Dynamic Duo

IT’S EASY to see why Judy Love and Mike Turpen enjoy working together. They laugh, finish each other’s thoughts, and trade one liners about philanthropy. Mostly, it’s Turpen dishing the witticisms.

“We believe that fund-raising must be fun,” he says, as the duo explain their process. He likes to put people on the spot, and Love hounds prospects with e-mail—all in good fun. “The biggest paradox in life is the more you give, the more you have,” says Turpen.

Their latest project is “right on target,” according to Love: a $1.5 million campaign to fund the inaugural celebration and first-year programming for the new Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, set to open in late 2019 at Northwest Eleventh and Broadway in Oklahoma City.

When the two are fund-raising in Oklahoma, many of their campaigns involve a trip to the Chickasaw Nation, headquartered in Ada. The Chickasaws had already given $1 million to Oklahoma Contemporary’s $30 million capital campaign—the performing-arts theater will be named after Chickasaw storyteller Mary “Te Ata” Thompson Fisher—and Love and Turpen felt reluctant to impose upon their generosity again. Turns out, Chickasaw leaders had already agreed to donate an additional $500,000 to the project. “We are pleased to support Oklahoma Contemporary because the arts are vital to enhancing the quality of life of the individual and the community,” says Bill Anoatubby, governor of the Chickasaw Nation. “Te Ata once wrote that art brings all people together, and her career bears testimony to that noble idea.” Knowing that Love and Turpen support the project only makes giving easier, Anoatubby says: “It is difficult to overestimate the
impact of the passion [they] bring to this project.”

Years ago, when they first visited Anoatubby to raise money, Love and Turpen pondered taking a private plane, but Love’s husband, Tom, advised against it, says Turpen, laughing: “He said, ‘When you’re going to rattle the tin cup, you need to get out of a Chevy, not a [Cessna] Citation.’ Isn’t that a great line?”

Judy and Tom Love founded Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores in 1964, starting with one filling station in Watonga, Oklahoma. The company has since grown to more than 480 locations in forty-one states. Turpen served as Oklahoma’s attorney general from 1983 to 1987 and is a partner at Riggs Abney, an Oklahoma law firm. A member of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, he and his wife, Susan, are also philanthropists.

Both inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2010, Love and Turpen have been working together in philanthropy since they worked on a capital campaign to renovate Oklahoma City’s Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School starting in 2003. They have gone on to co-chair Allied Arts’ 2014 campaign to raise $3.5 million, lead a 2015 United Way campaign to raise $21.6 million, and co-chair with Robert J. “Bob” Ross, president and CEO of the Inasmuch Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a $6 million campaign in 2017 for the Oklahoma City Boathouse Foundation in honor of the late Oklahoma City businessman Aubrey McClendon.

“If I can, in whatever way I can, I just feel like I should help,” says Love. Turpen quotes Martin Luther King Jr. when he says, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others? That’s what motivates me. It’s really kind of selfish. I feel good when I’m giving back.”