Although she had none of her own, Emma Showman loved children, and she believed passionately in education because it had pulled her out of poverty. Eventually, these two interests led her to become an influential friend of The University of Tulsa.
Born in 1903, Mrs. Showman grew up in a dirt-floored Arkansas house, where she helped care for a mentally challenged older sister. When her family moved to New Mexico, her passion for education drove her to overcome her disadvantages and become a schoolteacher. She worked in the Santa Rosa and Tucumcari areas, where she particularly enjoyed teaching English to Spanish-speaking grade school children.
An early photo of Emma shows a lovely woman with a warm smile and kind eyes. No wonder a 50-something widower, part-time New Mexico rancher and Tulsa oilman Roy B. “Pete” Thompson asked for her hand in marriage in the mid-1930s. They were apparently a good match. Emma was a strong, private woman who could hold her own in a man’s world. She became an astute businesswoman, helping her husband oversee the buying and leasing of mineral interests. In the 1940s, a New Mexico ranch caught her eye, and she arranged its purchase on her own. A family friend says Pete told her to offer $1.50 an acre for the 36,000-acre spread, certain that the owner would take no less. But Emma managed to negotiate 75 cents an acre.
The grit and determination of her early years helped her in other ways. One year, a drought threatened to kill their herd, and Emma took action. She and her ranch hands drove the cattle to Kansas, where they could be fed.
She also was exceptionally honest and ethical. After Thompson died in 1951, she honored his undocumented deathbed instruction to find an old business partner and split royalties on a prolific Texas gas well. Her honorary granddaughter, Shari Williams of Tulsa, once told a writer, “She was able to negotiate and make incredible business deals and decisions in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. She was the only woman on our church building committee in the 1950s – 11 men and Mrs. Showman. That was a big deal back then.”
Emma became Mrs. Showman in 1954, when she married Dr. Winfred Showman, one of the first dermatologists in Tulsa. Although they each had a home, she moved to his because he didn’t want to leave his carefully cultivated rose bushes. There the couple welcomed the visits of area youngsters. “She used to have all the neighborhood kids over to play, and she taught us to wager our pennies playing Pokeno,” Shari Williams remembers. “She loved children. She talked to every child she saw in the store.”
Nevertheless, much of the Showmans’ love for children was showered on Shari, their surrogate granddaughter, whom they met when she was just three years old. Shari would often stay there when ill, and she and Emma made a pact; the Showmans would help take care of her, and when they got old, she would take care of them. And so it was. When the Showmans’ health began to fail, Shari left her office job to manage the Showmans’ interests. Dr. Showman died in 1994. Mrs. Showman died in July 2000 at age 96.
A woman of integrity and foresight, Emma Showman ensured that others would have the opportunity for an education by directing part of her estate to The University of Tulsa.
Her scholarship gifts to The University of Tulsa ensure that her lifelong passion for education will continue to benefit future generations of deserving students. They include the Emma R. Showman Endowed Scholarship for Future Teachers; the Emma R. Showman Endowed Provost Scholarship to provide merit scholarships to full-time students; and the Emma R. Showman Endowed Presidential Scholarship to provide merit scholarships to entering freshmen. In 2011, the Emma R. Showman MBA Scholarship Endowment Fund was added to this largesse to provide merit-based scholarships to students in TU’s Master of Business Administration program, and in 2017, this program was amended and expanded to benefit students in all graduate programs in the Collins College of Business. An annual need-based scholarship fund, known as the Emma R. Showman Scholarships in Business, was added in 2019 to benefit undergraduate students in the Collins College of Business, once again extending her legacy of helping others achieve their academic goals. In 2020, an additional scholarship program with similar parameters was created to support business students.
Emma Showman also established the J. Paschal Twyman/Emma R. Showman Memorial Scholarship in memory of TU’s former president. Dr. Twyman was born in Prairie Hill, Missouri on November 21, 1933, and he passed away in 1989. He completed his academic work at the University of Missouri in Kansas City; his Ph.D. was in Education and was awarded in 1962. Twyman started his teaching career at Oklahoma State University in 1960 and became Associate Director of the Research Foundation in 1965. In 1966, he was appointed Director of Research at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Dr. Twyman came to TU in 1967 as Vice President of Research and Development. In 1968, less than one year after coming to TU, he was appointed president. He was reportedly the youngest president of any university in the nation at the time at the age of 34. Dr. Twyman had been a dear friend of Emma Showman.
