Video Series

TITLE GOES HERE
JOHN CLAYBON
talks @ the MEMORIAL
ELLIS WALKER WOODS was the first Principal of North Tulsa's historic Booker T. Washington High School. Woods helped build not only the prosperous community, but, also, with his staff, worked from 1915 to 1948 establishing institutions revered across the United States, toda. HBCU Athletics may top the list. JOHN CLAYBON, a 1945 BTW grad gives the first talk at the memorial, the monument to Ellis Walker Woods that sits on a hill on the campus of OSU-Tulsa.
Flying with the Tuskegee Airmen was John Claybon's goal after graduating in 1945 from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was the tail end of World War II and you get the feeling, older and wiser, Claybon's parents, John I. and Amanda Claybon understood things were heating up. They talked their son out of getting into an airplane for combat, but, he made the trip to Alabama and worked backup for the, then fledgling, now legendary air corps while completing his engineering degree at Tuskegee University.
On his return to North Tulsa, safe and sound just as his parents planned, Claybon opened his own company, CLAYBON ELECTRIC, which he operated for 39 years. Today the company is owned by his son, JOHN ERIC CLAYBON (pictured above/right, with his father).
JOHN CLAYBON talks about his experience with the TUSKEGEE AIRMEN
JOHN CLAYBON
These talks with Mr. Claybon were not interviews, but, recorded as information about Ellis Walker Woods to be used later in print. Mr. Claybon and his son agreed to share these videos for the first talk in this series. No one could have been more appropriate.
Ellis Walker Woods was Mr. Claybon's high school Principal. In the two videos above you'll hear probably more about Mr. Woods than most of us would be able to tell about our schools' Principal. There's more about the legendary S.E. WILLIAMS, about the school, about the Tuskegee Airmen and about Mr. Claybon's volunteer work, today...of course, where else, at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium. Click on the links below to two earlier talks he made about his work with the Tuskegee Airmen. Click here to visit tuskegeeairmen.org



