Return of the Big Red Rocket
by Berry Tramel
10/18/2024
In the early 1950s, Cecil Samara was dubbed OU’s biggest fan. Over the next 40 years, Samara certainly was the Sooners’ most flamboyant supporter.
Samara wore a big red cowboy hat and a red-and-white suit with crimson cowboy boots. Samara carried a megaphone through which his raspy voice would shout “Go Big Red!” both inside and outside Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on game days. One set of Samara’s dentures featured gold letters that spelled “Big Red;” another set of dentures sported an “O” and a “U.”
Samara was an OU icon, until his 1994 death at age 77. And it all started with a $25 debt.
In 1948, a man owed Samara money and couldn’t pay. So the debtor gave Samara a dilapidated 1923 Ford Model T. By 1950, the Big Red Rocket was born. Samara and his brother fixed up the Model T, complete with OU motif, and Cecil Samara began driving it to Sooner home football games.
In 1952, Samara finally relented to the requests from cheerleaders and Ruf-Neks, who wanted the Red Rocket to make it to Dallas for OU-Texas, and a tradition was born. Samara drove the Red Rocket not just to Brooks Street, which then circled on the north side of the football stadium, but to Miami for Orange Bowls, New Orleans for Sugar Bowls, Dallas for OU-Texas, all over the Big Eight circuit and to Chicago, Pittsburgh and South Bend for Sooner games.
Cecil Samara and the Red Rocket became as much a part of OU lore as Lil’ Red was back in the day and the Sooner Schooner is now.
And now the Red Rocket is back. The crimson Model T has been reimagined and will participate in the Homecoming Parade on Friday, then will appear in the Party at the Palace, outside Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium before the South Carolina game on Saturday.
“It’s important to preserve and to accentuate some of the fun traditions we have here at the University of Oklahoma,” said athletics director Joe Castiglione. “It engages fans from all ages and for generations to come.”
The Red Rocket’s return is courtesy of Jon Cooperstein, 1982 Sooner graduate and OU Athletics partner, and Jay Jacobs, a former Sooner player and 1983 graduate. Samara’s family kept the tradition alive for a while, parking the Red Rocket on campus before games in the 1990s and into the 2000s, but eventually the decaying car was stashed in a warehouse.
Gallery: Big Red Rocket Reimagined
Over the years, a variety of fans kept alive the vision of restoring the Red Rocket, before Cooperstein spearheaded the project and Jacobs was a co-contributor.
“Cecil’s smiling today,” Cooperstein said of his reaction when he first saw the restored Red Rocket. “I guarantee it. This is state history. It’s Oklahoma history.”
Speaking of Oklahoma history, Samara was born in 1916, the son of Lebanese immigrants. His father was a peddler who died at an early age. Samara was raised in the shanties of early-day Oklahoma City; he quit school in third grade to sell newspapers for two cents. By age seven, he was hitch-hiking to Norman for Bennie Owen football games.
“Been a nut for football all my life,” Samara said in a 1983 interview with the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Samara eventually became a successful businessman, with his Big Red Flag Company, but his Sooner obsession never waned. Hence the Red Rocket.
Samara was an honorary member of the RUF/NEKS; he sat near where they stood on Owen Field for games. The Red Rocket would travel no faster than 35 mph; for his Orange Bowl trips, he would leave a couple of weeks early and schedule stops at Rotary Clubs along the way, to spread the OU message.
Samara said that the week after his first OU-Texas trip, he appeared on longtime Oklahoma City radio/television personality Danny Williams’ show, and Williams dubbed Samara “OU’s No. 1 fan.” More media jumped on the story, and soon enough, Samara had an unofficial title.
As the Sooners in the 1950s through the 1980s became national powerhouses, Samara and his car were constant symbols of Sooner tradition and pageantry.
“I met Cecil when I went to school here,” Cooperstein said. “He always had a big smile on his face, everyone was always happy to see him, whether you were friend or foe. He was a great ambassador for OU. Personally, and with this vehicle. That was Cecil.”
Cooperstein said that when he heard the Red Rocket was sitting in a warehouse, “I sent one of my guys over to look at it. He called me, and he said, ‘It needs a lot of stuff.’”
The Red Rocket was disassembled; Cooperstein was stunned to learn that the frame of the car was made of wood and at one point it had “tenants.” Yes, termites.
But the work continued, and now the Red Rocket is back. It includes a modernized frame, revamped wheels with wooden spokes, updated safety features and a new exhaust system.
“Jon’s different,” Castiglione said. “We don’t doubt Jon. He gets things done. But you also have to recognize, we had a little bit of skepticism. We had heard this story before by a few others.
“This was a really involved project. Not a new coat of paint or have somebody tune up an engine.
“But Jon was undeterred. It was a way to celebrate some tradition that had been put in storage for a while, and we’re excited to see the finished project. Now it’s here.”
And back is the legacy of Cecil Samara.
“There’ll be people who see the Red Rocket for the first time,” Castiglione said. “It’ll be important for us to have some of the back story with it, so they can understand how one person made this part of Oklahoma tradition.”
