Artist Information

Jay Wilkinson recently retired after 37 years of executive management in the employer sponsored retirement industry.

He received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his graduate degree from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts .  At Duke he was a first team All-American football player and the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year in 1963.

After graduation, he was Executive Assistant to Oklahoma Governor Dewey Bartlett and Staff Assistant to U.S. President Richard Nixon, where he was one of four employees who reported to White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman.

Jay was a recipient of the 1989 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award, presented to six former athletes each year who have excelled in business and civic achievement 25 years after graduation.  In 1979 he was inducted into the Duke Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2010 into the Atlantic Coast Conference Class of Legends.

He has been a director at Quail Creek Bank in Oklahoma City since 2010.

Jay is the author of Bud Wilkinson – An Intimate Portrait of an American Legend, a biography of his father, the legendary University of Oklahoma football coach.  He recently completed a second book,  Dear Jay, Love Dad – Bud Wilkinson’s Letters to His Son about a series of letters his father wrote to him during his college and post-graduate years that has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.  Today he functions both as a professional speaker and as a specialist in executive coaching during executive management sessions.

Jay and his wife Rita live in Oklahoma City and have four children and eight grandchildren.