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Only in Oklahoma: Promoter helped make sure babies got milk

Posted: Sep 6th 2007 By: mikeiles

Oklafan Editors Note: The following story was written as part of the Oklahoma Centennial Celebration and appeared in the Tulsa World on 9/7/07

Thousands of Tulsans had milk to drink as babies during the Great Depression thanks to a Tulsa wrestling and entertainment promoter and philanthropist.

The Babies Milk Fund was one of Sam Avey's three favorite charities, all involving children. The other two were an annual Christmas party for needy children at his Coliseum and the state Santa Claus Commission, which provided presents for children in orphanages.

Avey didn't start the milk fund, but he became its angel -- its biggest supporter -- two years after it was started in 1934 by women at Boston Avenue Methodist Church. He supported the fund with an annual charity wrestling match at the Coliseum from 1936 to 1959 and frequently added money from his own pocket.

"The Community Fund took care of many situations and made life better for people in general," Mrs. Earle Porter, who was the chairwoman of the group that founded the fund, recalled in 1977. "But there was nothing for babies who needed milk, and federal aid did not extend to providing milk for babies."

The Milk Fund paid to have milk delivered by regular milkmen or to have canned or special formula milk provided to households as needed.

After the Coliseum burned in 1952, Avey moved the Milk Fund charity wrestling matches to the fairgrounds. The matches continued until 1959, when the fund's board thought it could be self-supporting. The fund supplied milk to babies until 1977, when it gave the $4,600 it had left to The Little Light House, a school for children with disabilities.

Avey's annual benefit matches brought to Tulsa the great names of the grappling game. "Many years we had three champions on the card," he told a reporter in 1959.

Most of the wrestlers took training expenses or transportation costs and nothing else, Avey said. "They took their cue from the ladies of the milk fund. Here was a charity that operated without any overhead. The ladies even paid for their own stamps."

Sometimes the milk fund received more than the gate receipts. The 1958 gate, for instance, totaled $5,200 but Avey turned over $7,100 to the fund.

Avey also suspended his rule about not taking up collections at Coliseum events to allow donations to the milk fund. He didn't like soliciting in the Coliseum because, he said, spectators had paid to get in and shouldn't be expected to pay more.

Avey staged Christmas parties for needy children in the Coliseum from 1944 until 1950. The events attracted as many as 9,000 children, who sang Christmas songs, watched ice skating shows, clowns and elves and, of course, Santa. Each child received a four-pound sack of fruit, nuts and candy to take home.

Surplus sacks of goodies were delivered to local orphanages and homes.

When he died in 1962, Avey was the chairman of the Oklahoma Santa Claus Commission, the state agency that provides Christmas gifts for children in orphanages and training schools. Avey was named to the commission in 1957, succeeding the late W.G. Skelly.

Avey was born in Kingfisher. By age 15, he was on the "coal oil" theater circuit, working as a prop handler and bit actor playing juvenile leads. After six years on the stage, he joined his father in a grocery business. That didn't hold his interest and he got involved in show business of a different sort -- wrestling.

He became the promoter for Ed "Strangler" Lewis, one of the big names in wrestling in the early 20th century, and came to Tulsa in 1924 to promote wrestling. He later turned over wrestling promotion to Leroy McGuirk, a wrestler who had been blinded in an automobile accident, to devote time to his other interests.

Those other interests included the Coliseum, which he bought in 1944. Under his guidance, it became a venue for many of the big entertainers of the period until it burned down in September 1952. Avey, with two partners, also started radio station KAKC in 1946 and operated it until 1955, when they sold it to an evangelist.

Avey also was a senior vice president of Farmers and Merchants State Bank.

In 1947, he received the Chamber of Commerce award for outstanding and unselfish civic achievement. That year he was the chairman of The Salvation Army building fund campaign.

But throughout the years, the milk fund remained one of Avey's favorite charities.

"I like a charity where 100 percent of the money received goes to the charity for which it was intended," Avey once told a reporter.

Best of all, he loved children.

Tags: Sam Avey, Ed Lewis