Forgotten Tulsa: Bates Elementary School

While Googling for Regent Preparatory School of Oklahoma, I came across a webpage about Bates Elementary School, the public school that originally occupied the building on 72nd East Avenue, north of 51st Street. The school wasn't named after Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote "America the Beautiful," or any of the Bates Stapler Bateses:

According to my mother's memory, John Bates was a boy who had died in a car accident. Shortly thereafter, his mother purchased a parcel of land which she then donated to the Tulsa Public Schools with the stipulation that a school would be erected on the land in the child's name.

As far as I know, that John Bates is not a relative of mine.

The school opened in 1973. Its predecessor was Phoebe Hearst Elementary, a collection of prefab buildings built in 1966 in the Regency Park neighborhood, on the land that is now Aaronson Park.

UPDATED 2025/04/11 to replace dead links with Wayback Machine links. The Bates/Hurst tribute site also has recipes for Tulsa Public Schools bean chowder and cinnamon rolls, and the author, Andrea MacMullin, discusses her life and the fashion and hairstyle inspirations for elementary school girls in the early 1970s. Her collection of "blast from the past" photos includes Big Chief tablets and Laddie pencils.

Bates was one of four TPS schools to open in the 1973-1974 school year, along with Mayo Elementary, Thoreau Junior High, and Mason High School. Mason opened mid-year due to construction delays. The same year Riverview and Jefferson Elementary Schools were closed and overall enrollment dropped by 4400 to 66,215.

John Wesley Bates Elementary School was designed by Blaine Imel on an open concept (no walls) and built by Hawkins Construction for $742,864. The name was selected by the board in April 1970, in memory of John Wesley Bates 3rd, son of the president of Reading & Bates Inc. Drilling Company, who was killed on September 20, 1960, when his bicycle went out of control and slid under a moving car near his home at 42nd and Victor. (The Tulsa World story of the accident notes the race of the driver.)

The same board meeting chose names for Mayo and Thoreau, and for several elementary schools that were never built, mainly in anticipation of east Tulsa development that never happened: Jim Thorpe, adjacent to Thoreau at 71st St & 73rd East Ave; Alexander L. Posey, 15th & 156th East Ave.; Stephen Decatur, 13th & 137th East Ave.; Bret Harte, 26th and 137th East Ave.

The homepage for the tribute says, "After Bates closed, the building became home to Platt College, a trade school. In the 1990's, Central Assembly of God church purchased the building, which it now leases to Regent Preparatory School." Regent moved out of Bates in the summer of 2006 and opened that fall in the old Higher Dimensions Evangelistic Center near 87th and Memorial, the site it still occupies today.

Bates Elementary School closed in 1983, and Oklahoma College of Business and Technology, later known as Oklahoma Junior College, moved into the site that fall. OJC moved into the old Thoreau Junior High in 1989, replaced at the Bates building by Platt College from 1989 to 1995, when Platt moved to 3801 S. Sheridan. Central Assembly of God bought the building in 1996 and continued to meet there throughout Regent's tenure from 2000 to 2006. It's unclear when the church ceased to meet, but the church was no longer a polling place as of November 2006.

In 2009 the building at 4821 S. 72nd East Ave. became the Discovery School of Tulsa, then Dove School of Discovery, a K-8 charter and sister school of Dove Science Academy. In December 2020, Central Assembly of God sold the property to LIFE Senior Services, and in March 2024, the Bates campus opened as the Roma Berry Senior Center, home to LIFE Senior Services.

MORE on Central Assembly of God: Pentecostal historian Daniel Isgrigg has an article on Vandella Frye, who brought Pentecostalism to Tulsa in 1905 and was instrumental in the founding of what became Central Assembly. The 90th anniversary of Central Assembly of God was the cover story for the Spring 1997 edition of Assemblies of God Heritage.