Delores Stokes spent most of her life serving Guthrie.
The 87-year-old Stokes spent much of her life as a volunteer coordinator. Her role was to procure volunteers for projects and events in Guthrie.
“Some of the people that I got that were my regular volunteers, when I’d call they’d say, ‘What do you want now?’” Stokes said. “They knew I was going to ask them to do something.”
Stokes began her volunteer career in Guthrie in 1978. From there, she began to rally people together to volunteer in the community for decades. She eventually was given the award of Volunteer of the Year by the Guthrie Chamber of Commerce. She even had a day named after her due to a proclamation of then-mayor Jon Gumerson.
Stokes was known as the go-to for anything anyone wanted to get done in Guthrie.
“Whenever they wanted some volunteers, they would call me because I knew so many people,” Stokes said. “I’d lived in Guthrie, and they would call me, and I would secure their volunteer squad.”
Stokes remembers what Guthrie looked like when she was young and reminisced on how she saw the town changed as she grew older.
“I love Guthrie, I lived there most of my life,” Stokes said. “I went to school and everything in Guthrie. It’s all been new since I’ve been there, because I was born in 1933.”
Stokes moved to Edmond when her husband passed away to be closer to her son Dennis.
She has faced medical problems as of late, but she stays active and even recently was approved to receive her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Stokes is a lifetime member of the First United Presbyterian Church and did volunteer work for them, as well. Some of the other volunteer coordinating work she did included procuring volunteers to run the sincedefunct Guthrie Jazz Banjo Festival, securing hosts at a bed and breakfast for Christmas tours and finding volunteer help for many other efforts.
Stokes also helped start the Territorial Christmas Committee and came up with the idea for the lighted Christmas parade.
“Those concrete benches that you see around on Main Street and so forth, I helped obtain those and had to go and ask the merchants if they wanted one or if they’d buy one,” Stokes said. “I instigated that.”
Stokes said she still has a soft spot for Guthrie in her heart. She misses the town and looks back fondly on all the work she did for the community.
“I’ve enjoyed my life and enjoyed Guthrie,” Stokes said. “Guthrie’s a fine town for people to live in, and everybody’s so helpful and they know everybody, and they speak to you on the street and call you by name. It just gives you a good feeling, living some place like that. I miss that.”