Patrick Hurley was soldier during World War, Secretary of War during the Hoover administration, a lawyer for the Choctaw people, a diplomat for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and a philanthropist. One of the special objects of his philanthropy both materially and spiritually were the American Indian students at Bacone College.

Hurley matriculated at Indian University (Bacone College) in the early 1900s, graduating in 1905. Hurley was Caucasian, from the small coal town of Phillips in the Choctaw Nation. His father was a coal miner, an occupation that Patrick was forced to embrace when he was eleven years old. He also worked as a mule driver and cowboy before getting a chance to attend Indian University. When Pat was seventeen, he worked with two Cherokee boys “at Brush Mountain, Oklahoma, feeding cattle for a Mr. Hellinghausen.” The two boys attended Indian University; they invited Pat to accompany them to the campus to have a look. He met President Scott. “The next day,” Hurley recalled for a reporter forty-five years later, “’Father’ J. S. Murrow . . . and President Scott drove a surrey to where ‘Pat’ was branding calves. ‘Would you like to go to school?’ they asked the young man. ‘Yes, but I have no money,’ he replied.” The men nevertheless invited him to the college, where he could work to pay his tuition. “These two gentlemen literally picked me off the prairie and started me on the way to an education,” Hurley remembered. Hurley’s mother had instilled in him studious habits and the love of books, which enabled Hurley to thrive at Indian University. Fellow students saw in Hurley a dedicated worker, faith-filled man, articulate orator, and energetic leader. He was gregarious and likeable, loud and outgoing. He played the french horn in the college orchestra formed by Professor Collette. Years later, Hurley recalled one time when he had missed class while nursing a broken arm. He had to take an algebra test, and his professor, J. G. Masters, allowed the young man all afternoon and evening to complete the test. When during World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Hurley how he had acquired his abilities as a thinker and statesman, Hurley responded that Indian University, along with the study of history and religion, were the ingredients of his success.

Hurley was Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, the Baconian, in 1905, which allowed him to explore and elaborate on the many ideas he was developing and crystallizing at Indian University. In the February issue, for example, he wrote about the Bible: “There is no literature of modern times that has not been ennobled and enriched by it or has not felt its inspiration and power.” He said of good books, “that the man’s actions are those which have been produced from his reading, for the actions are only the outward manifestation of what is within.” Of Indian University, he wrote: “Our school is a body of great complexity. Each individual throbs with life and energy. In a measure each lives to himself, yet the life of the school is the resultant of the life of each individual member enrolled.” Of the prospects that Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory would combine into one state, Hurley predicted: “The new state will have all the attributes necessary to give it a high rank among the commonwealth, to insure its prosperity and in all to make it a strong factor in national politics.” Hurley’s editorial revealed  his awareness of the seminal issues involved in the problem of statehood.

After graduation Hurley studied law and made his home in Tulsa. He became the Choctaw tribal attorney. In 1914, Hurley returned to Bacone in November to help dedicate a new chapel on campus, located in Rockefeller Hall. He spoke before the students, after which Rev. Van Meigs preached, and the college chorus sang.

Since his graduation in 1905, Hurley had maintained ties with the college, sometimes supporting needy students financially, sometimes appearing on campus to speak and encourage. In 1928, he became president of the Alumni Association at the same time as he crossed the state campaigning on behalf of Herbert Hoover. In 1929, Hoover rewarded Hurley by appointing him Assistant Secretary of War. Hurley had fought in World War I, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Upon the death of Secretary of War James Good, Hoover elevated Hurley to the cabinet position. The Secretary of War returned to his alma mater in June, 1931, to deliver the commencement address. The Index-Journal of South Carolina headlined that “’Paleface’ Hurley Soon to Revisit His Indian School.” Hurley arrived in June. It was the silver, 50^th anniversary, of what had been Indian University when Hurley attended. President Weeks, who had previously invited Hurley to speak at commencement, this time successfully so, admired Hurley for many reasons, one of which was his frankness and transparency. When Hurley had arrived at Oklahoma in 1928 to campaign for Hoover, he had stopped at Atoka to meet with Father Murrow. Murrow, who had helped Hurley attend Indian University, had known his mother; he told Hurley of “her gentleness, her refinement, her superiority, and her hopes for him.” Mary Kelly Hurley had died when Patrick was eleven. That evening, after his meeting with Murrow, Hurley broke down and “wept” at the hotel dinner table. “He threw aside all reserve, power and poise as he spoke of his appreciation for his mother, and of how he had tried to be true to the ideals she had cherished.” Hurley had “promised his mother on her deathbed that he would get an education and make something of himself.” Weeks wrote that “in that moment I saw the greatness of his soul as I had never seen it before.” 

The Bacone College Company of the National Guard greeted Hurley upon his arrival to the hill-top in June, 1931; a nineteen-gun salute of heavy artillery brought tears to his eyes. “Who would ever have believed thirty-five years ago when I was a penniless little charity student up there on that hill that the day would ever come when the Guard would be called out to meet me and the guns be firing on my account?” Addressing the numerous guests, including Governor W. J. Holloway, state and local officials, dozens of prestigious Bacone alumni, and the faculty, staff, and students of Bacone College, Hurley spoke of his gratitude to Samuel Murrow and J. H. Scott “for the opportunity they gave me to receive an education.” Why did they care to give him, an insignificant youth, an education? He pondered this question when Weeks asked him to consider, “why should we educate the Indians?” Weeks’ question raises “every element of the Indian problem and the relationship of the Indians to the Government and to their fellow citizens.” The Indian problem Hurley referred to involved Caucasians spending centuries trying to figure out what to do with these different people—embrace them, civilize them, or destroy them? For civilized Christians, as Bacone once said, the only option is to civilize and Christianize them—to leave them be is out of the question, partly because of the acquisitive nature of white civilization. Although of Irish ancestry, Hurley said: “I know the Indian. I know his characteristics. I was reared among the Indians. I went to school with them. I served the Choctaws for years as National Attorney. The then Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation gave me my first opportunity for public life. I have served in the Army with many of them. I am under a debt of gratitude to the Indians. I am willing to analyze the Indian’s character as a friend who is deeply interested in their welfare.” The Indian character as Hurley understood it was agreeable, kind, calm, dignified, courageous, stoic, loyal. If so, then why would there continue to be an “Indian problem”? The “problem,” Hurley said, is as follows: the Indian does not understand private property or the “acquisitive sense of our own race.” The United States government was in error in assuming that Indians could own their land and could operate and make profitable their property without being educated in white property values. The Allotment program failed in part because Indians were not taught about personal property values. Only education can do this.”

We might “deplore” our acquisitive culture, Hurley went on, nevertheless it is reality, and to have Indians be a part of this culture, we have to educate them accordingly. “We have taught the Indian the Christian religion. We have taught him our system of government. We have taught him our manual of arms. We have taught him our code of ethics. But we have not instilled in him the attributes of our civilization pertaining to property. . . . As a race the Indian has not learned that he must be self-sustaining before he can successfully discharge the duties of citizenship.” Of course, Indians were self-sustaining in America before the coming of the Europeans. But in American society, to be a citizen—granted to Indians only seven years before in 1924—they must either own property by which to make a living or work for another who owns property by which many people earn a living; there is no other option, and the failure of many to do this made them dependent upon government.

“Why should we educate the Indian?,” Hurley asked again. “We should educate him because it is the only thing that we can now do that will make any permanent contribution to the welfare of the Indian. . . . Education will make the Indian a good citizen. It will make him self-sustaining. It will assure to him a life of service of happiness. . . . Schools have become the great levelers in America. Education eliminates class distinction.” Since Indians are now citizens, education will bring them up to par with other citizens. 

Hurley told the Class of 1931 that character is determined by common sense, courage, and work, which is the key to self-respect. “Be yourself. Do not try to act a borrowed part. If you do so, you will deceive no one but yourself.”

In March, 1936, Hurley returned to campus and spoke to students in the chapel of Rockefeller Hall. He praised Bacone College as the institution that “has furnished more idealism to Oklahoma” than any comparable institution. Changing his tune slightly from his address of 1931 celebrating the college’s fiftieth anniversary, Hurley proclaimed that because Indians lack “the acquisitive sense, the attitude that success is based on material gain,” he “is superior to the Caucasian race as a student of real art and as one capable of Christian living at its best.” Hurley said that besides his mother, Bacone was closest to his heart, for here he learned the great lessons of life, including that “the highest attribute of humanity is clean, honorable sentiment, for as a man thinketh in his soul, so is he.”

Hurley, a purple-heart recipient in World War I, in World War II was promoted from Brigadier General to Major General, sent by President Roosevelt to the Pacific theater in 1942, where he organized supply logistics from Australia to Bataan in the Philippines in a failed attempt to keep the Philippines out of Japanese hands. While in Australia he experienced the fierce Japanese air attack on Port Darwin, and was injured by shrapnel in the hand; he also survived a Japanese attack on his plane when flying over the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). He briefly served as U. S. Ambassador to New Zealand, before being sent as President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the Soviet Union. There he met with Joseph Stalin and had a chance to view Soviet troops in action fighting against the Germans. Hurley served on the U. S. diplomatic entourage at the conferences at Cairo and Tehran, where the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China met to discuss war strategy. In 1943, he also met with David Ben Gurion and the Zionists of Palestine who were pressuring the British and Americans to grant an independent state to the Israelis. Hurley was not impressed by the forceful imperialism of the British upon the Palestinians, nor by the imperialist, expansionist claims of the Soviets. His anti-imperialistic views were deepened when now Major General Hurley was sent by President Roosevelt as his personal representative to China in 1944. There he met with the Communist Mao Zedong and the Nationalist Chang Kai-Shek, who represented a divided Chinese people at civil war at the same time as they were fighting Japanese aggression. Hurley distrusted the Communists and threw his support behind the more democratic Nationalists. 

Patrick Hurley returned to Washington after his busy diplomatic activities during the war. Hurley was adamant with anyone who would listen to him that Bacone deserved the attention of donors to help it build an endowment for the future. He believed that “few if any institutions in Oklahoma or in the entire Southwest have produced stronger leaders than Bacone.” The school’s recent war record would bear him out on this claim. Hurley had tremendous admiration for the founders of the school, Bacone and Murrow. Bacone “is a Christian school that grew on a rough and turbulent frontier, and yet maintained its Christian qualities. Killing was prevalent then. Out there it was not considered such a bad thing to kill a man, until Bacone got to talking. Bacone sent men out who preached from the pulpits, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.” Sometimes love can lead to exaggeration: Hurley’s derived in part from Bacone’s seclusion, a small oasis of learning amid the Oklahoma prairie.

In the 1960s, Hurley donated funds to Bacone College to build a new President’s home, subsequently called Hurley House. He died in 1963.

The above narrative is taken from Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books