Every week, The Talon interviews a member of the Oklahoma Christian University community, a “Newsmaker,” to answer questions about their role on campus. This week, The Talon interviewed two special guests.
On April 20, The Talon interviewed Dan and Karla Seitsinger, the father and sister of Talon Newsroom dedicatee Kyle Seitsinger.
Can you tell us a little bit about who Kyle was?
Dan Seitsinger shared what it was like watching Kyle grow up.
“Well, Kyle was not a good kid. Kyle was kicked out of three different schools. So, I sent him to military school, and he understood what conformity meant, because in military school, if one gets in trouble, the whole unit is punished. He went to Wentworth, which is a military academy in Lexington, Missouri. December after he graduated, in 2003 he joined the Marine Corps. He loved it, and he excelled in it. He got nice assignments. He was admitted to embassy duty, and met a lot of people, prominent people. He went to Brasilia, Brazil, Moscow, Russia, and he was eligible for discharge. They said, “We will extend your duty if you run an assignment in Rio” and he adapted to Rio. That was his lifestyle. He was going to retire, and he liked the culture and the lifestyle. He got his background in journalism. In Rio, soccer is big, and he represented himself as a journalist and a member of the press. He would go to cover soccer matches. When he ended up at Oklahoma Christian, he double majored in journalism and Spanish, and apparently, he excelled in journalism. When he was in Moscow, he learned some of the Russian language. When he was in Brazil, he learned to speak Portuguese. So, he had a natural talent for foreign languages. He was a natural fit.”
Karla also shared her memories of Kyle.
“Keep in mind, this was the 70s and 80s, and things were much stricter back then. What being in trouble looked like and what was tolerated in schools compared to what is today is quite different. From what the teachers tolerated, he was very rambunctious and inquisitive, you know, he would ask questions all the time. He couldn’t sit still and he really wanted to know everything. He always had that in him. And that became helpful down the line. If you’re not afraid to ask questions, and you want to know the answers, then that’s a pretty good starting point for journalism. He wanted to go back to Edmond Memorial to have fun and do all the things with the other kids. But I think in the long run, he really knew that he learned quite a bit from going to Wentworth Military Academy. It was an all-boys school at that point, and they had kids from all over the United States and Mexico that went to that school. Coming from a very small town to being exposed to people from other countries that are coming to school there. It opened his eyes to see that there is another world. As the older sister, I went off and worked in different places, but then I ended up admiring him so much because he traveled all over the world. When you have lost someone, you don’t realize how impactful they are in people’s lives until you meet their friends and you meet the professors and people that have interacted with them. They tell you all the stories that you didn’t know about and all the way that they touched their lives. We heard a lot from the students here during that time. Kyle was 29, an older student. He had already gone through all this life experience before he came back here to get his degree. He was hoping to become a foreign correspondent, where he could continue to travel around the world and put his foreign language skills to work. One of the things that I am most grateful for, is that Kyle was at this school before he went overseas. That was so he could connect with God and have a strong relationship with Jesus before he went overseas. He made sure that he had that relationship knowing what was going to happen, he had that strong faith before he went over there.”
What principles from Kyle’s life do you hope students today carry with them?
“Have confidence in yourself. The other one would be to have strong faith and a relationship with Christ. He had a strong relationship with God from being here at Oklahoma Christian. I believe it was the best foundation for him.”
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