News & Updates
Humans of OKC- Denyvetta: A Northeast Neighborhood Icon
Summary
It was a cloudy February day when Denyvetta Davis told us her story of becoming a neighborhood leader. After just a few minutes of speaking with Ms. Davis, her warm smile and calming presence had already brightened our day. Denyvetta took us through her journey from growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, to building community in Oklahoma City, and becoming the President of the Northeast OKC Neighborhood Coalition.
It was a cloudy February day when Denyvetta Davis told us her story of becoming a neighborhood leader. After just a few minutes of speaking with Ms. Davis, her warm smile and calming presence had already brightened our day. Denyvetta took us through her journey from growing up in a small town in Oklahoma, to building community in Oklahoma City, and becoming the President of the Northeast OKC Neighborhood Coalition.
Muskogee, OK was still a small town when our neighboring icon was growing up, and it was during her childhood Denyvetta formed a love for neighboring.
“I grew up in a village surrounded by love and laughter, I guess you might say a neighborhood like JFK. So being a good neighbor, I know what that looks and feels like… It’s something that I grew up with and wanted to be and wanted to recreate.”
And Davis has more than lived up to the title of a good neighbor! She settled on the Northeast side of Oklahoma City, in North Creston Hills after college. Now she continues the work in the JFK Neighborhood where she lives and serves as President of the Neighborhood Association. Denyvetta served as a Board Member for NACOK and currently serves on several Boards including the Northeast OKC Renaissance, Inc.
Denyvetta and other neighborhood leaders saw the need for a voice on the Northeast side.
“We formed a coalition because so many new developments were happening in Northeast Oklahoma City, and sometimes in our backyard. We didn’t have a clue what was going on. We were completely out of the loop, not in the room, and not at the table or anything. So, in the fall of 2019, I convened with three other neighborhood presidents to discuss the need for neighborhoods to have a voice on the Northeast side… so we co-founded the Coalition. We started with presidents/team leaders representing four neighborhoods, now we have eighteen neighborhoods that are members of the Coalition. Yeah. So, that’s how we started, just out of the need to know, be engaged, support and collaborate with each other. You know, like I said, we were not. We were not in the room, definitely not at the table, but now we are informed, asked for input, and invited to be part of the solution,” Denyvetta said.
In JFK, Davis has worked to shed light on environmental issues. After years of feeling the effects of a local recycling plant and other industries, neighbors were fed up.
“We have environmental issues we’ve been working on in JFK for over a decade. It started with explosions coming from the recycling plant when gasoline in the auto tanks and when crushed, explode… It makes the window shutter and it’s loud and scary. Neighbors have complained about structural damage to their homes because of the explosions. There are other issues that we are aware of that we’ve been focusing on that affect air quality.
“All from this recycling plant?” we asked.
“We’ve been focusing on the explosions for years and shared our concerns with various groups like the City of OKC and Oklahoma Department of Environment Quality (DEQ),” replied Davis. “There are other industries to the north and south of the neighborhood. There is Citgo to the north, Haskell Lemon, Derichenbourg Recycling Plant, Dolese Stone and Sand Yard, and Hite Plastics to the south. We have dust and film on plants, mailboxes, cars, smoke. So, there are also air quality issues, dust, smoke, smell of sulfur so strong that it is not safe to go outside to get mail or work in the yard … I just kept thinking who can help us? Who can help us? We don’t have any money. Well, academics… institution…”
And she was right. “When the OU Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and the Environmental Studies capstone classes began working with JFK Neighborhood in 2021 to investigate these explosions from the recycling plant, we were beside ourselves. In spring 2022, the capstone class students presented the investigation results in a public form and provided JFK with a print copy shared with the City of OKC and others. They [OU capstone class] made recommendations. One of them was to put trees in front of that noise barrier wall. So, we partnered with Oklahoma City Beautiful to plant trees on the media on NE 4th between Lottie and MLK Avenue to buffer the noise and vibrations from the explosions and providing each JFK neighbor that wanted a tree could get one. Trees were planted in December 2023.
“Well then, the City of OKC informed us the recycling plant was going to build a noise barrier wall even though they said repeatedly there was nothing they could do about the explosion…we would just have to live with it. We found out they had been fined almost a half million dollars down in Houston where they have another recycling plant for failure to remove or check for ozone-depleting refrigerants from appliances and car air-conditioners before disposing of them. So, they built the wall, it has helped to reduce the number of explosions. The explosions are still happening, they aren’t as frequent but one happened yesterday. “
“We partnered with Open Design Collective and recently received a 3-year EPA grant, five hundred thousand dollars, to address air quality issues. We started our third year working with the OU Environmental Studies capstone class. We also partner with the OUHSC College of Public Health, City of OKC Office of Sustainability, OU College of Architecture (Division of Landscape Architecture), and the OU Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. So, we just kind of keep steadily plugging away…”
JFK, and surrounding neighborhoods, continue to live with the effects of environmental neglect in Northeast OKC. Yet throughout this, Denyvetta and her neighbors have shown the incredible resilience of their community.
Along with being an exceptional neighborhood leader, Davis is also a mother and grandmother to awesome adults who are her proud and joy, former head of Ralph Ellison Library where she and her staff coordinated the NEOKC annual Juneteenth and Kwanzaa Celebration among many other programs and activities (Usher visited the Library at the age of 14), the first African American administrator at the MLS, and past president of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Denyvetta loves decorating, working in her yard, and is a world traveler. So far, she has traveled to six continents with plans to explore Antarctica, visited 28 countries, 3 Wonders of the World, and 48 states with only the Dakotas remaining. Denyvetta is an alumnus of Leadership OKC (Class VII) and SALLT (Class 12). She has received numerous awards including the American Library Association’s prestigious John Cotton Dana Award, Oklahoma Governor’s Art Award for Community Service, and the John A. Reed, Jr. Spirit of the Community Award. She also shared with us that she also dances every morning as part of her praise and worship to begin her day.
For more information about the environmental studies conducted by OU, visit the links below.
Black neighborhood in Oklahoma City troubled by scrapyard explosions