Tullahassee to reopen high school gym as a communty center

Cathy Spaulding, Muskogee Phoenix, Okla.
·2 min read

Jul. 25—TULLAHASSEE — Former Wildcat guard Larry Hytche Sr. recalled basketball games in the old Tullahassee gym.

"Our main rivalry was Boynton and Taft," he said. "Preston and Boley, too. There'd be sell-out crowds."

This week, Hytche and others worked until midnight preparing the old gym for its new life as the John Ford Community Center.

The center, named for a long-time school superintendent, will have its grand opening at 1 p.m. Friday. The event begins two days of celebration as part of Tullahassee's biannual Homecoming celebration.

Hytche's daughter, Lori Hytche-Thompson, said Ford was superintendent from the 1950s to 1980s.

"He actually left a good job to come back and save Tullahassee," she said. "The date of his passing in 1992 actually coincides with the day of this grand opening. We didn't plan it that way. It just goes to prove that nothing ever dies in Tullahassee. It may lay dormant, but never die."

Thompson said the gym was Tullahassee's last standing school building. The district consolidated with Porter in 1990. After that, the high school and elementary school buildings succumbed to two separate fires, she said.

The gym, however, remained open until safety concerns prompted the building's closure in the early 2000s, she said.

Thompson said the Tullahassee Wildcats Foundation began working to restore the building around 2017. She said the building had become "just a shell."

"This was a dirt floor, there was nothing here," Thompson said. "Spiderwebs, snakes, they did whatever they wanted to for 20 years."

The foundation helped the town secure grants and donations, she said. The tiny community lost its Zip Code in the early 2000s she said.

"It was hard to secure grants without a zip code because it would come up Porter," Thompson said. "The foundation is working to get the town back its zip code."

Through grants and donations, the gym got new lights, new floors, new bathroom fixtures and air conditioning. Original bleachers were repainted.

Work on the gym has picked up as the Homecoming nears, Thompson said.

"The last two weeks, we'd work every day until midnight," she said.

Thompson said members of the Ford family will attend the building's ribbon cutting Friday.

She said she expects 700 people for the Homecoming weekend. The gathering could include smaller communities and schools, such as Clarksville that fed into Tullahassee High, she said.

The community center could help bring revenue to Tullahassee, considered Oklahoma's first all Black town, she said.

"This is just a stepping stone to show we're actually in here," Thompson said. "We're going to start running tournaments, and have a revenue of money coming in, to show we still have a population that lives here."