SEPTEMBER 2024 | 23 THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. As Ms. Childers’ career was developing at Kanotex, she and C. M. Boggs, president of Kanotex, and Robert R. Cox, treasurer of Kanotex, organized the Crude Oil Transit Co., a pipeline company that transported crude oil to refineries. An interest aside from the oil industry developed when Ms. Childers became involved in the enactment of Arkansas City’s zoning ordinances and became one of the original members of the city planning commission. Her interest in municipal planning was realized with her purchase of the Crestwood District, where she hired authorities to lay out the residential areas. Ms. Childers had streets built, brought in utility service, constructed a community lodge and pool, planted hundreds of trees and installed a nursery to provide for future landscaping. She was also a member of the First Church of Christ Scientist and the Business and Professional Women’s Club. According to Mr. Boggs, Ms. Childers was an amazing woman and a brilliant attorney with a very good business mind.8 She was not your masculine, heavyvoiced, too-efficient type of woman but seemed to be more at home presiding at a tea table than sitting at a desk directing the destinies of a half-million-dollar business concern.9 As Ms. Childers stated, “A woman in the business world will be treated simply as she wants to be treated. If she is businesslike, and knows her place and stays in it, the men in her office will treat her in a perfectly friendly, businesslike fashion.”10 Ms. Childers’ advice to women entering the business world was, “Say your prayers and do your best, be honest and work hard ... if you don’t want to be criticized, do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.”11 Ethel Kehrer Childers died June 23, 1946, in Arkansas City. ENDNOTES Individual Sources: John S. Boggs Jr. M. Jean Holmes 1. “From Country Schoolma’m to Oil Magnate,” The Kansas City Star, Oct. 4, 1925, p. 10. 2. Id. 3. Armstrong v. Goble, 1918 OK 492, 176 P. 530. 4. “From Country.” 5. “Knowledge of Oil Industry Shaped Woman Lawyer’s Career.” 6. “Mrs. Childers Dies after Long Illness: Kanotex Official One of Midwest’s Leading Business Women.” 7. “From Country.” 8. John S. Boggs Jr., email to author. 9. “From Country.” 10. Id. 11. Id.
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