By Doris Wedge
January 12, 2009 02:06 am
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At 87 years of age, Bob Naifeh can look back on a life filled with a strong family, good education opportunities, service to his country, and success in his profession. Yes, it has been a good life, he says.
He enjoys reminiscing and can reel off the dates and places, hinting that he isn't telling all that he remembers about life in Norman, where he has lived since he was a child.
Naifeh's parents emigrated from Lebanon and settled near Tulsa. They became naturalized citizens in 1902. Home then was the oil boom town of Kiefer. "There were 17 saloons in the town, and it was a good place to move away from," Naifeh joked.
His father took a business opportunity in Tennessee, where Naifeh was born. He has claimed Oklahoma as his home since his widowed mother moved to Tulsa with her seven children in 1929. In 1931 she moved to Norman and her two oldest sons, Mitchell and William, opened the Naifeh Grocery, a main street fixture for many years. Goodno's Jewelry now occupies that site.
"The whole family worked at the store. I grew up on Main Street," Naifeh said, recalling a town of less than 10,000 when there were nine drugstores and nine groceries in the three blocks from the railroad tracks to Porter. "They all made a living," he said, adding a bit wistfully, "and now there is not a single one."
Those were the days when "everybody knew everybody. If you did anything wrong, your parents knew about it before you got home."
And home wasn't too far from that downtown strip of stores, as the town's boundaries of development were Robinson, the state hospital grounds, Lindsey and Flood. "Pavement ended at Flood."
Another recollection of the early days brings a smile to his lips. "I had an appendectomy in the American Legion Hospital. It was an eight bed hospital," he recalled of the facility run by two doctors. "The two nurses lived in the basement."
A highlight of each day at the hospital was the arrival of the owner of Gilt Edge Dairy. "He would deliver a pint of ice cream as a treat for every patient who could have it."
The youngest of the Naifeh siblings, he was in his third year at the University of Oklahoma when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He volunteered for the Air Force and was trained as a machine gun mechanic. Tapped for Officer Candidate School followed by the Air Force Intelligence School, he ended up as an intelligence officer attached to the 92nd bomber group.
"We were a B17 bomber group stationed in England," he said, They saw action in England, France, North Africa, Italy and Greece. "I went in as a private and came out as a captain."
The bomber group, which received honors for flying the 300th mission, holds annual reunions and he has enjoyed the continued relationships. One reunion was held in England where they gave $15,000 to restore a pipe organ in the church of a village near their air base.
"The little town consisted of a pub, a school, a filling station and an Anglican Church," he said.
The gift was a memorial to the men and women who didn't return from the war. Attendance at the reunions is "thinning," he says, and he had to miss the last reunion due to illness.
While he was able to return home after the war and resume his studies, his brother Alfred, who had graduated from OU Law School in 1940, died in the Pacific. Heroic actions by Alfred Naifeh resulted in the christening of the USS Naifeh, a destroyer that was active from 1944 until 1966. Naifeh attended the christening of the ship when his mother broke a bottle of champagne on the bow. "I am the only honorary crew member of the USS Naifeh," he said as he put on a cap bearing the ship's insignia.
Naifeh enjoys the outdoors and can't talk about a summer job he held while a college student without smiling. He was a Yosemite National Park ranger, "and it was the most delightful job I ever had." It was such an enjoyable place he took his bride there on their honeymoon, and they spent three months living in a tent. His ranger hat hangs in his den today.
He left the life of a park ranger behind when he finished law school. He practiced general law in Norman for a few years before joining forces with Charles Nesbitt in an Oklahoma City office. Together they built a practice in oil and gas law. Their reputation as authorities on the law was so well-known that Mobile, Phillips and Chevron oil companies asked them to represent them in securing a portion of the proceeds in the Prudhoe Bay oil pool.
Prudhoe Bay records were kept in Seattle, so he and Nesbitt and their wives lived in Seattle for three years (1983-85) as the litigation proceeded. "We would come home regularly during that time," he said. The oil companies only wanted two percent of the Prudhoe Bay find, but that amounted to $5 billion. "We came home with our share of it," he said.
His career also included appearing before the Court of Claims -- "that's when people sue the government, and you find out who has all the money." He also was an arbiter for the New York Stock Exchange, and served for two years as state assistant attorney general, working under his friend, Charles Nesbitt.
"For the last 25 years I have had an office with Bill Woodson," he said.
He has enjoyed excellent health until the last few months, a situation that has kept him out of the office. He still gets calls from attorneys from across the country who tap his knowledge of oil and gas law. "My profession has treated me well."
Naifeh has been active in the Norman community all of his life, even having served on the City Council in the early 1950s. He recalls it as "a turbulent time" in city politics, and he was going against the stream. "It was a tough go," and he doesn't want to resurrect those memories.
He has been a member of First Presbyterian Church for more than 50 years, and a "rank and file" member of the Norman Kiwanis Club. He is a Shriner, an OU Associate, a life member of the OU Alumni Association and has held OU football tickets for more than 50 years.
His illness has kept him from one of his pleasures in life, coffee each morning with friends in a downtown coffee shop on the site of what once was the Murray Department Store at the corner of Main and Crawford. One of those coffee drinkers is his lifelong friend, Dee Powell. "We bought our first car together." It was a '34 Model A Ford that barely ran, he recalls.
His wife, Lil, passed away in 2004. They were partners in raising three children. Their son, Robert Naifeh Jr., followed him into the practice of law, and the girls, LeeAnn Kuhlman and Karen Sue Meyerson, are teachers. All are Edmond residents. They are OU graduates, as are three of the Naifeh grandchildren. Another one is a freshman at OU now. They frequently drop in to check up on Bob and he was host for the Christmas dinner this year.
He is regaining his strength from a major illness, and recovering from a corneal transplant. Looking to the future, he said "I am learning to use the computer. I have a new vision machine, and a talking watch."
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