In June, Friends of the Ferguson are planning two major events. The first is the National Flag Day Celebration at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 14 at the Ferguson Home Museum. We have invited students who are attending Boys State or Girls State to raise the Oklahoma state and United States flags. We will celebrate our United States flag. The main speaker will be the Oklahoma State Historian, Matthew Pearce, Ph.D. He will speak on the Oklahoma State Flag which this year is celebrating a centennial (100 years) since being adopted. The history of our state flags is one worth knowing and appreciating. Our original state flag is being remembered on our current Oklahoma license plate, but our current flag has great symbolic meaning relative to our state.
Then, one week later, on Saturday, June 21, the Friends will host the annual Ferguson Tea. This year’s theme is Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Everyone is encouraged to wear hats. We have Mr. Ferguson’s original top hat he wore when he became governor of the Territory of Oklahoma. But stealing the show is Elva Ferguson’s hat pictured below. Tickets are $10 and proceeds go toward the Ferguson. There will be activities for young attendees. This will be a good opportunity to introduce them to a semiformal event.
The Friends of the Ferguson Home want to thank again all who came to the presentation May 22 on the Importance of preservation by Dr. Kay Decker. For a summertime scavenger hunt, parents might drive their children around to find signs for public buildings and attractions in your town. Dr. Decker had difficulty finding the Watonga Public Library, so she recommended we improve our signage.
To learn more about local signage, we recently visited a town of less than 5,000 that receives 3 million visitors annually, in an effort to learn how they use signs.
We appreciate the members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho who attended and told us about famous persons buried in the Native American Cemetery just south of the airport.
I plan to write about David Pendleton Oakerhater, a contemporary of the Fergusons who is buried there, along with Chief Henry Roman Nose.