By Patricia Pixler
Student Reporter
It started with a baby grand piano.
Six years ago, John Allen was making the move from Olathe, Kansas, to back near the family ranch in Hardtner, just north of Alva. One of the items he was clearing out of a house he had purchased to remodel was a piano. He put out an ad in the Newsgram to find it a new home.
Allen “Skeeter” Bird answered the ad. Bird is the CEO of the Northwestern Foundation & Alumni Association on the Northwestern Oklahoma State University Alva campus. Growing up in Hardtner, Allen was well-acquainted with Alva and Northwestern.
“Northwestern was always a part of my childhood,” Allen said. “My parents would take my sister and I down to games and events. Northwestern Homecoming was a never-miss event.”
As a teen, Allen had toured Northwestern and he had expected to attend college there. He had family who had attended the university, like many others do. Yet life had taken him elsewhere.
Meeting Bird brought Allen back into the familiarity of Northwestern. The two men bonded over their love of horses and their ideas about how impactful education is and could be. Allen said there was instant respect between him and Bird.
Then a position with the Northwestern Foundation & Alumni Association opened. Allen had spent his career in communication and public relations. Director of alumni relations was a
perfect fit for him. Though he was interested in the opportunity, he didn’t want to jeopardize his friendship with Bird.
“Skeeter told me he couldn’t hire anyone he couldn’t fire,” John Allen explained. “I said ‘Good, I can’t work for anyone I can’t fire.’”
Bird looked at him funny for a bit, but they understood each other, Allen said. Neither man could work with someone they couldn’t disagree with or share their opinions with. The friendship is there at the end of the day, but so is a working relationship.
“We’re brutally honest with each other,” Bird said. “It’s nice to have.”
Allen started his job as the director of alumni relations in December 2013.
His first event was in Oklahoma City — a Thunder game, in particular. Then he spent that December break talking and connecting with alumni.
“Communication is an art,” Allen said. “You can’t go into a conversation with an inflexible opinion. You have to go in wanting to listen and expecting to learn something.”
Allen said he’s been blessed to have enjoyed every job he’s held — from copyeditor to public relations and crisis management for a worldwide construction and engineering firm — but there’s something special about Northwestern.
“It’s all part of the journey,” Allen said. “I can be an introvert. I could go out and ride a horse, be without people, and I would be fine.”
But the community of Northwestern sets itself apart.
Allen frequently travels out-of-state to connect with alumni, some who know all about the current happenings of Alva and Northwestern, and some who have become lost along the way. The reconnection of alumni and their stories gives Allen an enjoyment to the job he’s not had elsewhere, he said.
“John’s completely passionate about Northwestern and its students,” Bird said. “Usually people are surprised he didn’t graduate from here.”
When life took Allen elsewhere, he ended up at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. It was there that he met his future wife, Dawn.
“He always sat in the same seat in class,” Dawn Allen said with a laugh. “It was like a ritual to him.”
Friends of Dawn Allen convinced her to get up early and get to class before John Allen did. They put her in his seat, of course, Dawn Allen said. But John Allen didn’t say a word. He sat next to her.
“Next thing we knew, we were dating,” Dawn Allen said with a smile.
They’ve been married 39 years as of last August.
Dawn Allen is an assistant professor of English and composition coordinator for the English, foreign language, and humanities department at Northwestern.
“I was doing adjunct on the side as we had moved down here,” Dawn Allen explained. “We wanted to be closer to the boys. Plus, the farm was harder to manage from Kansas City.”
The Allens have two sons, Patrick and Barrett, who live with their wives in central Oklahoma. Hartner was a good middle location between them and Dawn Allen’s parents in Kansas City.
Not long after John Allen was hired for the foundation job, Dawn Allen accepted an English faculty position at the university.
“We agreed to keep things separate,” Dawn Allen said. “It’s a ‘you do your thing, I do mine.’”
Dawn Allen describes her husband as her opposite. She’s a city girl, but he’s a country boy. She’s the introvert, she said, while he loves talking with people.
“But we share the same values,” she added. “Working hard, treating people well. Living up to expectations.”
Yet while she’s curled up inside the house with the dogs, John Allen is outside with the horses.
“I don’t see myself as a cowboy,” he said with a laugh. “I’m more of an amateur horseman.”
On the weekdays, Allen is in suits and button-down shirts, talking with students, staff, faculty and, particularly, alumni of Northwestern. But on the weekends, he’s in jeans running after his horses.
He and Bird train and start colts. They teach the colts to lead and work with their feet. They take long yearlings, which are nearly two-year-old horses, and start them on saddles and rides. They ride them until they’re stable enough to sell.
If the horses are athletic and show they’re good for cutting, then the horses are worked longer and trained for competition. Cutting is a type of competition where horses show their athleticism and ability to handle cattle, usually in a two-and-a-half minute run.
In addition to his horsemanship, Allen has multiple other talents.
“My mother always called him a bit of a Renaissance man,” Dawn Allen said. “He’s a masterful cook. I have paintings of his that are gorgeous. He’s a fantastic writer and editor. Beautiful voice.”
As a child, John Allen and his sister performed as vocalists at many venues in Kansas and Oklahoma. Allen said he and his sister had fun, and worked hard, but it was never the most important thing in their lives. That was family, church and school.
“It was a nice time, though,” Allen said. “It taught me to be more of a people person. It taught me to communicate better.”
Early on, Allen said, he learned that communication and friendships are important. While a large part of his job is connecting to alumni and getting donations for the university, he doesn’t consider himself a fundraiser.
“I’m a friend-raiser,” Allen said. “To be a successful fundraiser, you have to be a connector.”
Nonetheless, Allen said he still considers his job as more than fundraising and making connections. To him, his job is about learning the journey of alumni, and it’s a validation of what Northwestern did in people’s lives.
Leslie Nation, communications and marketing manager at the foundation office, also points to Allen’s passion for Northwestern and her admiration for him.
“John has been both a joy to work with, and a good mentor to me since I’ve begun working at the foundation,” she said.
Nation and Allen work together on projects such as the alumni magazine “RoundUP” as well as the foundation’s “Annual Report.” They collaborate on stories, interviews and design the publications inside and out.
“He has great consideration and compassion for both his colleagues and the people he meets outside of Northwestern,” Nation added.
Every time Allen meets with alumni he becomes excited about their journey and what Northwestern has sparked for them.
“Lessons can live forever,” Allen said. “Effective teachers make an impact in and out of the classroom. That influences the world.”
Allen points to one rich opportunity Northwestern has for learning: students from other countries.
One such student, Biraj Aryal from Kathmandu, Nepal, graduated from Northwestern in December 2017.
Aryal had taken Composition II with Dawn Allen, and John Allen enjoys teasing and joking with Aryal about how mean his wife really is outside of the classroom. Aryal always laughs and insists she’s too nice to be mean. By now, it is an inside joke between the two men whenever Aryal returns to Alva.
But the relationship is more than teasing. Aryal talked about how helpful Allen had been with advice after his graduation from Northwestern.
“I can’t say ‘thank you’ enough for how grateful I am for getting to know him,” Aryal said. “He has made a huge impact on my life.”
Aryal discussed how the help and confidence Allen instilled in him helped him get a job in Witchita, then one in Tulsa.
“John is super nice and being around him makes everything so [much] better,” Aryal added. “How did I get so lucky?”
Allen explained that getting to know students like Aryal is part of what he enjoys so much about his job. He said he loved talking with students because everyone has the opportunity to change students’ lives — colleagues in the foundation office, the faculty, the staff and the community.“We’re a community,” Allen said. “That’s what makes Northwestern special.”