Fiesta Bowl travelblog: Lunch with General Jerry Holmes & golf tour with Vince Orza

General Jerry Holmes has talked foreign policy with Anwar Sadat. Vince Orza won Oklahoma gubernatorial primaries in each party. Trish the Dish and I had great visits with both Friday.

One of the best things about traveling is not just seeing cool things. It’s reconnecting with great people. That certainly was the case Friday during Fiesta Bowl week.

We had lunch with General. Holmes. We had a great visit and tour with Orza, who lives part-time in Desert Highlands, the Scottsdale neighborhood that includes Jack Nicklaus’ famed golf course of the same name.

General Holmes is 86. We got to know him through OU’s College of Engineering, where General Holmes taught a class for 20 years. He and his late wife, Nina, grew quite close with the Dish. Just great, classy, humble people. Maybe the most impressive couple I’ve ever met.

Nina died a couple of years ago, and General Holmes last January moved to suburban Phoenix to be near his son’s family.

General Holmes grew up in Wewoka and has a bachelor’s engineering degree and a master’s engineering degree, both from OU. He graduated from the National War College in 1976, where he was a classmate of Colin Powell, who became a lifelong friend.

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Gen. Holmes has a million stories, including personal chats with Menachem Begin and Sadat, who as prime minister of Israel and president of Egypt, respectively, signed the historic Camp David Accords in 1978. “Sadat was a man of peace,” the general said of the Nobel Peace Prize winner who later was assassinated.

The world needs more men like Anwar Sadats. It also needs more men like General Holmes.

General Holmes’ honors and accommodations are too many to list. He’s an Oklahoma treasure.

We were joined at lunch by the Johnston family, big OSU fans from Chickasha, where Darrel Johnston and his son, Cameron, have an accounting firm. Cameron’s wife, Stephanie, worked in OU engineering with the Dish and also knew General Holmes well.

We had dinner with the Johnstons in Boise, the night before the OSU-Boise State game, and it was great catching up with them, too. When we were together in Idaho, none of figured there would be a Fiesta Bowl rendezvous. As Cameron Johnston said, a lot of OSU fans would have been happy just making a bowl game at that point.

After lunch, the Dish and I headed for Desert Highlands. Vince and Patti Orza had invited us out.

Most Oklahomans have followed Vince Orza for decades. He was in local television for years, going back to Channel 4’s iconic Dannysday show. Orza pioneered business reporting at Channel 5, became a news anchor and eventually became a business reporter for ABC News. He also went into the restaurant business, with his Garfield’s and Eateries Inc. becoming multi-state enterprises.

Orza twice took a turn at politics. In 1990, Orza won the Republican Primary, beating Bill Price and somebody named Burns Hargis. But in the runoff, Price edged Orza, before Democrat David Walters won the general election. In 2002, the Democrats recruited Orza to run, and he again won the primary. But in the runoff, Brad Henry Orza. Henry eventually upset Steve Largent in the general election.

The Orzas fell in love with the Valley of the Sun and 18 years ago bought a second residence, in the Desert Highlands neighborhood of North Scottsdale.

Desert Highlands is the Nicklaus-designed course that was the site of the first two Skins Games, 1983 and 1984. The Skins Game was a made-for-television event involving Nicklaus, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson. The Skins Game served as a huge marketing tool for the burgeoning Desert Highlands neighborhood, which sits at the base of Pinnacle Peak, one of Greater Phoenix’s iconic mountains.

Orza invited me to play golf, but I didn’t have the time for 18 holes and I don’t have the game to walk onto a Jack Nicklaus teebox. Instead, I settled for a tour of the course.

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Just like all over Scottsdale, the Desert Highlands homes reflect the desert motif. The Orzas have a beautiful house, and they gave us a great tour of the course, which is stunning, with its elevated tee boxes and native contours.

There are few concrete cart paths – Nicklaus wasn’t a fan – and virtually no rough. If you’re not on the fairway, you’re in native grounds that typically are trouble.

Home ownership comes with automatic membership at Desert Highlands, and there’s no other way to be a member. The Valley is known for its incredible golf, and Desert Highlands certainly sits at or near the top of that status.

Afterward, we headed back to the Camelback Inn, listening to Alabama-Cincinnati en route. I still had work to do, and we weren’t overly hungry – our lunch at Rita’s Cantina in the Camelback Inn was quite filling; I had shrimp enchiladas – and later we went to the media hospitality suite to hang out with the press corps from Oklahoma and watch the second half of the Georgia-Michigan debacle.We were treated to a virtual floor show from Tulsa World photographer Ian Maule, who literally is the funniest person I know and is a real-life standup comedian. But Maule doesn’t have to be doing a routine to keep you stitches. I double over in laughter every two minutes, just in normal conversation with him.

It was a fun way to end a wonderful Friday, which included two amazing Oklahomans. A four-star general and an amateur politician who won gubernatorial primaries in each party.

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Fiesta Bowl travelblog: Oklahoma icons Gen. Jerry Holmes & Vince Orza