Officials, Friends Pack Mildren Service

Hundreds of Oklahoma's top elected officials, legislators, University of Oklahoma football fans and admirers packed Norman's McFarlin Methodist Church this afternoon for services honoring the life of former Lt. Governor Jack Milden.

Mildren died last week at age 58 of stomach cancer. He was an executive of Arvest Bank and a popular sports talk radio show co-host. He is survived by his mother, Mary, and his wife, Janis, and their children and grandson, and by brothers Richard and Glynne.

Among those in attendance at his funeral were Governor Brad Henry, Lt. Governor Jari Askins, Attorney General Drew Edmondson, Congresswoman Mary Fallin, former OU coaches Chuck Fairbanks and Barry Switzer and many of Mildren's former high school and OU teammates.

As his services were underway, a sports blogger revealed that Mildren's legendary high school football exploits may have been the inspriration for the popular movie Friday Night Lights about Texas football: "In an 2004 interview with ESPN.com, 'Friday Night Lights' author H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger said, 'When I was about 13 years old, there was a cover story in Sports Illustrated (Sept. 9, 1968) about a high school quarterback named Jack Mildren, and he played at Abilene Cooper High School in Abilene, Texas. 'I read that story word for word and was enthralled and amazed. He was like the Elvis Presley (or) Marilyn Monroe of the town. He was playing in front of 15,000, his name was on church marquees, and movie marquees all over town. I just said, 'My God.' I think I was jealous. I mean, what is it like to be that young and that famous? It sort of stayed with me and stayed with me.'"

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