When I started work in 1962 as a receptionist at the Press Association located a few blocks from the state Capitol I met many politicians. It’s where the 17-year-old me first met Lieutenant Governor, George Nigh, D-McAlester.

Yes, the man who wore a good-guy white cowboy hat when he was running for office, was a Democrat.

There were lots of D’s who were elected for public offices in those days, but George Nigh was my all-time favorite back then, later, and now.

He came to our office to visit with my boss (Ben Blackstock, another D), and in 1965 we placed George’s political ads in all the newspapers in the state.

That fall I turned 21, and was old enough to vote for him in the November election in which he easily won.

George Nigh Calls

I saw him at the press association office, or at other events over the years, then one morning at work I got a call from “George.”

He’d called to apologize for my date being late to pick me up on Friday night.

That date, Bill Walter, had already explained there had been a problem with the Lt. Gov’s plane at a ribbon-cutting event, and he’d volunteered to bring him back to OKC.

Bill and I were married a few months later, then moved to Hennessey in 1978. He was the public relations director for the Turnpike Authority back in the sixties and seventies, and used to stop by the Lt. Gov’s office.

He’d told me the governor showed him a large wall map of Oklahoma where there were notations on each county as a reminder about when he’d last visited there.

This week when I was reading one of the governor’s obituaries I knew exactly how he became “the first gubernatorial candidate to win in all 77 counties when he was re-elected in 1982.”

Another Story

During a 2002 event for past presidents of the Oklahoma Press Association I overheard a story about the 1960s that involved the former Lt. Governor.

A group of newspaper publishers were invited on a government-sponsored junket to Washington D.C. They found themselves there on a Friday night without the benefit of a U.S. Senator or Representative and were being turned away from some hot spot supper club.

That’s when Cowboy Curtin (Watonga), who was wearing his wide brim hat, got creative and told the club manager he was the Lt. Governor of Oklahoma.

His witnesses were supposedly Jimmie Craddock (Weatherford), Wheeler Mayo (Sallisaw), Clancy Frost (Hobart), Beachy Mussleman ( Shawnee), and my husband’s father, Art Walter (Hennessey).

The men got into the club and soon a spotlight was shining on Gerald T. Cowboy Curtain as Oklahoma’s “Good Guy” Lt. Governor.

Cowboy stood up, removed his cowboy hat, and bowed with flair to an applauding crowd, or so that story goes.

Then a few minutes later the club owner took the microphone and said Oklahoma brought an even larger delegation. “And strangely enough there are two Lt. Governors in Oklahoma. Please welcome Oklahoma’s other Lt. Governor: The Honorable George Nigh.”