Free barbecue was on the menu for Veterans Day at Stutts House of Barbecue.
The north Tulsa staple gave away plates of chicken, ribs, bologna, links and slabs with sides of coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans and jambalaya to all veterans and their children to celebrate the early November holiday.
According to census data, about 6% of Tulsa’s population is veterans.
“I do it every year to say thank you,” said owner Almead Stutts. “My two oldest brothers were in World War II, and my baby brother (was in service in Vietnam). I just want to say thank you to our sisters and brothers that went and fought, although they may not like what they fought for.”
‘They didn’t like it too much’
Fannie Warrior had a house payment due in 28 days that she couldn’t afford. It was 1983, and she had just been laid off from her job at an oil company.
“It was real hard for a Black female to get a job in the ’80s,” Warrior told The Eagle while waiting for her food at Stutts.
Desperate to make ends meet, she responded to a military ad offering $800 to new recruits. She and her best friend rushed down to get their physical exams and sign up.
Warrior spent the next nine years working in administrative services for the U.S. Army. She was eventually promoted to sergeant, which angered a lot of her white peers, she said.
“The white (people who) enlisted didn’t like it too much,” she said. “I wasn’t the only Black female, but you could just tell how they didn’t want us there.”
Warrior retired from a City of Tulsa administrative role in 2022 at 67, and she doesn’t think the government does enough to support veterans. She pointed to Tulsa’s downtown VA hospital as an example of something that has taken too long to open.
“We have to go way out to 91st and Mingo just for clinical service,” she said. “(We) have to go to Muskogee, just if it’s a hospital thing.”
‘They watched me all the time’
James Gibbs was 18 years old in 1965 when he decided to pass up a scholarship to attend Langston University. That decision changed his life as, shortly afterward, he was drafted into service in the Vietnam War.
“Vietnam was just kicking up, and I didn’t want to go to Vietnam because my understanding (was) a lot of people were being sent to Vietnam and getting killed,” Gibbs said from Stutts.
The U.S. suffered 58,220 military fatalities during the conflict, but Gibbs never stepped foot on the battleground. Before being sent to the front line, he contracted malaria during training and spent the next 18 months at the Panama Canal recovering.
“I got Panama, which was a blessing,” he said. “Best thing ever happened to me.”
But that wasn’t the end for Gibbs’ tenure with the military. After the Vietnam War ended, he was sent to Korea, where he worked in finance for nearly a decade. He remained on active duty for 21 years.
While waiting for his order of beef, hot links and ribs, Gibbs told The Eagle he would often be racially profiled for being a Black man in the military. He described his time in the service as OK but not good. Sometimes his peers would leave money out in the open to see whether he would take it.
“They watched me all the time. They would see if I steal any money,” he said.
He reflected on his decision not to go to college, he said he regrets it to a certain extent but that life didn’t turn out too badly for him.
‘I had a family to take care’
Joe Parks Jr. was considered old for a recruit when he joined the Army in 1987 at age 23.
He had just left Oklahoma State University and needed a job. Parks said he knew the military would offer him enough benefits to keep food on his plate.
“I had a family to take care of, too,” he told The Eagle.
Over the next 13 years, he found himself stationed around the globe in places such as Germany, Bosnia and Iraq.
“Germany, you could bring your family,” he said. “My kids (were) speaking fluent German at one point because I put them in German school.”
Parks took part in Operation Desert Storm during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
He waltzed into Stutts Barbecue on Wednesday not knowing he would be getting a free meal. He told The Eagle that being a Black man in the military during the ’90s could sometimes be a lonely affair.
“It wasn’t very many Blacks in the military. We stood out,” he said. “The leadership was there. (We) still have some Black leadership, so the strides had been made since Vietnam.”
At 62, Parks now works at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, and both his son and daughter served in the Navy.
Ismael Lele is a Report for America corps member and writes about business in Tulsa for The Oklahoma Eagle. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting this link.
