NEW PLAN TO MOVE COLUMNS

The lovely and majestic columns on the old Phillips campus in Enid, Oklahoma will be moved according to a new plan to open a Smithsonian quality museum addition in Enid adjacent to the Chisholm Trail Conference Center.

The current location, beside a peaceful pond with arching trees is lovely and in there place would be a destination for tourists, students, and community. The current plans show them moved to the new downtown addition and named for donors. In the fading golden sun of a peaceful November afternoon the thought of these gracious and classic structures being surrounded by traffic seems too harsh and cruel. They are mythic art so at home in their natural setting. Times change, places are forgotten or torn down. Another page of history is turned and what will the result of this urban renewal ultimately reveal? Only the future can tell if this will be a good thing or if , like so many other victims of urban renewals have learned, the realization will be that sometimes, stories and things, should remain.

MUM IS THE WORD

Several legends exist about the supposed mummified remains of John Wilkes Booth residing for long years in the attic of an Enid store and strange mummies found elsewhere with bizarre features or anomolous surroundings. Sometimes the stories are true underscoring the fact that truth can be the strangest of all.

Occasionally, one hears of strange things have been done to bodies. People preserved and kept in the company board room, or kept on display as a sample of how good the embalming job at XYZ frontier funeral parlor. bad men killed while robbing a bank were often put on display and as late as the 1930's the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde and their henchmen were displayed as stark lessons to any who contemplated fighting the law.

There is a story that one Elmer McCurdy, outlaw, alias Frank Curtis and Frank Davidson. It is said "he was killed during a robbery by a sheriff's posse near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, on October 7, 1911. 66 years later, his mummified body was found in a fun house attraction at the Long Beach, California Nu-Pike amusement park. It was during the filming of an episode of TV's "Six Million Dollar Man," that a technician rearranged what was thought to be a mannequin, only to have one of McCurdy's arms fall off. Elmer is now buried here in 1977, under 2-1/2 yards of concrete. May he rest in peace; even an outlaw deserves that respect.