The month of April is always a nice milestone for Voices of Oklahoma for it is the anniversary month of recording the oral histories of many Oklahomans. It was April 10th, 2010 that we launched our website with the oral history of Wilma Mankiller.

Wilma passed away on April 6th, 2010. We were in the finishing stages of building our website, so we scrambled to make her our first storyteller. We consider it a great honor to have the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation as our first oral history.

But how did Voices of Oklahoma come about? In this episode I will tell you how the idea came to me, and the interesting details leading up to the launching of the site, which would become the only website in Oklahoma dedicated solely to oral history.

We would not have reached this milestone were it not for the foundations and individuals who have faithfully supported our mission. So, on behalf of our 233 storytellers, I say thank you for listening to their stories and listening to this podcast as we salute our 11th anniversary.