Leon E. Nelson
Leon Nelson has been a mentor to many young people who launched successful local government careers under his tutelage. It is not surprising then that he credits educator/banker Dr. Eugene Swearingen and Gerald Wilkins, then City Manager of Enid, as the inspirations for his career in City Management. In 1957, as Dean of the College of Business at Oklahoma A&M, Swearingen encouraged Leon to apply for a summer internship with the legendary Wilkins. A year later he became Assistant City Manager at Ponca City and then was City Manager there from May 1959 until May of 1978.
This Perry native continued on to another successful career in financial institutions, retiring in January 1998.
Following the lead of his mentors, Leon was always mentoring young administrators. Among those whose long careers he helped to launch are current Ponca City Manager Gary Martin, Muskogee City Manager Walt Beckham, and Harold Pumford, Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Governmental Risk Pools.
Leon served as President of the Oklahoma Municipal League in 1977 and 1978. He has maintained his relations by attending many of the President's Luncheons held at the annual OML conferences the past 23 years.
His visionary planning and enthusiastic tenacity for downtown redevelopment, industrial development, and local heritage made programs developed in Ponca City into models for similar projects in many other communities. Especially noteworthy are the Hutchins Memorial, the Ponca City Cultural Center, and Indian Museum and the Marland Mansion.
As a city manager, Leon gained a deserved reputation for identifying, hiring and mentoring numerous individuals that went on to establish their own careers in local government; for being an ardent advocate for new disciplines to solve local government issues, for creating model cultural development and historical preservation programs, and for forging alliances to bring regionalized planning and resource utilization to best serve the citizens of cities and towns throughout Oklahoma.