Passing it on: Wyers turned a life-changing scholarship into a legacy
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Media Contact: Tanner Holubar | Communications Specialist | 405-744-2065 | tanner.holubar@okstate.edu
Patrick Wyers once joked that he might be the only college graduate to have dropped out of the first grade.
After briefly ending his education due to not liking a teacher in Stigler, Oklahoma, he excelled academically, eventually earning a mechanical engineering degree from the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma A&M College, now Oklahoma State University.
Wyers was one of six children of Sampson and Ruth Oteka Wyers. In 1932, they moved to McAlester, Oklahoma, where the family endured hardship during the Great Depression.
When Sampson Wyers experienced the early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, he entered a treatment facility while the rest of the family moved to Stigler.
It was here that Patrick would develop a distaste for his first-grade teacher, but also where his brother, Paul, would receive a scholarship to OAMC to study industrial engineering.
Once Paul had received his scholarship, the family moved to Stillwater, where Patrick started his sophomore year of high school.
The move to Stillwater started a family tradition, with Ruth and five of her six kids ultimately earning degrees from A&M. At his brother's urging, Patrick enrolled as a mechanical engineering student until he was drafted in 1957.
He began his military service and, while stationed in Virginia, went on a blind date with Mary Ellen Abell, whom he later married. After serving his two-year commitment, he and Mary returned to Stillwater in 1959 so Patrick could finish his education. Their first child was born in 1960, and the young family lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Elm Street in Stillwater.
After graduating with his engineering degree, he worked for Boeing in Louisiana and Alabama. He worked on rocket boosters for the Saturn V project, which resulted in successfully landing humans on the moon for the first time.
Patrick got to meet Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon.
“It was a very good time for me because I approached him and asked him if he would be kind enough to sign his autograph for my son, Randolph, and my son’s good friend, Brian,” Wyers said. “He said he’d be glad to, so he gave me a little slip of paper with his mission number on it and his name. It was one of the highlights of my success in that program.”
In 1966, he was hired by General Dynamics to work on the structural flight aspects of the F-111, a supersonic stealth bomber aircraft produced between 1964-76.
After making a large impact in the defense industry in positions that required a lot of travel, he and his family decided a change was necessary. This led him to opening his own real estate business, which he operated from 1974-87. Through his industry contacts, he worked for a real estate investment company until his retirement in 1992.
Patrick, his mother and five of his siblings have their names inscribed on bricks along the walkway to the ConocoPhillips OSU Alumni Center. Stillwater and OSU are a special place for the Wyers family, a place where they all saw tremendous value in education and where they could call home.
“I believe it is because we have all had wonderful experiences as students at Oklahoma State, and I hope and pray they feel they’ve received a wonderful education,” Wyers said.
