Did being Phillipsburg stymie Bartlesville's growth?

Rita Thurman Barnes, a Bartlesville local historian and newspaper columnist, recounts a Tulsa conversation that rubbed her the wrong way.

We made a very early trip to Tulsa this morning to get a belt for hubby's lawn mower. We left before breakfast so we could get there when the dealership opened and home to mow before the rain.

On the way back about 9:30 we stopped at a bakery and got a couple of donuts. We were making small talk while the clerk made change and I mentioned we were hungry and heading back to Bartlesville. She was an older lady, about my age, and she looked at me and said, "I've been up there a couple of times. It's such a 'cute little town'."

I don't know what rattled my cage but her comment didn't set right. I could be getting old and touchy but I want the town I'm spending the rest of my life in to be thought of as more than just "a cute little town".

I reminded her that Phillips 66 had its beginnings in Bartlesville as did what is now known as Citgo. I had to stop myself from preaching a sermonette about all the good things that go on here in town and how the lives of people around the state and even around the world have been impacted because of the research and development that continues to take place in Bartlesville in spite of some relocation to Houston.

We may be a small city tucked in the NE corner of Oklahoma but we matter and we contribute and for the most part we reach out to our neighbors and friends less fortunate and give from deep down in our pockets and from our hearts.

There's no doubt that Bartlesville punches above its weight, culturally and economically.

My earliest memories, mostly happy, are of Bartlesville -- walking to Johnstone Park playground past the Nellie Johnstone replica and the tank cannon and the steam engine, swimming at Sani-Pool, walking to the library, church, and the stores; the Play Tower and the amphitheater at Sooner Park; and of course the Kiddie Park. As an adult, I brought my family back annually for Kiddie Park visits (until the youngest got too tall) and OK Mozart concerts, often with supper at Mr. Limey's or Murphy's or Dink's, and always with a drive around town to point out where things used to be when I was a kid.

When I was five, my dad's employer, Cities Service, moved his job to Tulsa, and we were sad to leave Bartlesville. I've been told that Cities Service didn't feel welcome to expand its presence in Bartlesville, that efforts to build a world headquarters in the city were blocked. I have no way of knowing if that was true, but it certainly seemed like Bartlesville was a Phillips town, even though Cities Service's antecedent companies were there first. There was a frequently used jibe, "Cities Service makes me nervous. Phillips gives you better service." I'm sure Tulsa worked hard to woo the company as well.

How did Phillips get such a hold on the civic imagination of Bartlesville? I'm sure the moguls who led Cities did their share of philanthropy, but it seems like Frank Phillips was more generous, or at least more visibly generous, and flamboyant on top of it, enough so that the main east-west road through the city was renamed in his honor, and that he came to be known simply as Uncle Frank. (To my shame, I still haven't read Michael Wallis's biography of Phillips.)

In hindsight, I can't but wonder if Cities Service's move was an inflection point in Bartlesville's destiny. Had Cities Service felt that it was welcome to consolidate and grow in Bartlesville, other businesses would have sprung up as well, and perhaps it would be a city of 100,000 now, instead of bumping along in the mid-30s where it has been since 1980.

Comparing the population history of Bartlesville and Tulsa it looks like something happened in the early decades of the two cities to set them on different courses. Both grew dramatically in the first 20 years of the 20th century, but Tulsa grew twice as fast and kept growing into the 1920s as Bartlesville stagnated. Was Bartlesville limited by geography -- wedged between a flood-prone Caney River and the Osage boundary? Or was the Phillips dominance already enough to convey to energetic entrepreneurs that they'd have to go elsewhere to shine? Even Frank's brother, Waite Phillips, seems to have felt the need to move to Tulsa to make a name for himself, out from under Frank's shadow.

I confess this is speculation on my part, but it seems to me that if a city is dominated by a single businessman and philanthropist and by the company he founded, if the city's leading citizens all climbed the ladder with his help, people with dreams of making it big on their own might take their entrepreneurial energies elsewhere. The junior executives and non-profit leaders and city officials who advanced to influence and wealth through the good graces of the city Big Shot might feel threatened (more so than the Big Shot himself) by the rise of independently wealthy and powerful innovators, and they might use their influence over local government, real estate, and finance to frustrate potential rivals and encourage them to move elsewhere.

In the short run, a dominant businessman/philanthropist would give a city a certain stability and identity; in the long run, that dominance would deprive the city of dynamism, particularly after the founding Big Shot has left the scene, and the system he left behind becomes more about self-preservation than innovation and progress.

Michael Mason's excellent and exhaustive study, "The Kaiser System," has stirred some of these musings, and I hope to comment more in the near future.

Tulsa was once a city where W. G. Skelly, Josh Cosden, Harry Sinclair, Thomas Gilcrease, W. K. Warren, Waite Phillips, and many others made names for themselves in business and society in parallel with one another, in a dynamic environment where success and fame didn't require ingratiating oneself to the in-group. When that dynamism is lost, the city is poorer for it.

NOTE 2020/09/25: The brief excerpt above from an article by Rita Thurman Barnes is presented here under the Fair Use limitation on exclusive rights under Section 107 of the U. S. Copyright Law for the purpose of comment. No license or prior permission from the copyright owner is required to quote an excerpt within the boundaries of Fair Use. In all cases where I present a short quote from another publication for comment, I make no claim to ownership of the copyright of the material I am quoting. The copyright notice at the bottom of this page applies to my work here presented on BatesLine, not to quotations from other sources presented under the Fair Use exemption. Although these facts are generally known by people familiar with copyright law, I am stating it explicitly here to allay concerns in this particular instance.

MORE: Bartlesville historian Granger Meador has posted a scan of the program for the citywide celebration honoring Frank Phillips on his 66th birthday, November 28, 1939. Special trains carrying employees and special guests came from Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Phillips, Texas, where they were greeted by members of the Jane Phillips Sorority serving breakfast. The morning was filled with tours and open houses at Woolaroc Ranch and Museum, company headquarters, research lab, US Bureau of Mines building, the Phillips company airport, Jane Phillips Sorority, and Phillips Men's Club. A birthday parade through downtown included a historical pageant depicting key episodes in Uncle Frank's life, all 21 departments of the company, Osage Indians, marching bands from high schools around the region, including Nowata, Dewey, Collinsville, and Coffeyville, and a drill team from the Tulsa sales division. Phillips was presented with a birthday cake at the Municipal Stadium, with a speech by Gov. Leon Phillips, and the festivities broadcast over KTUL in Tulsa, KOMA in Oklahoma City, KWFP in Wichita Falls, and KGNC in Amarillo. The evening festivities included a "continuous variety show" at the Civic Center, a basketball game at the new high school gym (built with financial support from Uncle Frank), a fireworks show at the stadium, and free dances at four different venues, plus (weather permitting) a street dance.