Reba McEntire returns to Oklahoma to receive the Annie Oakley Society Award
A version of this story appears in Friday’s The Oklahoman. To see a video of Reba McEntire talking about the Annie Oakley Society Award, click here.
Reba McEntire receives the Annie Oakley Society Award
The Country Music Hall of Famer and native Oklahoman returned Thursday to her home state, where she was honored at a luncheon at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
An accident between a catering truck and the Concorde inadvertently helped Reba McEntire get her favorite job in her long and varied entertainment career: Playing Western heroine Annie Oakley on Broadway.
In 2000, McEntire and her husband/manager Narvel Blackstock were set to fly the turbojet from New York to England for a television appearance, but fate had other ideas.
“They said that our plane had been canceled ‘cause the catering truck had backed into the Concorde and knocked the door off the hinges. I thought that was pretty bizarre, but it’s also fate, ‘cause Narvel said ‘What do you want to do today?’ … Anytime we’re up in New York City, we go see a play. He said, ‘Well, they’ve been asking you to do ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ for awhile now. Do you wanna go see it?’” McEntire recalled with a smile.
“At intermission, we looked at each other, and I said, ‘I gotta be on this stage.’ She’s a very powerful woman and we are here today still honoring her because of all the examples she set. She was a strong woman. She fed her family. She stood up for what she believed in. She traveled the world. She performed in front of queens, probably presidents, too … and she was very, very respected. So she’s a lady I’ve always looked up to and was kind of always there in the back of my mind, kind of ‘What would Annie do in a situation like this?’”
On Thursday, the Country Music Hall of Famer, 57, returned to her home state to receive
the Annie Oakley Society Award at a luncheon at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Gov. Mary Fallin , the state’s first female governor, called McEntire a “shining star of Oklahoma” as she presented the multi-talented entertainer with the award, a bronze statuette of the Western legend that was designed by Deborah Fellows.
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