VERNON WHITING

As an active member of the Pawhuska and Osage community up until his death in 1956, VERNON WHITING served as Commissioner and Mayor of Pawhuska, was the president and director of the Pawhuska Chamber of Commerce, and during WWII was president of the 4 Minute-Men of Osage County. He was also a member of the Council of Defense and was very active in the stamp and bond sales.  Vernon Whiting was an active and prominent citizen, understandably known as the “Town Builder” in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

The following detailed biography of VERNON WHITING was published in 1929, 9 years after he had already built THE WHITING APARTMENTS (now THE HOTEL WHITING) and many other buildings in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

1929…

VERNON WHITING – A native of the State of New York, a resident during the first two decades of his life of Nebraska, and a graduate of the latter State’s schools, Mr. Whiting has been a citizen of Oklahoma for almost forty years. There he has been successfully engaged in the practice of law, in the newspaper business, and has held different public offices of importance, all of which he filled with credit to himself and to the satisfaction and benefit of the Commonwealth, and in other ways has been prominently active in public life. Having come to Pawhuska in 1909, he has served this city as mayor and postmaster, has practiced his profession there, and in different ways has done his full share in building up the town to its present condition of prosperity and importance. 
Vernon Whiting was born in Ogdensburg, New York, February 10, 1870. When he was a small child he removed with his parents to Nebraska and received his preliminary education in the public grammar and high schools of Seward, which he attended during 1875-86. He then became a student at Lillibridge and Roose College, Lincoln, Nebraska, from which he was graduated in 1890. While still a college student he took up the study of law, which he continued after graduating from college, and, during the month of his twenty-first birthday, February, 1891, was admitted to the Nebraska bar and to practice in the State and Supreme courts. Later in the same year he removed to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and was admitted to practice in the Territorial and Supreme courts. During 1892-93 he served as chief clerk of the United States Land Office at Kingfisher, which position he filled with efficiency, resigning September 16, 1893, to make the run to Enid, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Strip, when that region was thrown open to settlement. Upon his arrival there he resumed the practice of law, in which he continued successfully until 1906. In that year he was appointed Clerk of the United States Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. In the following year he became secretary to the Hon. Bird S. McGuire, Member of Congress, and during 1907-09 he was a resident of Washington, District of Columbia, where he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States in 1907. In 1909 he left Washington and, returning to Oklahoma, settled at Pawhuska, of which town he has been a resident since. For four years he served as competency commissioner of the Osage Nation, filling this position with unvarying efficiency and fairness. In 1910 he purchased the Pawhuska “Capital,” which newspaper he continued to own and edit until 1918, when he sold it to its present owners. In that year he became extensively interested in erecting a number of business and residential buildings, operations which represent an investment of a quarter of a million dollars and which he carried out with great energy and success. During 1921-22 he served as mayor of Pawhuska, giving that town an honest and business-like administration. At the end of his term he was appointed postmaster, which office he still holds and in which he has continuously displayed the many fine qualities which enabled him to make his administration of the different offices held by him previously invariably successful and creditable. Such of his time as is not required by his official duties is devoted to the care of his individual investments. Ever since coming to Oklahoma, Mr. Whiting has been very active in the affairs of the Republican party and for the past thirty-five years he has taken a prominent part in every national, State and county campaign. He has served as a member of the Republican State Committee, as well as in the capacity of its secretary and chairman, and he has been elected to represent his district at various Republican National conventions, three times as a delegate and twice as an alternate. He is a member of the board of directors of the Pawhuska Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Whiting married (first), in 1897, Helen Voorhees, and by this marriage is the father of two children, Fred and Freda, both married and residing in Pawhuska. Mrs. Whiting died in March, 1916, and he married (second), in August, 1918, Mrs. Maude A. Bunnell, of Arkansas City, Kansas.

(Source: Oklahoma, A History of the State and its People, by Joseph B. Thoburn and Muriel H. Wright; Volume IV; Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., New York 1929; transcribed by WJ Fields)