Oklahoma: A Story Through Her People

S Y L V A N N A T H A N G O L D M A N
Sylvan N. Goldman was born in Ardmore, Chickasaw Nation, prior to
statehood, to parents Michael and Hortense Goldman. He attended
Ardmore schools and as a youth worked in the dry goods store owned
by his father and uncle.
He served in France during World War I and after the war he and his
older brother opened a wholesale fruits and produce business in Texas.
The brothers moved to California and were there introduced to a new type
of grocery store offering all products under one roof, the supermarket.
They returned to Oklahoma bringing this new concept of shopping to
their home state. They opened their first store in Tulsa in 1920 under
the corporate name of Sun Grocery Company. In only one year there
were twenty more Sun Groceries throughout the state. The brothers later
sold their company to Skaggs-Safeway stores and in 1934 Sylvan bought
and revived the floundering Humpty Dumpty chain.
In 1936 he came up with his most important contribution to grocery
shopping, the grocery cart, now used worldwide. One of his original carts
can be seen at the Greater Southwest Historical Museum in Ardmore, his
hometown. Through the Folding Basket Carrier Company that he created
in order to manufacture the carts, there ensued many other items that
revolutionized grocery shopping.
He and his wife were avid patrons of the arts and throughout his
lifetime he received many honors for his innovative and philanthropic
contributions, including being inducted into Oklahoma Hall of Fame in
1971. Perhaps one of his most important contributions was $1.5 million
dollars to the Sylvan N. Goldman Center to house the Oklahoma Blood
Institute, the ninth largest blood donation center in the country and an
institute pivotal to saving lives on a daily basis.
C A R L T O N C O L E M A G E E
Carlton Cole Magee invented the first parking meter in 1932 in
response to the growing problem of parking congestion. He patented it in
1935. As head of the city’s chamber of commerce, Magee hoped the meters
would free up parking spaces for local businesses. Holger George Thuesen
and Gerald A. Hale designed the first working meter, the Black Maria.
Thuesen and Hale were engineering professors at Oklahoma A & M
and began working on the parking meter in 1933 at the request of
Carl C. Magee. They.started the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company to
manufacture the parking meters. These early parking meters were
produced at factories in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first
was installed on July 16, 1935 in Magee’s hometown, Oklahoma City at
First Street and Robinson Avenue. It is estimated today that there are more
than five million meters in use in the United States.
O K L A H O M A : A S t o r y T h r o u g h H e r P e o p l e
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