Latest news with #Claremore
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Safenet gets settled in new building
Safenet Services, the local domestic violence nonprofit displaced by flooding last month, began moving into its temporary new home Tuesday. Executive Director Jody Moore got the keys Tuesday to 417 W. First St., formerly the Higgins law office, and showed her leadership team around Wednesday morning. Rogers County owns the building and expects to move the planning commission there as part of its courthouse remodel project. The commissioners leased the Higgins building to Safenet at their June 16 meeting for $1,000 a month. Moore said Safenet expects to spend about six months in the temporary building. She said the nonprofit hopes to have its First Street outpost in operation next week. "We'll offer all the things that we offered at our admin offices," Moore said. "We'll offer counseling services, groups, supervised visitation and our batterers' intervention program, case management ... the hope is that we can find some alternative placement for our shelter guests." Meanwhile, the agency is working through contractors and insurance to restore its Dupont Street offices. On June 6, sewage backed up and flooded about 90% of the building. Safenet staff and shelter guests had to evacuate. Moore said the shelter guests are all safe under the care of partner agencies. She said the goal is to find a place in Claremore to temporarily house some of Safenet's short-term, highest-risk cases. "How I explained it to my shelter staff is we have to be out of a crisis before we can start taking on the major crisis of finding housing for somebody," Moore said. Safenet maintains another office in Pryor at 118 N. Adair St., Moore said. People who want to reach Safenet in-person can visit with the organization's court advocates and other staff at its office on the second floor of the Rogers County Courthouse, 200 S. Lynn Riggs Blvd. People can also dial the crisis line at 918-341-9400 or reach Safenet's web chat system at Moore said Safenet expects to spend six figures or more moving into the Higgins office, working with insurance, fixing the Dupont Street offices and paying the rent on the new place. "The damages are super-extensive," Moore said. "It could be a million dollars, you know, but we don't know that. ... Right now, we don't have a solid answer to what it's going to cost, or who's paying for it." The nonprofit also continues to reckon with receiving less federal funding than in years past. Last year, Moore said, the agency lost about 40% of the money it receives from the federal Victims of Crime Act, which taps court costs paid by people and companies convicted of federal crimes. Safenet's fear of losing that money spurred Moore and five others tied to the agency to raise funds last August by summiting Colorado's Mt. Elbert. At just above 14,400 feet — as approximated by a sticker on Moore's water bottle — it is the tallest of the 50 or so fourteeners in the Centennial State. She said that last year, the hikers raised about $24,000. People could sponsor individual hikers and may do so again this year at "100% of people's donations go straight back to Safenet because everybody who is going, they're responsible for their own transportation, their own lodging, their own food, things like that," Moore said. "All of the donations go directly back to us." Moore said she will leave Rogers County Aug. 1 for Leadville, the base camp town. She said the elevation and resulting lack of oxygen punished her last year, and she wants to prepare better this year by spending a few days above 10,000 feet in the country's highest incorporated city. The hikers will begin their 4,500-foot climb Aug. 6. That same day, Safenet staff will gather at 8 a.m. at the Claremore Mountain Bike Trail, 15012 E. 470 Road, to symbolically trek alongside them. "If they can't do the climb, they still have an opportunity to come and support us and cheer us on," Moore said.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lilac Festival to give downtown Claremore flowery new look
The downtown Claremore Lilac District will soon get a makeover to match its name, said the director of the upcoming Lilac Festival. Claremore's inaugural Lilac Festival will bring live music, dancing, shopping deals, vendor booths and more to the downtown streets from Thursday to Saturday. The festival is free and runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. Steve Robinson, executive director of organizer Claremore Main Street, said the festival will usher in permanent cosmetic changes to the Lilac District. "We're gonna have flower baskets, planters, street poles all painted black," Robinson said. "It's going to transform the look downtown." Robinson said Claremore Main Street will paint a purple Lilac District logo on the street at the intersection of Will Rogers Boulevard and Cherokee Street. The organization will also hang lilac baskets from the light poles and place lilac-filled concrete planters beside downtown benches. Claremore's downtown has carried the Lilac District name since 2021, when Claremore City Council passed a resolution to make it so. The name pays tribute to Lynn Riggs, author of "Green Grow the Lilacs," the play that inspired the musical "Oklahoma!" "The Lilac Festival will really focus on the connection between the Lilac District, 'Green Grow the Lilacs' and Native Americans at the beginning of our state," Robinson said. "'Green Grow the Lilacs' was all about Claremore becoming a state. ... What we are celebrating is that era of statehood where you brought together Native Americans with farmers, with ranchers, and you mixed all those cultures together, and that became Claremore." Riggs embodied this mixture: His mother was one-eighth Cherokee, while his father had English heritage. On Friday, festival attendees can take part in square dancing and a pie auction, both elements of Riggs' "Green Grow the Lilacs." At 9:30 p.m. that night, the Claremore Museum of History will screen "Oklahoma!" at Gazebo Park. The festival will also spotlight Claremore's Cherokee heritage. Monica Champ, a Cherokee jeweler and beadwork artist helping to organize the festival, said the organizers are inviting women to wear their ribbon skirts Thursday for a style show. "The reason we wear them is to show our pride, our solidarity, our sovereignty, that we're still here," Champ said. She said Choogie Kingfisher, a storyteller and Cherokee National Treasure, will perform at Gazebo Park from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. Cherokee artists will also sell their wares at vendor booths throughout the festival, and kids can make their own Cherokee-inspired art by painting rocks to form a snake, which Robinson said will stay on display downtown after the festival. Champ said she is very excited for the festival and hopes it will promote "gadugi," the Cherokee concept of building and strengthening community. Robinson said the goal of the festival and accompanying cosmetic changes is to make downtown Claremore a destination spot. "We really want the Lilac Festival to become an event like Dickens [on the Boulevard] ... where we draw 10,000 people to downtown Claremore and get a feel for it so they want to come back," Robinson said.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Attorney general applauds city-county opioid abatement project
Claremore and Rogers County's joint opioid abatement project is "nothing short of remarkable," said Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Drummond's office granted the city and county about $500,000 last fall to combat the spread of opioids in the community. Using money the state received from 2022 settlements with pharmaceutical companies, the Oklahoma Opioid Abatement Revolving Fund paid out $12 million to 85 entities last year and is getting ready for a second round of awards. The city and county have used those funds to hire a grant manager and two personnel to provide GED prep and testing in the county jail. The funding also buoys the Women in Recovery program offered through Tulsa Family and Children's Services. Drummond visited the Rogers County Courthouse May 30 to discuss the state of the abatement project. Fourteen people – from city and county leaders to Family and Children's Services personnel to people involved with the county's drug court – sat with Drummond around a rectangle of tables. "One of the takeaways I want you to get from this time together is that this involves a lot of people, a lot of directions, a lot of expertise, a lot of people that really, really care about tackling this opioid crisis," said Scott Greenland, hired by the county last December to manage the grant. Greenland said opioid deaths are increasing in Rogers County. Eight people died of an overdose in the county in 2019; that number climbed to 28 in 2022, then dipped slightly to 23 in 2023. Greenland said men are twice as likely to die of an overdose than women, and men aged 35 to 45 face the highest risk. In 2024, Greenland said, 116 overdoses occurred in Rogers County. Nearly all the overdoses occurred in residential areas, but other than that, Greenland said no common thread ties them together. He compared the geographical spread to the random locations of marbles dropped from a helicopter. "We don't know exactly how to tackle that yet, but we're working in that direction, realizing that it's not an easy, quick fix," Greenland said. "This is something that we've got to strategically look at." Claremore City Manager John Feary said he and District 3 Commissioner Ron Burrows had first talked about a joint opioid abatement initiative several years ago, but neither the city nor the county had the money then. Feary said he is thankful the state Legislature and Drummond had made funds available, and that partner organizations like Family and Children's Services and local recovery houses had joined the team to provide their expertise. The city and county have leaned on these partner organizations to provide high school equivalency exams and parenting classes to inmates in the Rogers County jail, help inmates find stable employment upon release and give those recovering from addiction a temporary place to live. Lani Burns, director of employment and education at Family and Children's Services, said a stable job and a gain in education level are the two biggest factors in decreasing recidivism. "If we combine expertise, and that's what this collaboration is all about, we allow for pathways and cycles to break within that familial cycle of addiction and incarceration," Burns said. The other part of the city and county's strategy of combating opioids is teaching kids why they're harmful. Greenland said school-based prevention is evidence-based and differs from past "just say no" approaches by showing students how drugs like fentanyl affect their bodies, brains and futures. He said about 1,215 of Rogers County's 13,500 public school students have received prevention education from local nonprofits Rogers County Youth Services or KeyChoices. Greenland said he aims to increase this percentage from 9% to 40% in the next few years. Burrows said school prevention is the heart of the project. "It starts with the youth," Burrows said. "We know we got an issue with adults, and how do you break the cycle?" The county introduced Drummond to Chantel Reben, two years sober after going through Rogers County's drug court and Family and Children's Services Women in Recovery program. Reben said she grew up surrounded by addiction and went to prison for drugs in Okmulgee County in 2012. A recovery program helped her get clean, and she established a life in Claremore for her and her son. But after a life-altering car accident injured her son, Reben relapsed, which culminated in 2022 with another arrest and the threat of 15 years behind bars. She said Judge Stephen Pazzo and Chrisie Stone, coordinator of Rogers County's drug court, saved her from prison because they understood she needed treatment for her addiction. She entered Women in Recovery and received trauma therapy. Reben said she graduated from drug court May 15. "I was given the opportunity to address my trauma, my loss, my addiction, my health, that reunification with my child, and I've returned to a truer version of myself," Reben said. "... I have a well-paying job — which I will be leaving to right after this — I'm supported in my community and my son is as well. I have fully reunified with him, and I'm actually in a healthy, loving relationship." After the meeting, Drummond said Claremore and Rogers County are deploying the opioid funds exactly how his office intended they be used. He said the city-county project should serve as a template for other entities seeking to combat opioid addiction in their communities. "We can invest money today with our youngest citizens and avoid this heartbreak as they become workforce-ready or not," Drummond said. "It's commendable ... to look at [Reben], truly, a wonderful young person that was on a path of destruction and lived hard years, but now I'm so proud of her in her sobriety, and she's got partnerships around her. They're gonna lift her up and keep her straight." Drummond said that regrettably, many local governments in Oklahoma aren't taking advantage of the settlement money. His office plans to distribute $28 million in its next tranche, for which applications close Friday. Claremore and Rogers County are asking for $2.4 million. From then on, the Attorney General's office will open grant applications every three years.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Claremore Class of 2025 graduates at drizzling commencement ceremony
Claremore High School awarded diplomas to the 331 members of its Class of 2025 Sunday at Lantow Field. Intermittent showers and a gloomy forecast prompted the district to move graduation a few hours ahead of its initially planned start time. Families and graduates alike huddled under umbrellas and ponchos as they packed into the football stadium. Rain continued to fall as the seniors framed the football field in red and white and watched their classmates' faces flicker one by one up on the Jumbotron. Each senior had recorded a "Senior Shout-Out" video to thank their friends, family, teachers and others who had helped them make it to graduation. After everyone had taken their seats, Principal Brooke Lee thanked the crowd for its patience with the weather. "I know everyone just got wet rear ends as they sat down, but it was just really important to me to keep this outside for you seniors so that as many of your family members could be here to celebrate this moment with you," Lee said. "I've heard in some cultures, rain on a wedding day is good luck. So maybe on graduation day, it's good luck as well." Lee said among the Class of 2025 are four valedictorians, 22 salutatorians, 33 Oklahoma Academic Scholars, one Academic All-State winner and one National Merit Finalist. The class earned a collective $2.8 million in scholarships, she said. Claremore's senior class helped propel the school to high honors this year in several sports and extracurricular activities. Lee said Claremore's girls track and field, boys golf, jazz band, academic bowl and Future Farmers of America agricultural communications teams had all won state championships. It took Lee more than five minutes to list all the groups that had achieved on the state or national level this year. "I'd say this group of seniors knows a thing or two about succeeding, and they've got the accomplishments to prove it," Lee said. Each of the four valedictorians gave a speech. Caroline Lee, who will study management information systems at the University of Oklahoma this fall, quoted "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to remind her classmates to appreciate life because it moves so fast. Allison Wiseman, headed to Milwaukee School of Engineering to study biomedical engineering, advised people cannot control all their circumstances but can always control their perspective. The other two valedictorians, Kizer Ballard and Campbell Crum, will each pursue a political science degree. Ballard said many people had shaped her life, but especially her late grandfather and former Claremore Superintendent Keith Ballard. She said her grandfather dedicated his life to education and taught her to appreciate its value. "There will be smaller gatherings of classmates at reunions, weddings and other celebrations, but right now, this is the last time we will all be together," Ballard said. "Let's rejoice in what we have left and know that I am proud of each person here, and my grandpa would be, too." Crum thanked his parents, who both work at Claremore elementary schools, for orienting him toward education. Between jokes about the rainy weather and Claremore's attendance rates, Crum said he hoped the school would one day restore the block schedule it will replace next year with a seven-period day. This prompted his classmates to clap and cheer. Crum told the rest of his graduating class that though they're starting a new chapter, it's OK to look back once in a while because it's human nature. He referenced his favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut, and how Vonnegut loved Lot's wife for looking back on Sodom. "I found there will always be good in the past if you look for it, and please do look for it because sometimes becoming a pillar of salt will remind you of your beginnings," Crum said. "... Love everyone because no matter what, they're human. Vonnegut once said, 'We're all here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it even is.'" Italya Lona, Claremore's senior class president, gave the last speech and received her diploma first. Lona thanked her family, friends, teachers, coaches and Jesus, and said she loved them more than Starbucks during finals week. Lona said her classmates should be proud of themselves for surviving high school and use that accomplishment to push them through future challenges. She counted the class down into a chant of, "We did it." "Class of 2025, here's to the memories we made, the obstacles we overcame, and the people who helped us along the way," Lona said. "I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else. Now, let's go walk this stage and get out of here like we've been dreaming of since freshman year."
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Light of Hope, Eastern Hills to commemorate first anniversary of May tornado
After a tornado ravaged Claremore last May, Eastern Hills Baptist Church became a gathering place of sorts. The church, which sits on a hill overlooking 4200 Road east of Claremore, sustained little damage compared to the ruined homes that surrounded it. Melissa Fullerton, the church's administrative assistant, said she had full faith God had planned to use Eastern Hills to help the community recover. For the next six weeks, people dealing with the tornado's aftermath would flock there for food, supplies and something to do besides ruminating on what they'd lost. One year later, the church will soon host "Hope after the Storm." It will run from 5 to 8 p.m. June 16 at the church, 16912 E. 480 Road in Claremore. Pastor Brad Taylor said the free event is an opportunity for people to rekindle the camaraderie they'd found in the wake of the storm. "We're at the anniversary of the storm, so there's anxiety because we're in another storm season," Taylor said. "... We can't fixate on the storm ... if another storm comes, it's OK because we can put back the pieces. God has put around us great resources of life and friends and family and neighbors that will help guide us." The church will offer food and raffle prizes, and News on 6 meteorologist Travis Meyer will give a presentation reflecting on the tornado. Eastern Hills is hosting the event jointly with Light of Hope. Nancy Phelps, the nonprofit's executive director, said the two formed a partnership "from about the first minute and a half after everything happened." Phelps said many other tornado recovery partners will come to the event to host breakout sessions and information booths, such as Claremore/Rogers County Disaster Assistance and Rogers County Emergency Management. "It's kind of like a reunion," Phelps said. "All the ones that started, and now everybody's coming back together." Phelps said the storm placed a burden on many people's mental health. She said mental health professionals and Sara Wallace, a Claremore yoga instructor, would come to the event to provide strategies for weathering the metaphorical storms disasters can whip up. Taylor said a tornado survivor had told him they were unsure if they could go to the event. He said they told him it would dig up painful memories they had deliberately stowed away. "The reality is, that's the person [who] needs to come because items undealt with is what brings about other issues in life," Taylor said. "This is an opportunity to face that fear, realize there is hope."
