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Re: Voices of Oklahoma, the Ongoing Oral History Website Created by Tulsa Radio Legend John Erling

Aired on Tuesday, April 14th.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we are pleased to welcome John Erling, known and appreciated by many local radio listeners for his three decades on the air at KRMG. Five years ago, Erling inaugurated Voices of Oklahoma, an oral history website dedicated to caputing the life stories of Oklahomans from all walks of life. As Erling tells us today, what began as basically a part-time retirement project has now grown into full-blown, ongoing passion for the Tulsa radio icon. With more than 160 long-form recordings featuring the voices and personal remembrances of Ann Bartlett, Roy Clark, Nancy Feldman, Fred Harris, George Nigh, Oral Roberts, Bud Wilkinson, and Henry Zarrow -- to name just a handful -- Voices of Oklahoma has now been acquired by the University of Tulsa's Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. Erling, who still serves at the website's creative director, explains why this important partnership with TU (which took effect about a year ago) will ensure sustained growth, a wider readership, and ample research/academic opportunities for his remarkable website.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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