Why Berry Tramel is voice of our state
A newspaper editor once offered some insight about the highly acclaimed columnist.
"Did you ever see him tackle a subject for comment that was not serious? And did you ever feel that he had failed to get at the very heart and nub of the matter and split it open with a laugh?
"The answer is twice in the negative."
The editor concluded that the columnist was more philosopher than writer.
"Tackles life," he wrote, "because he can."
Those things were said of Will Rogers in the late 1920s — but they can be said again today of Berry Tramel.
On the day my colleague and friend is inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, he will be lauded and honored along with eight others during a lunchtime ceremony. The group includes top-notch journalists and top-shelf people, including our own longtime photo editor Doug Hoke. All have done journalism vital to their communities.
Berry is no different. He is the voice of our state.
Now, before we go any further, Berry had no idea I was writing this — you may read it before he does, though he's a pretty early riser and avid newspaper reader — because frankly, he couldn't know about it. He might've threatened to resign if he thought it would stop us.
He might've walked the plank to keep us from devoting any hallowed space in our sports section to him.
Heck, he might still give me and our editors the silent treatment.
That's a risk we're willing to take — he is worth it.
Berry, after all, is our modern day Will Rogers.
Rogers, you'll remember, became one of the most famous people on the planet back in the days of the Roaring Twenties, the World Wars and the Great Depression.
He started out as a roper and performer and Vaudeville act, but soon, his side-splitting wit and spot-on commentary gave him the opportunity to write columns, do radio and appear in movies.
He was so beloved, so well-known that more than eight decades after his death, some folks believe he's still the most famous person ever from Oklahoma.
He gave voice to a nation.
Frankly, with the divides that now exist in our country, it seems unlikely that anyone will ever speak for everyone like Will Rogers did.
Rich and poor, conservative and liberal, rural and urban — he connected with everyone.
Berry has done the same for our state.
You may not always agree with what he has to say — whether in his column, on his blog, in our videos or during his drive-time radio stint — but you always have to check it out.
Doesn't matter whether you're a Sooner or a Cowboy.
Doesn't matter if you're from Oklahoma City or Boise City. Doesn't matter if you hated his last take or loved it. You have to know what he thinks.
"Did you read what Tramel wrote today?" is a regular refrain around our state.
Most of the time, what he writes is sports. For some folks, that's a disqualifier. He writes about games? How can that be so great?
But if you've read Berry for any length of time, you know that he writes more than sports.
Long before he wrote about Joe Mixon's punch of a female student or Chris Collins' rape of a 12-year-old or OSU's mourning after not one but two plane crashes, Berry went to Lone Wolf in the far southwest corner of the state to write about Philip Tepe.
The ninth grader had become the center of a societal firestorm — he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and many opposing basketball players and even a few teams were boycotting being on the court with Philip.
It was 1993, and the AIDS epidemic was raging. Research was sparse. Treatment was still developing. Misinformation was rampant.
And into the fray was dropped a young boy who contracted the virus from a tainted blood transfusion, who had lived in the same part of Oklahoma all his life and was suddenly seeing familiar faces turn against him.
"Why can't the boys who have played basketball with Philip Tepe all their lives take the court for a 32-minute game, when the best medical authorities say the most dangerous thing involved is driving to the game?" Berry wrote.
"But parents want absolute guarantees, and life offers no absolute guarantees."
Berry ended the column with some beautifully profound but terribly heartrending words.
"And 14-year-old Philip Tepe has put on hold his fight against the great plague of our time, the virus of AIDS, while he battles an equally worthy opponent, the virus of human fear."
Less than six months later, Philip and all of his teammates went to Kansas City at the invitation of Chiefs star Derrick Thomas.
He heard about Philip and the teammates who stood beside him, and Thomas wanted to do something special.
There was a basketball game against current and former NFL players, but then there were autographs and pictures and memories to last a lifetime.
Berry's story made that happen.
Then, there were the columns that he wrote in the days after the bombing in Oklahoma City.
As the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building still smoldered, Berry reflected on a trip earlier that year to New York City, how he wandered around Manhattan marveling at the Empire State Building and Madison Square Garden and, yes, even the World Trade Center.
"We had come to see the world, because we lived in a haven called Oklahoma, and the world wouldn't come to us."
Then on April 19, 1995, it did.
Every year on the anniversary of the bombing, one of my co-workers goes back and reads what Berry wrote that day.
Time and again, we have turned to him for clarity and understanding
Berry Tramel
in the toughest of moments. After planes collapsed the Twin Towers. After tornadoes ripped apart our city.
Berry is our voice and our conscience.
That's why he's beloved. Go anywhere with Berry, and you'll see how well he's known.
Lots of times, people come up and say hello and tell him how much they enjoy his writing. Other times, they hang back, though you can see in their eyes that they recognize the guy with the gray hair, the sport coat and the glasses perched at the end of his nose.
Berry is real and genuine and no-nonsense. Berry is us. "Examine any statement that he has ever made, and there is a nugget of pure sense in it."
Those words were also said of Will Rogers many moons ago, but I have difficulty seeing how they don't apply to Berry. He knows our hearts. He has our pulse.
Long before anyone made it official, he was a hall of famer.
Why can’t the boys who have played basketball with Philip Tepe all their lives take the court for a 32-minute game, when the best medical authorities say the most dangerous thing involved is driving to the game?”
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or view her personality page at newsok.com/jennicarlson.