Mourning to Turning—Turning Losses into a New Future

When Conoco merged with Phillips in 2002, over 250 officers and executives from Conoco moved to Houston, the new companies headquarters. The town of 25,000 also lost 600 or 700 indirect jobs as a result, both as a result of the multiplier impact in reverse and Conoco-Phillips moving to one source contractors. In all 1200 people let town, creating a huge, negative impact on a town this size.

Stan Kisler said, “We were in a mourning stage for about a year. But a couple of events helped to pull the town together. One was a mission/soup kitchen in the bad part of town that was burnt down by an arsonist. In 90 days we rebuilt it with everyone working together. The second was when we did a $1.2 million campaign to rebuild the Northern Oklahoma Youth Shelter. Dave May, who weighed about 270 or 280 pounds decided to do a fundraiser with people donating $1 to $2/pound for him to lose weight. We challenged each other. Dave was all over town, riding a bike, doing other things to lose weight. Everyone took ownership in this new shelter as a result. When you start to help other people, you start to feel better about yourself.”

Today, Ponca City is putting those lost jobs, a lost shelter and lost pounds behind it. They are working together and preparing for a better future…a future built upon a more diversified job base, building upon existing clusters in tool bits and machining, growing their existing local companies, even as they recruit in new businesses.