History of Cushing Lions’ Club

When the Cushing Lions Club was chartered on April 21, 1921 the town was beginning to settle down after World War I. The Cushing oil field was the leader in oil production and gave Oklahoma the world lead in supplying oil. With its huge sprawling tank farms, Cushing at one time sported 10 refineries. In 1915, Cushing supplied 17% of the oil marketed in the US., and production reached a high of 305,000 barrels daily.

The young Club immediately set to work with various projects with aid for the needy, aid to the blind, sponsoring community affairs, and serving in every way possible. The traditional spirit of service has remained throughout the years. It exists with a purpose and for a purpose to serve.

Meetings were held in the various churches until the Cushing Hotel was built and sessions moved to that location. The Club gradually grew in membership until the depression. It then went down to 12 members: however, It never missed a meeting, After the depression the Club began growing until it reached a maximum of 117 members. Present Membership is 42.

In January 1939, the Cushing Lions Club organized the first underprivileged “ Boys Club” in the part of the state with 20 boys enrolled as members. The Club purchased all furnishings, equipment, and working material for the Boys Club. A thin line connects this original Cushing Lions Club to the I.O.A. Boys Ranch. a Cushing boy was one of the organizers of the Ranch, with the support of the local Club.

Join us at Steer Inn from 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Lion of the Day

Ziva Branstetter, married to the son of longtime Cushing insurance company owner Gary Branstetter, will speak at next week’s Lions Club luncheon, where Gary will be honored as Lion of the Day.

Ziva is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative editor and storyteller deeply committed to “accountability journalism,” including how government agencies are spending your tax dollars.

For the past three years, she has been a senior editor at ProPublica, a national, nonprofit newsroom devoted to the highest standards of impartial, factual journalism. ProPublica has won eight Pulitzer Prizes since it was founded in 2007. It partners with local journalism organizations across the country, including in Oklahoma, to investigate wrongdoing that harms vulnerable people.

In May, Ziva was one of a team of editors and reporters who received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “Life of the Mother,” an investigation that she edited and helped lead. The project examined the unintended and fatal consequences of laws prohibiting abortion.

Ziva's team has earned ProPublica multiple national awards, including the George Polk award, Scripps Howard award, and the Overseas Press Club award.

Before joining ProPublica in April 2022, Ziva served as corporate accountability editor at The Washington Post, where she led a project exposing how ultra-wealthy people use offshore companies to avoid paying taxes and hide fraudulent activity. "The Pandora Papers" was the largest global collaboration of journalists in history.

In 2019, Ziva was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame

In 2015, she and three colleagues started The Frontier, a nonprofit newsroom in Tulsa that has since doubled in staff. She also spent more than two decades as an investigative reporter and editor at the Tulsa World.

She is a native of Fayetteville, Ark., and a proud graduate of Oklahoma State University. She left ProPublica in June to launch Orange Sky, a coaching and training company that helps journalists, nonprofit teams, and corporate clients sharpen their writing and storytelling skills.

Ziva has been married for 37 years to Doug Branstetter, Gary’s oldest son. The Branstetters have two adult sons, Jordan (33) and Parker (28). They are proud and active grandparents to 6-year-old Xander Branstetter.

The luncheon will be held at noon on Tuesday at the Steer Inn, 1340 E. Main St., in Cushing.

For additional details regarding Ziva’s Hall of Fame induction, please click the link below.