By New Year’s Day, they [The 45th Infantry Division] were engaged in battle. They endured 209 days of fierce fighting without relief. They gained and held such strategic terrain as T-Bone Hill, Old Baldy, and Alligator Jaws Hill, at which American news correspondents reported some of the most bloody and bitter fighting of the war.

In the 1960s Murray’s knowledge of Spanish and of South American customs was valuable when the U.S. State Department sent him to Latin America on special assignment. Johnston and his outgoing wife, Willie, opened the governor’s mansion on weekends for public visits, with Willie inviting the people of Oklahoma to come see “your mansion.”

During his campaign, [Henry] Bellmon told a story about a farmer with a cow for sale. “The first man who looked at the cow wanted to know about her pedigree,” he said. “The next fellow inquired about the butterfat content of her milk, and another one asked about her annual milk production. ‘All I can tell you,’ said the farmer, ‘Is that she’s an honest, hard-working old cow, and she’ll give you all the milk she’s got.’ ” Bellmon promised to be like the cow – honest and hard-working.

Unemployed workers from other states flocked to the Oklahoma oil fields to fill 2-per-hour jobs, mostly in the Anadarko basin in the western part of the state. A shortage of mobile homes and motel rooms inspired the building of a record number of motels. Still, people were forced to live in their cars and sleep in parks until housing became available.

Brad Henry was officially sworn in as Oklahoma’s twenty-sixth governor on January 13, 2003.  At age 39, he was the youngest governor in the country at the time.  Henry had served 10 years in the state Senate and was chairman of the Judiciary Committee before deciding to run for governor in 2002.