Oral history interview with Garland Kent

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. Today is May 22, 2018, and I'm interviewing Garland Kent, a Chilocco alumnus from the class of 1958. Garland, you're a Ponca tribal citizen. One of your vocational tracks at Chilocco was plumbing, and you turned that into a successful career doing that and pipefitting and landing a job with Conoco. You've been in charge of the Chilocco powwow, I think for a number of years, and I look forward to learning more about your time with the school and your career. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.

Kent: Yeah.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Kent: I was born ten, twenty-two, thirty-eight, in Pawnee, Oklahoma, but I grew 1:00up here in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Spent all of my young adult life, well, still yet, and went to school here in the Ponca City Public Schools until I got up to junior high. Then I decided to go to Chilocco school, Chilocco Indian agricultural school. I enrolled there in the fall of 1954 and graduated class of '58, May of 1958, senior class.

Little Thunder: What did your parents do for a living?

Kent: My dad was a carpenter, and my mom was a housewife. Dad was a carpenter, and he learned his carpentry trade at Chilocco way back in the early 1900s. At that time, he attended eight years there, up to the eighth grade. At that time, back in those days, if you got an eighth grade education, you were certified as 2:00educated, so that's as far as he went in high school. He was a carpenter all of his life, and so was two of my other brothers.

Little Thunder: Okay, yeah. I wondered how many brothers or sisters. -- How many brothers or sisters in the family?

Kent: I had two brothers that attended there. Beside my dad, I had two brothers and two sisters and myself.

Little Thunder: What was your exposure to Ponca culture and language growing up?

Kent: I grew up here in the Ponca area, and I remember--. I'm half Ponca, Otoe, and Iowa tribes. My culture that I learned was from the Otoe and Ponca tribe. One disadvantage that I had was that my dad was an Otoe member and my mom was a Ponca. In the household, they didn't converse with each other in their tribal languages, so I didn't learn how to speak like some of the younger folks did 3:00because their parents were the same tribe. I had a little disadvantage. What I did learn through the years, or what I've learned, from mostly from the Ponca tribe. It don't really affect me in any way other than I don't know a lot of my culture way back. Some of the things that I could have known due to that because Mom and Dad didn't talk about their tribal cultures, but we did learn it through the years and things like that. I'm still learning yet to this day. There's different things that are changing from way back when I remember the things when I first got interested in what's going on. Up until the present day, the culture of certain things is changing drastically. It's just something that we're going to have to accept.

Of course, the old saying, the elder advice, it's still there yet, and we still go by that yet. Most of us do, anyhow. The younger ones, they may not know the 4:00history of the Ponca tribe or the affiliated tribe. They are learning what they can now, but a lot of our tribal cultures are kind of going away. I hate to see that and hear that. That's one of the things when I went to Chilocco. I knew the surrounding tribes around here in the Ponca City, Kay County area, northern Oklahoma area, but when I got to Chilocco, that's when I met many different tribes from all over the United States. I learned their culture and their customs and things, what they do, even the things they ate, things like that. I did learn a lot of things from them folks, those students that I went to school with. They learned from us, also, because they were the same way I was. They didn't know the culture that I had, and they were the same way with them.

Little Thunder: So you kind of had that family tradition, (your dad had gone to 5:00Chilocco) so when you first got to Chilocco, what were your impressions?

Kent: When I first got there, I didn't know if I was going to know anybody because I didn't--. I knew of the school. My dad and brothers went there before I did. When I did get there, I felt comfortable and felt at ease because everybody, they was just like me. They were learning things that they didn't know about. The school system, of course, we were there to learn our ABCs and things. That was the main idea. When we got there, I felt comfortable being there. Of course, the break-in time, orientations, that we had for the first month, it was kind of exciting and something new to me and new to everybody else. Everybody all started just fitting right in, and it worked out really good, as far I know, anyhow.

Little Thunder: What was one of the teachers or administrators you remember? 6:00What's one of the teachers or administrators that made an impression on you at Chilocco?

Kent: There were several of them. Two of them were English teachers: Miss Kay Ahrnken and Miss Mabel Walker. They were English teachers, and they knew pretty well all the cultures of all the tribes that came into the classrooms. They didn't single anybody out, but they could talk pretty well with just anybody. Through that, I did ask them some questions about what they knew about things that other students that were there before me, and they were very up to date on everything that was going on. The other instructor and teacher was a person called Dee Gregory, and he was the social studies. He was not only with the international and national; he was with the culture of all of Oklahoma. He was 7:00pretty well up on everything that was going on. He was well instructed on how to teach in a social studies area the different things that we would learn in history books and things like that. He knew exactly where to go. There were some things, when I wanted to know of a certain culture or something, I would go to him and ask him, and he would find out for me. If he didn't know, he would find out. He was kind of a go-to guy.

Little Thunder: You were interested in some of the--there were some amazing vocational offerings, and you were interested in some of those. Some of the vocational offerings you were interested in--.

Kent: One of the reasons I went to school there was that I didn't know of the--vocation and the trades department was the best in the surrounding area, 8:00unless you went to a special tech school like Okmulgee or things like that and you got into one type of vocation. But at Chilocco, you had a choice of many things all the way from learning how to cook in the kitchen, clear out to heavy equipment working out in the fields, and everything in between because Chilocco at one time were domestically self-supporting. They had everything in between, like, leatherwork, auto mechanic, body shop, dry cleaning, power plant operation, everything in between, carpentry, painting, masonry, plumbing. Anything that a student would need to learn to get a job in any city, it was there for him to learn, or her. On the women's side, I don't know too much about that, but they also had cosmetology and home ec, and things like weaving and those things like that, learning different types of fabrics. Now, I didn't know too much about that because I wasn't in it. (Laughter)

Anyhow, those were the things that we--. It was a hands-on thing. It wasn't just 9:00reading out of books. You actually did the job as you were learning. Say, for instance, when I first started out, I had to learn different types of pipes, and different types of gauges and types of metal that you worked with, and also the gases that you put in with the flanges, and different--kind of material tools that you would need. You would learn all those things. Like the gaskets for instance, I didn't realize there was so many different kinds, all the way from paper gaskets to molybdenum gaskets. Paper gaskets are just the regular gaskets. Then there were steel-type gaskets and aluminum-type gaskets, clear down to the moly steel, was an acid-resistant type that you would use, like, in Conoco for instance or in a refinery that you had HF [hydrofluoric] acid and things like that. It had gaskets and metals for that called moly steel. You had to learn all 10:00of those things, and that was there for you to learn. Different types of, like, bolts for instance, the strength of how many thousand pounds of PSI it will hold, clear up in to the tonnage up there, the different bolts and the strength of the pipe and the strength of the bolts and whatever tools you would need to put the pipe together.

We learned all of that, and it was all a hands-on thing. We took care of everything on the campus. We took care of the piping and the plumbing department and pipe-fitting in all the dorms and all the school buildings, even the employees' homes and things like that. They never had to call a plumber from out of town. Same with the auto body shop. The employees would bring their cars down there, and the students would work on it and repair it for them for free. They might have to pay for the parts, but an instructor was there to make sure that they did it right. It was a hands-on thing; they learned while they were doing the job. Same with the dry-cleaning. The students and employees would bring 11:00their clothes to the dry cleaning, and that was their job to learn how to do it. It was free. We were self-supporting. In a way, we were self-supporting. In the leather department for instance, people would take their shoes. Back in those days, people would take their shoes down and have them repaired rather than going down to Payless and buying another pair. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Right.

Kent: That was the things that they did there, and the power plant supplied all our power and steam and heat and things like that. We had people in there learning that thing, so in case you came to Ponca City or wherever you went, you would be able to know how to work in a power plant or generator plant. Those things, it was exciting to see everybody doing what they're doing. Especially in my job, I had to go all different places throughout the campus. I had to learn all the different types of buildings and things like that, what was in those buildings, what was in those residences. It was something kind--it wasn't dull. I'll say that. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What is one of your best or worst memories of detail?

Kent: Of detail? (Laughter) I would say probably--everybody had to do their details. Everybody was assigned a certain detail. Say, for instance, one person, like in the dorms, you had to mop and clean the hallways, and wax and buff the hallways and things like that. Had to empty your trash, take care of things like that. It was just one of the things we had to do, had to learn. I don't really look back, don't think there was anything I didn't like. Of course, I just had to do it, and we did it. Got to do them; might as well go ahead and do it.

Little Thunder: What did you do for fun?

Kent: There were several things that we could do. There was different clubs 13:00there that you could join, and they always had something putting on, maybe once a week or once a month like socials. Go down to the gym or where it might be and have dances and things like that. Also there was sports activities, intermural and also interscholastic, you could do all over, and I was into that.

Little Thunder: What sports?

Kent: I started out in football, and then I had basketball and track. Went four-year letterman in track and two-year letterman in basketball. I had to drop out of football. Those are some of the things in the athletic department. Everything was there that every other school had. We had it also. I don't know if we had something that nobody else didn't have. I don't think we did. We were Class A division, and we participated against schools like Ponca City, Blackwell, Cushing, Perry, and Guthrie, Stillwater, all of those. That was the 14:00class we were in, and it was one of the top, toughest classes in the state. That was the only one, Class A, B, C, and D. We were in Class A because our student enrollment put us over the--. There's a certain amount of students could be in the school where what class they're going to be assigned to in sports. Due to our enrollment, (and that included a Navajo program also) our high school academics from freshman to senior year, ninth to twelfth grade, that was academic. That was the regular students.

Now, the Navajo program, that ranged from, we called, first year to eighth year. First year is equivalent to kindergarten, first grade, and an eight year student was equivalent to an eighth grade student. Finish the eight-year program, he could possibly go into ninth grade and on into high school. Due to that, those students, even the little guys in the first grade, they counted it as our 15:00enrollment, so that put us over the top to have to be in Class A, which was all right with me. I'd rather be there rather than be in--. Of course, the competition was a lot stronger. -- We competed well with every school that we competed against throughout the state. We had some top-notch athletes that came through there that was recognized throughout the state. The hundred-yard dash man was one of them, Don Thames. He tied the Oklahoma state record in the hundred-yard dash. At that time, our dashes were classified as yards, not meters like they are today. Everything was in yards, the hundred-meter, two-hundred-meter, two-hundred-yard dash, hundred-meter dash or forty-yard dash. It was in the yards, not meters.

We'd have some great athletes that qualified and were recognized throughout the state for that. When I was there, they didn't have boxing. They did before and 16:00after, but those years that I was there they didn't have boxing. I didn't know this that some of the boxing athletes were, to this day, well-known throughout the nation. We've had some top-notch boxing athletes there. I don't know why they dropped it when I was there, (I didn't ever know why that) but later on, they did bring it back. There was some athletes that still went on to fight in Chicago and Hawaii and places like that. They qualified for the Golden Gloves, to go there. That's the kind of athletes we had there. They weren't just run of the mill folks. Of course, we had some that were, (Laughter) but a lot of them were outstanding.

Little Thunder: Right. I understand you met your wife at Chilocco, Lucy.

Kent: Yeah, I didn't know Mrs. Kent: before I went to Chilocco. She may have known of me. I don't know. Anyhow, as we entered into the ninth grade, we had a 17:00class. We would all get together and meet each other. Fact is, one of the things we had to do is we had to invite a girl from that class and take them to a dance whether we knew them or not. That's how we got to know each other. (Laughter) I remember that first time. I had a girl, Edna Randall. I didn't know her. It just, her name came up, and I said, "Well, okay, whoever that is. Edna, who are you?" (Laughs) That's how we got to know each other through the years. Then later on I got to know her, and things kind of stuck together and things like that. Ended up getting married, and going to turn over sixty-two years June 6 of this year.

Little Thunder: Oh, congratulations! Your folks were not too far away. How often 18:00did you go home?

Kent: We were allowed to go home. Each boy and girl were allowed one weekend to go home to visit home no matter, and Ponca City was close to me. I got to go home every month. It was usually the first weekend of the month for boys to go home, and then the second weekend for the girls to go home, wherever they lived. You could get a pass on a Friday evening, and you had to check back in Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. Had to be there before bed check at nine thirty Sunday evening.

Little Thunder: Were you always ready to go back?

Kent: Yeah, I was. I'd come home and eat home-cooked food, and Mom would cook the things that I was used to eating before I went to school. I'd go to, maybe, a movie and things like that, but come Sunday afternoon, Mom would clean up my clothes, pack them back up, and get ready to go. It wasn't nothing about going 19:00back. There was a lot of students that didn't want to, but I wasn't one. I was ready to go back.

Little Thunder: The food at Chilocco--how was the food at Chilocco?

Kent: I look back now; it was probably some of the best. I hear about different folks griping about the food that they ate at the government schools. It wasn't like that at Chilocco. We had some of the best cooks, and, like I say, the instructors in all the vocations were some of the top, some of the best. So was with the cooks and the folks in the bakery department. They were some of the best. For instance, when you first enroll there as a freshman there, it was mandatory that you took agricultural along with your regular vocation because Chilocco Indian Agricultural School was an agricultural school. You went to your vocation half a day, and then you went to your academic class half a day. It 20:00might be morning or afternoon. Then one of those days through there, you had to attend agricultural class. There were different things that we had to learn hands-on. We weren't just reading in books.

Like, say for instance, there was a sheep shed, hog shed, horse barn, stock barn, and a dairy barn. Everything in there, we had to learn all of those things, and it was hands-on. You didn't just go look at them; you was out there working with them. This time of the year, we'd brand the little calves out there. Picked up the little calves and go brand them. That was one of the things we had to learn. Had to learn how to de-horn a cow in the dairy area. We had the Holstein type. We had to milk those cattle every day. You could not miss, every day. That was one of the most fun things. Everybody liked to work the dairy barn because you got to eat all the ice cream and drink all the chocolate milk you wanted. (Laughter) That was one of the things; we processed our own milk. We 21:00bottled it and processed it, and that went to the cafeteria or chow hall. Everything in the dairy line, we made, from cottage cheese to butter to chocolate milk. Everything between, we had it. We made our own.

In the stock barn, all the cattle there, you had to learn to work with the cattle. Go ride your horse out there and learn how to round up the cattle and things like that, like you was actually on a ranch. It's what it was, was a ranch. You work with the horses at the horse barn. You work with them. The sheep shed, you had to tend the sheep. You had to shear the sheep. This time of the year, you'd be shearing the sheep there. Those are things that you learned. As you would shear the sheep, (everybody knows that's sheared a sheep before) when you get done, your hands are baby soft because of the lanolin in the wool. I mean, it's pure lanolin. Your hands are soft for a week afterwards. Things like that, you learn how to do those things. Everything was hands-on. They would tell 22:00you how to do it, and then you would do it. Like for instance, every now and then the kitchen area, talking about the food, we had the cooks there. The food wasn't the same every day. They had a menu every day.

One of my aunts, Julia Kent: , was one of the nutrition that worked there. Every meal, she had a different type of menu for every meal, the nutrition that you would need. Every now and then, the kitchen would send out a request to the agriculture department to butcher four beef, six hogs, and twelve sheep for the meat line. That took care of the meat line. Of course, there were certain other things that we got like the weenies, hot dogs. We had a contract with Maurer-Neuer [meat packing] out of Ark City [Arkansas City, Kansas] at that time, and we would get some of those things from them. Same with the ag department. We farmed our own small grain, corn, millet, wheat, oat, everything. 23:00We planted it, farmed it, learned how to cut it. Learned how to drive the tractor combines and everything. I wasn't there during that. I was home. School was out by then, by the time they did all the farming. They had a contract with, I think it was Winfield [Kansas] some place in Winfield because I know they would come down. Every day they would come down with a little tanker truck, and they would load up the excess milk from the dairy barn because we had gallons.

At that time, milk wasn't classified as gallons. It was classified as pounds. They would come in and load up their trucks and take it back. I think it was St. John's out of Winfield. The rest of the milk, we used ourselves. We were self-supporting. We supplied our own meat. The hog, for instance, we would have to learn how to butcher the hog, butcher the beef. We had to learn that in case 24:00we ever needed to. That was just part of agriculture and being on the farm. Everything on the farm that we'd need to know, they taught you that. Fact is, Oklahoma State was sending some of their students to Chilocco and spend a week there and work with all the students throughout. College students was learning from high school students. That's how well advanced we were at the ag department there. We was glad to have them. We would take them to chow with us and things like that, and they enjoyed being there. (Laughter) These guys were the students from OSU. Come up to Chilocco and learn from high school guys. We weren't trying to be snobby or nothing like that, but we enjoyed working with them.

There was things like that. They learned how we did our dairy line and how we went about taking care of the cattle, and when we'd get done, we'd clean out the dairy barn where it was clean. We had inspectors go in and be sure that before 25:00the next herd, the cattle, would come in, it was clean, the trough. I remember--I was there when it happened. The cattle would be out there on the south side of the dairy barn and would be waiting to come in to be milked. It was usually the first thing in the morning. Sometimes it might be a different group because you rotated every day. You were assigned one week to a dairy barn, stock barn. You were assigned to one week. You might be there in the morning, or sometimes might be in the afternoon. In the morning time, that's when you milked all the cattle. I remember this one cow came in, and they knew to go right to the stalls. They knew how to go in there, and they'd put the lock down on their head and put the food in the trough and things like that in there.

It was the automatic milk machines. You cleaned off their udder, washed it all 26:00off, and they knew it. They'd just stand still and let you do it because they knew that they wanted to be milked. We'd get the little suction cups put on the teats--. I noticed that one cow--I was down the stall there, and I noticed that one cow kind of kicking around there. "What's going on here?" I got to looking and said, "Hey, there's something wrong with her." They put her on there like that and wiggled it around, and wiggled that one around. Got okay. A little while there, he turned that machine on to start sucking the milk. I'll tell you what, that cow went ape. We didn't know why. "Turn it off!" Boy, she was kicking and raising her head up. Come to find out, she had been out in one of the pastures that we didn't allow them to be in. It had these little round, yellow burrs out there, and one of those burrs got in her teat. We put that little cup on it, and she let us know it was there. We found it and got it out.

That was one of the things that happened there. Another time we was butchering 27:00hogs and had a ham hock hanging upside down. Sheep and hog, you got to bleed them. You can't kill them; you've got to bleed them. We had the hog hanging upside down. You go in there and you cut their vein in their throat. You put a clamp around their snout and lock it down where they can't bite you because they're just hanging straight down. You grab that chain and hold it down, cut their throat, and bleed them. This guy apparently didn't cut it good enough. It was bleeding, but it wasn't good enough. That hog started kicking, and he got loose. I'll tell you what, he scattered everybody out of the hog shed. The instructor ending up having to shoot him to put him out of his misery. He had that thing on him, but he was causing a big ruckus in the slaughterhouse there. That was the only time that we had a miscue.

Little Thunder: Those are really difficult things, like you say. You have to 28:00have that training. You have to be able to do that. Thanks for sharing that story.

Kent: Those were some of the things, like I say, we learned first-hand because we had to do it. We weren't just told to do it. We had to do it, and we had to do it right. The instructors was right there showing us to be sure that we were doing it right. Like I say for instance, when you put a hog in there, you put him in salt brine. You scald his hide, and you scrape until his skin is white. Then he was ready to be butchered. You learned all of that. Learned how to skin a cow, what parts--the knives that we used and things like that, how to dissect it and take it apart and hang it up and get it ready to send to the chow hall or the kitchen. The trucks would come down, and they would load it up for us. We had to learn all that, just like we were going to be butchers. We weren't, but it was there in case we wanted to.

Little Thunder: So how--when you left Chilocco when you graduated, what happened next?

Kent: After I graduated in the spring of '58, came home. Course, I was married then, and that's one of the things I knew. I thought, "I better learn something because I'm married now." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You got married during school?

Kent: Yeah, the year of my senior year. That was one of the reasons they didn't allow married students to attend. Both of them couldn't be at the school at the same time. One could, but not both of them. The last I knew, it was still standing there because there were other students that were married. I came home. In the Ponca City area, the job situation was pretty tight. I applied at different places into plumbing and things like that, and the only jobs that were opening were construction. I did. I got into construction, building grain silos 30:00and bridges and things like that, and I became a steel man to put the steel into the--. Put it down, then pour the concrete on later on. I was in that for a while. Then later on, the guy was telling me that Conoco is getting to the point where they're getting ready to hire. I applied at Conoco and was there.

Little Thunder: Because they had a big plant here.

Kent: Yeah, it's right there. It was at that time it was Continental Oil Company, and then they bought out the east plant over here, which at that time--. We started out as City Service then went to Sequoyah. Finally Conoco was getting so big, they bought Sequoyah. This whole area here now was Conoco. Now it's ConocoPhillips now. That's where I went to work there and spent the rest of 31:00my working years there. I retired out of there June 1 of '04. I was hired on due to--when I got my certificate from Chilocco, I was classified a journeyman plumber and pipefitter. Due to that training there, that's one of the reasons why Conoco hired me because they needed pipefitters in the refinery, so there I was. I worked part-time on that, and I also worked in the lube division in Conoco.

I learned how to make different grades of oil, all the way from 5W clear up to 4050 grease and all the things in between. We'd load it out from little pipe cans to 20,000-gallon tank cars, and everything in between that. We learned how to do that. Then later on, through Conoco I took my EMT training and was at the Fourth Street Clubhouse over here. Went through the whole session. It wasn't broke up over two days or three days. Every day, we went there. At the very end, 32:00the last two days, we had to take a test. You had to pass it by 90 percent before you got your certificate. Through that, I found out the emergency response team at Conoco, they were short on first responders. I bid in there, and they put me in there.

Little Thunder: So you left your old job for that emergency responder job?

Kent: No, it was still in the refinery, but it covered all of the complex at Conoco. It was the fire brigade and first responder, and I was in the emergency first responder brigade. Wherever they needed us, that's where we was. They assigned me because the things I knew--they assigned me to be head of the emergency breathing air department because if there was some kind of release that happens here in the refinery, you have to get them certain types of breathing air equipment. I had to know all that and teach those guys. I taught 33:00those classes to them guys, the whole refinery, not just one, but everybody. Anybody that would come into the refinery had to come through my office and my shop to learn how to use that equipment, no matter if they was just going to go around ten minutes and out and that was it. They had to come to me first in case while they were there something went wrong and they had to use that equipment, they would know how. That's one of the classes that I had to do.

I also had to give classes throughout the refinery on different types of emergency things. It was mostly breathing air equipment, how to use it and how to put it on and why you would use it, different kinds of what you would need. There's different types of breathing air--. There's a negative pressure respirator that you're breathing atmospheric air, but it's filtered. It's got little filters on it. There's another kind, SCBA, self-contained breathing apparatus. That's where you're in full hazmat gear. You're not breathing 34:00atmospheric air; you're breathing out of a tank. You had to learn how to use those, why you would need that, when you would need it, things like that. We've got several places here that you would need to do that. You can't just go in there if you don't. You're not going to last very long. I had to learn all different kind of chemicals. HF, for instance, hydrofluoric acid, that's from the alky [alkylation] unit, very dangerous place. All through the refinery, due to the refining of the oil, it's organic.

Anything organic will decay and create h2s, hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas. It 35:00even comes out of your home because it's decayed matter. If your sewer system is not right and comes up through your home, you can get very sick. H2s is a deadly gas. There's a lot of gases there in the refinery, and I had to learn all of those. That's my job, to teach those guys. Like, h2s for instance, at ten parts 36:00per million, you've got a little monitor on you, when it starts going off, it means for you to get out of there now, not stand around. You've got to go now. Ten parts per million to evacuate. Twenty parts per million, if you don't, you're going to start getting sick. You probably get to throwing up, or you might start getting disoriented and things like that. Fifty parts per million, you are going to get sick, and chances are you're going to go down and you may not make it. Hundred parts per million, you're going to die instantly. As soon as you breathe it, you're dead. That's how deadly h2s is.

We had to learn all of that; I'd teach those guys that. Now, these are parts per million. These are not one part. This is parts per million. That's how dangerous those things are. When the monitors say get out of there, you need to get because what it does is, at ten to twenty parts per million, what it does is it attacks your part of the brain and it paralyzes your breathing apparatus in your body. You cannot breathe. Somebody's going to have to breathe for you. That's one of the things--at ten parts per million for you to get out. Evacuate now, not later, but now. Those things we learned, and I had to teach those things when I was at Conoco. I also responded to different types of releases, fires for instance. We had several fires down there. We had one fatality there. About two years before I retired, we had a fatality at number one crude unit. Had an explosion down there. One of our operators got severely burned that he didn't make it. Anyhow, that's one of the things.

I responded to that. I was one of the first ones there because I knew I was on the safety channel, channel one. My job was to drive one of the fire trucks down, engine trucks, and get there on line so everybody else, rest of the brigade come there and tie and hook up the hose, prepare to fight the incident whatever it might be. There was other ones that I'd heard but not like that. It was an explosion is what it was. It was little things like that. People talk 37:00about Conoco, "Oh, they get high-paid money," but I'll tell you why. Once you come in that gate, you're in a whole different world. It's not like being out here on the street. It's a whole different world; it's a dangerous job. You're working in a high-explosion area every day. Every minute of the day, you've got to really be careful what's going on in a refinery. It's not like out here. Things can happen just in a second, and it has. I know it can happen, and it has. Those are the things I learned in my tenure at Conoco.

Little Thunder: You also had a chance to use your EMSA training at that dance one time outside of work.

Kent: Yeah I did, outside of work. When I learned that, I thought, "Will I ever be able to do--if I need to, will I be able to do this?" I was thinking about my own folks or somebody, my friends or somebody like that. I thought, "Well, I 38:00think I probably could." I know I'd have to in case if I come to that area there. At one time if you're a known EMT person--there's only two states, Vermont and Missouri, that don't recognize the Good Samaritan law. I think they may have changed now, but at one time, they didn't recognize the Good Samaritan law. If you administered first aid to somebody, they couldn't be sued in case something happened to that person. Everybody else, they do recognize the Good Samaritan law. I thought, "Would I be able to do that if I ever needed to?" It so happened I was at a place in Pawhuska, and there was a person that went down. I recognized the symptoms on it. He was having a heart attack. When I finally got to him, everybody was all around him, was crowded around him, and I said, 39:00"You need to get back. Get back." He was laying on the ground. Picked him up and laid him on a bench. When I got to him, he was code blue. He lost all his faculties.

There's code yellow, code green, code red, and then there's code blue. Code blue, you're not here no more. That's what he was. He had no pulse, nothing, no heartbeat, wasn't breathing. I commenced to give him CPR and work on calling an ambulance at the same time, and about four or five minutes later, got him back. He started breathing. He got a heartbeat first. Kept giving him mouth to mouth, and then after a while he started breathing on his own. After a while he was wanting to sit up! We said, "No! Lay still." He just came back; it was there. Just like, I know my ABCs, like ABCD--. You know that. When that training came in, it was just there. I just knew what to do. It happened. I never thought I'd be able to. "Would I be able to?" I did; thank goodness I did know that. That's 40:00one of the things that I learned from Conoco. You hope you never--. Different things that you learn in that EMT, how to set a broken leg, broken bones, things like that, even a compound fracture or a double compound fracture.

You first come upon an incident or something like that, if there's a bleeder, look at who's there. You attend to the bleeder first because an adult can die within two minutes from loss of blood. You get down to three to four pints of blood down, and you're going to go out. An adult can bleed to death within two minutes if he's got a severe cut, so you always attend to the bleeder first and then the rest. Of course, you would think--. One of the questions that's hard to answer is that if you come upon an incident, a car wreck for instance, and a little baby is laying down in the ditch and you see a man in the car and he's 41:00bleeding, who do you attend to first, the little baby or the bleeder? Everybody--get the little baby and throw him out of there. I was wrong. You attend to the bleeder first. You get the little baby out later on once you get the blood stopped, stem the flow of blood. Then you get the little baby. The little baby can live six to eight minutes without oxygen. You could bring him back possibly, unless it's really bad. It's been known that you can bring him back, six to eight minutes.

That was one of the questions we had to answer, and a lot of them got it wrong. It seems mean. It seems like you wouldn't think that, but that's the way it is. You attend to the bleeder first. Like a tourniquet for instance, if you can't get the bleeding stopped, the last resort is to put a tourniquet on. That's to stop the bleeding. They always tell you if you do that, the chances are you're going to lose that limb. You're going to lose that leg, or you're going to lose that arm due to that tourniquet. During the meantime, do you want them to lose 42:00their life, or do you just want to just lose a limb? You use a tourniquet as a last resort before you get the blood--. It's just things like that that we learned in it. All EMTs, they all know that. One of the things that we didn't know is if you're there and you should call for EMT or ambulance or something like that, you tell them the situation of what you know about the patient or whoever may be injured or things like that.

When they get there, you tell them what you know, and then get back and get out of the way. Let them do their job because that's what they're there for. You might want to help lift them up or do something like that, but when they get there, tell them what the situation is and get back and let them do their job. A lot of times that happens. A lot of times people are so concerned about their loved ones, they want to go over and get around and hug them and things like that. They mean well, but it's wrong. They're getting in the way of the EMT because they've got to get the job done now. They can't wait another minute or 43:00two. It's things like that that you just learn those things.

Little Thunder: It's great training to have. When did you start getting involved with the Chilocco Alumni Association?

Kent: I was going to a bowling tournament down at Ponca Bowl, and they was having an alumni meeting at the Pioneer Bank. It's on the way down there, so I thought I'd stop in and see who was there and what's going on. There were several folks there from all over. The national board was there. At the time, it was Jim Edwards. I walked in and sat down. "Come in and sit down." Everybody said, "I know who you are." One of the ideas they were here was that they was wanting to start a north central chapter. There was several chapters all over, but they didn't have one in Ponca City, northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas.

Little Thunder: That close to the school, and they didn't have one?

Kent: Yeah.

Little Thunder: That's crazy!

Kent: That's what I'm saying. I got in there, and that's when they was talking about it. I got elected president of it! (Laughter) I just dropped in to see what was going on, and got elected to president.

Little Thunder: Was this about fifteen years ago?

Kent: No, that was January 5--. It might have been 2004. No, no, it was sooner than that. It must have been about 2000. Anyhow, it was on June 5. From then on, because I was the president then, I had to attend all the meetings wherever they had them, so that's how I got really involved with alumni. I would go to their 45:00parties and things like that once in a while, not every year, but once in a while. When I became the president, then I had to go. It was fun because I got to see my old classroom buddies and meet new ones that I didn't know that were there before me and before and after I was there. That was kind of exciting, and I still enjoy that.

Little Thunder: And you're pretty much--you've been in charge of the powwow for the last few years.

Kent: Probably about seven or eight years now. I can't remember.

Little Thunder: And you're in charge this year, also?

Kent: Yeah.

Little Thunder: What changes have you seen over the years in the powwow?

Kent: At the powwow, when I first started getting into dancing with my regalia on and different things like that, there was just so many certain dances that 46:00this area, the Oklahoma tribes, that they did. I was involved in that. Now, due to the intertribal things that are happening throughout the United States, like the northern tribes that are coming in and the southwestern tribes are coming in, they're intermingling things. Everybody learned the way they do things, so there's different kinds of dances that are happening now that didn't happen thirty, forty years ago. They weren't here, but now they are because intertribal are getting closer and closer together, which I think is a good thing because the cultures won't be lost. We learn from each other.

Most tribes are glad to teach somebody else their way, their customs, and their culture, those things that they know, and we're the same way. I can see that's happening. Even the songs that the singers sit around the drum, the songs that they sing, I hear that all the time around here, but every now and then they got 47:00what they call a northern drum that comes in. They have different types of songs and different singing, and same with what we call the southern drum when they go up to northern states. They have a place for them to sing their songs and things like that. Those things have changed from thirty, forty years ago. Thirty, forty years ago, if you seen some of the dances that you see today, you wouldn't know what they're doing, but now you do. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Why are the Chilocco reunions important to you?

Kent: Chilocco closed in 1980. The alumni members are getting really elderly right now. In fact, I think since January of this year we've lost nineteen alumni members. I don't know how many there were last year that we lost. They're just getting to that age where they're elderly. We try to hold what we can 48:00together with what we got, the remembrance and things like that. We really can't do anything like we would really like to, like rebuild a school and things like that, maybe even start a school. We had a mind one time to try to do that, but the cost of doing something like that was--. We couldn't afford anything like that unless we had some really strong backing at that time because Chilocco was closed and--nobody was willing to step in and back us up on that. Trying our best to keep our alumni members together and remember who they are and just remember some things like that, things that we knew. Say for instance, the Seminole tribe was one of the really strong helpers, and they were from Florida. We got Seminoles here in Oklahoma, but the main tribal members were from Florida.

That's kind of a funny thing there, not funny, but it's one of the odd things is 49:00that up until 1957 the Seminole tribe was still at war with the US government. They finally, because the Seminole tribe went into the Everglades, they just let them go, leave them alone. They wanted troops to go in there and try to get them; they'd get wiped out. They said, "They're going to go in there; just leave them in there. Just leave them alone." They were still at war. In 1956, they signed a truce, a peace treaty with the United States government, so that made it eligible for the Seminole tribe to send their students to Chilocco or whatever school they could go to because it was a government school. They were eligible then. Up until then, they weren't because they were at war with the United States. Due to that, we have several Seminole students come here, and they became one of the richer tribes in the nation due to their casinos and their whatever other things, their enterprises they've got.

They helped, one of the tribal leaders. It was a great monetary help for the alumni, and did a lot of things for us through that. The different other tribes tried to come in and do what they could, but they're limited as to what they can help and what they can do. It's kind of sad that we just don't have the backing that we would need to do the things we want to do. For the National Guard armory up there at Chilocco, it was still in good shape last time I knew. The five confederated tribes at one time were going to donate that to the alumni. I think it was going to cost the alumni one dollar for that building. We decided to go 51:00ahead and fix it up and get it reusable again, that the tribes wouldn't come back in and say, "We want that back because that one dollar said you sold it to us." It's in progress yet on the National Guard armory. It's still in good shape, but it needs some new doors and maybe a roof and things like that. We had engineers come in and give us an estimate as to the monetary cost on it, and we didn't have the money for that. W was looking at trying to find and get it. We're still into that program yet.

Some of the officers that were there then are still with the alumni now, and they know that. Anyhow, those are the things that's going on now. This year, I'm hearing a lot of folks are going to be here this year that never were here before, going to be at Chilocco again at the First Council Event Center, because 52:00they know that fact that one day, that may not be there. They may not be here. The reunions, the alumni may no longer exist. That's one of the reasons that they're wanting to come this year because they're all getting up to that age. Even my son, youngest son is fifty-one years old, and he didn't graduate from Chilocco. He was there in '82 and '83. I knew that the school was going to be closed because the government said it was costing them too much money, so in the second semester, I pulled him out of Chilocco and reenrolled him here in Ponca City because I didn't want him to start all over again. That way he could have the spring semester here in Ponca City and finish out. That fall, they did close the school that year. It was kind of a sad thing. We really hated to see that happen, but nothing we could do about it.

Little Thunder: I'm glad you told me about the hopes for the National Guard 53:00armory, and I hope that happens, too. Is there anything else we should talk about that we didn't mention?

Kent: We were looking at trying to redo the National Guard armory because the Chilocco Indian School was well-known for their Company C, Charlie Company, clear back into, I think it was started in 1924. I think they first started up with the National Guard. I don't know exactly when Chilocco got their first Company C there at Chilocco, and it consisted mostly of all Indian students. Colonel Ernest Childers and Lieutenant Jack Montgomery were in it, in the 45th National Guard C Company. Both of them are military Medal of Honor winners, both 54:00from World War II. Colonel Childers went ashore to Anzio in Italy, and he and Lieutenant Jack Montgomery went ashore at Salerno, Italy, in a place called Oliveto [Citra], Italy. That's where Childers got--he received a Medal of Honor for what he did. Jack Montgomery was out in an open field somewhere in Salerno, and he was awarded a Medal of Honor. They both survived what they did.

They both were wounded, but they survived. The third one was PFC Charlie George. He was an eastern Cherokee from North Carolina. He was in the Army, and he heard that the 45th division, the C Company, was all-Indian company, Charlie Company. He asked his CO if he could transfer into that company, and they allowed him to 55:00do that. When the 45th was mobilized to Korea, they led at Incheon, and they went on into battle. November 30 of 1952, they was in a really bad firefight. They sent these boys up to capture one of the enemy, and they did. They went up there, and they kept him alive. They fought their way up there, and they knew what was happening. The enemy was a North Korean, and the Chinese knew what was happening. They was trying to wipe them out. They had him, and they was taking back down a hill. About that time, a grenade came in where they were at, and Charlie George threw himself on that grenade and took the full impact of the grenade. He saved the other boys with him.

He was in C Company, Charlie Company, so those could have been Chilocco boys 56:00that were there. Anyhow, he was a Medal of Honor winner for that. That came from a Charlie Company, and that's one of the reasons we won a honor, the Thunderbird Division, Company C. When they were in Korea, Company C was known as Chilocco Company because they were all Chilocco Indians. It wasn't Charlie Company, even though it was. They were known as the Chilocco Company. That's what they were called in Korea. Due to that, that's why we were trying to keep the 45th division, the remembrance of them guys alive. I don't know if there's--PFC Charlie George did not attend Chilocco, but he was with the 45th division, C Company from Chilocco. Far as I know, it's the only high school in US history to have three Medal of Honors from the same company, only high school in US history to do that. There was other members from schools that were Medal of Honors, but they weren't from the same company. Chilocco has that; they're known for that.

Little Thunder: That's a tremendous contribution.

Kent: That's one of the reasons we were trying to keep the National Guard armory still intact. Maybe use it for some reason, some purpose, whatever it might be.

Little Thunder: I hope that happens. Thank you so much for your time today, Garland.

Kent: Sure.

------- End of interview -------

Postscript

After reading and reviewing the Chilocco documentary, I realized I failed to mention that Chilocco had one of the finest safety programs of any organization. Every instructor was well educated in teaching their students the safety procedure of their vocation including the ag department. We all know agriculture can be a dangerous occupation. I don't know of any serious accidents that occurred at Chilocco.

(Garland Kent: , Sr., February 13, 2019)