tupaview: what a difference 10 years can make
Mike Tupa and Becky Burch hold awards won from the Oklahoma Press Association 10 years ago.
By Mike Tupa
June 9, 2025
BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS REPORT
“I shall pass this way but once.”
— William Penn
Exactly 10 years ago last Thursday, Joe and Becky (Burch) Slack gave me a ride to Oklahoma City.
We looked forward to a happy evening — collecting awards at the Oklahoma Press Association convention banquet.
I don’t recall much about the journey. Joe and Becky always provided good company and I’m sure we chatted about several things.
For me it was a milestone experience — this would be my first and only time to attend the OPA awards banquet. I already knew I would receive the first-place award for sports coverage for all newspapers our size in Oklahoma.
Becky garnered the top honor for photography.
Becky also was earmarked to bring home some hardware. Joining us at our table were two of our Pawhuska Journal-Capital colleagues, who would clean up that night with recognition for their excellent work among the state’s smaller publications.
The only awkward part of the night for me concerned being called up to the podium to accept my plaque — I didn’t really have a nice suit to go along with the occasion.
After the banquet wrapped up, we visited the display of the work of all the first-place recipients.
What won the sports coverage kudos for me was an issue that featured the up-and-coming boxing career of Kenzie Witt Morrison, one of the sons of former world heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison.
I finally crawled into the back seat of Joe and Becky’s truck for the smooth ride back to Bartlesville. As I recall, we picked up another passenger, although I don’t recall who.
During the first few miles the conversation in the car wrapped around the excitement of the banquet and also the unknowns facing the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise’s future. Both our publisher and editor had resigned, amidst a change in the ownership of the paper, leaving the rest of us wondering about what other changes we might experience in our jobs.
While still several miles out of Bartlesville a phone call came in on Becky's cell — a call of a tragedy that consigned both our joy and apprehensions of the night to the irrelevant. We learned Justin Albert, the adult son of our co-worker Susan Albert and her husband Jay, had drowned that day at Copan Lake.
We were stunned. Becky and I had worked alongside Susan for 13 years. I had known Jay as a school coach even longer than that. I had watched and written about Justin during his high school football years at Bartlesville.
What had started out as an evening in which we could temporarily shelve our concerns about the turmoil at the paper and celebrate our work had made a U-turn into overwhelming sorrow.
I wondered how Susan — a totally devoted mom — could deal with this.
Finally we arrived back in Bartlesville. Joe and Becky dropped me off at my apartment. I remained haunted by my concern for Susan and Jay, mingled with the fun of the banquet. It was a surreal feeling.
A decade later I look back on that night as a crossroads — an emotional roller-coaster of emotions that we all shared together.
I was only 59 years back then; my career still contained many highlights — including winning the OPA First Place Award for sports photography in 2017 as well as several top honors for the best feature sports story of the year. Many other great moments followed as well — being inducted into the Bartlesville Athletic Hall of Fame, being nominated by the National Sports Media Association as the Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year, being honored by the Oklahoma State Legislature and reporting about some incredible local athletes and coaches.
But on the 10th Year Anniversary of that carefree trip to Oklahoma City, how drastically our lives have changed in many ways.
The newspaper endured major leadership and policy changes and hung tough but continued to lose ground until we sold our beautiful building less than 30 years after it had opened. I had called that office home for more than 25 years and had sat at the same messy desk area for more than 20 years.
It also was so sad to see my friends and colleagues slowly bounce away — some voluntarily, others by layoffs — like basketballs rolling to the end of an empty court.
Susan and Jay dealt with their tragedy and eventually moved to Kansas to be near their grandchildren by their younger son.
Becky and Joe continued to enjoy an idyllic life together during Joe’s retirement. But in January 2022, Joe passed away unexpectedly — at age 76 — leaving a major void in Becky’s life and her heart. And it remains to this day.
She’s helped fill part of that longing through her unselfish decision to serve the kids and schools of this area through the Bartlesville Area Sports Website — without any pay for the time being to help defray the costs of gas and other expenses in getting around to cover the games. Just a commercial — I hope that any that feel so inclined might contribute to the site or purchase some of Becky’s outstanding photos.
I’ve worked closely with her on the website but she’s done most of the heavy lifting, so to speak, in organizing the website and editing the articles and photos and uploading them.. I’ve contributed only the writing and reporting, which — for someone with diarrhea of the pen — has not been a great hardship, although a bit tiring at times.
For me, the seismic tumult in my life occurred in 2021 when my sister Pam — a double-breast-cancer survivor that underwent two mastectomies — passed away at age 63. Even though we lived 1,200 miles apart, Pam had been my best friend, my listening board, my advisor and confidant. For more than 25 years we had talked on the phone every Sunday night at 7 p.m. When she passed away I felt a sadness like sitting in an empty ballpark at midnight and haunted by the hollow echoes of yesterday’s cheers that are swallowed up in the forlorn dark.
In some ways I wish I could sponge away 10 years and be back in the truck with the Slacks headed to Oklahoma City. But time is a catalogue of days gone by — and all the vicissitudes and passions and hardship that defined each one.
Thank goodness for the memories of that night and the happiness we remember. Despite the turns our lives have taken how empty they would have been without the good times and people.