McKee announces bid for Norman Ward 2

Norman attorney Michael McKee announced Friday that he will seek the Ward 2 council seat currently held by Richard Stawicki. Stawicki announced Jan. 7 he will not seek re-election.

McKee is a former assistant city attorney, hired by former city manager Jerry Smith in July 1971. He resigned in 1977 to go into private practice.

While working for the City of Norman, McKee worked on rewriting the municipal code, was a prosecutor for the City, was assigned as the Norman Police legal advisor and evaluated and defended workers' compensation claims against the City.

McKee said he wrote more than $250,000 in grants for the City from the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments, as well as writing major construction contracts for the City of Norman and training police cadets in the Norman Police Academy.

He served a short period of time as acting city attorney.

McKee helped establish and was president of the Norman Oklahoma Municipal Employees Credit Union for municipal and hospital employees. NOME later merged with Tinker Federal Credit Union.

McKee graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1964. He worked four years with the Social Security Administration in Gallup, N.M., and Farmington, N.M., and later in Clinton. He received his juris doctorate degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1971.

He worked as an intern in the office of the Oklahoma Attorney General drafting appellate criminal briefs and wrote administrative policies for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife. He was appointed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court as a judge of the Court of Appeals, Temporary Division No. 128.

McKee is married with four children. His wife Jonee was a registered nurse, teaching anatomy and physiology at COACH, to high school level home schoolers.

His daughter Stacey Kierstan is married to a professor at Oklahoma State University. His three sons Kurt Michael, Frederick Dow and Stephan Kern are students at Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., University of North Texas at Denton, Texas, and Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. McKee said all are musically talented.

The McKees are members of the Trinity Baptist Church and he tutors Chinese students and professors in English.