Patti Johnson Wilson was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 1987

Patti Johnson Wilson, civic leader, philanthropist and world traveler, was born in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, and moved to Tulsa at the age of four. She attended the Tulsa Public Schools and was inspired at an early age by prominent Tulsa piano teacher, Patti Adams Shriner. At fifteen, she began supporting herself by teaching piano and playing for a classical dance studio. With the savings accumulated from these efforts, the help of a small scholarship, and a loan from the Rotary Club, she was able to enroll in the School of Music at the University of Kansas. She reminisced that this experience taught her much about life. “It was a wonderful piano department and for someone who loved music as I did, it was almost heaven—even if I did have to watch my nickels and survive mostly on soup and cornbread.” A job at a local radio station playing piano in a trio at eight in the morning helped pay the bills. She was awarded a Bachelor of Music degree in three years, graduating at the depth of the depression.

With loans to repay, she established her own piano studio in Tulsa where she taught and gave recitals. During this time she was active in the Piano Study Club and the Hycheka Club and performed numerous concerts. She was also a member of the original board of Concertime.

Twice widowed, she is the wife of Colonel Francis J. Wilson, retired regional head of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, who was one of the principal architects of the Kerr-McClellan Arkansas Navigation project. With her first husband, the late John H. Leavell, a M.I.T. trained mining engineer and U.S. Petroleum attaché, she traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. After his death, she successfully managed their widespread interests in mining and oil and gas, causing those various enterprises to flourish. Her second husband, the late George A. Stebbins, was an expert on Oriental culture. On one of their extended visits to the Far East, she was trapped in a Saigon hotel during the 1963 coup against the Diem regime.

Her cultural and charitable interests are numerous and varied, having served on the boards of the Children’s Day Nursery, Tulsa Town Hall, Gilcrease Museum and the Tulsa Philharmonic. She has served on the board of Philbrook Museum of Art and was an advisory director of the Tulsa Ballet Theatre.

She is founder and principal trustee of the Patti Johnson Wilson Foundation, which she established in 1972. This perpetual trust was established to provide scholarships for needy college students. The foundation has awarded hundreds of scholarships over the years and continues to be an activity of primary interest to Mrs. Wilson. Based upon her experience, she recognizes the importance of hard work and a good education.

William Kelly Warren was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 1987

William Kelly Warren embodies the spirit of the independent oilmen who developed Tulsa from a sleepy cowtown into the Oil Capital of the World. As well as becoming a successful oil executive and an outstanding leader in all areas of the petroleum industry, Warren also carried roles in banking, medical research and education. He established a hospital and was a Roman Catholic lay leader, humanitarian and philanthropist.

Warren was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 3, 1897. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he struggled with poverty and constantly searched for ways to earn a buck. Warren worked in various occupations as a newspaper carrier, a Western Union messenger, a peanut vendor in a baseball park, a drug store employee, a door-to-door salesman and even a dance hall instructor.

When he was 18 years old, Warren decided to leave his home town. With his job as a railroad filing clerk, he earned a mere 40 dollars a month, and he had heard of the lucrative job opportunities in Oklahoma. Warren arrived in Oklahoma in 1916, and by this time, Tulsa was well on its way to becoming the Oil Capital of the World. He soon became an accountant with Gypsy Oil Company. Later, he worked for Gilliland Oil Company and McMann Oil Company. Warren married Natalie Overall on September 21, 1921, and the couple had seven children.

In March of 1922, the Warrens scraped together 300 dollars and organized a firm to purchase the output of gasoline plants handling natural gasoline and liquid petroleum gasses. The company began in two rooms of the Atco Building and had two employees—Warren and his wife. With Warren’s ingenuity in the processing and marketing of liquidized petroleum gas, this tiny company emerged as the world’s largest independent distributor of the product many years later.

Warren generously contributed to many projects within the Tulsa community. The William K. Warren Foundation was chartered in 1948 for the purpose of donating to hospitals, churches, schools and worthwhile charities. Warren established Saint Francis Hospital in 1960.

Warren served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Warren Petroleum Company from 1922 until retirement in 1961. He was a strong leader with an abundance of administrative ability.

Charles Page was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 1987

Charles Page envisioned a self-sustaining institution that would support orphaned children. That dream materialized on June 2, 1908, when he established the Sand Springs Home. Page developed a real estate and industrial base to ensure financial support for the Home, which has been providing shelter to orphaned children and widows for over ninety years.

Page was born on June 2, 1860, in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where people had to struggle for the necessities of life. When he was 11 years old, Page’s father died, and he virtually became the head of the family; the older children were nearly all married and no longer lived at home. He took care of his mother and younger brother through the hardships of their lives. Page comforted his disheartened and discouraged mother with a declarations that predicted his future achievements: “Mother, don’t cry. Wait until I get to be a man! I will take care of you and you won’t have to work and I will take care of all other mothers and poor boys and girls, too!”

Page possessed two ambitions—first, to make money; second, to use that money for the benefit of the down-and-out. Page worked in Washington, British Columbia, Colorado and Michigan gaining experience in mining, real estate and oil drilling. From Michigan, he came to Oklahoma and furthered his career by buying and selling leases to a variety of oil companies.

In 1908, Page purchased a quarter section of land several miles west of Tulsa, initiating the plan to establish a home for the homeless. Nearby, Page ultimately built the industrial and manufacturing town of Sand Springs. The name came from the Creek Indian words “Oktahv Uekiwv,” which literally means sand water and described a large spring on the property. Although the Sand Springs Home began with one widow and her children residing in a tent, it grew rapidly, and in 1910, fifty children occupied a large frame building. Throughout the years, an increasing number of people sought shelter in the Home, causing repeated expansion of the housing facilities.

Apart from his generous contributions surrounding the Sand Springs Home, Page supported various charities including the Salvation Army of Tulsa and Sand Springs, the YMCA and YWCA of Tulsa, The Tulsa County Humane Society, Tulsa County Public Health Association, Family Welfare Association of Tulsa and the American Red Cross Association. When Page died in 1926, sorrow filled the hearts of the many people who had been touched by his constant care and protection. Page’s memory lives on as the Sand Spring Home continues to flourish.

Benjamin Harrison Hill was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 1987

Benjamin Harrison Hill’s contributions to Tulsa derived from his double role as a leading religious figure and a state lawmaker. His accomplishments provided a peaceful transition for the community during the racially turbulent sixties. He was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, November 1, 1903. His family moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where he spent his childhood years. Hill earned a graduate degree at Wilberforce University in Ohio and studied law at the University of Nebraska. While teaching at Campbell College in Jackson, Mississippi, Hill met his wife, Fannie Ezelle Johnson. They were married 39 years and had a son, George Forris.

Services to God and humanity motivated Hill to pursue his career as a minister, teacher and public servant. In 1938, he was licensed to preach at the St. John A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopalian) Church in Plains, Georgia, and subsequently led other congregations in Boley, Claremore, Muskogee and Tulsa in Oklahoma. Hill was a junior high school principal for many years in Okfuskee County and pioneered the area of special education for slow learners. He contributed to the A.M.E. church in many ways while serving as Director of Christian Education, chairman of the Commission on Educational Institutions, member of the Episcopal Committee, secretary of the General Conference and editor of the A.M.E. Church Review.

From 1951, Hill served as editorial editor and columnist for the Oklahoma Eagle. He was active throughout Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma in community-oriented organizations including the Tulsa Urban League, the Tulsa Council of Churches, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Ministerial Alliance, the Boy Scouts of America and the Council of Churches and Community Chest. Hill also served as director of the Tulsa Economic Task Force and president of the Tulsa branch of the NAACP. For his notable achievements in the community, Hill was named Tulsa’s outstanding citizen by the Tulsa Park and Recreation Department; a park and recreation center was named after him —the Ben Hill Recreation Center.

At the time of his death in 1971, Hill was a member of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives having served two terms. In his 31 years of service as a prominent Tulsa leader, he gained recognition as a progressive thinker, a creative legislator and one who sought practical solutions. Hill always had an encouraging message and provided a sense of worth to individuals on any social and economic level.

James Monroe Hall was inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame in 1987

James Monroe Hall was a pioneer Tulsan whose arrival with the Frisco Railroad in 1882 marked the beginnings of modern Tulsa. Hall, credited as being the “Father of Tulsa,” operated a general merchandise store, J.M. Hall & Co., for several decades on Main Street. He established Tulsa’s first church and founded the Tulsa school system. Hall was the guiding force in shaping the future of schools and churches at their roots. He believed that schools and churches formed the backbone of a community.

Hall also became involved in the earliest banking business in “Tulsey Town” when he embarked a 20 year banking career as a director in the Tulsa Banking Company, which opened in 1895. This institution eventually grew into one of the largest and most influential banks in the state and is in successful operation today. In early 1899, the Tulsa Banking Company was nationalized and the name changed to First National Bank of Tulsa.

Hall’s endless contributions toward the establishment of Tulsa were captured in a nutshell by Lerona Rosamond Morris in 1927 from “Tulsa The City Beautiful!”

“J.M. Hall—Tulsa’s First Citizen” “It is a wonderful experienceto be the father of a town; to indeed be its first citizen; to see its first railroad construction; to mark off its first street; to own its first store; to be pioneer postmaster; to organize its first school, its first church, its civil government and endure all the hardships of primitive frontier life in the midst of wild Indians; to be visited by bold, bad men of the Cook and Dalton gangs; to see the tiny trading post develop into a small village—the village into a real town; to be the leading spirit in all its enterprises for development; to see a territory become a state; to see the small cowtown become the Oil Capital of the World; to actually live and have a vital part of a town grown from one to one hundred and fifty thousand souls. Such has been the thrilling experience of J.M. Hall”