Savannah Blades

Savannah Blades is a doctoral student studying nurse anesthesia from Clayton, Oklahoma. She enjoys taking walks with her French bulldog Ladybird and traveling to historic locations. Some of her favorite locations include Savannah, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana. 

“I enjoy haunted history. My mom really enjoyed that too, so we like places that have a lot of culture to them,” Blades said. “I’m not really sure why it’s so fascinating to me, but I think more so than anything, the history and understanding where different cultures came from and how we’ve kind of advanced today is interesting.”

Blades is part of the Comanche tribe. She is a direct descendant of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman who married Peta Nocona. Parker was the mother of Quanah Parker, the last Comanche chief.

“Being a part of the Native American heritage more than anything really means not only remembering and honoring your past and your culture, but also trying to preserve that moving forward,” Blades said.

Blades graduated from high school in a class with 36 people, which for her town was a large class. After graduating, she went to Southeastern Oklahoma State University where she originally majored in English and minored in political science. She originally planned to go into law.

 “I did a lot of interning over the summer and that’s when I really learned that wasn’t something that I really had in my heart,” Blades said. “I’ve always liked medicine. I did a little bit of research and I had had most of the prerequisites for nursing school. I found this accelerated program at Oklahoma State University and got into it.”

After graduating nursing school, Blades worked in the ICU and was a flight nurse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as a travel nurse and worked in COVID ICUs at Barnes Jewish Hospital, a teaching hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

Blades described her experiences during this time as immensely difficult.

“You’re doing everything you can and it’s still not enough and you just see patient after patient after patient decline. It was mentally taxing but when you think that you’re at a true breaking point, you have that one patient that does make a turnaround and they are able to recover,” Blades said. 

After obtaining her doctorate in nurse anesthesia, Blades plans to begin practicing in a rural setting. She said rural communities are often lacking adequate healthcare resources and that she wants to bridge the gap of healthcare accessibility. 

“I grew up in a rural community. My closest hospital was actually an hour away. Seeing how people in our community struggled with healthcare or even getting basic surgeries was something that appealed to me,” Blades said.

Upon graduation, Blades said she wants to either work in rural Oklahoma or Missouri, as her fiancé is from Missouri. 

Kesley Girty

Kelsey Girty is a master’s student studying school counseling. She is from Warner, Oklahoma. 

Girty currently works as a school counselor for eighth grade students and after graduation, plans to stay in that field.

Girty enjoys camping, going on long walks, longboarding and swimming. She also enjoys watching reality TV and scary movies.

Girty is Cherokee. Her grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee and taught her a small amount of the language.

“It was the era where it wasn’t really cool to be Cherokee. It was not really a good thing to be Native, so she didn’t teach us a lot,” Girty said.

Girty is a Cherokee Promise Scholar, which means the Cherokee Nation paid for her entire undergraduate education. She attended Northeastern State University and majored in business, with a double minor in psychology and Cherokee culture.

“I remember the first time I ever counseled anyone, I was actually in high school and it was at a church camp. This girl was talking to me, she came forward because she needed someone to talk to her,” Girty said. “So I just sat down and I talked to her and then I was just thinking ‘this is what I love to do. I love helping people. I love being there just to listen.’”

During her undergrad years, Girty learned more of the Cherokee language, traditional values and crafts. She said this helped her to connect with her family and grandmother. 

“We enjoy beadwork, basket weaving and cooking traditional foods. My dad loves to hunt and forage for mushrooms. We try to keep the traditions alive and we are very proud of our Cherokee heritage,” Girty said.

Being a Cherokee Promise Scholar provided many opportunities for Girty. She has attended conferences in Georgia, New Mexico and even New Zealand to discuss her heritage and culture. The conferences also serve for other cultures besides the Cherokee to talk about their beliefs and traditions.

“It was a great experience. The Maori culture is really beautiful and one of the specific reasons we came over there was because the Maori language was dying and then just a few people who really cared about the language over there brought it back,” Girty said when discussing her New Zealand experience. “Now it’s a flourishing language and we wanted to try to do the same thing with the Cherokee language and to learn from them.”

In addition to attending conferences, Girty has also participated in the Remember the Removal bike ride, a bike trail that followed the Trail of Tears. To prepare for the ride, Girty and the other participants trained for six months. She rode the trail shortly after completing her undergraduate studies. 

The ride started in Newashota, Georgia, which was the old Cherokee capital. For six days in 100 degree heat, they rode to Oklahoma, camping along the way.

“It was a way for us to come together as a group. It was really hard to remember a little piece of our ancestors and think that they were all elderly and they were babies and they went on that same trail. So it was just a really good way to connect with my heritage and culture and learn,” Girty said.

Crystal Soltow

Crystal Soltow is a doctoral student studying education. She is from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. She is a member of the Cherokee Nation and works as an assistant principal for Union Public School 6th/7th Grade Center.

Soltow enjoys spending time outdoors and cooking food from a variety of cultures. She said cooking is a way for her to connect with her grandmother, which is where her Cherokee lineage comes from. 

“She was one who loved to take care of anyone that came to her door and needed anything and so I feel like that’s where I’ve gained this love of cooking. It’s something that I just enjoy, but then also it’s like a stress reliever for me,” Soltow said.

Soltow started out at a community college, before being pushed by one of her professors to apply to the University of Tulsa. She got her degree in elementary education and entered the teaching field immediately upon graduation. She has worked with middle school students for 22 years.

During this time, Soltow worked toward her master’s. She said she decided to pursue a master’s degree because her coworkers said she could do more.

“I had two really phenomenal administrators in my life who just kept asking me to take on some leadership roles,” Soltow said. “There was one administrator in particular, who said to me ‘you really need to continue your education. I can see you making an even bigger impact’.”

Before she decided to go into education, Soltow studied broadcast journalism. She said she made the switch because she felt a calling to work in education.

Growing up, Soltow said her family didn’t talk about their heritage that much. She said she has family members who are direct descendants of those who walked the Trail of Tears. 

“Part of that is being pushed from where you were from to another place. It’s kind of led to this quietness about it,” Soltow said.

Soltow said a mantra passed down in her family helps her in her line of work. 

“My grandmother had her philosophy, which I feel like lines up with the culture of the Cherokee Heritage. It’s just about helping others out and making things better than they were when you got there,” Soltow said. “So I take that mantra of doing everything that I can and trying to make things better than when I left it, by how I treat my students and getting to know them and building those relationships, so that they know that they can do things better than maybe they did yesterday.”

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