration wasn't as difficult as it is today. Even if you were a student, you could sponsor relatives to come.
And so he spoke up for dad and he got to come to the University of Arkansas, Go hogs Go in nineteen sixty and he graduated from the university in nineteen sixty four and mad wonderful friends. And you know, people who talk about America, those people who are representing us, those of us who are from the Midwest, you know, get they have this idea that the East Coast and West Coast are the real Americas, especially the big cities, you know, Los Angeles and New York, well real America.
And my humble opinion is the Bible Belt Midwest. I mean, people will literally take their shirt off and give it to you and Voss, you would say that all the time. And he was treated so well by so many people. And looking back, you know, I didn't think much about it, but after watching remember the Titans. You know, desegregation had
just happened. This is nineteen seventy, you know. And I experienced a little pushback when I was growing up as a young girl in Pittsburgh, Kansas because but you know, kids can be mean.
I was little.
I had started My whole education experience has been in the United States. When I migrated, I was only about a year and a half old. Now Gopi was eight years older. So he had studied in India and learned a lot of the really great Indian work ethics for studying. And he will humbly say that you all think I'm smart, but so many people from India and from that system.
I mean, it kind of works against you, but it makes you so much smarter and stronger as a student because you better study your stuff and basically become an expert. Otherwise you're not going to do well. People come to America and go, this is a piece of cake.
You know.
So going back to my story, Gopi was very knowledgeable and was a third parent. But it was because he had gone through the school systems and I was getting ready.
To take the act SAT.
Gopy was a pre med It was hard to get hold of him. He was in Pittsburgh and we still hadn't had cell phones, and it was expensive to call Pittsburgh long distance, and so we were like, unless it's an emergency, you don't use the phone and call lugg distance, or it's very well planned ahead, because we were trying to save every penny in indiaan those days. When Dad migrated in nineteen seventy, they wouldn't let people take any more than a very small amount of cash I'm wanting
to say, like five hundred dollars from the country. So Dad came to this country in nineteen seventy with two small kids, his wife who was wearing sorry and then the native dress of India, and and himself at two suitcases, five hundred dollars in his pocket, no promise of a job. And my uncles who met him there at the mad Us there at the airport, my uncle in Seattle, Ramachandran, says,
you should have seen your dad's face, Thujata. He was coming basically with nothing, like so many other immigrants, I mean, from a great family, had a lot of money back there, but he couldn't take it. Came to this country and he was smiling from ear to ear, and he my not nervous, not scared, smiling from ear to ear because he had been bitten by the America bug like so many others. And the place that he worked in India at the time, he worked for some very major companies.
Like Tata Motors, which is.
The company who actually ended up buying Jaguar. They're very big company in India, steel company, and they went ahead and he was working for Tatai Industries and so that's like one of the best jobs that ever happened, that you could have ever had. And then he worked for another company called Akinson Armature where I mean, I'm sorry McNally bird and they have a collaboration in Pittsburgh, and
that's how Dad got his first set of experiences. Was trained right out of college in Pittsburgh and then worked in India. But India, especially the part of India where he was working in Bengal, was turning more communists and it was a very corrupt system and he didn't want to deal with that. I mean, Dad couldn't make thousands of dollars from bribes, dollars from bribes, not Indian rupees, dollars from bribes, but that's not who he was, and we're.
Going to remember him for who he was.
Coming up on Tuesday, Tuesday the.
Eighth, and that is going to be at the STC Offices and that is at one oh five South penn from four point thirty until six thirty. Thank you for sharing your story with us today.
Thank you so much for being here.
Such an outpouring from the public, that's why we're having this event for debt for Dad. We really hope anyone who would like to come would come. We'd be very happy and touched to see you.
Thank you,