Air-Space Day 1960: When the Thunderbirds came to Stillwater
A father’s slides and a daughter’s research help Stillwater remember the air show that drew 25,000 people 66 years ago this month.
Sixty-six years after the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds made their Oklahoma debut at Stillwater's airport, a local researcher has brought the nearly forgotten air show back into view, with help from her late father's color slides.
Air-Space Day, held Sunday, Oct. 23, 1960, drew an estimated 25,000 people to Stillwater Municipal Airport, more than the city's population at the time.
Margi Stone Cooper, a Stillwater native and four-time Oklahoma State University graduate, documented the event in "Air-Space Day 1960: The Day the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds Soared Over Stillwater," published in the spring 2026 issue of the Payne County Historical Review.
Her research began with a question about whether the show had happened here at all.
The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds pass over an Oklahoma Air Guard C-97 Stratofreighter (left), climb straight up in single file (center) and peel apart in a “bomb burst” (right) during Air-Space Day on Sunday, Oct. 23, 1960, at Stillwater Municipal Airport, now Stillwater Regional Airport. – Photo by John F. “Jack” Stone
In fall 2025, Cooper attended a OSU Flying Aggies fly-in at the now regional airport's Ray & Linda Booker OSU Flight Center and stopped at a display table inside the building. She offered the airport color slides her father, John F. "Jack" Stone, had taken at the 1960 air show but the people at the table told her they weren't familiar with the event, Cooper told The Stillwegian. Later, one of them wondered whether the Thunderbirds pictures might have been taken at an air show in Tulsa or Oklahoma City.
"This is when my goal shifted from simply wanting to share my dad's Air-Space Day photos, to feeling that I needed to document their authenticity," Cooper said.
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Stone, an OSU agronomy professor and soil physicist, was also a photography enthusiast. He stored his slides in labeled steel cases in temperature-controlled parts of the house, Cooper said. Eleven of them show Air-Space Day.
"Color photography was a fairly expensive hobby in those days," she said.
Cooper was at the show, too, as a toddler in a stroller. She said she remembers only snippets: the sea of cars in the parking area and a crowd standing near a troop transport plane.
Piecing together the day
Cooper found the show's name and date in 1960 Stillwater NewsPress coverage. Other records were harder to find. She said the OSU Library Archives had no record of the event, faculty she contacted at OSU didn't respond, and the former OSU ROTC members named in the newspaper coverage had all died.
What she reconstructed was a community-wide effort. The Thunderbirds came at the invitation of Col. Floyd J. Gudgel, commander of OSU's Air Force ROTC detachment. OSU, the city, the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, and several civic organizations organized the show and scheduled it for OSU's homecoming weekend.
The crowd overwhelmed the airport, which was reachable by a single road. About 6,000 cars arrived, and volunteers gave up on collecting a planned 50-cent parking fee. The Thunderbirds flew F-100 Super Sabres in a tight diamond formation and finished with a "bomb burst" trailing red, white, and blue smoke. Aviation pioneer William D. "Billy" Parker flew a 1914 pusher biplane he had built.
Cooper said several factors may explain why the event faded from memory. Many organizers retired or died. Newspaper coverage ran without photos. The lost parking fees, meant to reimburse the military for its expenses, may have left some organizers uneasy about how the day went. And talk of making it an annual event ran into the airport's restrictive single entrance and lack of adequate parking, she said.
"People often do not recognize history in the making," Cooper said.
The boy on the hill
The clearest proof came from a search engine. Cooper found a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Wall of Honor entry saying a Thunderbirds performance in Stillwater had shaped the career of Harry "Bud" Wyatt III, who went on to become director of the Air National Guard.
"I had finally found a rock-solid, credible source," Cooper said.
Wyatt, a 1967 graduate of Stillwater's C.E. Donart High School, was 11 when he watched the show with his father from a hill south of the terminal.
"That day, I told my dad, 'One of these days I'm going to fly one of those F-100s,'" Wyatt told Cooper for the Review article.
He did, with the Tulsa Air National Guard in 1977. He later served as Oklahoma's adjutant general and, beginning in 2009, as director of the Air National Guard with the rank of lieutenant general.
Harry “Bud” Wyatt III appears in his 1967 senior portrait at Stillwater’s C.E. Donart High School (left) and in his 2011 official portrait as a lieutenant general and director of the Air National Guard (right). Wyatt was 11 when he watched the Thunderbirds perform at Air-Space Day in 1960. – Photos courtesy of the C.E. Donart High School yearbook and the U.S. Air Force
"I cannot stress enough how much that air show in Stillwater influenced me," Wyatt said in the article.
Cooper said she now sees the show as an investment whose return took decades to appear.
"The event was an investment in the community, but the return on the investment did not become apparent until well into the future," she said.
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What comes next
Cooper said she has pitched the airport on including her father's Air-Space Day photos in the airport history museum in its new terminal. After she first shared the slides, airport staff sent her a list of the photos they would like to use, she said.
The anniversary comes during OSU's homecoming week and two months after the airport opened its new terminal on Aug. 19.
The spring 2026 Payne County Historical Review, including Cooper's article and many more of Stone's photos, is free to read on the Stillwater History Museum's website at stillwaterokhistory.org/historical-reviews.
John F. “Jack” Stone (left), an Oklahoma State University agronomy professor and photography enthusiast, took the color slides of Air-Space Day in 1960. His daughter, Margi Stone Cooper (right), stands beside a T-6 Texan II trainer painted in World War II-style markings during the OSU Flying Aggies fly-in on Saturday, Oct. 3, at Stillwater Regional Airport. Cooper’s research on the airport’s 1960 Air-Space Day appears in the spring 2026 Payne County Historical Review. – (right) Photo by Scott Cooper
Cooper returned to the airport for this year's fly-in on Oct. 3. Walking the tarmac, she thought about something Wyatt had told her: that you never know who an air show might inspire.
"Watching the crowd, I wondered if any future leaders were among the kids in attendance," she said.
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