Gayla Brooks Kokel

Gayla Brooks Kokel, a sixth-generation Texan and Oak Cliff (Dallas) native, is glad she listened to all her parents’ stories—about living and growing up in Oak Cliff—and all her mom’s stories about living in 1920s Fort Worth. And she’s glad she listened to her grandmother’s family stories and mini-history lessons. Those tales, along with family photograph albums and high school yearbooks, her own genealogy research and love of Texas, gave Kokel the background to pursue collecting and writing about United States, Texas, and Dallas-Fort Worth history.

A graduate of Dallas’s Justin F. Kimball High School, she earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of North Texas before spending roughly twenty years involved in education. She taught history for the Dallas Independent School District, later home schooling her own children and then teaching at Trinity Christian School in Cedar Hill, TX. In the recent past, Kokel worked as a freelance writer, copywriter, and photographer, having weekly high school sports stories and photographs published in several Southwest Dallas County publications. In previous years she worked in various capacities for two large Dallas area churches, later writing, producing, and directing church youth group performances. She also works part time as publicist and assistant producer for a Dallas musician, and as administrator for her family landscape business.

During her senior year in high school, she was co-host of a weekly teen talk program on KRLD radio in Dallas and was in syndication with the same program for a short time.

Along with genealogy and history, Kokel’s hobbies include map study, photography, and reading. She serves on the board of directors of the North Fort Worth Historical Society & Stockyards Museum and the Dallas Area Writers Group, and is on the interim board of governors for the Justin F. Kimball High School Alumni Association. Additionally, she is the photo curator for Trinity Christian School, where she also does volunteer work for the athletic department. Earlier, she served the school for numerous years as both a booster club and parent-teacher organization officer. A member of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, she recently co-authored Images of America: Oak Cliff for Arcadia Publishing Company and writes a monthly history column for the Oak Cliff Advocate.

She is married with three adult children.