An Open Mike

The tribal elder went on to become chief justice of the Cherokees' Supreme Court. McSpadden's own father, Ray Thompson McSpadden, served on the Cherokee Nation's election committee. His was the first panel to name a woman, Wilma Mankiller, to a ranking position.

By the time Michael Thomas McSpadden was born in 1944 in the West Texas hamlet of Borger, oil was in the family's blood. His father would log 40 years for Phillips Petroleum, rising as a refinery supervisor in moves that took the family on their own unforced migrations through the West. McSpadden, one-eighth Cherokee, was a ninth-grader by the time they settled in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

The judge, even as he sits today in a judicial chamber decorated with peace pipes and related Indian artifacts, plays down the Native American heritage.

"Growing up as a child, one thing I learned from my family is you never used your heritage as an excuse for anything you didn't achieve," he says. Another lesson -- a far more unlikely one -- would have the greatest impact on his future.

The senior McSpadden, before his death in 1999, was an avid athlete who was inducted into the Northeastern State University Hall of Fame in both tennis and basketball. His son still remembers his advice, from more than a half-century earlier:

"Mike, play all the different sports you enjoy -- but always play tennis."

The boy wondered why.

"It's a carry-over sport," the father explained. "With it, you'll meet more nice people -- quality people."

Under his father's tutelage, Mike McSpadden got a tennis scholarship at the University of Oklahoma. He became the Norman conqueror of the courts, claiming the Big Eight singles title for OU from 1963 to 1966.

He also became an all-star hell-raiser, another jock who lavished in the drinking and partying so prevalent on campuses in that era. Almost 30 years later, he'd have to admit to a political opponent that he served a six-month probated sentence for biting a woman on the butt while dancing the "gator." And police twice detained him for intoxication.

"I majored in history and minored in stupidity," McSpadden says, shaking his head slightly. "Like a lot of students, everything was without boundaries for me in college."

He headed into OU law school and found himself facing the draft at the zenith of the Vietnam War. Contemplating his options, McSpadden enlisted with the marines. When he completed basic training at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune, McSpadden's tennis abilities again guided his fortune.

Major General Rathvon McClure Tompkins, the Lejeune base commander, was a hardened marine veteran of three wars -- as well as a tennis addict. Tompkins noticed McSpadden's talents and gave him the chance to become a member of the Marine Corps squad that competed against the other armed services.

McSpadden acknowledges only that he played for the corps. Others familiar with that era add some relevant details. Marines didn't tolerate losing, whether it was in foxholes or on clay courts. Those who dropped to the bottom seed of the six-member marine tennis team had to take on challengers.

"Mike doesn't like to talk about it, but some of those were the matches of his life -- skinned knees and everything else, and he'd have to keep on playing," says former district attorney Carol Vance. "Those were high stakes: Lose and you're shipped out to Vietnam."

McSpadden stayed stateside until his honorable discharge in 1971. He then returned to Norman and finished law school. At his father's insistence, he signed on at Phillips Petroleum. And if not for his prowess with a racket, he'd likely be heading toward a quiet company retirement by now.

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As district attorney of Harris County in the 1970s, Carol Vance had a love of tennis that was legendary. The fatherly administrator would turn into the fiercest of competitors for anyone on the other side of a net.

Mike Ringer, a former OU quarterback and rival of Vance's on the courts, ran into Vance at the National College of District Attorneys. He couldn't resist tempting Vance with some news about the arrival of a friend.

"I got a guy who can whip you in tennis," Ringer laughed. Vance, unaware of McSpadden's accomplishments in Big Eight competition, told him to bring on the stranger. "Mike won that first match," Vance recalls, "but not by much. I gave him a real good game."

As they continued to face off in matches, a friendship developed. Vance learned that McSpadden worked for Phillips as a land man, a relatively lowly position of checking deeds, handling mostly boilerplate leases and other mundane matters.

"Carol got really tired of hearing how much I hated my job," McSpadden remembers. "He finally said, 'If you hate it that much, come with me.' "

He did. Assistant district attorneys of that era were bemused by Vance's enlistment of a tennis addict as an employee, although McSpadden quickly immersed himself in the alien world of criminal justice. He was fascinated almost daily by the cops and crime, wary witnesses and defendants, hardened repeat offenders, and tender wounds of victims and relatives.