Jay R. Hannah. For
the past decade Oklahoma has offered a specially inviting field in
which to initiate professional or business activities on the part of
young men of ability and the vital spirit of ambition. The product of
the state’s university and other educational institutions of higher
learning has scattered itself in the most favored communities and
accounted well for itself. Probably no other state in the Union of
comparable population has so great a percentage of vigorous and
successful young men engaged in professional work. In nearly every
town of importance in every county of the state may be found one or
more young men who are laying the foundation for professional
prestige of high order and who exemplify fully the progressive spirit
of the vital young commonwealth with which they have cast in their
lot. The field has naturally been inviting also to young men from
other states, especially Texas and Kansas, and the universities of
those states have made what may be termed far more than normal
contribution to the citizenship of Oklahoma. Among the young men who
have come here from the University of Kansas is Jay R. Hannah, who
has been engaged in the practice of law in this state since 1912 and
who is now the junior member of the representative law firm of Elting
& Hannah, of Durant, the judicial center of Bryan County, where
it controls a substantial general practice that is constantly
expanding in scope and importance. By his
classmates and by the legal fraternity in Kansas he will be recalled
as editor, in 1911-12, of the Kansas Lawyer, published at Lawrence,
the seat of the University of Kansas, and constituting the official
organ of the legal fraternity of that state. In 1912 Mr. Hannah
completed in the law department of the University of Kansas the
course which leads to the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and a few
months after his graduation he returned to Oklahoma, where his
parents had established their home in 1900, and engaged in the
practice of his profession at Tonkawa, Kay County, where he remained
until the spring of 1913, when he established his residence at
Durant, where he has since continued in practice and where he has
made a record that places him among the leading lawyers of the
younger generation in this section of the state. He acquired his
early education
in the public schools of the City of St. Joseph, Missouri, and after
the removal of the family to Oklahoma he here completed, in 1908, a
course in the university preparatory school at Tonkawa, after which
he entered the law department of the University of Kansas, in which
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1912, as previously
noted. Mr. Hannah is a member of the Bryan County Bar Association and
the Oklahoma State Bar Association, the Phi Delta Phi college
fraternity claiming him as one of its valued and appreciative
fraters. He is actively identified with the Durant Commercial Club
and is affiliated with the local organizations of the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows and Woodmen of the World, besides which he holds
membership in the Kansas University Club, his political allegiance
being given to the democratic party.
Jay R. Hannah was
born at Newton, the judicial center of Jasper County, Iowa, in the
year 1889, and is a son of Dr. Joseph Warren Hannah and Nora Edith
(Holmes) Hannah. Doctor Hannah was born in Ohio, a representative of
one of the honored pioneer families of that state, and after his
graduation in the Northwestern Medical College at St. Joseph,
Missouri, he was engaged in the practice of his profession in Iowa
for a number of years. In 1900 he came to Kay County, Oklahoma,
where he continued his professional labors until his removal to
Durant, Bryan County, where he built up an excellent practice. He and
his wife now maintain their home in the State of Missouri. His father
was one of the pioneer members of the bar of the State of Iowa, there
continuing in practice many years and for a time serving on the bench
of the County Court.
In 1913, at Tonkawa,
Oklahoma, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Hannah to Miss Mayme
Goodman, daughter of Dr. Sanford T. Goodman, a pioneer physician and
surgeon of Kay County. Mrs. Hannah was graduated in the University of
Oklahoma, and later did effective post-graduate work in Leland
Stanford University, in California; the great University of Chicago,
and Cornell University, at Ithaca, New York, besides which she took a
course in the Patton School of Expression, in the City of Chicago.
Mrs. Hannah prepared herself for professional work and for two years
was teacher of expression at the University Preparatory School at
Tonkawa, Oklahoma. While in Chicago she had for a time the active
charge of the Junior Dramatic League of America. Since her marriage
she has to a certain extent continued her professional work and her
gracious personality and high attainments make her a popular favorite
in social circles, the while her distinctive talent as a dramatic
reader causes her interposition to be much sought
in connection with public entertainments of varied orders. Mr. and
Mrs. Hannah have a daughter, Mary Bess, who was born in the year
1914.