| THE OKLAHOMA CONFEDERATE HOME NOW CALLED THE OKLAHOMA VETERANS CENTER: ARDMORE DIVISION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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UPDATED- April 7, 2009 - This Web Sight has been visited 29,981 times. This page is dedicated to all the
Veterans who have lived and died here and all the past and current Employees who work and have retired from here and to my family.The Ardmore Veterans Center is a long-term care facility for American veterans. Our Administrators' name is Gary Robertson and Gary is a Persian Gulf Veteran. Our new Assistant Administrator is Gayla Dabbs. Gayla started working at the center 23 years ago and has ran the Lab ever since. I will add more information about Gayla later! UPDATED NEWS 03-10-2009: I retired on March 1, 2009 after 29 1/2 years! I was the last connection to being hired by Mr. Noland in 1979. There is one employee that has worked longer but she came from a different center in the early 1980s. (Alma you are geat) I will keep in touch with the Veterans Center for updates! Enough about me! David Fenti Sr. has become the Fire & Safety Supervisor and I wish him the best! Jarrod Genn became a level 2 Fire & Safety offficer on 04-01-2009. Looks like Tornado season is here and I know everyone is getting prepared thanks to Jerry Goodes leadership! Recreation will be getting our residents ready for our fishing season. We had a great Christmas for our residents with some nice gifts from different groups and several concerts. Billy Joe Howard Band played on December 15, 2008 to a packed house. We had a good time with all of trick & treaters from the area schools and I know all the kids enjoyed our veterans and employees. Our residents go out of there way for Halloween and have a lot of fun! We had a large crowd here on Veterans Day and Wal-Mart donated a lot of snacks for our visitors and friends. Our employees had a large Thanksgiving meal on 11-14-2008 and it was a huge success. Our Assistant Administrator, Regina Eubanks retired December 01, 2008 after 29 years of service. Mrs.Regina Eubanks became our Assistant Administrator on January 1, 2003. Mrs. Eubanks also started at the Ardmore Veterans Center in 1979 and later became our Director of Nurses. Regina left Ardmore in late 1999 to become Assistant Administrator at the Oklahoma Veterans Center in Norman, Oklahoma.Regina will truly be missed around here and for me, I went to Dickson High School with Regina and know her family fairly well and I will miss Regina on reasons of her being apart of every decision that was ever made here or it appeared that way! The Country Wranglers featuring our own Dr. Cannon performed some great Country & Western music for our Veterans on 10-05-2008. Our residents where taken to the Carter County Free Fair on 09-02-2008 and had a great time! We took some of our residents to the Oklahoma State Fair in Oklahoma City on 09-15-2008. Physical Therapy and Recreation have been taking some of the residents to the Y.M.C.A. for swimming therapy. I know there is another name for swimming therapy but I can't remember what it is called right now but it sounds fun. Brenda Clinton is leaving the Ardmore center after 21 years and has taken a new job at the Lawton Veterans Center and she will be missed here! Our Assistant Administrator Regina Eubanks has been gone for several months because of some serious health issues but with everyones prayers and great Doctors, everything is looking very good for Regina to return to work before the year is through! Labor day has come and gone and high school football is back and I sure enjoy the spirit of high school football. We had a real nice July 4th holiday and we took our residents to the Elks Lodge 7-14-2008 for a cook-out and swimming. We are going to have another cook-out 7-16-2008 here at the center! We took our residents to Tishomingo, Oklahoma to the moving Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall 6-27-08. We took a bus load of veterans to the state capital for Veterans Awareness Day March 19, 2008.A few of our residents traveled to the Windstar Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma 2-20-2008 to eat and have fun and they always enjoy this trip! We are just coming off an inspection of our facility and I hope we did good? I hope everyone has a great 2008! Billy Joe Howard and friends played some great country, rock, and blues for our residents on 12-18-2007. Dale Lay played some great old time honky tonk and Christmas music for our reidents on 12-18-2007. Our Administrator passed out sacks of Christmas goodies to our residents on 12-21-2007. This has been a great Christmas season for most here!! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Day Holiday!! Our residents and workers had some great turkey & dressing Thursday and cooked by our Kitchen workers and they do a great job! Veterans Day just passed by and we had around 250 people show up this year compared to 650 last year. The residents still enjoyed the services and a few of our Residents got to go eat at Golden Corral in Norman,Oklahoma. The Veterans Center had two unexpected visitors on 10-30-2007 and this was a big surprise, Athur & June Box stopped in to visit and had a lot of information on Samuel Box. Mr. Samuel Box was our fourth Administrator of the Oklahoma Confederate Home in 1918 and I had some information on Mr. Box and his wife. I hope to get more information in the future! We had around 150 school kids to come around to do some trick or treating here and our residents enjoy seeing the kids and giving them candy!Our Residents got to go fishing with Jimmy Houston north of Dickson, Oklahoma on 10-02-2007. Our Recreation staff took our residents to the Oklahoma state fair on September 17, 2007. It has been hot around here for the past two weeks with some one hundred degree weather and high humidity! 07-03-2007: In Southern Oklahoma, we have had record amounts of rain. Lake Murray & Lake Texhoma are going over the spillways. This is the third time in Lake Texhomas history that it has gone over the spillway. In 1957, 1990, and 2007 for the Texhoma spillway! We went from the dryest summer in our history last year to the wettest summer in our history this year. Could there be something to this global warming? I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a watermelon feast on 06-20-2007 in our recreation hall. Billy Joe Howard played some great guitar and keyboards for our Veterans and Employees on June 13, 2007 at 7:00 P.M. in our recreation hall. The concert lasted around 1 hour and 15 minutes of no stop music! I made a D.V.D. out of this show and got some good closeups on Billys finger action going up and down the neck of the guitar!! Gary McCollough played some great music for our Veterans and Employees on June 18, 2007 in our recreation hall. I played guitar with Gary on a B.B. King & Stevie Ray Vaughan song! We had a nice crowd show up for the show. We had a little over 400 people brave all the rain we had on Memorial Day and Rear Adm. Wesley Hull (Ret.), veteran council chairman, expressed appreciation for the Patriot Guard Riders members and recognized the Ardmore band, director Debra Thompson, Army Reserve, Oklahoma Army National Guard, Dr. Rick Bagget, Kayla Alkire and Sharon Scott. Also introduced were State Sen. Johnnie Crutchfield, State Reps. Greg Piatt and Terry Hyman, former legislators Tom Tipps and Al Sadler and County Commissioners Bill McLaughlin and Dale Ott. On page 5 I have put a ROLL CALL OF SOUTH CENTRAL OKLAHOMA VETERANS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN FOREIGN WARS As of May 29, 2006! Looks like tornado season is here and we are about as prepared as we can be. We our currently having our first Veterans olympics here and the residents our enjoying the events. On 5-9-2007 I drove a Bus load of residents to Lake Texoma to the yearly AMVETS cook-out. The food and music was very good. We also had our Employees appreciation day on 5-9-2007 with a lot of good food. (OLD NEWS) I played guitar with Gary McCollough on February 06, 2007 for our residents and employees. Gary McCollough is a very talented musician and very good singer. Gary played a mixture of old rock, blues, and soul music with a twist of country. This was Garys 4th appearance at the Veterans Center and this was my last show for some time due to having a fourth knee surgery on 02-09-07. I played some Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, & a tune by the Allman Brothers Band. I am sure going to miss watching Billy Joe Howard (guitarist) play for our residents and employees on 02-13-2007!! I hope everyone has a great Presidents Day Holiday! We are just starting to get over a huge ice storm here in Southern Oklahoma and looks like we are going to get a big snow storm this weekend. We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and everything around this area was frozen! We had quite a bit of freezing rain and sleet down here in Southern Oklahoma and some parts of the area are without power due to frozen tree branches breaking and snaping the electrical wires! The new year is here and Christmas has passed us all very quickly.Our residents had a lot of partys and gifts from different groups and santa clause showed up also. We are looking for the new year and the old year ended up sad with the passing of our late president Gerald Ford! Billy Joe Howard had to cancel the concert for 12-14-2006 due to illness and Billy had resceduled for 12-18-2006 then Billy Joe Howards father passed away on 12-17-2006. Billy Joe Howards father was a resident here and the services are pending. All of our prayer and thoughts go out to Billy Joe and all of his family! The War Commission and Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs had the Bi-Monthly meeting here on 12-15-2006 and it looks like it was a good meeting. Slap the dog and spit on the fire Linda Vance retired on 12-31-2006! Another Pearl Harbor Day has come and gone and now we are all looking toward another Christmas and New Year. We are starting to have all the Christmas parties for our residents and Billy Joe Howard (guitarist)will be performing for us on 12-14-2006 at 6:00 P.M. and we are looking forward to the Billy Joe Howard show!! This guitarist is great!! We just had ice/snow period the last day of November and the first day of December. Looks like another Thanksgiving has come and gone and the residents and employees got to have some very good turkey, dressing, and lots of pies. The day after Thanksgiving, my Grandmother passed away at the age of 92. November 17,2006 - Thanks to Justin Corndog Wallace for all of his help on the new added pictures to this web sight!! November 15, 2006-We had the largest Veterans day crowd ever with the help of Plainview & Ardmore High School students. I would guess that we had around 650 people here and the weather was very good. Mr. Mike Walters from the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs was our guest speaker. We had around 150 kids here on Holloween and the residents enjoyed all of the little spooks and giving away candy!! We are looking for a large turn out for Veterans Day 11-11-2006 and a great Thanksgiving. Mr. Don Schroeder retired on 11-30-2006 and we will miss Don! The cool weather is here in southern Oklahoma and we had around 4 inches of rain over the middle of October.We need another 4 inch slow rain for our farmers. The local high schools are deep into the football season and I have watched every Dickson High School game this year. We had a bad summer with 41 days over 100 degrees and a lot of grass fires. The month of September was a little cooler with very little rain. The Fourth Of July has come and gone and we had a lot of music and outdoor events for our residents. We got a new karaoke machine and now everyone is a pop star. We had a new pavilion built and it is nice. We can now have covered cook outs with a live band. Our first entertainer was Billy Joe Howard (guitarist). Billy Joe is one of the greatest Guitarist that I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of great guitarist in my lifetime. If you ever get a chance to see Billy Joe Howard, please go see this man play!! 2006 Memorial Day was a great day with one of the largest crowds ever!! The weather was very good but a little hot. There was also Memorial sevices for the Confederates at Rose Hill Cemetary. Butch Bridges and a lot of other people have raised some money to help replace and or repair some of the old broken markers for our past Confederate Soldiers. Most of the Confederates buried at Rose Hill, had lived here at one time before there passing. Butch Bridges is the real historian around Southern Oklahoma and enjoys every second of all the research that he (Butch) does. Butch is one of the reasons that I created this web site. I had a treat on May 31, 2006!! Susan Grandma Whittles family showed up and I got to show the family a few things and a small tour of this place. Grandma Whittle was one of the first residents of the Confederate Home and was admitted on July 4, 1911 and so was her (Susans) husband. Grandma Whittle died at the age of 105 a few years later and at the time was the oldest women in Oklahoma. MESSAGE FROM RICK : If you are a Oklahoma Veteran and need help or move into our Veterans Center, please contact Cathy Gillispe at 580-223-2266 and I bet she can help you with your needs!! This is to all the people who need to know about past residents that I dont have listed, there is a grey area between 1921 - 1949 that a person could get this information from the Oklahoma Historical Society and Oklahoma Department of Libraries in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. On 11-11-2005 at 1100 Hours, We had the Largest Veterans Day Services that I can remember in 27 years with around 600 people showing up with a couple of local schools being here and the weather was great!!
2005 - Memorial services 2005
Remembrance of Confederate Home veterans where held Memorial Day at Rosehill Cemetery.
Lakota Nations Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp conducted the memorial tribute to honor veterans of the one-time Confederate Home in Ardmore buried in the cemetery.
THE VETERANS CENTERS' ADDRESS IS P.O. BOX 489-ARDMORE,OK. 73402 PHONE # IS 580-223-2266 I HAVE HAD ALOT OF E-MAILS FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY WANTING TO KNOW ABOUT FAMILY MEMBERS THAT LIVED HERE IN THE PAST.I AM WORKING ON THIS AND I WILL GET IT ALL UP ON THE WEB AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I started this Web Site February 2000. At the bottom of page 5 in history, I have a complete list of INDIAN TERRITORY CONFEDERATE VETERANS.
I hope you enjoy your visit. Here is a current 2006
picture of the OKLAHOMA VETERANS CENTER ALSO KNOWN AS THE OKLAHOMA CONFEDERATE HOME IN ARDMORE, OK. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
