By Ruth Ann Replogle
Gary Brown is addicted to history.
His great-grandparents made the Land Run of 1893, settling in Garfield and Grant counties.
His family owned Brown Funeral Home and he grew up in the two-story house behind the funeral home that is now Maple Place Bed and Breakfast. Brown said as a youth, he noticed most of the people who lived in the now historical Kenwood district in the 1960s were senior citizens.
“They were people who came in with the Land Run,” Brown said. As a result, he was immersed in the narratives of the past, setting a foundation for his fascination with northwest Oklahoma.
“I grew up hearing Cherokee Strip stories,” Brown said.
He said his grandmother left a wealth of information about the Enid area to him, and he has been piecing the stories together ever since.
“Right now I am looked to as a receptacle for the historical information,” Brown said.
Since moving back to Enid in the mid-1980s, he has spearheaded various historical preservation projects, and he is on the board of directors for the upcoming Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.
Upon his return to town, Brown initially was involved with Sons and Daughters of the Cherokee Strip.
“I realized I had not stepped foot in the Museum of the Cherokee Strip,” Brown said. He described the museum as a one-room gallery then.
“I got involved in looking at an expansion,” Brown said. “That was 1988.”
He served as the first president of Friends of Government Springs (also known as Enid Beautiful Inc.) The group was formed to maintain and beautify Government Springs Park and Dillingham Gardens.
“When we finished the park, we wanted to do a special event,” Brown said. “Someone said Chautauqua. I had no clue what that was.”
As the first director of Chautauqua in the Park, he said, “It was designed to feature the park. The setting was ideal.”
Chautauqua in the Park took on a life of its own, so Brown moved onto other things.
“I’ve always stayed involved. I’ve had my own history projects, too,” he said.
Brown, along with Jerry Blankenship, is co-chairing a committee that in essence will provide the program part of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.
For those not familiar with that name, Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center will take the place of the Museum of the Cherokee Strip, which will be expanded to include more space for research, archives and storage as well as larger galleries.
“People say we’ve got a museum. Now we’re going to be a regional center. Through this one facility we’ll collect and archive history,” Brown said. “Local history is all about connecting the dots.”
Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center’s signature theme will be the land run — the ramifications, the experience, the opening up of this area in one day’s time, Brown said. He said the center will tell those stories in a way never told before.
When he is not tracking down old anthologies and artifacts for Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center, Brown is a lawyer for estate planning and business transactions at Brown & Associates.
Through his work, “I get exposed to a lot of stories, how this and that came about,” Brown said. “That has made me more aware of our regional history.”
“The story behind it — that’s what’s intriguing to me about local history,” Brown said. His thirst for knowledge not yet quenched, the husband and father of three will continue with his quest to connect the dots.
“I am a history buff. I drive my wife nuts flipping from CNN to the History Channel,” he said.
