Marker Text:
The
MABELLE
KENNEDY
HIGHWAY
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Dedicated in Honory of Mabelle Kennedy of Pawhuska
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as a tribute for outstanding public serviceWho Is Mabelle Kennedy?:
When Mabelle Kennedy came to Oklahoma in a covered wagon with her parents and three siblings, her grandmother was sure the family would be killed by outlaws or scalped by Indians.
Years later, the woman who became known as “the grand dame of Oklahoma politics” and who served in many political and governmental roles, told a reporter that period’s often-rumored Indian Territory dangers remained just rumors. “It was a delightful trip,” she said.
The 1891 trip was made in two covered wagons by the family of five from near Kansas City to the Enid area, where they disliked the wind and blowing sand, and eventually to Ralston where they settled — long before her political career began.
“We bought produce from farmers along the way and camped by streams. It was a picnic to me all the way and I was sorry when it was over,” she told a reporter.
While living in Ralston, which she said was “as big as any town in Oklahoma at that time,” Kennedy returned to Missouri for schooling. It was on one of her trips home from Oakland College that she met her future husband, Edmund Kennedy, a young Kansas City banker. He had come to Oklahoma for a visit. After their marriage, they moved to Pawhuska, where he bought the National Bank of Commerce in 1909.
She spent much of her time raising five children until her husband died in 1936, leaving her the bank and five Osage County ranches.
“I had never done anything about business in any way,” she said. “I told myself ‘I’m not going to let this go down under me’ ” and enrolled in banking and ranch management courses so she would be more capable of handling business.
She also got more involved in politics. She served as mayor of Pawhuska, delegate to four national Democratic conventions, Democratic national committee-woman from Oklahoma, assistant treasurer of the United States and on a goodwill commission to Brazil — a position that carried the rank of ambassador.
Kennedy had met Harry Truman at one of the political conventions, was impressed by him and joined his “Whistle Stop” campaign when he was a candidate for his own term as president after serving out the unexpired term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
She later served on Truman’s inaugural committee and he appointed her as assistant secretary of the treasury, the second woman to hold such a position. He later appointed her to the goodwill commission to Brazil, a job she accepted with her usual joking humor:
“If I made a failure of it, I was
not well-known enough that it
would make a difference.” In 1980, Kennedy was chosen by Gov. George Nigh to receive the fourth annual Pioneer Woman Award. Nigh said she was a person who was “highly deserving and a natural recipient because of her true pioneer heritage and lifelong civic involvement.” In 1974, she had been honored with a “Mabelle Kennedy” day in Oklahoma.
Kennedy told a reporter in 1971 that she’d had some heart problems. “It’s bound to get out of balance once in a while,” she said about her health. She said the first flare-up came 30 years earlier when her doctor told her she should relax. “I told him to relax,” she said, adding “you needn’t worry about me; they don’t have any wings up there to fit me anyway.”
She also explained the unusual spelling of her name. She said she was named May Belle after two aunts but when she started to school, she couldn’t make the “y” correctly. Her mother told her that a child should have a voice in how he or she is named and added, “From now on, you are Mabelle.”
She was “deeply touched” in 1975 when a new highway that replaced a 32-mile stretch of U.S. 60 known as “Lizard Lane” was named the “Mabelle Kennedy Highway.” It was the first stretch of highway in Oklahoma to be named for a woman.
The opening of the new highway climaxed a 23-year fight to improve the road between Ponca City and Pawhuska.
“I prayed to live long enough to see this highway finished,” Kennedy said at its opening. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to kick off tomorrow. I’m going to live to enjoy it.” She died six years later, at the age of 93.