LAWTON – More than 100 business and community leaders from Lawton and Fort Sill filled the Lawton Country Club last week to hear a speech by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.
The speech, which was billed as the State of the State, was supposed to be given by Stitt.
But Stitt didn’t show. Instead, Sterling Zearley, the chief of the state Department of Tourism, stepped in and spoke for about 20 minutes on the status of the tourism department. Zearley said he was contacted by the governor’s office on Monday to do the speech.
Zearley, who served in several different state posts, has also led the Oklahoma Public Employees Association. He said he has 23 years of experience in the tourism department, starting in 1984 as a curator in Gore. Later he served as a park supervisor at Tenkiller State Park and a park manager at Cherokee Landing State Park and at Sequoyah State Park.
In 2024, Stitt appointed him to lead tourism, after the agency’s former director, Shelly Zumwalt, resigned.
Zumwalt’s resignation came about five months after Attorney General Gentner Drummond called on her to step down. Drummond pointed to the ugly state audit the agency had received as the reason for Zumwalt to resign.
“He has a long track record of service to Oklahoma, and I’m grateful for the work he’s done to make our parks a great place to be,” Stitt said, when he announced Zearley’s appointment.
Before he spoke, Zearley stood with his bac k to the audience and took a couple of ‘selfies’ with his phone. The images were of the crowd waving to Stitt.
“I’m not the governor, but we are going to have some fun,” Zearley said. “I told him I would send him a selfie. Everyone can wave at him.”
After the impromptu photos, Zearley spoke about the current status of the tourism and recreation department.
“One thing I like about this job, it’s that I love the state of Oklahoma. I was born and raised here,” he said. “We have the opportunity to leave our grandkids a legacy. The state of Oklahoma is a great state.”
Zearley said his department was established in 1972. He said the agency promotes the state, oversees the state lodges, helps maintain 38 state parks, seven golf courses and nine information centers.
“We also do all the state wide travel promotion and also do Oklahoma Today Magazine,” he said.
Still, while he spoke positively about the agency, Zearley acknowledged the problems tourism had under previous administrators.
“When I first took over, we had some issues with accountability and we kind of isolated ourselves,” he said.
Zearley said state tourism dollars totaled $12.3 billion in 2024 – though he did not say specifically from where those dollars came.
He said (tourism) was the third largest industry in the state, generating more than 20 million visitors, 108,000 jobs and $875 million in local and state taxes.
He said the agency’s goal was create a three- and five-year strategic plan.
“We hire a company that’s assisting us with this,” he said. “Right now, we don’t have a plan, we’re just out there. We seem to be ‘if this problem comes up, we take care of it.’ We’re not managing certain things properly and we haven’t done that in the past.”
He said a new plan would have solve future problems.
Zearley also acknowledged the problems between the state and Swadley’s barbeque. “We had the incident with the restaurant a couple of three years ago. It is what it is,” he said. “But here’s the thing, as our commissioner knows: we are not going to hide from those things. We’re going to clean up and move and care of it.”
He said the agency also hopes to utilize state colleges and universities more and leverage marketing opportunities with other entities and upgrade state information centers.