Class of 1977
News & Announcements

Rick Couri, the Sport Director at Tulsa's KRMG radio, began his career with KRMG in 1982 and has since done "everything you could do" at the station.  Couri has covered top sporting events such as the Olympic Games, the World Series, numerous football bowl games and championship tennis. He even spent a day with boxing great Muhammad Ali.  Couri has also spent 16 years working as a color commentator for TU football, and 4 for Union High School Football.

Rick is probably most well known around town for his unusual annual fund raising events, over the past 18 years, for Tulsa's Operation Aware.  Among his efforts have been sitting in the 40,000 wooden seats at Skelly Stadium, riding a bicycle 400 miles throughout northeastern Oklahoma, riding Zingo at Bell’s Amusement Park 542 times, sliding down the slides at Big Splash Water Park 401 times, rowing 90 miles for three and one half days on the Arkansas River, mowing 31 miles of River Parks with a hand mower, swimming on the bottom of the Thornton “Y” pool in scuba gear for 36 hours, riding a horse for 170 laps and 106 miles around Fair Meadows track, planting over 3,000 plants on the lawn at Saint Francis Hospital, refurbishing the Golden Driller using 60 gallons of special paint, and reeling in an amazing amount of fish in a local pond. Wow! That’s dedication. 
 
Couri and wife, Christine, have three children.  When away from the microphone, he can be found at the helm of his boat. He is also a certified scuba instructor.

Information & photo courtesy of www.gtrnews.com and www.krmg.com

Peggy Porter-Tierney

front-page - Terre Haute Tribune-Star - Sunday, June 12, 2005
Children's book publisher runs company from Terre Haute home

When Peggy Tierney tells Wabash Valley residents about her job, the suspicious looks remind her where she is.  "Publishing is a New York City industry.  And not even New York - Manhattan," said the founder of Tanglewood Press.

Tierney, 45, edits, advises and markets her publishing company from her Terre Haute home.  She has driven book sales to about 22,000 copies since the first release in October.  Tanglewood boasts such well-known children's book authors as Judith Caseley and Audrey Penn.

Tierney hopes to grow from publishing three to five books a year to 10 or 12.  "I'm still small, and some of my authors I'm doing more than one thing with," she said.

Family and her husband's work brought them and their son to Terre Haute at the end of 2003.  Transitioning out of a decade-long split between editing in London and publishing in Washington, DC, through the Child Welfare League of America, Tierney didn't start out thinking about her own business.  "For about 24 hours, I thought I was going to be a housewife," she said laughing.

But working with the Welfare League, she remembered resistance to edgy concepts and book that didn't teach a definitive lesson.  "I was always so restricted with what I could publish," Tierney said. "So personally, I wanted to do something different."

Through the Welfare League, Tierney met Penn, especially known for her New York Times bestseller "The Kissing Hand".  Penn wanted to publish "Mystery at Blackbeard's Cove," and she knew characters such as 13-year-old Stefanie could be unlikable to adults.  It was the first book Tanglewood Press published last October.

Tierney's company is publishing books such as "You Can't Milk a Dancing Cow," by Tom Dunsmuir, a writer for "Sesame Street."  In May, Tanglewood Press published "Is a Worry Worrying You?"  National retailers already have ordered almost 5,000 copies, Tierney said.  Marie Le Tourneau illustrated it.

"I think moving to Terre Haute was just such a relief," Tierney said about leaving Washington, DC and a two-hour commute.  "It's going to be a trend - people wanting to escape the rat race."

Tierney was featured with two other children's book publishers in Publisher's Weekly, "the 131-year-old international news magazine of the $23 billion book industry," according to its web site.  The October article details her recent release, "It All Began With a Bean," by Katie McKy, a story about what happens when everyone passes gas at once.

~excerpt from 10/04 Publisher's Weekly article:  "I am thrilled that authors are coming on board in spite of the fact that my company is so small and new," Tierney said, "but I think that this is part of what appeals to them. I think these authors are looking for the personal relationship that I can offer them. And I'm excited that I don't have to publish anything I don't want to publish. I can wait to find the books I feel passionate about." In keeping with this philosophy, she has named her company not after a performance venue in the Berkshires but after a region west of Tulsa, where she grew up: "Tanglewood is a beautiful area on the Arkansas River, which is home to many of my friends. It is very dear to my heart." As, obviously, is her new publishing venture.

You can visit Peggy's web site at: http://www.tanglewoodbooks.com/