ADDITION SUBTRACTED
Position at end of Tinker runway dooms one of Midwest City's earliest neighborhoods
Dead men tell no tales, they say, and dead neighborhoods yield no history.
Yellowed newspaper pages and darkened black-and-white photographs do, however, tell the tragic tale and contorted history of Midwest City's well-planned but illfated Glenwood addition, the only neighborhood to fall to the needs of Tinker Air Force Base.
Glenwood, an early 1950s project by developers Glen Breeding and N.D. Wood, was in the right place and time for the post-World War II housing boom, tucked between SE 15 and SE 29 on the west side of Douglas Boulevard. It was within no city limits when the first houses were built.
Times changed along with developments in military aircraft and weapons systems, and the place
became dangerous, situated as it was almost abutting the base, directly under the northern approach to Tinker's main runway. Midwest City annexed Glenwood in the fall of 1952.
At the beginning of the end for Glenwood, the neighborhood had 836 houses on 283 acres — plus Glenwood Elementary School, all under potential — and tragically realized — threat of deadly accident from the air.
The property and people living in the area themselves were a danger to the future of the base, which the U.S. Air Force was threatening to close.
It fell to Oklahoma County to save the day and the base, by acquiring and scrapping the neighborhood, after Midwest City voters had failed to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation.
County voters agreed in 1973 to a $10.8 million bond issue to buy the entire neighborhood, auction the houses and lease the land to the Air Force for token rent.
Scarcely a generation had passed since this section of prairie north of Tinker Air Force Base started sprouting with new homes and families — but it was a lifetime for some residents.
But death, the Air Force and an auctioneer had the final word: Sold!
Glenwood's days were numbered starting with a deadly fireball.
1961 jet crash
About 3:45 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25, 1961, 1st Lt. W.H. Barbour, of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing stationed at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in South Carolina, took off from Tinker in an F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet freshly loaded with 1,800 gallons of fuel.
The 27-year-old pilot barely got off the ground before the jet lost directional control, and he bailed out at 800 feet after trying and failing to steer the aircraft back to the base. The jet, determined to have been disabled by a fire in the fuselage, crashed directly into a house at 325 Ferguson Drive.
The explosion destroyed the house, killing 2-year-old Tibbie Lynn Tuttle; her 4-yearold sister, Judith, died the next day. Fire swept the block, engulfing seven other houses and injuring several other people. Barbour's parachute landed him two blocks away.
"If I could have stayed aloft one more second, the plane would have missed hitting the houses," Barbour said that Saturday. "In 20 more seconds, it would have made the runway."
A spokesman for the Air Force noted that while Tinker was one of the "least congested" Air Force bases, officials were growing uneasy with residential areas directly in any bases' flight paths.
1968 jet accident
About 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 18, 1968, Air Force Capt. Alex W. Sapyia, 34, and navigator Maj. Thomas R. Adams brought down a crippled F-4C Phantom jet fighter in an emergency landing at Tinker en route from Bermuda to Ogden Air Force Base in Utah.
They made it safely onto the runway, but after realizing the jet had no steering, they immediately took off again, unknowingly dragging 300 feet of steel cable and 3,000 feet of a runway barrier system used for emergency landings.
Power lines and poles and tree tops were snapped across 10 blocks of the Glenwood addition as the jet ascended, banked and returned for a second landing, this one successful. No one was injured, but the accident terrified the neighborhood and brought back memories of the deadly 1961 crash.
1969 jet crash
About 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1969, a TF-100 Super Sabre training jet on a routine flight out of McConnell Air Force Base at Wichita, Kansas, crashed in Glenwood while attempting an emergency landing. Lt. James R. Nelms, of the Kansas Air National Guard, the co-pilot, was killed.
The crash destroyed three houses and damaged others. The instructor pilot, Capt. James L. Kirkhuff, of the 184th Tactical Fighter Squadron at McConnell, ejected and was found dazed and wandering a block and a half from the crash scene.
The crash was five blocks from Glenwood Elementary School.
Two crashes, one nearcrash, three deaths, plummeting property values, warnings from Air Force brass — it all came to a head.
Somebody needed to do something, but who? Some homeowners had tried to sell and found no takers even at bargain prices. Others moved anyway. Two of the houses destroyed in the 1969 crash were vacant.
Urban renewal?
In November 1971, the Midwest City City Council proposed creating an urban renewal authority to clear Glenwood and relocate residents. It would require voter approval of a $2.8 million bond issue.
Some opponents said the houses should never have been built where they were in the first place. Others noted that the city of Midwest City had no say in that at the time because Glenwood was not in the city limits when started.
Proponents said that no one 20 years before could have foreseen the advances in technology and weapons systems that would bring such regular danger to the area, and pointed out that homes for Glenwood mortgages had even been insured by the then-Veterans Administration.
The Air Force supported the idea: "The area needs to be cleared," said Maj. Gen. George M. Johnson Jr., commander of the Oklahoma City Air Materiel Area. U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, a former governor, also took the rare step of taking a position on a local election.
U.S. Rep. Tom Steed, whose congressional district included Tinker, put it bluntly: It wasn't just a local question, even though by law it was one only voters in Midwest City could decide.
"The next five years," Steed said, would bring "a life-or-death struggle for the survival of military bases like Tinker," and "there could be no stronger insurance for Tinker than the resolution of the Glenwood problem."
An election was set for Dec. 28. Midwest City voters were in no mood to invest in anything: Six bond issues failed, including funding for street, water and fire protection.
All of the proposals went down hard, with up to 4-to-1 opposition in some voting boxes. The question on Glenwood was supported in just one of the 20 precincts: the one including Glenwood.
Forcing the issue
With so much at stake — mainly about 26,000 civilian and military jobs and a $300 million payroll, plus defenserelated businesses off base — and Air Force top brass remaining polite but growing impatient, it's not overstating it to say that cold fear set in among Oklahoma City and state leaders.
Throughout 1972 and early 1973, the Midwest City Chamber of Commerce and Glenwood Homeowners Association, as well as the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, the governor's Office and other concerned groups, cast about for financing and authority to move the houses to help assure Tinker's operation.
Doing so provided no guarantees that Tinker would stay. Doing nothing was seen as a guarantee that Tinker would go.
The Midwest City-Del City Board of Education did its part on Feb. 5, 1973, by voting to close Glenwood Elementary at the end of the 1972-73 school year, contingent on financing being found to clear the houses and relocate the residents.
The school board — and others growing desperate to placate the Air Force — had fresh reason to hope. Hours before, the Oklahoma County Commission voted to study the possibility of floating a bond issue to do to just that.
County bond issue
Within weeks, Oklahoma County commissioners called for a $10.8 million bond issue to finance the acquisition of Glenwood and removal of houses, to be sold at auction.
The election, the first county bond issue called since 1965, was set for May 8. As a capital improvement bond issue, it would require approval by a 60 percent margin.
Neighborhood, city, metro-area and state leaders, and the state's U.S. senators and representatives — including Speaker of the House Carl Albert — pulled out all stops in supporting the question.
"SAVE TINKER NOW!" became a rallying cry in paid advertising. May 8, 1973, was declared "Save Tinker Day," by proponents of the bond issue.
In a front-page editorial the day of the election,
The Daily Oklahoman championed the cause under the headline "Save $300,000,000 Today" — a reference to the annual payroll.
"Responsible and patriotic citizens will vote yes," the paper declared on Page 1. A banner headline over the masthead said: "Everyone Has a Stake in Tinker's Future — Vote YES Today." Inside, a separate editorial on the editorial page was headlined: "Vote 'Yes' to Save Tinker."
The campaign succeeded overwhelmingly, with 80,716 yes votes to 10,250 no votes, a margin of 88.7 percent.
The county bought the first house that July. County commissioners handed Mrs. Paul D. Huffman, 1913 Pickens Drive, two checks totaling $14,000, as a C-135 cargo plane lumbered off the Tinker runway, reaching an altitude of about 500 feet as it passed over the small frame house.
Then came a jet fighter, then two fighter-bombers, all during the short ceremony, punctuating daily life at the end of the runway.
It took almost five years to clear Glenwood. The last six houses were auctioned on Jan. 13, 1978, and removed, leaving only the vacant school building.
Glenwood became known as a no man's land, a place to dump trash. Eventually, in 1982, the county opted to lease the property to Tinker for $1 per year, for 50 years, and the Air Force fenced it and posted it. Tinker now uses it for training.