Oklahoma State to unveil Boone Pickens statue Nov. 28 before Texas Tech game

Oklahoma State will unveil a statue for the late Boone Pickens before the Cowboys’ home game Nov. 28 against Texas Tech, the athletic department announced Thursday.

The 9-foot-tall bronze statue sculpted by Enid-based artist Harold Holden will be west of the football stadium, which is named in Pickens’ honor. The statue will be the third on OSU’s campus, joining former school president Henry Bennett and OSU’s first African-American student, Nancy Randolph Davis.

Pickens, who was 91 years old when he died Sept. 9, 2019, at his home in Dallas, made more than $500 million in donations to OSU in athletics and academics. His $165 million donation in 2006 was the largest single donation to an athletic department to an American university. OSU’s football stadium and geology school are named after him.

“We could never thank him enough for all that he did for our university,” OSU athletic director Mike Holder said in a release. “He gave us everything he had and all that he asked in return was that we play by the rules and dream big.”

“He was just an old country boy from Holdenville, Oklahoma, but he could think his way around any Noble Prize winner,” OSU President Burns Hargis added. “Boone was a legend, a change agent, a life force that rarely comes along.”