A Thank You Letter to Home The Place That Helped Shape Me

Dear Community,

I’ve spent most of my life’s chapters living here locally amongst you. I was mostly raised and formally educated here, got married and raised three kids here, attended churches and participated in community organizations here and now have started a business here. 

Community isn’t just streets and houses and dogs, like my grade school worksheet depicted. I have seen this community from many angles and what you have given me could never fit in this article. Even so, I will try.

From my local semi-nomadic childhood and young adult life, placing down deep roots was hard to do and I had not learned the value of it. You helped teach me it’s value by holding tightly to the history that tells our story. I enjoy our nods to the past in the form of powwows, murals, plays, architecture and parades!

Mentors in this community deeply cared and taught me to think and to search for answers. They taught me the value of art, our constitutional rights, proper grammar—which I am currently benefiting from whilst writing this to you, to understand facts in numbers, the wonders of the wilderness and space.

Community, you helped shape a man worth pledging my lifelong love to. You’ve given him and me safe places to teach our children about the world around them and childhood experiences to fill their memories with special communal moments.

You’re a seasoned bunch at rallying behind one another … by cheering our team headed for the Special Olympics, by showing up with extra boats to save people and animals stranded from our 100-year flood, by offering support to a student who experienced a horrific accident, by patronizing struggling businesses after we lost hundreds of ConocoPhillips jobs.

Paying it forward is one of your strongest suits. When someone is cold in the winter, you step up to offer heaters, blankets and space. When a hungry kiddo’s school lunch account runs in the red, you step in to give them a fresh start.

When times were heart-gripping, you showed us how to stand beside … a mother whose son is still missing, the ones in the work accident, those struggling with addictions and hopelessness. Together, you’ve linked arms, built memorials and given prayers to those who’ve lost loved ones. You may have answered the call in different tangible ways, but you delivered it all in the envelope of hope.

Additionally, whether it’s through efforts given in preserving historical buildings and photos, the thoughtfulness of beautification projects or respectful civil discourse in the public square, you have taught me that a safe, shared space is something to be proud of and work toward. I’ve seen ideals nurtured from safe places like this turn into reality and change the community.

Not only am I proud to live here next to you—to call this place home, but I feel a responsibility for it—to contribute to its safety, to help it flourish and to leave my chapter better than the last when I’m gone. I believe in you, in us, in our state and even in our nation. We are a legacy worth adding to! I do firmly believe that our best days are ahead of us and that we can respectfully and collectively be the difference between now and then.

So, what have you given me? OklaHOME!

My sincerest thanks,

Liz Threlkeld