To the reader,
We met Doug Coe fifty years ago in Washington DC, after taking our first plane ride and showing up at the Fellowship House on Embassy Row in our plaid (only) suits. He and a few friends met with us over two days, challenging us to consider organizing a national student leadership conference in Oklahoma, near the geographic center of the country. The stated purpose was to ‘examine the moral and spiritual implications of leadership, using the model of Jesus of Nazareth’.
​
In 1976, at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Doug and his friends, including US Senators and Congressmen, Fortune 100 leaders, and a recently released prison parolee named Chuck Colson spent three days on campus meeting with several hundred student leaders that gathered from almost 100 campuses around the US.
Together we discussed long into the night and into the early morning the teachings of Jesus as the model for effective and lasting leadership. Needless to say, we had never heard Jesus and leadership used in the same sentence. We certainly had not considered His teachings used as a basis for friendship in a different way that that which we had experienced to that point.
​
These three days redefined the values of three 20-year-old young blue-collar Oklahomans, made us cast aside some of the things that divided us as a couple of Southern Baptists and a Catholic, and gave us a vision for the future that was based on unity rather than division.
Reconciliation instead of alienation. Jesus way as opposed to the world’s way. Our lives were permanently changed, as we began our now 50-year journey of walking together as brothers and being defined by something much larger than our respective religious beliefs.
​
We all went to law school in Oklahoma after OSU. After law school, we split up for a couple years when we all pursued out of state graduate degrees at three different schools following law school. We have now all lived back in Oklahoma for over 40 years. Kim is a member of the federal judiciary. John is the former Attorney General of Oklahoma and practices law. Kevin runs a private equity firm that he founded 20 years ago.
​
Sincerely,
Kim Parrish
John O’Connor
Kevin Jordan