Vicki Lynn Mooney

March 21, 1949- Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025

Vicki Lynn Mooney

Cherokee Playwright Vicki Lynn Mooney, age 76, died of natural causes on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, at home in Claremore, OK. Oldest child of Jimmie Lewis Gipson and Bonnie (Hamby) Gipson.

Born on March 21, 1949 in Tulsa, survived by her brother

Jimmie Lewis Gipson Jr. of Tulsa, sister Cathy Jean (Gipson) Stitt of Charlotte, NC, and husband of 46 years Gerard (Gerry) Mooney of Claremore. Her first stage production was “Cake and Sippin’ Whiskey” on NYC’s Theatre Row in 1984. It was later published by Dramatic Publishing.

Raised in and around Tulsa, Vicki had a special place in her heart for Avant, the home of her paternal grandparents, Edgar and Flora Gipson. She was their first grandchild, and they doted on her curly blond locks, blue eyes, and happy disposition. She attended several grammar schools in and around Oklahoma due to her father’s oil field work.

She and Gerry met in Tulsa in 1977. They subsequently moved to New York, where they wed at the 79th Street Boat Basin on August 12, 1979. She quickly became active in theatre. Working in development at The Writer’s Theatre, founded by Tom Fontana, she wrote several plays including “Armadillo Chili” and “Film at Eleven”.

Her monologue, “Sparrow”, about the Oklahoma City bombing, was performed by Patricia Neal in Dobbs Ferry, NY, in 1997. It was the featured piece in “Patchwork”, an evening of Vicki’s one-acts and monologues. “Sparrow” was also an entry in the prestigious Ensemble Studio Theatre’s One-act Festival in New York in 1997.

She went on to write The Broken Heart Land Trilogy, three interconnected plays about her own family in Tulsa in the years before and after statehood. The trilogy explores the destruction wrought by The Dawes Rolls, a Federal government plan to register native peoples. The three plays in the trilogy, “Hoop Jumper”, “Broken Heart Land”, and “Blood Boundary”, have all been produced in New York and Oklahoma City.

Plans to stage the entire trilogy in Claremore in 2021 were upended by the Covid 19 Pandemic. Work will continue on bringing The Broken Heart Land Trilogy to the stage.

There will be a memorial service on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025, at 2PM, at Rice Funeral Home, 631 E. Will Rogers Blvd., Claremore, OK.