(FREE) People of Ponca Series: Victor Fairbanks

Article and Interview by Morgan Murphy / Ponca City Monthly Intern

Jul 19, 2024

The “People of Ponca” is a limited series featuring stories of local Ponca City residents. New stories will be featured every Friday. Be sure to sign up for Ponca City Monthly Plus to get emails whenever we post a new story!

**Victor Fairbanks - Ponca City Library, July 26, 2024**

What are you doing in Ponca?

I'm just trying to find a purpose in life. My wife passed away June 3rd, and I'm kind of lost right now. I'm just looking for a way to have normalcy in my life. Whatever it is, I want it to involve God, be in His will, and possibly help others. I was reading a book there by Carrie Underwood, and she talked about being physically fit, which I have always tried to do. So, I'm inspired to do some workouts and do things like that.

Before your wife passed, what did you guys do together?

She was very sick the last six months to a year, so we didn't do a lot, but before that, we would walk in the mornings a mile or two, and I would go work out somewhere, and then she would fix a really nice dinner, and I really miss those because I'd go home and have a good meal that I have to provide for myself now. She had lung cancer, and so as we walked in the mornings, it would get harder for her to breathe. I told her she needed to get a chest x-ray, but she never would follow my advice. It turns out that maybe if she had, she wouldn't have been stage four when she found out about it, and she’d possibly have surgery and still be with me. That would be wonderful, but she isn't, and so I know that heaven already has something precious there for me, so I look forward to being there.

Are you retired?

I retired at the end of June 2012, so it's been about 12 years since I've retired. I've tried to fill that with meaningful activities over these years. For the first while, I attended Pioneer Tech and took some courses there, then I was asked to stay on as an assistant instructor, so I tried that for a while. Then, after that, I mostly just tried to do action things, like I've always enjoyed being, for instance, in the Grand Canyon. My wife and I went there once, and then the Palo Duro Canyon out below Amarillo, south of Amarillo, close to Canyon, Texas, and biked with her. We just tried to enjoy living, and basically, we were killing time and not accomplishing much of anything.

Did you have any kids?

Yeah, we have two sons. One of them is an airline pilot, and he's somewhere up in the sky right now, flying around. He goes from one end of the United States to the other every day. He is qualified to fly planes to London, South America, the Caribbean, or wherever. Our other son is a city engineer here in Ponca City. He has three sons who are all out of college now and living in Edmond, Oklahoma. One was a marketing major at OSU, and he works for PACOM. One of them was a valedictorian for Ponca City in 2019. He was able to go all the way through school with a straight A, average in civil engineering. He works for an engineering firm now in Oklahoma City.

The middle grandson was into music, band, and other things like that in high school. He's now the computer guy for UCO at Edmond, so he keeps their computers and LAN system running. They're all Christians, born again, and I'm proud of them, you know, for being that way and for living a life that is, you know, quality. They're married to the good people, to Christian folks. My youngest grandson married a girl who went to school here. She graduated the year before him in high school, and she's really a smart kid. She is an RN and a charge nurse for some floors in a big hospital in Oklahoma City. I forget the name of it, but they're all really good kids. I'm proud of all of them. We have two great-granddaughters that my wife thought were the most precious things in the world. There are two and four, I think, right now. She just loved them to death.