By Scott Meacham
Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoman
Every year at this time, I think about my grandparents — about how different their world was from ours today, and about how much about it, happily, is still the same.
I had two sets of grandparents growing up. On my dad’s side, we go back to the Land Run. My dad’s dad and mother and their families helped settle Western Oklahoma. My dad’s great-grandfather built a sod house outside of Clinton and lived in that house made of prairie grass and mud with their 12 children.
His mother’s family established banks across Western Oklahoma and lived in the old “big houses” on Broadway in Elk City.
I was the fourth generation to be a lawyer in our family’s law firm in Clinton (which dates back to 1920) and ended my time in Western Oklahoma as the CEO of our family bank in Elk City which was founded in 1901, about six years before statehood.
My mother’s family also goes back multi-generations in Oklahoma. My great-great granddad on her side was the first sheriff of Oklahoma City and his grandson, my granddad, served as Oklahoma City manager on two different o