Description:
Gloria Hall talks about growing up in Oklahoma City and her work with her church.
Transcript:
Interview with Gloria Hall - 11/17/07
Interviewee: Gloria Hall
Interviewer: Melba
Interview date: 11/17/07
Interview location: Unknown
Transcription Date: 6/25/20
Transcribed by: Alex Hinton
Melba (M): Good morning Ms. Hall, how are you today
Gloria (G): Good morning, Melba, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.
M: I’m just so glad to see you this morning participating in the project that we’re doing, called the Oklahoma Voices Project for the Metropolitan Library System.
G: Okay.
M: It is an official centennial project.
G: How nice.
M: And it will be permanently on file in the library at the Oklahoma Room Downtown.
G: Oh really?
M: So we’re going to start. I’m just going to start by asking you to give me your name.
G: First of all, before I do that, Melba I want to thank you for allowing me to be a part of this project. I really appreciate it. I think it’s something worthy and very noteworthy that you’ve selected. So, thank you very much. My name is Gloria J. Hall. I’m a native of Oklahoma City; I was born here in Oklahoma City about five decades ago [laughs]. My parents are natives of Arkansas, but when my father was looking for employment, he migrated to Oklahoma City and got a job at Tinker Air Force Base.
M: Okay. Could you give me your birthday?
G: Well on March 21, the first full day of spring, 1950.
M: And our relationship?
G: We have a couple of relationships. Number one, we’re friends. We’re members of the same church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church1. And we are sorority sisters. So, we’re tied together three ways.
M: We have a three-strong cord [G affirms]. You were born here. And did you grow up here?
G: I was born here; I grew up here. My education has been in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City. I’m a graduate of Douglass High School, Frederick A Douglass High School2 now. My elementary education was at Edwards and Moon Junior High School. And my college career was at Central State College, which is now the University of Central Oklahoma. Master's studies at the Oklahoma City University.
M: Okay, let’s talk about the year you graduated from high school at Douglass, and let’s talk about the major that you selected in undergraduate school, your master’s study, and the year you graduated.
G: I graduated in 1968. My high school years, I thought, were the best years of my life.
M: Why don’t you talk about that a little bit?
G: Well I think relationships are established for life in high school, people that you know and grew up with from elementary through high school. You graduate with some, and from there you branch off. Many of our classmates went out of state. Several of my classmates and I went to Central State College then, UCO now. And of course, from there my major in college was business administration. I initially thought I wanted to be a high school secondary teacher, which was good. But my interests changed, so my course changed. Because I have a lot of interest in business ideas, I am somewhat of an entrepreneur. I have a business called Jay Hall Enterprises and under that I do several things. Office management consultants, and of course the radio show comes on every Monday at 6:30 PM. And of course, I’m branching off. I do a little marketing and consulting for small businesses of like five people or less. So that’s kind of where I am. That’s what I do; that’s what drove me to where I am. I’m presently working full time for the Federal Aviation Administration out at the Michael Monroney Aeronautical Center3.
M: Could you name your parents?
G: I’m the oldest child of Ben O. Hall Sr., now deceased, and my mother Toylee Hall, who yet lives. There are four of us; I have three siblings. My sister, Toye O. Smith, who is a very gifted and talented person. My eldest brother is Ben Hall Jr. My youngest brother is Garland Hall and he lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
M: Are you married?
G: I’m divorced.
M: Do you have any children?
G: I have one son. And you know the interesting thing about that? Most people my age have grandchildren. I have a seven—he just turned seven years old [laughs]. I made that choice. I say to people I’m a late in life mother. I adopted him about seven years ago approximately, a little less than that. And now I’m trying to wonder what I did with my life without him because it seems like he’s been there forever.
M: What is his name?
G: His name is Robert Nelson Davis Hall. He was named for my maternal grandfather.
M: Could you name your maternal grandparents and then name your paternal grandparents so that we can preserve their history?
G: Absolutely. My mother’s parents, Toylee Hall’s parents, were Robert Nelson Davis and Edith Sarah Ann Davis. Now my father’s side, Ben Hall, well he was Ben Hall Sr. at the time, and his wife Georgia Jeanette Hall from Arkansas. We spent a lot of years down in a place called Laurel, Arkansas where my father grew up.
M: That’s very interesting. My father is from Arkansas also.
G: Is that right?
M: So I just kind of smile that we ended up in the same church and our fathers are both from Arkansas. Do you remember your great-grandparents or their names?
G: I remember my great-grandmother on my mother’s side. Her name was Amanda Coffey. And I never met her husband. And I never met my great-grandparents on my father’s side. They were deceased. And actually, his great-grandfather’s name—my dad’s grandfather was named Benjamin, and his wife was Jeanette.
M: Would you describe yourself when you were growing up as a happy child?
G: Very.
M: What do you remember doing, what kind of activities? Since you did go to Douglass, were you a member of LeRoy Hicks’s singing group?
G: Oh listen, let me tell you, the concert choir. I was so proud to be a member of the concert choir.
M: Because he invented that for Douglass. LeRoy Hicks is someone that quite took us through the history of his work at Douglass, and I knew you were such a gifted singer.
G: I was a part of the concert choir, and of course we had to audition. You know, he probably would have taken us anyway, but it was a part of practice and training. If we sang soprano, we had to sing a line of something in our voice. We did that, and I loved participating in the concerts and the competitions. And the thing I really appreciate about Mr. Hicks the most was the exposure he gave us to George Handel, and Handel’s Messiah. And to this day I don’t think it’s Christmas without having a piece of George Frederic Handel’s Messiah. I think that’s it. I love it.
M: Do you want to share any other memories from Douglass? Were you involved in any other extracurricular activities?
G: Well the thing that got me started on my business career, was this woman, I don’t know if she’s living or deceased, but her name was Adeline Porter. She was my future ‘Business Leader of America’ teacher. I was a member of FBLA, the debate club, those kinds of things. Those kinds of things inspired me to choose the path I’ve taken.
M: Did you have a nickname?
G: I didn’t; I was never much for nicknames. My siblings called me by my middle name, Jean. My brothers, you know? That’s their name. But it’s Gloria.
M: [Laughs] You let them slide with that.
G: I let them slide, yeah.
M: While most people called you Gloria.
G: Most people call me Gloria.
M: Who were your best friends when you were young and would like name to name your best friends in this interview?
G: Well, let’s see. Man, it just varies. In elementary school I had so many. We were at Edwards. I can think of…I’m going to say all their names: Linda Jane Howard, Carolyn Braton, Marsha and Brenda McNeal, Charlene Tate, Sharletha Treadwell. We all lived in either Edwards addition or Carverdale. Gosh, there were so many. I had one friend—his name was Larry Powell. I think he lives in New York now. And let me talk about one of my favorite teachers in elementary school.
M: That’d be good.
G: Mrs. Robinson was my kindergarten teacher. And I remember her because she was so strict, but also so nice. And then first grade was Mrs. Sparks. Second grade I think I had Ms. Thomas. Mrs. Jeanette Miller was third grade. So you know—Mrs. Strong—I had a lot of good memories of elementary school. Now in junior high school, there’s like a myriad of people. Everybody was my friend, I thought.
M: Well you better be careful about the names if you had that many.
G: I better not say. But we carry those relationships now. One friend I want to mention is Patsy Folson Woodberry. Reverend Glenn Woodberry’s wife at Mount Olive. We were friends from elementary school through college. We were roommates in college. So, it was nice. And then after that, one of my good friends in college, I met her when I got to college. It was Beryl Hudson. She graduated from Northeast High School4 in ’68. I can’t name them all. I might have missed somebody beyond that.
M: I would like you to talk about any teacher that you might have had in college that might have influenced you a great deal.
G: That’s kind of tough because my college years were—going to UCO, Central State College as it was then known, it was a transition time for me, as well as for the school. I think in ’68 there was so many black students coming in that it might have been a little overwhelming. And I think…I can’t remember anyone’s name.
M: I can understand. We will move on. Why don’t you take me from your high school – no, not from your high school. From your college education on a walk that will take us to your career journey? What kind of jobs did you have from college all the way up to what you’re doing now?
G: Out of college. I graduated from University—Central State College, which is University of Central Oklahoma now. Before I do that I want to say my I had several jobs while I was in college and I want to thank the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City because they were primarily responsible for my being able to support myself and for my parents to support me. One of the jobs I got—Mr. William Franklin helped me get the job at Channel 5. I entered their information on logs. I would come in after class in the afternoon and do that. So I thought that was a great experience. Then after graduating from college my first job was selling insurance for John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company. That was a challenge, but I enjoyed it because it was a sales job, direct sales, and you know how difficult it is to sell life insurance.
M: Oh yeah, it is.
G: I had a challenging area because no one wanted it. But I got out there and worked hard. I didn’t know they didn’t want it. I was very successful doing it. I had several achievements that were listed in our national magazine for the insurance company. And thanks to the Urban League. They got me that job; referred me to John Hancock. Yes, they did. I have a great deal of respect for the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma. I worked there for about ten years, and I worked briefly at Tinker Credit Union. I had a little financial background experience. Our regional manager at John Hancock came in one day and they had made the decision to close all of the debit offices. So we moved over to our general agencies, but that didn’t last very long. My interest waned and from there I went to work with Tinker Credit Union. And from Tinker, I was there for about two years. I started my federal career in 1985 at Tinker Air Force Base. I was there, formed a lot of relationships at Tinker, stayed there for about ten or ten-and-a-half years. And then met a man by the name of Bill Williams through Tuskegee Airman. I was affiliated with Tuskegee Airmen, and I had an interest in changing and broadening my horizons, changing my career. So through Tuskegee Airmen I met Mr. Bill Williams, who was one of the directors at the FFA, and the director of an organization called ‘Aviation System Standards.’ I still work for that organization. In a nutshell that organization is responsible for writing all of the highways that are in the sky so that pilots can fly. They’re called ‘procedures,’ and without procedures the pilots in the aircrafts wouldn’t know which way to go. The air traffic controllers direct them, but they have procedures that are called ‘highways in the sky.’
M: Ah.
G: So I’ve been with the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation System Standards since June of 1995. I’m going on probably my thirteenth year there. Now while I was at the FAA, I was taking an announcement to KTLV, the religious radio station, 1220 on your AM dial. I took an announcement out there and someone said to me, “We’re trying to build our programs. Would you like to have a program on our radio station?” I said, “Okay [chuckles]. I’ve never done it before.” They were trying to add airtime. I’ve been with them almost ten years. I had a little break; I had to step back and Pont. But I’ve been with them almost ten years, and my program is called ‘Visions for the Community.’ We like to share things for our listening community so that they’ll know what’s going on, what people are doing, and if you have something you’d like to share I’d like for you to share it with them so that they will know what’s coming. It could be current events, a project coming up. It could be a program like this, something celebrating the centennial. If you have a new business getting started, I’d love to tell your story or have you tell it. So it’s anything. I hope that you and others like you will take the time out to come and visit with me on Monday evening.
M: I would like to give that some consideration on the work I’m doing to strengthen families once I complete the publication that I’m working on. I think that will be something I can consider sharing in a format such as the one you’re telling me.
G: Right.
M: As you shared that information, I would like for you to share your thoughts with us about your religious beliefs.
G: Well I will say first of all, I thank God for my parents because they are responsible for my spiritual growth. I got that instilled in me at the very early age. I believe in God, the Father Almighty. I will say in three sentences: maker of Heaven and Earth, and his son Jesus Christ who was born, who died, and who rose again. Now I got my training in our denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which has a strong—I want to say—1787 to 2007 going on 2008—well over 200 years of strength and we’re still being strengthened. So, my belief in God came through my parents and through the African Methodist Episcopal Church, of which both of us are members.
M: I’d like for you to share about the work that you’ve done with the Missionary Sinai Church.
G: Oh my goodness. Well thanks to you, and others like you, you all elected me in ’99 to serve as president of the Oklahoma Conference and Women’s Missionary Society, which at that time had about twenty-eight churches. I want to say if we split the state of Oklahoma in half vertically, it would range from everything west of Oklahoma City on and south of Oklahoma City. This would include all of the Lawton area, Frederick, Purcell is in there. You’d go as far north as Ponca City and as far east as…there used to be a church in Hennessey, Oklahoma. I was about to recall the name, but they have since closed. Enid, Oklahoma; Langston, Arcadia, of course Oklahoma City, Midwest City and Del City, Lawton, and Ardmore, Oklahoma, the concentration. So I had the privilege to serve as the president for eight years and we had several accomplishments, none of which could have been done without your support. I would like to make that known and tell people. It was a challenge, but it was a good challenge. And I had a lot of background because I grew up through the ranks. By the time I got to be Conference president, I had done several things. I was a conference YPD director from ’77 to 1980. I think by the time we got to what we called the Quadrennial Convention in New Orleans, it was a Triennium then, they thought I was too young to be the YPD director, because they didn’t have anyone under thirty doing those.
M: How old were you at the time when you became the YPD director, and you tell us what the YPD stands for?
G: Sure. I was twenty-seven years old. And YPD stands for the ‘young people’s division’ of the Women’s Missionary Society. Each local church, if there are enough members, has a senior society which is called the Women’s Missionary Society. At my local church, it’s the ‘Lucien Hughes Women’s Missionary Society.’ And within that we train young people, not only to become missionaries, but to go elsewhere. Some will not want to be members of the Women’s Missionary Society because there are young men as well. That’s our function. So when you get to the conference level, it enhances the training. And when you get to the Episcopal district level, which for the twelfth district are the states of Oklahoma and Arkansas, then it’s even broader. Then when you get to the Connectional or global level, the international level, you’re dealing with twenty episcopal districts all over the world, several on the continent of Africa.
M: That’s important.
G: It is important. And when we went to our quadrennial convention in Philadelphia this past summer, we heard Bishop and Reverend Cecilia Brant sat they had just come back from India, where they had planted a church. We had never been in India before. So, we brought a new church, with our leadership, to India. So that’s kind of how that all evolved.
M: Well, that is quite a story. What are your dreams for your little boy?
G: I want him to be the best that he can be. He wants to be several things, he told me. I took him to a wedding with me and he said, “Mom, who’s going to be my wife?” I said, “I don’t know. God is preparing her for you, but there are things that you have to do.” So he wants to be a husband; he wants to be all of that. He wants to be an attorney, a lawyer. He wants to be a preacher. He wants to be a doctor. I say, “You can be any or all of those, but you must well trained.” So I want him to be prepared for whatever God has for him. Certainly, to be a good husband he has to be a good provider. And of course, I encourage him. I say, “Number one, you want to get to know the Lord for yourself. Number two, you want to get the best education. Number three, you want to be a good provider for your family because you will be the head of your family.” So I have so many hopes and dreams. My challenge is to get him through these nurturing years so he can be prepared to branch out.
M: Now where do you have him in school?
G: He attends True Vine Christian School, at NE 36th Street and Spencer Road, in Spencer, Oklahoma.
M: I would like for you to name, if you can, this may require more than one name, I would like for you name anyone who you can recall has been especially kind to you.
G: Oh wow. First of all, my parents top the list. Then next, of course my brothers and sisters and family. Beyond that, there’s a couple of ladies, both deceased. One, her name is Attie B. Mayfield. She was my junior church leader at First A.M.E. Church. And then Mrs. Eddie Lee Albred, who was absolutely my mentor. In all things she was my mentor [clears throat]. She was always very kind. She always tried to run interference for me. There are so many people who have been kind to me. All the pastors I’ve had contact with in the Oklahoma Conference, every one of them. I’m not going to start naming because there are too many who have come through [she clears her throat again].
M: I understand there was this tremendous group of men.
G: Yes, my current pastor—
M: Do you want to name your current pastor?
G: The Reverend Ralph O’Thomas, young man with a lot of vibrant ideas, but all of his predecessors. I want to name the first one.
M: Please.
G: A Reverend Eugene E. McAshan. Who was the first pastor of the church I attended.
M: Name your church and any pastors you can bring up.
G: My church is the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. We grew out of Avery Chapel AME Church in 1959. I was a little kid then. Our first pastor was the Reverend Eugene E. McAshan, very young man, had a young family, but he was full of energy, so he set the course for our church. The pastor that followed him was David J. Brown. He was the one who exposed the Church, and me, to the Connectional AME Church. He made sure that the young people at First AME Church got out to the meetings so that we would know that there was more than just the area where we were living.
M: The local church.
G: It was more than a local church: all of the annual conferences, all of the Episcopal district meetings, all of the Connectional meetings. When I started, Reverend Brown sent me to a meeting called the Richard Allen Youth Council. We met in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and it was a wonderful exposure. There were several in between, but those two really set the course in terms of my development. And Reverend David Brown is now deceased, but Reverend McAshan yet lives. And we I go to the Connectional meetings, I always look for him, and he always remembers us and asks how everyone is doing.
M: Where is he living now?
G: He’s in the state of New York. His wife, Jewel, is the president of the First Episcopal District Women’s Missionary Society.
M: It is significant that, in addition to churches and missionary efforts around the world, we do have some universities. Did you have a lot of opportunity to visit any of the African Methodist Episcopal universities?
G: Oh absolutely. First of all, I want to start with Shorter College5 which is right here in the twelfth district.
M: Right. You know everybody has to go to Shorter.
G: We got to go to Shorter, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Absolutely. And then in Atlanta, Georgia, Morris Brown, one of our schools that’s coming back. I didn’t get a chance to go to Edward Waters college, but that’s of course in Florida. Then we have a school, Wilburforce6, which is the birthplace of education for African Methodists. I’ve never been there, but we had the privilege of hosting the Wilberforce Concert Choir. A few years ago, they came down in support of one of their oldest living alumni, Dr. G.E. Finley. And I have to mention his name because he was my first job in high school. I would leave school because I finished my coursework early and Dr. G.E. Finley who was in the state Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, hired me and I worked for him.
M: When did you work for Dr. Finley? You should tell us about that.
G: Well listen, I started working for Dr. Finley my junior and senior years in high school because I finished my coursework and I needed a little job and he needed some help. So I did his administrative work for him when he was on the corner of NE 2nd and Walnut in the Finley building. He was our family doctor. He delivered me; most…[she reconsiders] most of the baby boomers who were black or African American in Oklahoma City. I’m sure he slapped many bottoms on their way out. [G and M both laugh] And he yet lives. He’s such a kind—he been such a good friend to our family, even now.
M: I concur with you. Dr. Finley loves you so much. He talked about you in his interview.
G: He did?
M: He said he delivered you in his interview that we had, and I was just thrilled because he’s almost a centenarian. He’s ninety-nine years old, and he’s alert and just a wonderful human being. When I reflect on the bridge that comes from the Sheraton over 2nd street, the area where I used to have my Bricktown office and I’d see his building named by him as very deep and moving.
G: It is. I know you have a Dr. Finley story, but we honored him back in ’97 or ’98. We had a huge banquet in his honor to recognize him, our church. Reverend Harold C. Davis was the pastor at the time, who later became your pastor. He and his wife led us in a beautiful recognition banquet for Dr. Finley for all the work that he’d done. He was a pioneering spirit in Oklahoma and still is. [clears throat] Excuse me. People recognize him yet today for the work that he did. He had to endure hardships as a doctor. Not that he wasn’t qualified, but that’s just the way it was at the time, but he never gave up. He persevered.
M: That is the biggest lesson, I think, that he taught. The importance of persistence and being peacefully persistent. He was very significant in the way he presented that in his interview. Anyone listening to his interview can really understand what both he and his grandson had to say. They could get that really deep down in their spirit. It’s a very valuable tool. I would like for you to name Reverend Harold Davis’s wife.
G: Mrs. Frieda Davis.
M: The late Reverend Davis did pass away during his work at Allen Chapel, our church building. He did a major renovation for our Allen Chapel or the African Methodist Episcopal church. In order to preserve his memory as well as reinforcing the message that Doctor G.E. Finley and his son had in their interviews concerning you, I’m glad that you were able to help us to piece your reflections of him.
G: Oh, you know this has been such an honor, Melba. You talk about persistence, I’m going back a bit to the story of my mother and father, but most of all my mother, how she came up and she never gave up and never quit. She endured quite a bit of hardship when she was growing up. She lost her father because he was ambushed on his way home from work.
M: By whom?
G: I don’t know the name of the person. I can’t recall. He was a white man who was making unnecessary advances towards my grandmother, who resisted. So to get back at her, he waited for my grandfather and he shot him in the back.
M: Did he kill him?
G: Oh yeah. Two or three times, he shot him. I say all that to say—you talk about perseverance—she never let us, her children, get caught up in the negative part of that.
M: How did she teach you to deal with that kind of tragedy?
G: Well from a spiritual point of view, because otherwise you’d be consumed by it. Number one: as bad as things are—and that was pretty bad because it took away her and my grandmother’s livelihood; they struggled from that time forward because he was the breadwinner. They struggled, but to encourage us they reminded us that number one: the God we serve has the ultimate say. And our job, while we’re on this Earth is not to promote evil and the negative, but to promote the good. She said, “If I can survive it, and it directly affected me, then you certainly can.”
M: Oh wow.
G: You see what I’m saying? If she could live through it, and she was directly affected, you can certainly live through it.
M: It helps you to put your life in perspective as a lot of disappointments occur.
G: The other part of that is: they had to sneak around in the night because they were coming to get them. Because they could tell who did it. So they were moving--
M: They witnessed it? The children witnessed this murder?
G: My mother and her sister--
M: Witnessed their father being killed.
G: They were in the field. My grandmother witnessed it and they came to tell them. And they said, ‘You all are going to have to move.’ So they have to move in the night, and they had to keep moving for two or three nights, where they wouldn’t be found. Finally, the guy who did it crossed the border into Louisiana, and I think he spent one night in jail. But while he was in Louisiana, someone shot him.
M: While he was in Louisiana, he was shot. Was he killed?
G: Absolutely. They don’t know who did it, but the word came back.
M: That he was killed.
G: By the same method
M: That he killed your grandfather?
G: Yeah. So you know, as I look over my life God has been good and that’s the importance of a spiritual background. It really is significant; you have to put things into perspective as bad as they are. When you lose loved ones it hurts deeply, but we can recover. It takes little more time, some more than others, to get over the hurt. It does, but you can survive.
M: You know, one of the goals I had with the interviews that I’ve been doing was to strengthen marriages. I had three objectives for my interviews: to strengthen marriages and families, and to help people recover from trauma. When I interviewed you, you asked me my reason for asking you. I told you that I saw you as a very gifted singer with an opera-like voice. I had seen you use it in the church, in travelling to different states, using your voice for Christ, your life for Christ. You had made a personal sacrifice, adopted a son to raise as a single parent. I chose to interview mainly men, and I did that because it was very important for me that people listening to the interviews that I’ve done to be able to access male voices. We have a problem all over the country with the breakup of our marriages, and it’s not something that’s confined to the black community. It is a national problem. There were a lot of talented women I wanted to interview, but it was really hard to decide which ones to interview. But you were working on so many fronts, doing some community-minded things that I knew you weren’t getting paid for. [G chuckles] That was missionary work and community service. And one of the things I think is critical in the development of our communities is the community service that we give one another just by observing the need for it. I wanted to say that in your interview, and I wanted to give you a chance to let anyone listening to this interview know what put that spirit to give back in you? How you receive that spirit of missionary? What happened in your life that taught you to make that personal sacrifice? I implemented a scholarship a few years ago, because I’m interested in teaching servant leadership.
G: Well, in my home where I grew up, if there was somebody hungry in the neighborhood, my parents would always—on Sundays before we ate dinner—Mom would fix all these plates. This is a true story.
M: Before you ate?
G: She would cook for whoever was sick. And she said, ‘now take this brother so and so, sister so and so.’ And some people, we had to get in our car and drive to take, because they didn’t live in the neighborhood. And then she would take them food baskets. Before we ate, we had to deliver other people’s food. And then something happened in my life; it’s going to happen again. Lifestrides on the Eastside was something I wanted to do. It was organ and tissue donation effort. We started it in 2002, 2003. We had two of them, and we’re going to revive that again. It’s promoting education about the benefits of organ and tissue donation, but more than that about the benefits of health and prevention so that you won’t have to get one. So there’s the ‘giving back,’ but I’m also a living organ donor.
M: Are you?
G: I’m a living organ donor. My brother suffers from kidney disease, so I gave him one of mine. As a result of that it was like, ‘Okay, what can we do?’ We had an initiative in the missionary society to promote organ and tissue donation. I said, ‘Okay,’ and we thought about it. We decided to do through Lifestrides on the Eastside. We had free seminars, had doctors come in and talk about health issues. You ask how I got the spirit of giving back. My parents taught me through giving; we couldn’t eat until we had fed the people. And then when I wanted to think of things that would be most beneficial to the community, I thought of Lifestrides. And there are going to be a lot of initiatives that come out of that when we gin up again in 2008. So were broadening our horizons. I want to thank Doctor Johnny Griggs at Integris Medical Center because he was the champion for our cause. He helped us to get Lifestrides on the Eastside going. And because of him being able to put that in place for us, and find people who were willing to support us, we were able to raise our first year $25,000. We gave it all to Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Center at Integris Baptist Medical Center7. And the second year we raised ten or fifteen thousand and we did the same. [clears throat] So I’m always looking for things that will benefit for the community. That’s one of the things that drove the title for my radio show Visions for the Community. I like to be able to share things, to give back something, to share knowledge for those who might have a need.
M: Gloria we just greatly appreciate your interview. We greatly appreciate you community service and your gifted voice that you’re using for the glory of God. Thank you for being on the Oklahoma Voices.
G: Thank you Melba
Melba (M): We want to reopen your tape, Gloria. It’s just not going to be in the best interest of anyone hearing this tape without us allowing you to—[she starts over] Because this is the centennial. It’s one-hundred years of Oklahoma History. I have the ‘secret knowledge’ about your voice, out of the people that are in the library system. I just would like to share your voice with our listeners, because you’ve used it to minister. I would like for you to sing a song for us, just a little bit of a song as the spirit leads you to before we end your interview.
Gloria (G): Well Melba, just for you. And in celebration of the state’s centennial and in reverence for the month of Thanksgiving we’ll do a little bit of something you like, To God be the Glory.
[Singing]
How can I say thanks for the things You have done for me?
Things so undeserved, yet You gave to prove your love for me.
The voices of a million angels cannot express my gratitude.
All that I am and ever hope to be, I owe it all to Thee.
To God be the Glory, to God be the Glory
To God be the Glory, for the things He has done
M: Thank you.
G: My pleasure.
M: To God be the glory.
G: Thank you again, Melba.
M: Thank you for your Oklahoma Voices.
[Interview end]