Lizzie Borden meets Power Plant Man
Favorites Post #71
Originally posted March 8, 2014.
I have many stories that I am going to write about the extraordinary Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma from 1988 to 1994 this year, but it happened that I was watching a recorded episode of Forensic Files (otherwise known as Mystery Detectives) on TV tonight and it made me remember…. The story I was watching was about a women that was kidnapped in Pennsylvania June 1988 and murdered in order to draw the husband to a location where the kidnapper could collect the ransom and murder the husband. The man guilty of the crime was found to be a person that shared a pew in the Presbyterian Church with the couple but held a grudge against the husband for turning him down for a loan at the bank a few months earlier.
While I watched this show, I flashed back to June 8, 1988 and suddenly remembered the moment I was standing in the parts cage in the back of the electric shop in the main switchgear at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma when I heard about the murder of Mark Stepp.
Mark Stepp (left) standing next to Alan Kramer back in 1982
Mark Stepp was an Instrument and Controls employee at our plant. Both he and his wife had been brutally murdered while they slept in their home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mark Stepp had been shot once and stabbed many times. His wife Delores had been stabbed to death an excessive amount of times until she was passed dead. I cringe to think about it to this day.
The next thing that entered my mind while watching this video was one month earlier on May 6, 1988. We had a new Electrical Supervisor, Tom Gibson, and he had sent Terry Blevins and I with two of the Instrument and Controls men to Tulsa to a class at Nelson Electric to learn how to program an Allen Bradley PLC (programmable Logic controller).
PLC Training Certificate
When I think about this instance, I remember Ron Madron driving us to Tulsa in a company vehicle to the training (Ron. I know you read this post, so you an correct me if I’m wrong). It could have been Glenn Morgan. One thing I definitely remember is that Mark Stepp was with us that day.
My dear friend Terry Blevins
The reason I remember that Mark was with us that day, was because when the training was over around 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Mark didn’t want to go directly back to the plant. He wanted to go for a ride around Tulsa. This wouldn’t be so peculiar, except that a little more than a month later, Mark Stepp was brutally shot and stabbed to death while he slept in his bed along with his wife.
Somehow I always felt that Mark’s behavior the day when we went to learn how to program Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers was somehow related to his death. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ll let you decide.
So, let me describe what happened early morning on June 8, 1988 (or 6/8/88 for those of you who are fascinated with numbers like I am). In the middle of the night, someone walked into Mark Stepp and his wife’s Dolores’s bedroom, and shot Mark Stepp in the neck. Then proceeded to stab Mark Stepp and his wife an excessive amount of times until they were surely dead. I don’t remember the number of stab wounds. They were stabbed an excessive amount of times.
I remember first hearing about this when I had walked into the electric shop parts cage when I had gone there to look for some receptacle boxes With Diana Brien. Andy Tubbs came into the cage and told us about the murder and that their daughter had found them. The entire Instrument and Control Shop was on “high alert”. Suppose this person was murdering Instrument and Controls Power Plant Men at our plant! That day, no one really knew the motive.
I think some people from our plant were interviewed about the murder. I don’t know. I do know that Francine Stepp, their daughter was often mentioned in the discussion. She was on the same Softball team with her mother and father and many people at the plant were on this same softball team. They were all concerned with her well-being since after spending the night at her friend’s house, she came home and found her parents murdered in their bed.
During the next month while the police were investigating the crime, many revelations came out about Mark Stepp and his wife Dolores. None of which surprised me, though, it may have surprised those that worked more closely with Mark. You see, Mark has showed his true colors that day when we had all driven together to Tulsa to go to training.
When training had finished for the day, Terry Blevins and I (and Ron Madron, if he was the person driving) had counted on getting back to the plant in time to go home at a decent time. Mark Stepp, on the other hand had something else in mind. He wanted to go for a drive through Tulsa.
This didn’t make much sense to me at first, since I couldn’t figure out why someone wouldn’t want to return to the plant in plenty of time to fill out our time cards and get ready to go home to our wives and children (well… I didn’t have any children at the time, but I do remember wanting to go home at the regular time). We were on the clock and we were paid by the hour.
It didn’t make sense to me until we were driving down what seemed to be the frontage road of I-44 at the time and we came up to 6410 E. 11th Street. A similar thing happened to me just last week when a friend of mine was celebrating his 20th year at Dell and a person from Security who was playing a joke on my friend pulled into a location at 6528 North Lamar in Austin Texas. My gut sucked up like I was going to be sick as his friend pulled up to the entrance and proclaimed that this was the second part of his 20 year anniversary present. Well. my friend happened to be in like mind with me, which felt a sudden urge of betrayal and confusion. I’ll let you do your own homework at this point.
Mark Stepp asked us if we wanted to stop at a “Gentleman’s Club”. Really? With three die-hard Power Plant Men in a company car? The rest of us unanimously voted to go back to the plant. Ok. That was an indicator that Mark had something going on with his life that was not quite wholesome. What made this seem surreal was that I was the youngest at 27 years old, Mark was 40 years old and the other two in the car were in their 30s. It wasn’t like we were young unmarried irresponsible kids.
I bring this up because later I was not surprised to learn during the investigation of Mark Stepp’s murder that he had been involved with a group that included “Wife Swapping”. I know there were a lot of rumors going around at the time that one of the persons involved in the murder must have been involved in the occult, and that it made sense given the manner of death. None of this surprised me.
At one point we learned that hidden videotapes had been found in the house of their daughter while she thought she had privacy in her bathroom or bedroom. I don’t know if this was true or not, but I wasn’t surprised if it had been true. Actually, after that day in Tulsa, nothing surprised me about Mark Stepp anymore.
I don’t mean to sound cruel. I grieved when I learned about Mark and his wife’s death as much as many other Power Plant Men. No matter the circumstances. It was a great tragedy. Whatever hatred had been the cause of this murder, it had been caused by tragic events proceeding this murder, I have no doubt.
I say this, because within a month of the murder, the murderer had been located. It turned out to be their own daughter Francine. I didn’t know the family at all, and I have never met Francine. Other Power Plant people knew them much better. As I said, they were on a softball team together. Francine would go to the games to watch the team with her mother and father play their games. This came as a shock to them all.
Many people blamed her accomplice Cindy Sue Wynn. Francine’s parents had told Francine that they didn’t like Cindy and wanted her to stay away from her. The story is that Francine was spending the night at Cindy’s house when they devised a plot to kill Mark and Delores. Francine was 18 years old at the time, and was a Freshman at Oklahoma State University. If you would like to learn more about the murder you can find articles from the Daily Oklahoman here: “Two Stillwater Teens Facing Death Charges” and “Man Says he Heard Death Plot“.
They both pleaded guilty and Cindy was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1990, two years later, Cindy pleaded to be placed on a “pre-parole” program which was denied. Francine was sentenced to life in prison. Since that tragic day, Francine Stepp was eligible for parole in 2003. She was denied parole then, and has since been up for parole in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Francine’s next parole hearing is June 2015.
Francine Stepp
Just like the day that Jim Stevenson walked out of the shop telling Bill Ennis about the Snitch stealing the portable generator (See the post, “Power Plant Snitch“), I sat back and didn’t say anything when I heard about Francine’s conviction. What I had to say really wasn’t relevant. Just because it didn’t shock me that this particular daughter was so easily talked into murdering her parents by her friend, what I knew was no proof that she had been abused as a child.
Francine has now served 26 years in prison for murdering her parents. Her accomplice has been out of jail for at least 16 years. Francine is now over 44 years old (and now in 2020 is 50 years old). After 25 years, I think someone needs to take a fresh look at the motive as to why she would have wanted to take the life of her parents. Was it really because her parents didn’t want her to “play” with Cindy? Does that make much sense? Especially with all the other possible motives floating around.
I have recently been watching reruns of “Forensic Files” (also known as Mystery Detectives) on Headline News (CNN). I keep waiting for the episode about Francine Stepp running to her neighbor’s house on the morning of June 8, 1988 screaming that her parents have been murdered. Knowing full well that she had murdered them… But what really was the motive?
Was it really that her parents didn’t let this 18 year old girl spend time with her friend? Then how was she spending the night with her on June 7? Which parent hasn’t forbidden their child to play with someone because they were a bad influence? When did that ever do any good or amount to a hill of beans?
The little time I had spent with Mark Stepp a month before his murder gave me a small glimpse into his life, and maybe the life of his daughter. I didn’t really know the guy. I do know, however, that a true Power Plant Man wouldn’t try to drag three other married Power Power Plant Men (though I was only a pseudo-Power Plant Man myself), to an indecent “Gentleman’s Club” (especially while on the clock).
So, I have to wonder. Will anyone go to Francine’s defense in June 2015? Does she even care anymore? I don’t think she even showed up to her own parole hearing in 2012. She has spent many more years in prison than out of it in her life so far. If she was released, what would she do? Can you start your life over again when it came to a halt when you were only 18?
This is a hard post for me to write. I have a daughter who is 24 (now 30) years old this month. She was born almost 2 years after this tragic event took place, and one year after Francine was convicted of murdering her parents. During my own daughter’s entire life, Francine has been in jail for murdering her parents. Her father worked at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.
If Mark Stepp could speak from the grave today at Francine’s next parole hearing, I wonder what he would say? I only know what those at the plant who knew her would say. They all thought she got along with her parents. They thought her parents were proud of her. Billy Joel sang a song called “The Stranger“. It is about looking in the mirror and seeing that other side of you that you don’t let anyone else see. I suppose some people really have one of those lives where they aren’t really honest with the rest of the world. Billy Joel did, evidently. Maybe Mark Stepp did as well.
I have known for a while that I had to write about this story. I have dreaded this post. I am glad to have finally written it. Now I can put it behind me.
Comments from the original Post:
-
-
Wow, that’s an intense story. It certainly seems like there was more going on with Francine than anyone knew. Sad all around, but a very interesting post.
-
-
-
I can only imagine how hard this was to write. Nice job, I hope writing this helps you in some way. It is amazing how friends can detect something below the surface in other friends. I know that feeling, but nothing like this.
-
-
-
Hard to read, too. But if we are to understand our species, we have to know such things. And we need to understand when we raise kids … and when we vote, too.
-
-
-
I can’t for the life of me find the person’s name who wrote this, but I wanted to thank them for doing so. I went to school with Francine and had some of the same classes, but we did not know each other well. I always wondered what happened on that night and why she did it. She was very quiet in high school and as the years progressed she seemed to go from being ‘shy quiet’ to ‘angry quiet’ if that makes sense. I knew absolutely nothing about her life whatsoever so this is just an outsider’s observation. Reading the news made one think that she was this monster. I mean who could fathom killing their parents? However, none of us knew what Francine had to deal with in her life. To be able to commit this type of crime possibly points to some deep-seated anger and animosity. Your input gave me a little snippet of another viewpoint and I thank you for that and I’m sure Francine would as well.
You say you dreaded this post and I’m sure it was very difficult for you. I hope it released anything you were carrying within you. Thank you again as it has shed some light for me and hopefully others as well
-
-
-
I would encourage anyone reading this post (and the author of this post) to read the book “Unlikely Assassins: The Shocking True Story of a Couple Savagely Murdered by Their Own Teenage Daughter”. It is a book about this murder and contains a lot of information that was gathered while interviewing the detectives involved in this case.
I knew Dee at OSU – as a student and as a coworker. She shared stories about her family, and I believed her and Mark to be loving, involved parents. I was saddened and shocked to hear about these deaths, Francine’s involvement and the things they were involved in. It looks like Dee and Mark were not the only victims in this family. It reminds me that we never know everything about our friends and acquaintances, and that we need to remember to pray constantly for others.
-
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy
Favorites Post #63
Originally Posted on May 11, 2013:
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today.” Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a special tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make a seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52 — well, now 60), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop to go to work on something and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. “A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?”
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me!” Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art.”
Art said, “Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!”
So, I asked…. “How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him….” This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”).
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant because a long time foreman was retiring, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Balkenbush”). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt passing on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop (which one was supposed to be coming up on the horizon). Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey (or was it Jackie Smith at that time?) were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant. Maybe some day he will be promoted to VP.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story — See the post A Slap in the Face at a Gas-fired Power Plant)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding — See the post Singing Along with Sonny Kendrick) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this man-made hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy
Originally Posted on May 11, 2013:
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today. Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located)), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make a seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me! Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art.” Art said, “Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!”
So, I asked…. How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him…. This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”)…
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Balkenbush”). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt to pass on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop (which one was supposed to be coming up on the horizon). Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey (or was it Jackie Smith?) were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this manmade hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Lizzie Borden meets Power Plant Man
Originally posted March 8, 2014. Added comments from the original post:
I have many stories that I am going to write about the extraordinary Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma from 1988 to 1994 this year, but it happened that I was watching a recorded episode of Forensic Files (otherwise known as Mystery Detectives) on TV tonight and it made me remember…. The story I was watching was about a women that was kidnapped in Pennsylvania June 1988 and murdered in order to draw the husband to a location where the kidnapper could collect the ransom and murder the husband. The man guilty of the crime was found to be a person that shared a pew in the Presbyterian Church with the couple but held a grudge against the husband for turning him down for a loan at the bank a few months earlier.
While I watched this show, I flashed back to June 9, 1988 and suddenly remembered the moment I was standing in the parts cage in the back of the electric shop in the main switchgear at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Okahoma when I heard about the murder of Mark Stepp.
Mark Stepp (left) standing next to Alan Kramer back in 1982
Mark Stepp was an Instrument and Controls employee at our plant. Both he and his wife had been brutally murdered while they slept in their home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mark Stepp had been shot once and stabbed many times. His wife Delores had been stabbed to death an excessive amount of times until she was passed dead. I cringe to think about it to this day.
The next thing that entered my mind while watching this video was one month earlier on May 6, 1988. We had a new Electrical Supervisor, Tom Gibson, and he had sent Terry Blevins and I with two of the Instrument and Controls men to Tulsa to a class at Nelson Electric to learn how to program an Allen Bradley PLC (programmable Logic controller).
PLC Training Certificate
When I think about this instance, I remember Ron Madron driving us to Tulsa in a company vehicle to the training (Ron. I know you read this post, so you an correct me if I’m wrong). It could have been Glenn Morgan. One thing I definitely remember is that Mark Stepp was with us that day.
My dear friend Terry Blevins
The reason I remember that Mark was with us that day, was because when the training was over around 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Mark didn’t want to go directly back to the plant. He wanted to go for a ride around Tulsa. This wouldn’t be so peculiar, except that a little more than a month later, Mark Stepp was brutally shot and stabbed to death while he slept in his bed along with his wife.
Somehow I always felt that Mark’s behavior the day when we went to learn how to program Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers was somehow related to his death. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ll let you decide.
So, let me describe what happened early morning on June 8, 1988 (or 6/8/88 for those of you who are fascinated with numbers like I am). In the middle of the night, someone walked into Mark Stepp and his wife’s Dolore’s bedroom, and shot Mark Stepp in the neck. Then proceeded to stab Mark Stepp and his wife an excessive amount of times until they were surely dead. I don’t remember the number of stab wounds. They were stabbed so many times.
I remember first hearing about this when I had walked into the electric shop parts cage when I had gone there to look for some receptacle boxes. Andy Tubbs came into the cage and told me about the murder. The entire Instrument and Control Shop was on “high alert”. Suppose this person was murdering Instrument and Controls Power Plant Men at our plant! That day, no one really knew the motive.
I think some people from our plant were interviewed about the murder. I don’t know. I do know that Francine Stepp, their daughter was often mentioned in the discussion. She was on the same Softball team with her mother and father and many people at the plant were on this same softball team. They were all concerned with her well-being since after spending the night at her friend’s house, she came home and found her parents murdered in their bed.
During the next month while the police were investigating the crime, many revelations came out about Mark Stepp and his wife Dolores. None of which surprised me, though, it may have surprised those that worked more closely with Mark. You see, Mark has showed his true colors that day when we had all driven together to Tulsa to go to training.
When training had finished for the day, Terry Blevins and I (and Ron Madron, if he was the person driving) had counted on getting back to the plant in time to go home at a decent time. Mark Stepp, on the other hand had something else in mind. He wanted to go for a drive through Tulsa.
This didn’t make much sense to me at first, since I couldn’t figure out why someone wouldn’t want to return to the plant in plenty of time to fill out our time cards and get ready to go home to our wives and children (well… I didn’t have any children at the time, but I do remember wanting to go home at the regular time). We were on the clock and we were paid by the hour.
It didn’t make sense to me until we were driving down what seemed to be the frontage road of I-44 at the time and we came up to 6410 E. 11th Street. A similar thing happened to me just last week when a friend of mine was celebrating his 20th year at Dell and a person from Security who was playing a joke on my friend pulled into a location at 6528 North Lamar in Austin Texas. My gut sucked up like I was going to be sick as his friend pulled up to the entrance and proclaimed that this was the second part of his 20 year anniversary present. Well. my friend happened to be in like mind with me, which felt a sudden urge of betrayal and confusion. I’ll let you do your own homework at this point.
Mark Stepp asked us if we wanted to stop at a “Gentleman’s Club”. Really? With three die-hard Power Plant Men in a company car? The rest of us unanimously voted to go back to the plant. Ok. That was an indicator that Mark had something going on with his life that was not quite wholesome. What made this seem surreal was that I was the youngest at 27 years old, Mark was 40 years old and the other two in the car were in their 30s. It wasn’t like we were young unmarried irresponsible kids.
I bring this up because later I was not surprised to learn during the investigation of Mark Stepp’s murder that he had been involved with a group that included “Wife Swapping”. I know there were a lot of rumors going around at the time that one of the persons involved in the murder must have been involved in the occult, and that it made sense given the manner of death. None of this surprised me.
At one point we learned that hidden videotapes had been found in the house of their daughter while she thought she had privacy in her bathroom or bedroom. I don’t know if this was true or not, but I wasn’t surprised if it had been true. Actually, after that day in Tulsa, nothing surprised me about Mark Stepp anymore.
I don’t mean to sound cruel. I grieved when I learned about Mark and his wife’s death as much as many other Power Plant Men. No matter the circumstances. It was a great tragedy. Whatever hatred had been the cause of this murder, it had been caused by tragic events proceeding this murder, I have no doubt.
I say this, because within a month of the murder, the murderer had been located. It turned out to be their own daughter Francine. I didn’t know the family at all, and I have never met Francine. Other Power Plant people knew them much better. As I said, they were on a softball team together. Francine played on a team with her mother and father. This came as a shock to them all.
Many people blamed her accomplice Cindy Sue Wynn. Francine’s parents had told Francine that they didn’t like Cindy and wanted her to stay away from her. The story is that Francine was spending the night at Cindy’s house when they devised a plot to kill Mark and Delores. Francine was 18 years old at the time, and was a Freshman at Oklahoma State University. If you would like to learn more about the murder you can find articles from the Daily Oklahoman here: “Two Stillwater Teens Facing Death Charges” and “Man Says he Heard Death Plot“.
They both pleaded guilty and Cindy was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1990, two years later, Cindy pleaded to be placed on a “pre-parole” program which was denied. Francine was sentenced to life in prison. Since that tragic day, Francine Stepp was eligible for parole in 2003. She was denied parole then, and has since been up for parole in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Francine’s next parole hearing is June 2015.
Francine Stepp
Just like the day that Jim Stevenson walked out of the shop telling Bill Ennis about the Snitch stealing the portable generator (See the post, “Power Plant Snitch“), I sat back and didn’t say anything when I heard about Francine’s conviction. What I had to say really wasn’t relevant. Just because it didn’t shock me that this particular daughter was so easily talked into murdering her parents by her friend, what I knew was no proof that she had been abused as a child.
Francine has now served 26 years in prison for murdering her parents. Her accomplice has been out of jail for at least 16 years. Francine is now over 44 years old. After 25 years, I think someone needs to take a fresh look at the motive as to why she would have wanted to take the life of her parents. Was it really because her parents didn’t want her to “play” with Cindy? Does that make much sense? Especially with all the other possible motives floating around.
I have recently been watching reruns of “Forensic Files” (also known as Mystery Detectives) on Headline News (CNN). I keep waiting for the episode about Francine Stepp running to her neighbor’s house on the morning of June 8, 1988 screaming that her parents have been murdered. Knowing full well that she had murdered them… But what really was the motive?
Was it really that her parents didn’t let this 18 year old girl spend time with her friend? Then how was she spending the night with her on June 7? Which parent hasn’t forbidden their child to play with someone because they were a bad influence? When did that ever do any good or amount to a hill of beans?
The little time I had spent with Mark Stepp a month before his murder gave me a small glimpse into his life, and maybe the life of his daughter. I didn’t really know the guy. I do know, however, that a true Power Plant Man wouldn’t try to drag three other married Power Power Plant Men (though I was only a pseudo-Power Plant Man myself), to an indecent “Gentleman’s Club” (especially while on the clock).
So, I have to wonder. Will anyone go to Francine’s defense in June 2015? Does she even care anymore? I don’t think she even showed up to her own parole hearing in 2012. She has spent many more years in prison than out of it in her life so far. If she was released, what would she do? Can you start your life over again when it came to a halt when you were only 18?
This is a hard post for me to write. I have a daughter who is 24 years old this month. She was born almost 2 years after this tragic event took place, and one year after Francine was convicted of murdering her parents. During my own daughter’s entire life, Francine has been in jail for murdering her parents. Her father worked at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.
If Mark Stepp could speak from the grave today at Francine’s next parole hearing, I wonder what he would say? I only know what those at the plant who knew her would say. They all thought she got along with her parents. They thought her parents were proud of her. Billy Joel sang a song called “The Stranger“. It is about looking in the mirror and seeing that other side of you that you don’t let anyone else see. I suppose some people really have one of those lives where they aren’t really honest with the rest of the world. Billy Joel did, evidently. Maybe Mark Stepp did as well.
I have known for a while that I had to write about this story. I have dreaded this post. I am glad to have finally written it. Now I can put it behind me.
Comments from the original Post:
-
-
Wow – I hadn’t thought about Mark’s murder in years. This verse gives me hope: Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.
Thanks for another great story!
-
-
-
Wow, that’s an intense story. It certainly seems like there was more going on with Francine than anyone knew. Sad all around, but a very interesting post.
-
-
-
I can only imagine how hard this was to write. Nice job, I hope writing this helps you in some way. It is amazing how friends can detect something below the surface in other friends. I know that feeling, but nothing like this.
-
-
-
Hard to read, too. But if we are to understand our species, we have to know such things. And we need to understand when we raise kids … and when we vote, too.
-
-
-
I can’t for the life of me find the person’s name who wrote this, but I wanted to thank them for doing so. I went to school with Francine and had some of the same classes, but we did not know each other well. I always wondered what happened on that night and why she did it. She was very quiet in high school and as the years progressed she seemed to go from being ‘shy quiet’ to ‘angry quiet’ if that makes sense. I knew absolutely nothing about her life whatsoever so this is just an outsider’s observation. Reading the news made one think that she was this monster. I mean who could fathom killing their parents? However, none of us knew what Francine had to deal with in her life. To be able to commit this type of crime possibly points to some deep-seated anger and animosity. Your input gave me a little snippet of another viewpoint and I thank you for that and I’m sure Francine would as well.
You say you dreaded this post and I’m sure it was very difficult for you. I hope it released anything you were carrying within you. Thank you again as it has shed some light for me and hopefully others as well
-
-
-
I would encourage anyone reading this post (and the author of this post) to read the book “Unlikely Assassins: The Shocking True Story of a Couple Savagely Murdered by Their Own Teenage Daughter”. It is a book about this murder and contains a lot of information that was gathered while interviewing the detectives involved in this case.
I knew Dee at OSU – as a student and as a coworker. She shared stories about her family, and I believed her and Mark to be loving, involved parents. I was saddened and shocked to hear about these deaths, Francine’s involvement and the things they were involved in. It looks like Dee and Mark were not the only victims in this family. It reminds me that we never know everything about our friends and acquaintances, and that we need to remember to pray constantly for others.
-
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy
Originally Posted on May 11, 2013:
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today. Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located)), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make a seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me! Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art.” Art said, “Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!”
So, I asked…. How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him…. This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”)…
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Balkenbush”). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt to pass on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop (which one was supposed to be coming up on the horizon). Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey (or was it Jackie Smith?) were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this manmade hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Lizzie Borden meets Power Plant Man
Originally posted March 8, 2014. Added comments from the original post:
I have many stories that I am going to write about the extraordinary Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma from 1988 to 1994 this year, but it happened that I was watching a recorded episode of Forensic Files (otherwise known as Mystery Detectives) on TV tonight and it made me remember…. The story I was watching was about a women that was kidnapped in Pennsylvania June 1988 and murdered in order to draw the husband to a location where the kidnapper could collect the ransom and murder the husband. The man guilty of the crime was found to be a person that shared a pew in the Presbyterian Church with the couple but held a grudge against the husband for turning him down for a loan at the bank a few months earlier.
While I watched this show, I flashed back to June 9, 1988 and suddenly remembered the moment I was standing in the parts cage in the back of the electric shop in the main switchgear at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Okahoma when I heard about the murder of Mark Stepp.
Mark Stepp was an Instrument and Controls employee at our plant. Both he and his wife had been brutally murdered while they slept in their home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mark Stepp had been shot once and stabbed many times. His wife Delores had been stabbed to death an excessive amount of times until she was passed dead. I cringe to think about it to this day.
The next thing that entered my mind while watching this video was one month earlier on May 6, 1988. We had a new Electrical Supervisor, Tom Gibson, and he had sent Terry Blevins and I with two of the Instrument and Controls men to Tulsa to a class at Nelson Electric to learn how to program an Allen Bradley PLC (programmable Logic controller).
PLC Training Certificate
When I think about this instance, I remember Ron Madron driving us to Tulsa to the training (Ron. I know you read this post, so you an correct me if I’m wrong). It could have been Glenn Morgan. One thing I definitely remember is that Mark Stepp was with us that day.
My dear friend Terry Blevins
The reason I remember that Mark was with us that day, was because when the training was over around 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Mark didn’t want to go directly back to the plant. He wanted to go for a ride around Tulsa. This wouldn’t be so peculiar, except that a little more than a month later, Mark Stepp was brutally shot and stabbed to death while he slept in his bed along with his wife.
Somehow I always felt that Mark’s behavior the day when we went to learn how to program Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers was somehow related to his death. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ll let you decide.
So, let me describe what happened early morning on June 8, 1988 (or 6/8/88 for those of you who are fascinated with numbers like I am). In the middle of the night, someone walked into Mark Stepp and his wife’s Dolore’s bedroom, and shot Mark Stepp in the neck. Then proceeded to stab Mark Stepp and his wife an excessive amount of times until they were past dead. I lost count of the number of stab wounds. They were stabbed so many times.
I remember first hearing about this when I had walked into the electric shop parts cage when I had gone there to look for some receptacle boxes. Andy Tubbs came into the cage and told me about the murder. The entire Instrument and Control Shop was on “high alert”. Suppose this person was murdering Instrument and Controls Power Plant Men at our plant! That day, no one really knew the motive.
I think some people from our plant were interviewed about the murder. I don’t know. I do know that Francine Stepp, their daughter was often mentioned in the discussion. She was on the same Softball team with her mother and father and many people at the plant were on this same softball team. They were all concerned with her well-being since after spending the night at her friend’s house, she came home and found her parents murdered in their bed.
During the next month while the police were investigating the crime, many revelations came out about Mark Stepp and his wife Dolores. None of which surprised me, though, it may have surprised those that worked more closely with Mark. You see, Mark has showed his true colors that day when we had all driven together to Tulsa to go to training.
When training had finished for the day, Terry Blevins and I (and Ron Madron, if he was the person driving) had counted on getting back to the plant in time to go home at a decent time. Mark Stepp, on the other hand had something else in mind. He wanted to go for a drive through Tulsa.
This didn’t make much sense to me at first, since I couldn’t figure out why someone wouldn’t want to return to the plant in plenty of time to fill out our time cards and get ready to go home to our wives and children (well… I didn’t have any children at the time, but I do remember wanting to go home at the regular time).
It didn’t make sense to me until we were driving down what seemed to be the frontage road of I-44 at the time and we came up to 6410 E. 11th Street. A similar thing happened to me just last week when a friend of mine was celebrating his 20th year at Dell and a person from Security who was playing a joke on my friend pulled into a location at 6528 North Lamar in Austin Texas. My gut sucked up like I was going to be sick as his friend pulled up to the entrance and proclaimed that this was the second part of his 20 year anniversary present. Well. my friend happened to be in like mind with me, which felt a sudden urge of betrayal and confusion. I’ll let you do your own homework at this point.
Mark Stepp asked us if we wanted to stop at a “Gentleman’s Club”. Really? With three die-hard Power Plant Men in a company car? The rest of us unanimously voted to go back to the plant. Ok. That was an indicator that Mark had something going on with his life that was not quite wholesome. What made this seem surreal was that I was the youngest at 27 years old, Mark was 40 years old and the other two in the car were in their 30s. It wasn’t like we were young unmarried irresponsible kids.
I bring this up because later I was not surprised to learn during the investigation of Mark Stepp’s murder that he had been involved with a group that included “Wife Swapping”. I know there were a lot of rumors going around at the time that one of the persons involved in the murder must have been involved in the occult, and that it made sense given the manner of death. None of this surprised me.
At one point we learned that videotapes had been found in the house of hidden tapes of their daughter while she thought she had privacy in her bathroom or bedroom. I don’t know if this was true or not, but I wasn’t surprised if it had been true. Actually, after that day in Tulsa, nothing surprised me about Mark Stepp anymore.
I don’t mean to sound cruel. I grieved when I learned about Mark and is wife’s death as much as many other Power Plant Men. No matter the circumstances. It was a great tragedy. Whatever hatred had been the cause of this murder, it had been caused by tragic events proceeding this murder, I have no doubt.
I say this, because within a month of the murder, the murderer had been located. It turned out to be their own daughter Francine. I didn’t know the family at all, and I have never met Francine. Other Power Plant people knew them much better. As I said, they were on a softball team together. Francine played on a team with her mother and father. This came as a shock to them all.
Many people blamed her accomplice Cindy Sue Wynn. Francine’s parents had told Francine that they didn’t like Cindy and wanted her to stay away from her. The story is that Francine was spending the night at Cindy’s house when they devised a plot to kill Mark and Delores. Francine was 18 years old at the time, and was a Freshman at Oklahoma State University. If you would like to learn more about the murder you can find articles from the Daily Oklahoman here: “Two Stillwater Teens Facing Death Charges” and “Man Says he Heard Death Plot“.
They both pleaded guilty and Cindy was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1990, two years later, Cindy pleaded to be placed on a “pre-parole” program which was denied. Francine was sentenced to life in prison. Since that tragic day, Francine Stepp was eligible for parole in 2003. She was denied parole then, and has since been up for parole in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Francine’s next parole hearing is June 2015.
Francine Stepp
Just like the day that Jim Stevenson walked out of the shop telling Bill Ennis about the Snitch stealing the portable generator (See the post, “The Power Plant Snitch“), I sat back and didn’t say anything when I heard about Francine’s conviction. What I had to say really wasn’t relevant. Just because it didn’t shock me that this particular daughter was so easily talked into murdering her parents by her friend, what I knew was no proof that she had been abused as a child.
Francine has now served 26 years in prison for murdering her parents. Her accomplice has been out of jail for at least 16 years. Francine is now over 44 years old. After 25 years, I think someone needs to take a fresh look at the motive as to why she would have wanted to take the life of her parents. Was it really because her parents didn’t want her to “play” with Cindy? Does that make much sense? Especially with all the other possible motives floating around.
I have recently been watching reruns of “Forensic Files” (also known as Mystery Detectives) on Headline News (CNN). I keep waiting for the episode about Francine Stepp running to her neighbor’s house on the morning of June 8, 1988 screaming that her parents have been murdered. Knowing full well that she had murdered them… But what really was the motive?
Was it really that her parents didn’t let this 18 year old girl spend time with her friend? Then how was she spending the night with her on June 7? Which parent hasn’t forbidden their child to play with someone because they were a bad influence? When did that ever do any good or amount to a hill of beans?
The little time I had spent with Mark Stepp a couple of months before his murder gave me a small glimpse into his life, and maybe the life of his daughter. I didn’t really know the guy. I do know, however, that a true Power Plant Man wouldn’t try to drag three other married Power Power Plant Men (though I was only a pseudo-Power Plant Man myself), to an indecent “Gentleman’s Club” (especially while on the clock).
So, I have to wonder. Will anyone go to Francine’s defense June 2015? Does she even care anymore? I don’t think she even showed up to her own parole hearing in 2012. She has spent many more years in prison than out of it in her life so far. If she was released, what would she do? Can you start your life over again when it came to a halt when you were only 18?
This is a hard post for me to write. I have a daughter who is 24 years old this month. She was born almost 2 years after this tragic even took place, and one year after Francine was convicted of murdering her parents. During my own daughter’s entire life, Francine has been in jail for murdering her parents. Her father worked at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.
If Mark Stepp could speak from the grave today at Francine’s next parole hearing, I wonder what he would say? I only know what those at the plant who knew her would say. They all thought she got along with her parents. They thought her parents were proud of her. Billy Joel sang a song called “The Stranger“. It is about looking in the mirror and seeing that other side of you that you don’t let anyone else see. I suppose some people really have one of those lives where they aren’t really honest with the rest of the world. Billy Joel did, evidently. Maybe Mark Stepp did as well.
I have known for a while that I had to write about this story. I have dreaded this post. I am glad to have finally written it. Now I can put it behind me.
Comments from the original Post:
-
-
Wow – I hadn’t thought about Mark’s murder in years. This verse gives me hope: Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.
Thanks for another great story!
-
-
-
Wow, that’s an intense story. It certainly seems like there was more going on with Francine than anyone knew. Sad all around, but a very interesting post.
-
-
-
I can only imagine how hard this was to write. Nice job, I hope writing this helps you in some way. It is amazing how friends can detect something below the surface in other friends. I know that feeling, but nothing like this.
-
-
-
Hard to read, too. But if we are to understand our species, we have to know such things. And we need to understand when we raise kids … and when we vote, too.
-
-
-
I can’t for the life of me find the person’s name who wrote this, but I wanted to thank them for doing so. I went to school with Francine and had some of the same classes, but we did not know each other well. I always wondered what happened on that night and why she did it. She was very quiet in high school and as the years progressed she seemed to go from being ‘shy quiet’ to ‘angry quiet’ if that makes sense. I knew absolutely nothing about her life whatsoever so this is just an outsider’s observation. Reading the news made one think that she was this monster. I mean who could fathom killing their parents? However, none of us knew what Francine had to deal with in her life. To be able to commit this type of crime possibly points to some deep-seated anger and animosity. Your input gave me a little snippet of another viewpoint and I thank you for that and I’m sure Francine would as well.
You say you dreaded this post and I’m sure it was very difficult for you. I hope it released anything you were carrying within you. Thank you again as it has shed some light for me and hopefully others as well
-
-
-
I would encourage anyone reading this post (and the author of this post) to read the book “Unlikely Assassins: The Shocking True Story of a Couple Savagely Murdered by Their Own Teenage Daughter”. It is a book about this murder and contains a lot of information that was gathered while interviewing the detectives involved in this case.
I knew Dee at OSU – as a student and as a coworker. She shared stories about her family, and I believed her and Mark to be loving, involved parents. I was saddened and shocked to hear about these deaths, Francine’s involvement and the things they were involved in. It looks like Dee and Mark were not the only victims in this family. It reminds me that we never know everything about our friends and acquaintances, and that we need to remember to pray constantly for others.
-
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy
Originally Posted on May 11, 2013:
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today. Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located)), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make s seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me! Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art. Art said, Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!
So, I asked…. How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him…. This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”)…
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Kincade, or Campbell… or some such name). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt to pass on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best <bleeping> goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop. Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this manmade hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Lizzie Borden meets Power Plant Man
Originally posted March 8, 2014. Added comments from the original post:
I have many stories that I am going to write about the extraordinary Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma from 1988 to 1994 this year, but it happened that I was watching a recorded episode of Forensic Files (otherwise known as Mystery Detectives) on TV tonight and it made me remember…. The story I was watching was about a women that was kidnapped in Pennsylvania June 1988 and murdered in order to draw the husband to a location where the kidnapper could collect the ransom and murder the husband. The man guilty of the crime was found to be a person that shared a pew in the Presbyterian Church with the couple but held a grudge against the husband for turning him down for a loan at the bank a few months earlier.
While I watched this show, I flashed back to June 9, 1988 and suddenly remembered the moment I was standing in the parts cage in the back of the electric shop in the main switchgear at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Okahoma when I heard about the murder of Mark Stepp. Mark Stepp was an Instrument and Controls employee at our plant. Both he and his wife had been brutally murdered while they slept in their home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mark Stepp had been shot in once and stabbed many times. His wife Delores had been stabbed to death an excessive amount of times until she was passed dead. I cringe to think about it to this day.
The next thing that entered my mind while watching this video was one month earlier on May 6, 1988. We had a new Electrical Supervisor, Tom Gibson, and he had sent Terry Blevins and I with two of the Instrument and Controls men to Tulsa to a class at Nelson Electric to learn how to program an Allen Bradley PLC (programmable Logic controller).
PLC Training Certificate
When I think about this instance, I remember Ron Madron driving us to Tulsa to the training (Ron. I know you read this post, so you an correct me if I’m wrong). It could have been Glenn Morgan. One thing I definitely remember is that Mark Stepp was with us that day.
My dear friend Terry Blevins
The reason I remember that Mark was with us that day, was because when the training was over around 1:30 or 2:00 pm. Mark didn’t want to go directly home. He wanted to go for a ride. This wouldn’t be so peculiar, except that a little more than a month later, Mark Stepp was brutally shot and stabbed to death while he slept in his bed along with his wife. Somehow I always felt that Mark’s behavior the day when we went to learn how to program Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers was somehow related to his death. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ll let you decide. I have no loyalty to the dead, unless they deserve it.
So, let me describe what happened early morning on June 8, 1988 (or 6/8/88 for those of you who are fascinated with numbers like I am). In the middle of the night, someone walked into Mark Stepp and his wife’s Dolore’s bedroom, and shot Mark Stepp in the neck. Then proceeded to stab Mark Stepp and his wife an excessive amount of times until they were past dead. I lost count of the number of stab wounds. They were stabbed so many times.
I remember first hearing about this when I had walked into the electric shop parts cage when I had gone there to look for some receptacle boxes when Andy Tubbs came into the cage and told me about the murder. The entire Instrument and Control Shop was on “high alert”. Suppose this person was murdering Instrument and Controls Power Plant Men at our plant! That day, no one really knew the motive.
I think some people from our plant were interviewed about the murder. I don’t know. I do know that Francine Stepp, their daughter was often mentioned in the discussion. She was on the same Softball team with her mother and father and many people at the plant were on this same softball team. They were all concerned with her well-being since after spending the night at her friend’s house, she came home and found her parents murdered in their bed.
During the next month while the police were investigating the crime, many revelations came out about Mark Stepp and his wife Dolores. None of which surprised me, though, it may have surprised those that worked more closely with Mark. You see, Mark has showed his true colors that day when we had all driven together to Tulsa to go to training.
When training had finished for the day, Terry Blevins and I (and Ron Madron, if he was the person driving) had counted on getting back to the plant in time to go home at a decent time. Mark Stepp, on the other hand had something else in mind. He wanted to go for a drive through Tulsa.
This didn’t make much sense to me at first, since I couldn’t figure out why someone wouldn’t want to return to the plant in plenty of time to fill out our time cards and get ready to go home to our wives and children (well… I didn’t have any children at the time, but I do remember wanting to go home at the regular time).
It didn’t make sense to me until we were driving down what seemed to be the frontage road of I-44 at the time and we came up to 6410 E. 11th Street. A similar thing happened to me just last week when a friend of mine was celebrating his 20th year at Dell and a person from Security who was playing a joke on my friend pulled into a location at 6528 North Lamar in Austin Texas. My gut sucked up like I was going to be sick as his friend pulled up to the entrance and proclaimed that this was the second part of his 20 year anniversary present. Well. my friend happened to be in like mind with me, which felt a sudden urge of betrayal and confusion. I’ll let you do your own homework at this point.
Mark Stepp asked us if we wanted to stop at a “Gentleman’s Club”. Really? With three die-hard Power Plant Men in a company car? The rest of us unanimously voted to go back to the plant. Ok. That was an indicator that Mark had something going on with his life that was not quite wholesome. What made this seem surreal was that I was the youngest at 27 years old, Mark was 40 years old and the other two in the car were in their 30s. It wasn’t like we were young unmarried irresponsible kids.
I bring this up because later I was not surprised to learn during the investigation of Mark Stepp’s murder that he had been involved with a group that included “Wife Swapping”. I know there were a lot of rumors going around at the time that one of there persons involved in the murder must have been involved in the occult, and that it made sense given the manner of death. None of this surprised me.
At one point we learned that videotapes had been found in the house of hidden tapes of their daughter while she thought she had privacy in her bathroom or bedroom. I don’t know if this was true or not, but I wasn’t surprised if it had been true. Actually, after that day in Tulsa, nothing surprised me about Mark Stepp anymore. I don’t mean to sound cruel. I grieved when I learned about Mark and is wife’s death as much as many other Power Plant Men. No matter the circumstances. It was a great tragedy. Whatever hatred had been the cause of this murder, it had been caused by tragic events proceeding this murder, I have no doubt.
I say this, because within a month of the murder, the murderer had been located. It turned out to be their own daughter Francine. I didn’t know the family at all, and I have never met Francine. Other Power Plant people knew them much better. As I said, they were on a softball team together. Francine played on a team with her mother and father. This came as a shock to them all.
Many people blamed her accomplice Cindy Sue Wynn. Francine’s parents had told Francine that they didn’t like Cindy and wanted her to stay away from her. The story is that Francine was spending the night at Cindy’s house when they devised a plot to kill Mark and Delores. Francine was 18 years old at the time, and was a Freshman at Oklahoma State University. If you would like to learn more about the murder you can find articles from the Daily Oklahoman here: “Two Stillwater Teens Facing Death Charges” and “Man Says he Heard Death Plot“.
They both pleaded guilty and Cindy was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1990, two years later, Cindy pleaded to be placed on a “pre-parole” program which was denied. Francine was sentenced to life in prison. Since that tragic day, Francine Stepp was eligible for parole in 2003. She was denied parole then, and has since been up for parole in 2006, 2009 and 2012. Francine’s next parole hearing is June 2015.
Francine Stepp
Just like the day that Jim Stevenson walked out of the shop telling Bill Ennis about the Snitch stealing the portable generator (See the post, “The Power Plant Snitch“), I sat back and didn’t say anything when I heard about Francine’s conviction. What I had to say really wasn’t relevant. Just because it didn’t shock me that this particular daughter was so easily talked into murdering her parents by her friend, what I knew was no proof that she had been abused as a child.
Francine has now served 26 years in prison for murdering her parents. Her accomplice has been our of jail for at least 16 years. Francine is now over 44 years old. After 25 years, I think someone needs to take a fresh look at the motive as to why she would have wanted to take the life of her parents. Was it really because her parents didn’t want her to “play” with Cindy? Does that make much sense? Especially with all the other possible motives floating around.
I have recently been watching reruns of “Forensic Files” (also known as Mystery Detectives) on Headline News (CNN). I keep waiting for the episode about Francine Stepp running to her neighbor’s house on the morning of June 8, 1988 screaming that her parents have been murdered. Knowing full well that she had murdered them… But what really was the motive? Was it really that her parents didn’t let this 18 year old girl spend time with her friend? Then how was she spending the night with her on June 7? Which parent hasn’t forbidden their child to play with someone because they were a bad influence? When did that ever do any good or amount to a hill of beans?
The little time I had spent with Mark Stepp a couple of months before his murder gave me a small glimpse into his life, and maybe the life of his daughter. I didn’t really know the guy. I do know, however, that a true Power Plant Man wouldn’t try to drag three other married Power Power Plant Men (though I was only a pseudo-Power Plant Man myself), to an indecent “Gentleman’s Club” (especially while on the clock).
So, I have to wonder. Will anyone go to Francine’s defense June 2015? Does she even care anymore? I don’t think she even showed up to her own parole hearing in 2012. She has spent many more years in prison than out of it in her life so far. If she was released, what would she do? Can you start your life over again when it came to a halt when you were only 18?
This is a hard post for me to write. I have a daughter who is 24 years old this month. She was born almost 2 years after this tragic even took place, and one year after Francine was convicted of murdering her parents. During my own daughter’s entire life, Francine has been in jail for murdering her parents. Her father worked at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.
If Mark Stepp could speak from the grave today at Francine’s next parole hearing, I wonder what he would say? I only know what those at the plant who knew her would say. They all thought she got along with her parents. They thought her parents were proud of her. Billy Joel sang a song called “The Stranger“. It is about looking in the mirror and seeing that other side of you that you don’t let anyone else see. I suppose some people really have one of those lives where they aren’t really honest with the rest of the world. Billy Joel did, evidently. Maybe Mark Stepp did as well.
I have known for a while that I had to write about this story. I have dreaded this post. I am glad to have finally written it. Now I can put it behind me.
Comments from the original Post:
-
-
Wow – I hadn’t thought about Mark’s murder in years. This verse gives me hope: Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.
Thanks for another great story!
-
-
-
Wow, that’s an intense story. It certainly seems like there was more going on with Francine than anyone knew. Sad all around, but a very interesting post.
-
-
-
I can only imagine how hard this was to write. Nice job, I hope writing this helps you in some way. It is amazing how friends can detect something below the surface in other friends. I know that feeling, but nothing like this.
-
-
-
Hard to read, too. But if we are to understand our species, we have to know such things. And we need to understand when we raise kids … and when we vote, too.
-
-
-
I can’t for the life of me find the person’s name who wrote this, but I wanted to thank them for doing so. I went to school with Francine and had some of the same classes, but we did not know each other well. I always wondered what happened on that night and why she did it. She was very quiet in high school and as the years progressed she seemed to go from being ‘shy quiet’ to ‘angry quiet’ if that makes sense. I knew absolutely nothing about her life whatsoever so this is just an outsider’s observation. Reading the news made one think that she was this monster. I mean who could fathom killing their parents? However, none of us knew what Francine had to deal with in her life. To be ab.le to commit this type of crime possibly points to some deep-seated anger and animosity. Your input gave me a little snippet of another viewpoint and I thank you for that and I’m sure Francine would as well.
You say you dreaded this post and I’m sure it was very difficult for you. I hope it released anything you were carrying within you. Thank you again as it has shed some light for me and hopefully others as well
-
-
-
I would encourage anyone reading this post (and the author of this post) to read the book “Unlikely Assassins: The Shocking True Story of a Couple Savagely Murdered by Their Own Teenage Daughter”. It is a book about this murder and contains a lot of information that was gathered while interviewing the detectives involved in this case.
I knew Dee at OSU – as a student and as a coworker. She shared stories about her family, and I believed her and Mark to be loving, involved parents. I was saddened and shocked to hear about these deaths, Francine’s involvement and the things they were involved in. It looks like Dee and Mark were not the only victims in this family. It reminds me that we never know everything about our friends and acquaintances, and that we need to remember to pray constantly for others.
-
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy — Repost
Originally Posted on May 11, 2013:
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today. Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located)), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make s seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me! Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art. Art said, Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!
So, I asked…. How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him…. This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”)…
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Kincade, or Campbell… or some such name). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt to pass on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best <bleeping> goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop. Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this manmade hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy
If you crossed Walter Matthau with Howdy Doody you would come out with someone that would remind you of Bob Kennedy. All right. Bob Kennedy looked more like Walter Matthau than he did Howdy Doody, but I could tell that when Bob was younger, even though he didn’t have red hair and freckles, I could picture him as a little boy playing with his stick horse wearing a cowboy hat, and to me he would have looked a lot like Howdy Doody…
Walter Matthau
Howdy Doody
Cowboy Bob Kennedy on his stick horse
The day I first met Bob Kennedy I instantly fell in love with him. He was an electrician at the Power Plant in Midwest City and I was there on overhaul for three months during the fall of 1985. Bob was assigned to be our acting foreman while Arthur Hammond and I were there for a major overhaul on Unit 5. — Yeah. Five. They actually had 7, but all of them weren’t operational at the time.
Actually, I think it was Unit 4 that was a small generator that came from a submarine. — Half of the plant was like a museum. I used to park at the far end of the plant just so that I could walk through the museum each morning on my way to the electric shop. I think years later they may have torn that part of the plant down, which should have been illegal since to me it easily was a historical monument.
I called this post “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy” because Bob was tall and when he walked he sort of lunged forward and walked as if he was a giant walking through a forest that was only knee deep to himself. Bob had been an electrician for over 35 years. I know this because one of the phrases he would often say was, “I’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years!”
He had some other phrases, that I will probably mention in a few minutes. First I want to tell you about the relationship I had with Bob…. So, often in the morning after the morning steam horn would go off signalling that it was time to go to work (yeah… .isn’t that cool? A horn powered by steam would go off when it was time to go to work! My gosh… That horn alone was a monument of the 1930’s each morning when I heard it!),
Bob would come out of the office to where I was standing in the shop and say, “Kev. Follow me. I’ll show you what you’re goin’ ta be workin’ on today. Then he would head for the door. I would follow along behind him. I could tell that he preferred that I walk behind him. When I would walk faster, he would spread his lanky legs even farther to keep me one step behind him… so I quickly assumed my place two paces behind Bob.
He would have these large strides when he walked that would cause his body to move in a left and right motion where his arms were swinging at his side. I loved everything about Bob. I loved the way he talked… I loved the way he walked… I wished that I could be a miniature Bob. So, I started to imitate him.
As Bob would walk across the Turbine-Generator floor toward Unit 5 from Unit 7 (where the electric shop was located)), I would follow along two paces behind him trying my best to walk just like him. I would make very long strides to match Bob’s. I would swing my arms and lean left and right as I walked just like Bob. Bob was my hero and I wanted to let everyone know that I loved Bob and I wanted to be as much like Bob as I possibly could. So, as I walked I had a tremendous grin on my face. My expression was full of the satisfaction of knowing that I was literally following in Bob’s footsteps!
Operators and other maintenance workers that would see us instantly understood my intentions as they would grin, or laugh, or fall down in a total convulsion of uncontrollable laughter, sharing in my elation of being a miniature Bob.
I wish I could say that my time with Bob was one of total contentment and joy at being a miniature Bob that had “done it this way for 35 years”, but there were some setbacks. The first problem was that Arthur Hammond was with me on overhaul, and there was one major flaw in this combination….. Arthur liked to argue. See my post from two weeks ago called “Power Plant Arguments With Arthur Hammond“.
Before I go into the contention part, I want to first tell you about my second best Bob Kennedy Phrase. It is…. “I have a tool for that.”. You see. At this older gas plant where Bob Kennedy had spent the greater portion of his life, he had created a tool for just about every difficult job at the plant to make it easier.
Often in the morning when Bob would show me the job that I was going to be performing for the day, he would qualify it by saying, “I have a special tool for this.” Then he would take me back to the shop, reach under one of the work benches and pull out a work of art that comprised of chains, levers, pulleys and specialized cables that would make s seemingly impossible job, possible. He had a tool for everything.
So, when Arthur and I realized that Bob had a tool for everything we came up with a song for Bob that went to the tune of Big John. And old song about a guy named Big John that worked in a mine that collapsed one day. If you are older than I am (52), then you may have heard it before.
In case you haven’t, here is a YouTube version of Big John sung by Jimmy Dean:
Now that you have listened to the song about Big John, here is the song that Arthur and I devised about Bob Kennedy:
Big Bob…. Big Bob….
Every morning when he showed up at the plant, You could see him arrive.
He was 6 foot 6, and weighed more than than 145.
Wore a chip on his shoulder
And kinda wobbly at the hip.
Everyone knew he didn’t give a flip… That was Bob….
Big Bo ahh… ob… Big Bad Bob. Big Bob….
Bob didn’t say much ’cause he was quiet and shy,
He hummed and we hawed and we didn’t know why.
That was Bo ahh…. ob…. Big Bad Bob….
When he would say, “I’ve gotta job… for the two of you…
Follow me… and I’ll show you what to do…
” That was Bob…. Bahhh….ob… Big Bad Bob….
When somethin’ didn’t work, he would say real quick,
Just spit in the back and give it a kick,
That was Bob…. Baaahhh…ob…. Big Bad Bob.
When you’ve been doin’ it this way for 35 years,
It doesn’t matter what problem you’ve got sittin’ right here’s….
‘Cause I’m Bob…. Baaaah….ob…. Big Bad Bob…..
You see, I have a tool to fix it up just right,
Let me show you how it’s done. I’ll show you the light….
That was Bob….. Baaaah…..ob… Big Bad Bob!
Arthur and I would sing or hum this song as we worked. It made the day go by so fast that we wondered if Bob himself wasn’t warping time using some tool he kept under a workbench in the electric shop.
Like I said…. I love Bob, and I have since the day I met him, and I always will. There came a day when there was contention in the ranks…. I saw it beginning when Arthur was arguing each day with Bob. I think it had to do with the fact that Bob liked to argue also… and neither of them liked to lose an argument. So, each morning, either Arthur or Bob would win the argument (which sounds a lot like a Dilbert moment today)….
My two friends whom I love dearly (to this day) quickly were at each other’s throats. I didn’t realize how much until the morning of December 18, 1985, just before I left the shop and Bob Kennedy said to me… “That Arthur Hammond…. He sure can dish it out, but he just can’t take it”. I walked straight from that conversation down to the the mezzanine level of unit 5 where Art was working on a motor. The first thing he said to me was, “Bob sure can dish it out but he just can’t take it.”
At that point I told Art to just wait a minute. There was something I had to do…. I went back to the shop and told Bob that there was something at the motor where we needed his help. As I was walking with Bob across the mezzanine and down to the motor, my heart was split in two. Here were two of my friends at odds with each other….. Two people whom I would spend the rest of my life praying for their happiness. Yet they viewed each other as mortal enemies…
I had to figure that both of them were right in their own way, yet both of them were wrong about each other. So when Bob arrived at the motor I told them both (as if I had suddenly turned into their mother)…. A little while ago, Bob told me that ‘Art can sure dish it out, but he just can’t take it.’. Then I walked down here and Art tells me the exact same thing about Bob. Now…. what is going on here? Bob?
Bob looked at the two of us like the time had finally come to let it all out…. he said, “Every time we have an argument about anything Art here runs to Ellis Rook complaining about me. If he has something to say, he should come straight to me. Not run to our supervisor!”
Art said, “Now wait a minute! It isn’t me that is running to Ellis Rook! Ellis just spoke with me this morning about sending me back to the plant because I don’t get along with you (meaning Bob). Each time we have an argument, you run to Ellis Rook. Ellis has been telling me that he is thinking of sending me home because you can’t get along with me! Bob had a shocked look on his face.
Playing the facilitator role, I asked Bob… “Is this so?” Because I remembered that one day before (on December 17, 1985) when I had to leave for part of the day to get my blood test because I was going to be married (and in Oklahoma you still needed a blood test to be married)…. when I had returned, I met Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) in the elevator, he had asked me about Arthur Hammond.
As a side note, because of the new changes in overtime rules, if I left the plant in the middle of the day, I wasn’t supposed to stay long enough to collect overtime. Ellis Rook started to tell me that I shouldn’t have come back to work after getting my blood test, because I wasn’t eligible to work overtime after taking off part of the day. After apologizing to him (humbly and profusely), he said, that it would be all right just this once… I figured it was because I was going to be married that Saturday on December 21, 1985. Ellis said that he had heard some bad things about Arthur and he was considering sending him back to our plant.
This would have been a terrible disgrace for Arthur and would have been on his permanent record as someone that wouldn’t be able to go on overhaul anymore. I assured Ellis that Arthur Hammond was the most upright of employees and that there wasn’t any reason to send him home.
So, I asked Arthur…. was it true that he had been going to Ellis Rook (the electrical supervisor) to complain about Bob each time they had an argument… Arthur assured the both of us that not only wasn’t it him, but that it was Bob that had been complaining to Ellis Rook about him each time they had an argument. That was why he said Bob could dish it out, but he just couldn’t take it.
Bob replied, “It wasn’t me! It was Arthur! Every time we had an argument Ellis Rook would come to me and ask me about it. That is how I know that Art has been running to Ellis complaining about me. I would never tell Ellis about it! I would deal with it directly with Art. Art said, Ellis Rook was asking me the same thing!
So, I asked…. How would Ellis know if neither of you went to him to complain? I wouldn’t have told him…. This led us to the third person that was present during every argument….
You see, there was another electrician from the plant across town that was there every time Ellis came to Bob asking about Arthur after an argument… Let’s call it Mustang Plant (since that was the name). In order not to embarrass him, I won’t tell you his name, but his initials are “Randy Oxley”. Randy Oxley desperately wanted to move from Mustang Plant to the plant in Midwest City… (all right… since I’m already naming names of plants, I might as well say “Horseshoe Plant”)…
For a time during this overhaul I spent a great deal of time in the electric shop working on motors. Each day I would stand at a workbench disassembling motors, cleaning out their sleeve bearings (yeah. these old motors at the old plant had sleeve bearings) and measuring them, and re-assembling them. During that time there were two things that I listened to. The first thing was the radio…. At that time in history… the leading rock radio stations would play the top 20 songs only. That meant that after listening to the top 20 songs, the only thing left to listen to was the top 20 songs all over again…. To me… It was like a nightmare.
The songs I listened to 100 times were songs like
“Say you Say Me” by Lionel Riche,
One More Night by Phil Collins:
Every Time you Go away by Paul Young:
We Built This City by Jefferson Starship:
Something in the Air Tonight by Phil Collins:
I’m sorry to do this to you, but this last song I know I must have listened to about 50 times as the top 20 played over and over again about every two hours as it has been drilled into my head. I know. I can feel the pity from every one of you who have just read this post.
Today I have “Something In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins on my iPod only because when I listen to it once each week it reminds me of the time I spent in the electric shop at Horseshoe plant working on those motors working around Reggie Deloney, Steven Trammell (otherwise known as ‘Roomie’), Paul Lucy, and the others that were there during that overhaul.
The second thing that I listened to while I was working on the motors in the electric shop was Randy Oxley. Randy was much like Steven Higginbotham, the summer help that I had worked with the first summer I had worked at our plant. See…. “Steve Higginbotham’s Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“. He liked to talk.
Randy didn’t consider me as an important asset, so he didn’t talk much to me. He did, however, talk to one of the Maintenance Supervisors, who happened to be his uncle. You see… Randy wanted desperately to move from Mustang Plant to Horseshoe Plant. There was an opening for the B Foreman at Horseshoe plant, and he figured that one of the men in the electric shop would surely get the new foreman opening, which would leave an opening for an electrician.
So Randy would try to butter up his uncle (His uncle was called “Kincade, or Campbell… or some such name). He didn’t seem to care that I was standing right there carefully honing a sleeve bearing for an old GE motor. He openly expressed his opinion. It is only because of his blatant disregard for discretion that I don’t feel any guilt to pass on the conversation.
The one phrase that sticks in my mind is that Randy, while trying to convince his uncle that they should hire him in the electric shop at Horseshoe lake, said, “I am the best electrician at Mustang Plant. The only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it!”
I’m not kidding…. “I am the best electrician at the plant… the problem is that I’m the only one that knows it….”
This became one of my favorite phrases of all time. I couldn’t wait to share it with Arthur…. I told him… “I am the best darn BS’er of all time… the only problem is that I’m the only one that knows it…” Art would say…. “I’m the best <bleeping> goof ball of all time… only I’m the only one that knows it…” I know I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard.
Actually, I use this phrase to also remind me to never get such a big head that I really think that I’m better at something than others think I am… because they usually know better than I do.
So, this brings us back to the Art and Bob Cage Fight….
It became obvious that both of them had become snookered. Every time Art and Bob had argued about something and Randy Oxley was around, Randy would run up to Ellis’s office and tell him that Art and Bob were at each other’s throats.
Randy was trying to butter himself up to Ellis so that he would hire him when there was an opening in the electric shop. Art and Bob each thought the other had run to Ellis complaining about the other….
That was when the other shoe dropped….
Many years before, when I was still a summer help, and when I was a janitor, there was an electrician at our plant named Mel Woodring. Mel had decided that he didn’t have a future at our plant so he applied for a job at Muskogee. Of course, Bill Bennett and Leroy Godfrey were glad to give him a glowing recommendation because they thought that when Mel left, it gave them an opportunity to hire someone that would…. let us say… fit their culture in a more effective manner.
Because I was a janitor at this time, I was not eligible to apply for an Electrical job, even though Charles Foster had become my mentor and had me begin taking electrical courses through the company.
I had worked the year before I was working with Bob Kennedy at the plant in Midwest City, Oklahoma at Muskogee plant around Mel Woodring. I never worked directly with him, so I will just say that he met the expectations that had been set by my bucket buddy back home, Diana Brien.
Fast forward a year later to when I am on overhaul at Horseshoe plant….. Steven Trammell, Bob Kennedy and a few other electricians that had spent many years at the plant, all thought they would be possible contenders for new foreman’s job. Any of them would have been excellent candidates.
To their stunned surprise… Mel Woodring from Muskogee was given the job! To me, this was an obvious case of the “promote someone in order to get him out of the shop” syndrome.
It turned out that the foremen at Muskogee (John Manning), including our illustrious Don Spears, that I had the momentary lap dance with the year before (see, “Lap O’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“), had decided to give Mel the highest rating possible so that he would get the job at Midwest City, thus relieving Muskogee from the burden that our plant had placed on them by suggesting that Muskogee transfer him from our plant.
Not only was the Horseshoe plant in a state of shock, but so was Randy Oxley. This meant that there wasn’t going to be an opening in the electric shop, and all of his “schmoozing” had been for naught.
The last day of the overhaul was December 20, 1985, the day before my wedding. I remember that Paul Lucy wanted me to go to a “gentleman’s club”(quite the oxymoron if you ask me) to celebrate and have a sort of a bachelor’s party…. I remember looking straight at Art Hammond right after Paul asked me, and Art shook his head and said…. “Don’t listen to him. Do what is right.” I assured Art that I had no intention of ruining the rest of my life the day before my wedding.
I went directly home.
The next day, Art Hammond was at my wedding with his wife. It was, and still is, the most blessed day of my life. Partly because Art was there at the reception dancing alongside me. I was lucky that I didn’t have a black eye… (which is another story)… and lucky that Art and Sonny Kendrick (who sang at my wedding) were there. Of all of my friends at the power plant, they were the ones that came to my wedding reception of all the people my mom had invited from the plant.
Years later, I traveled with Bob Kennedy on a bus from his plant to Oklahoma City to visit the new Transmission Control Room and back. We sat together and it was just like we had never been apart. Bob talked… and I wished in my mind that I could be a miniature Bob walking behind him every step of the way.
Today any time I have to take a big step for whatever reason…. Bob Kennedy immediately comes to mind. I think about when Bob climbed out of that bus… These words come to my mind….
Through the dust and the smoke of this manmade hell walked a giant of a man that ‘lectricians knew well…. Like a Giant Oak Tree, he just stood there all alone….Big Baaah…. ob…. Big Bad Bob…. Big Bob….. Everyone knew it was the end of line for Big Bob…. Big Bad Bob…. An Electrician from this Plant was a Big Big Man… He was Big Bob! Big Bad Bob! Big Bob!
Power Plant Men 
Wow – I hadn’t thought about Mark’s murder in years. This verse gives me hope: Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.
Thanks for another great story!