David Earle Inhofe

Remembering David Inhofe, Childhood and Lifelong Friend (2/10/1948 - 4/5/2025) By Rob Robison I met David in Miss. Briggs’s 3rd Grade class at Eliot Elementary School in Tulsa, OK, in the fall of 1956. We had just moved into the Bren-Rose neighborhood and school assignment area. We became friends based on our love of baseball, bowling, and guitar music. I remember meeting before school on the playground ball diamonds waiting for Mr. Powell, the gym teacher, or one of his student helpers, to check out sporting equipment to us before school started so we could play pickup/workup softball on one the four diamonds on the playground. Whoever collected the sports equipment could play any position they wanted. David and I always wanted to start as batters so we could spend more time at the plate and less time working up to hitting before the school bell rang. In addition to baseball and softball, David introduced me to bowling. Because of David, I joined a kids’ league and we became teammates along with a couple of other kids from our Eliot classes. By the time we reached Sixth Grade, we were good enough to win the 15th Annual Mailographic National Tournament, representing Brookside Bowl. A picture of us receiving our trophies, wearing our Pepsi Cola-emblazoned bowing shirts, appeared in the local morning newspaper, the Tulsa Daily World, on May 13, 1960. Not only did I learn to love baseball, softball, and bowling because of David, his guitar playing also inspired me to pick up the guitar. In fact, I tried to be like him to the point I copied his hair style and attempted, however unsuccessfully, to keep up with him conquering arithmetic skills and more. I began to lose track of him after we graduated from elementary school and moved on to different junior high and senior high schools and post high school education. However, we reconnected frequently as adults, when I returned to Tulsa to visit my parents. He always made time for me to eat a coney at Jim’s Coney Islander, a burger at Goldie’s, shoot some pool and quaff a few beers at a favorite bar near 11th and Harvard or later at the tonier watering holes on revitalized Cherry (15th) Street, nestled between Utica and Peoria, or take in a ball game at the new Drillers Stadium. We talked sports and stocks and a little about music and Spain, another of our mutual loves, where his sister owned a bar and he and his wife Susan owned a piece of property loaded with olive trees. The last time I saw him a few years ago, now, he mentioned the new Bob Dylan Museum. So, after we finished lunch, we headed over and spent two hours wandering through what turned out to be a delightful museum experience. I don’t think either one of us knew or realized that Dylan had recorded with Leon Russell in Tulsa at Leon’s Church recording studio. I was so looking forward to seeing him later this fall in November, when I’ll be back in town for the annual family business meeting. He was one of my two best male early childhood friends, who formed the cornerstone of my memories and life experiences that made me who I am today. I will miss him dearly for all of the above and for the infrequent, always incredibly funny ribald jokes he would email me out of the blue, the financial advice, and his incredible friendship. I will absolutely never ever forget him. Rest in peace, David. You so richly deserve it! Your friend, Robbie Robison