Born in Kansas and raised in Guthrie and Weatherford, Oklahoma, Walter Stanley Campbell was known to readers by the pen name of Stanley Vestal. After graduating from Southwestern State Normal School (1908) in Weatherford (now Southwestern Oklahoma State University), he was named the first Rhodes Scholar from Oklahoma and received degrees from Oxford in 1911 and 1915. By 1952 Campbell had written 23 books, including biographies of Western pioneer personalities such as Kit Carson, and published verse, articles, fiction and scientific papers. He was an instructor in the English department at the University of Oklahoma (1915-1957), and served as the school’s research professor and director of courses in professional writing, of which he was also the founder, at the time of his death.