The body of a former Tulsa Fire Department assistant fire marshal and north Tulsa business and community leader was recovered Tuesday afternoon in Skiatook Lake, an Oklahoma Department of Public Safety spokeswoman confirmed.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol had been searching for Terry McGee, who served with the Tulsa Fire Department for more than 25 years and started a company focused on building homes in north Tulsa, since he jumped into the lake from his boat to rescue a child about 3:50 p.m. Sunday and never resurfaced, troopers said.
The child made it out of the water and is OK, the DPS spokeswoman said Tuesday evening.
The incident happened about 300 yards west of the east bank near Holt Road and Crystal Bay Marina on the north side of the lake, in Osage County.
McGee was a member of the NAACP, the North Tulsa Community Coalition and the North Tulsa Economic Development Committee and was a charter member of the Tulsa Metro Chamber Mosaic group, among other things, McGee said in a 2017 business Q&A with the Tulsa World.
People are also reading…
His company, McGee Enterprises, has focused on residential building in north Tulsa.
A townhome project in development in January called Black Wall Street Square was a collaboration with McGee Enterprises and Boomtown Development Co., an affiliate of Green Country Habitat for Humanity.
Of his dedication to serving north Tulsa, McGee said in the Q&A that he was taught as a young boy to seek God and love his neighbor.
When asked in the Q&A about his most important investments in his life, he said it was “the investment of educating myself on many different subject matters so as to be able to be a blessing to someone else as well as my family.”
He also said he wanted to leave a legacy for his community and family — “the investment of leaving a legacy that your parents, family and community can be proud of, including the investment I made to seek a theology degree so as to learn more about the life of Jesus Christ and be able to reflect a sense of hope, love and joy even in the most trying of times so that I might be of encouragement to someone else.”
According to McGee’s LinkedIn page, he retired as a Tulsa Fire Department fire marshal in 2004.