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A Cherokee citizen originally from Checotah, Okla., Jernigan regularly returns to Oklahoma to visit family and friends. He has two sisters and one brother who live in Checotah, who also went away to work but came back to live in their hometown. Their mother, Lou Jane Morgan, was an original enrollee from Pryor Creek, Indian Territory.

For more than 40 years Clyde Jernigan of Portland, Ore., traveled and worked throughout the world as a successful businessman. Jernigan left Checotah for Oregon in 1936 during the Depression to find work.

Jernigan (second left) visited with Deputy Chief Hastings Shade (first left), Director of Government Services Pat Ragsdale (third left), and Principal Chief Chad Smith. (fourth left)


Jernigan said, “I was 18 years old, and at that time you couldn’t buy a job, so I decided there had to be something better, and I hitchhiked to Oregon.” The journey took almost three weeks, but he said that he “got a job right away”, upon arriving in the timberlands of Oregon. His first job was splitting wood for steam engines. “After I got a job I was never without a one after that.”

After performing “every menial job there is to do” Jernigan began to move up in management, first with the Warehayser Company and then Georgia Pacific, both major lumber and paper companies. Also along the way he married and raised three children.

Eventually he became an acquisition manager for the lumber companies, which provided him the opportunity to travel throughout the world acquiring the right to use timberlands from governments. He also helped set up sawmills in those countries where timber was harvested. His travels took him to Canada, the Philippines, Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, and New Guinea.

Jernigan said his favorite trip was to Brazil where he spent four years in the Amazon jungle. “There were a lot of dangers such as insects, snakes and malaria. I was very fortunate nothing happened to me,” he said. “The people there were friendly and good to work with.

Though he traveled the world, Jernigan said he never lost sight of where he came from and that he was Native American. He also remembers the desperate times that forced him from Oklahoma, but he admires his mother and father for having the strength to raise nine children during those hard times.

“My father was a hard worker, but no matter how hard you worked at that time you still didn’t have anything.” “I just want people to know that anybody can do it (have success) if they have the intestinal fortitude,” he said. “I learned that from my mother.”