Best Family Tradition Embraces Oklahoma City University
When Janet Best enrolled her daughters in dance lessons at an early age, she thought the classes would help them grow into confident, outgoing young women.
What she didn't know was most of them would make a career in dance and she would follow them to Oklahoma City University. As her youngest daughter, Vicky, begins her senior year at OCU's Ann Lacy School of American Dance and Arts Management, Janet Best has taken on a major role in the school's costume shop as assistant costumer. She also is teaching a costume lab course this year.
Janet Best began working with the OCU costume shop in 1998 when her oldest daughter, Cindy, was a senior dance management major.
"We needed more costumes and they needed more people to help," Cindy Best explained. "I told them my mother could sew and it started from there. I more or less thought it would be a quick fix, I had no idea she'd still be involved. I'm thankful she is though. She loves working there and it's nice that she gets to work in that environment every day."
Cindy graduated with a BS in Dance Management in the spring of 1998 and a few months later, her sister Becky began the program. When she graduated from the dance management program with the same degree four years later, their youngest sister, Vicky, enrolled. Only one of the four Best sisters chose a different school and career-- Tammy (Best) Hart is a registered nurse.
"I thought it was great that my sisters followed me to OCU," Cindy said. "I'm really glad they did. We have fun teasing Tammy. We always tell her, 'Yeah, go ahead, be a nurse.' She was the one who always knew what her career would be."
Though she didn't stick with dance as long as her sisters, Tammy studied dance until she finished high school.
Cindy's decision to pursue a dance degree and attend Oklahoma City University was largely influence by one of her dance instructors, Fletcher McClendon, who was attending OCU while instructing one of Cindy's junior high classes.
"While I was there, I kind of encouraged my sisters to go too, but it seemed to be the school they already wanted to go to," Cindy said. "Aside from Fletcher, the dance management degree was a big inspiration for us to go through that program. It's very unique to any place else."
Cindy spent her first few years after college at Walt Disney World, performing in "Beauty and the Beast" at MGM Studios, and then on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. She currently does freelance work in Las Vegas, where she is helping to organize a new OCU alumni chapter.
Becky (Best) Hart, who graduated from OCU in 2002, now lives in Okinawa, Japan where her husband is serving in the U.S. Air Force. She teaches turbo kick aerobics classes and helps instruct physical training courses on base for all branches of the military.
"OCU was such a positive environment for all of us," Becky explained.
She said the dance department would feel like family even if none of her sisters had gone through it.
"Regardless of my family being there, it's such a tight group of people," she said.
Vicky Best, who also is pursing a BS
in dance management, hopes to
work at Disney for a while like her oldest sister.
"I really wanted a degree where I could dance, but that had something else to it," she explained. "I was really sure that OCU was where I wanted to go and I would have done it whether my sisters did or not."
Vicky said following her sisters into
the dance program did make the transition easier.
"I had the same professors, so it was helpful to come into a program where they already knew my family," she said. "They're always really careful not to call me by my sisters' names, and that's nice."
Janet Best has gradually increased the number of hours she worked for OCU during the past eight years, going from working at home for a couple of years to working four hours per day for six years and finally to her current role, which takes six to eight hours a day or more. She may cut back next year, but for now, she is enjoying the job.
"I've been sewing since I was very small," she said, noting that she learned to sew by hand at five and went on the machine at 10. She made all of her own clothes and later, made clothes for her daughters including their prom dresses.
As a parent, Best said she appreciated the small class sizes her daughters had at OCU. Best said the dance training helped them grow into active, successful adults.
Janet Best, assistant costumer at Oklahoma City University, cuts fabric in the costume shop at the Ann Lacy School of American Dance and Arts Management. Best has three daughters who have been part of OCU's dance program.