An Interesting Neighbor

In all his years in public service David Boren is about to do something in Oklahoma he’s never done before.

Turn 80 years old. His birthday is  April 21.

He’s done just about everything else from serving in the Oklahoma Legislature to serving as Governor from 1975-79 and three terms as a United States Senator from 1979-94.

Then he returned to his home state to become president of The University of Oklahoma. He was the 13th president of OU and is the second longest serving president in OU history behind Dr. George Cross.

Boren guided the university from 1994 to 2018.

He first was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1967 where he served four terms.

But it was at OU where Boren capped off a career of public service serving in the top spot for 24 years.

He and his wife of 43 years, Molly Shi, have retired to their home in Newcastle, where the couple have owned the home in McClain County since 2009.

While studying at Oxford, Boren kept a diary and listed being U.S. Senator from Oklahoma and serving as the President of the University of Oklahoma as goals he hoped to achieve in his life.

“It wasn’t just being a United States Senator,” Boren told The Purcell Register in an exclusive interview this week. “It had to be a Senator from Oklahoma.

“And I didn’t just want to be an educator but the President of The University of Oklahoma” Boren confirmed. “I owe everything to Oklahoma. It has given me an education. I owe a huge debt to Oklahoma and always wanted in some way to pay it back.”

Boren said it has been his greatest privilege being a public servant in Oklahoma to create new opportunities for Oklahomans.

What got you into public service?

“My father,” Boren said of former Oklahoma Congressman Lyle Boren who served in the House of Representatives from 1937-1947.

“Seeing his example of always being available (to the public). I helped him campaign. He would paint rocks, do interviews and along the way just say things to me about talking to the farmer in the field, a mechanic under a car or a bank president.

He told me, “no matter their station in life you can learn from other people.”

What made you stay in it?

“It’s really about service,” Boren said. “What concerns me today is it’s not about service but power. It’s what you do for other people to make their lives better. It’s improving the quality of life for other people.

“I’ve always felt the importance of my teachers. I’m most proud of the Oklahoma Arts Institute I started as governor. We also started the Oklahoma Foundation for Excellence and the Gifted and Talented Program when I was governor.”

How close did you come to running for President of the United States?

“Anyone in the Senate thinks about doing it,” Boren said. “There was just never the right time. The best time would have been when Clinton ran against Bush, Sr. But George and I became very good friends. I couldn’t bring myself to run against him.”

Boren and President George Herbert Walker Bush spent 3-4 hours together in the White House when the U.S. invaded Kuwait.

You once said you got out of Washington due to the gridlock. How is it now compared to then?

“There is so much partisanship. Howard Baker told me people need to play between the 30 yard lines to work together to make things happen,” Boren said.

“It became frustrating. When the offer came from The University of Oklahoma, I took the offer.”

What will it take to end such partisan gridlock?

After much thought Boren said, “Well I’m hopeful. But there could even be a new party arise that could help the moderates so they can get together. An open primary might help as well.”

Boren said primaries force candidates to feel the extreme elements of the party.

“Forming a bipartisan caucus rather than the Democrats meeting in one room and the Republicans meeting in another room both trying to beat the other one.

“Instead, we need to work together to solve problems,” he said. “Filibusters seem to be overused. In the past they were used very sparingly. It got to where there was a filibuster on nearly every major bill that came along.

“Here we are in a pandemic with a crisis over trade and a fragile economy. We are not able to move and not get anything done. It’s alarming and makes the democracy look bad.”

In your public service career what was the most gratifying?

“There’s been a lot,” he said. “Seeing record funding for education in the state. Increasing private funding at OU, seeing outstanding teaching to affect the next generation. Giving young people the opportunity to study abroad. The National Education Act partially focuses on areas of the world already sending many students here and learning about us.

“We were only sending a fraction (of that amount of students) to learn about the rest of the world. We were only sending students to places like England and France but to have good intelligence you have to know other societies. You have to learn their cultures and languages. Students have to go where not too many people have gone before.

“The National Security Education Act was formed to create a board to run the program to send students to countries where we were not often represented to prepare people to economically trade with the United States. It’ll make us strong.”

There were several thousand students involved making it the largest student exchange program since the Fulbright Scholars.

The name of the program is the Boren Scholars and Fellows, which may also inspire students to public service.

Boren said the number of OU Students studying abroad has tripled with the program.

Same question as president of the university?

“Having a chance to bring a strong spirit of community,” Boren said.

He reflected on the “terrible racist events by a fraternity that gained so much national attention.

“I had to take decisive action and speak out to the rest of the country. Remember, there were media here from all over the world including the BBC. I had to show the world this is not who we are at OU.

“We had to show we don’t condone racism of any kind. The only way to stop it is for every single one of us to speak out when given the opportunity. This is not acceptable and not part of our sense of community. It was the worst thing I’ve gone through in my public career. It was very tense. I knew I had to get our message out. One day I did 30 major TV interviews telling people we are not racist and would not tolerate it.”

Boren went to the Center for Continuing Education where a satellite was utilized for him to do interviews across the country switching from one network to another.

The impact was swift and immediate.

“Many students immediately started demonstrating. They passed petitions. They were unified and not going to put up with racism,” he said.

The faculty, staff and athletic department were all on board

“What could have been a very divisive negative mark against the university allowed me to try to turn it around and make something positive about it. “An African American woman in Houston came up to me and said, ‘I’m going to tell you why I’m going to OU. After seeing how that was handled my mother and I agreed I would be safe at OU.’”

Boren said with the help of a lot of great donors and volunteers over $2 billion was raised at OU while he was president.

“That allowed us to do so many special things,” he said.

When he took the reins replacing Richard Van Horn there were 95 endowed faculty positions. When he left office there were over 500.

“That makes a big difference in the kind of faculty you could bring to the university. Education has always been interwoven in my life,” Boren confirmed.

What politician do you look up to the most?

“My father,” he said without hesitation. “He influenced me as to how I saw politics and public service. He said to always keep your bags packed mentally and make the right decisions for the country, not for what is popular.”

Looking back, what would you change?

“It would be to have more family time with my wife and family,” he said. “You can get so caught up in your work you can sometimes not keep the proper balance with how you spend your time and with whom you spend our time. I always tried to keep my ambition under control.

 “You try to do the best you can and move up the ladder like from the legislature to governor to the senate and constantly thinking about doing what you are responsible for at that time. It has been very rewarding.

“There are certain injustices you can correct,” he said citing a moment from his Broom Brigade days when he first ran for governor.

“When I was walking from town to town a woman came up to me and said she’d lost her husband and had to pay inheritance tax. The husband and wife had been a team so all the money they had amassed was by both of them. So one of the first bills I passed was doing away with inheritance on husbands and wives. I got the same thing passed federally when I was in the Senate.”

Boren said he had very little money in that first gubernatorial bid so the Broom Brigade was kind of like an ice breaker.

“The newspapers and television stations would come to me,” he said. “But it was what I learned walking town to town that was most important.

“I was walking from Idabel to Broken Bow and came upon a house where a man was watching the Watergate proceedings on television.

“Did you ever think you would see something like that on television,” the man said. 

Then Boren mentioned the unthinkable images of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“I never thought I’d see something like that,” he said.

As Boren was leaving the McCurtain County residence the man said, “I’ve been living here all these years and not even a person running for sheriff has stopped by much less a man running for governor.”

As governor, Boren championed the open meetings and open records act. No longer could politicians hide their votes in the shadows.

It caused public bodies to meet in public.

“They used to have roll call votes and people didn’t know who voted for what and who didn’t,” he said. “There was no way of holding legislators accountable.”

He also passed campaign finance disclosure so the public knows who’s funding campaigns and he strengthened the competitive bidding process.

“It made it harder to make changes in contracts and to not have to bid them again,” Boren said.

Favorite time at OU?

Boren said it was witnessing the students become much more active in volunteerism.

He started the President’s Trophy which was to the top fraternity, sorority or housing unit that did the most volunteer work.

“That was encouraging to me,” he said.

He was gratified by the student’s volunteerism, planting trees and treating people right, with respect. 

But Boren also lit up talking about his time actually teaching in the classroom.

You could see by the twinkle in his eye he loved the hands-on teaching.

“We wanted to be very accessible,” Boren said. “That’s why we moved back into Boyd House. Molly would be out on campus all the time. We brought in the Mom’s Day Tea and tried to always use the word family. Hopefully our students and their family members beyond their student years could create a sense of family on campus. That’s part of what we did.”

What has Molly meant to you as you served the public?

That brought the biggest smile to Boren’s face in the entire interview.

“She has always been my closest advisor,” Boren said. “She came up with the bench program. She is best known for her landscaping. She helped plant a lot of the gardens on campus. She is always thinking about programs like the religious studies program. You can’t be a morally educated person ignoring religious views.”

And he said you have to take into consideration religious views not just here but all over the world.

“Another idea she had, for example, was for the dorms to every year adopt a portion of campus and on Arbor Day receive a plaque and be recognized.”

She was also instrumental in the Institute for Quality Communities.

“Before I went to work we shared ideas and when I would come home we would debrief. She’s just always been there helping and supporting me. We were more of a team at the university. When I was on the Senate floor she couldn’t be there or in the governor’s office but at OU we could do things together for alumni, parents, students.”

What are you enjoying about retirement?

With a laugh he said, “Not having to get up quite so early in the morning.”

But he admitted he is still testing the retirement waters.

“I must confess I’m still trying to find my way in retirement,” he said. “It’s hard to find out what to do.”

How many times have you sung the OU Chant?

“Thousands of times,” he said. “People didn’t know the words when we got here. They never sang it. So we started singing it at every event because traditions are important.

“Traditions like singing the OU chant. I wanted to bring back the chimes. We noticed the chimes never rang so we asked why. Well they’ve been broken for a long time. I asked what it would cost to have them fixed and said if I have to I’ll pay for it myself.”

The chimes got fixed. The Borens brought back other traditions like the yearbook and the homecoming parade.

And speaking of the homecoming parade, one OU game on homecoming had a kickoff time set so the parade could proceed. But a television network wanted to move kickoff to 11 a.m. which would rain on the parade.

Boren balked. The TV network blinked. The parade went on as planned.

Leadership.

As governor, Boren passed the most sweeping prison reform in the history of the state. 

“We were building Lexington and Hominy and repairing Big Mac.

“We developed a prison work release program. Instead of just dropping them off at the gate with no savings, no money, we phased people out in the community mainly Tulsa and Oklahoma City where they had the jobs. They would have a savings account instead of having to turn back to crime to have money.

“We started the education program behind bars. I  went to the first graduation for prisoners from Vo-tech. They said to me, ‘we know you started this and want to thank you for Vo-tech behind bars’.

“We invested more in corrections than at any other time. It had been very neglected. We established the rural medical manpower.”

It was a way to help pay medical student’s way through school with the understanding they would go to underserved areas, particularly in rural areas of the state.

Boren said with private donations he was instrumental in building the north Tulsa Medical Clinic named the Wayman Tisdale North Tulsa Medical Clinic.

After only a couple of years as president, Boren had an idea that would transform the research portion of south campus.

He brought the National Weather Center to Norman, managing to pull everything together with funding from the State Legislature and some federal funding.

It was the beginning of expansive growth in that area of the campus.

Both he and Molly had a brain storm after the historic 2007 ice storm that damaged so many trees in Norman and on campus.

They were told it would cost $1.3 million to clean up the mess and replace all the trees.

So they came up with the idea to have a volunteerism day to have students come out and pick up branches.

“It was a cold, damp day on a Saturday morning,” Molly Boren said.

They were afraid the students wouldn’t show up but over 1,000 did in what they described as the most gratifying day of their time at OU. 

“It saved the university  $150,000,” Molly said.