Oklahoma Supreme Court Chief Justice Dustin Rowe was the guest speaker at last Tuesday’s meeting of the Kingfisher Rotary Club.

Rowe told Rotarians that Oklahoma had an independent Supreme Court appointed by the governor and free of state politics.

He also said that Oklahoma’s Supreme Court justices could be removed from office by a vote of the citizens of the state.

He said that unlike Texas, where Supreme Court justices run for office and are elected by political party affiliation, Oklahoma’s justices never reveal their political party affiliation.

He said, in his opinion, Oklahoma’s system was much better.

A graduate of the University of Oklahoma School of Law, Rowe was raised in Tishimingo, in south central Oklahoma, and was only 19 years old when he made national news by being elected mayor of that community.

Now 50 years of age, he said that one of the great joys of his job was visiting the judges and courthouses all 77 of Oklahoma’s counties. He also said he was a a great admirer of one of his predecessors, Marian P. Opala, who presided as chief justice over the state’s Supreme Court from 1978 until is death at age 89 in 2010.

He said Opala was born in Lodz, Poland, and joined the resistance fighters in that nation when invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939.

Opala was later imprisoned by the German military and, when freed by U.S. forces in 1945, he worked with the British military in Poland as a translator, because he was fluent in reading and speaking English.

He later emigrated to the United States, where he became a U.S. citizen and settled in Oklahoma City and earned his law degree from Oklahoma City University in 1953.

Rowe said Opala was a staunch defender of America’s First Amendment rights of free speech, and he was proud to continue in that role in his current position.

Kingfisher County Associate District Judge Lance Schneiter arranged for Rowe to speak at the meetin ing.