May is National Preservation Month and Watonga, Blaine County and Oklahoma have a lot of places and items which are being preserved and in which we take great pride. The National Trust for Preservation promoted a week-long celebration in 1973 and extended the celebration to all of May in 2005 Recently I realized the importance of the musical organ for our state. We attended an evening of concert and old-time radio drama at the Oklahoma History Center. In the 1930s, WKY radio broadcast out of the Skirvin tower. Actors and musicians performed original productions of dramas and music. One of the keys to these classics was the Kilgen Theater Organ. This 1935 organ, with four rows of keyboard and many side effects, provided the dramatic flair of live radio productions. When WHY moved, the organ went to the Municipal Theater. At one point it was in danger of being sold out of state but was saved and installed at the new Oklahoma History Center. On April 27, we were treated to a radio drama re-enactment by the Carpenter Square Theater accented by the 90-year-old Kilgen organ.
Then Ken Double played several vintage as well as more modern songs. The audience was thrilled.
But here in Watonga, we have, at the Ferguson Home Museum, a unique organ with great statewide significance. During Territorial Days (1904-5) Harriet Parker Camden, a Kingfisher native, wrote “Oklahoma, A Toast”. It was selected among 20 songs submitted to help move Oklahoma to statehood. However, the name included “toast” which suggested alcohol. In 1935, after prohibition was repealed, the legislature officially adopted the state song of Oklahoma Camden’s organ, housed at the Ferguson Museum, was used to compose the music. The words are very reverent and describe iconic images of Oklahoma including sunflowers and fields of cotton. You can hear the song sung in 2007 by a 101-year-old who sang it in school .
The song served until 1953. Rogers and Hammerstein wrote “Oklahoma” as a Broadway musical in 1943. George Nigh thought the theme song would make a good state song. He arranged the cast of “Oklahoma” from Oklahoma College for Women (now USAO) to sing a couple of songs from the musical on the floor of the legislature. When Oklahoman Ridge Bond, who played Curly in the production, burst through the doors singing “Oklahoma,” Nigh’s bill passed, and the state song was changed.
Still, “Oklahoma, A Toast” and the organ used to write the song played an important part in early statehood. The Friends of the Ferguson Home are honored to be preservation custodians of the organ and its history.