Cortright, Stephen

Major General Stephen Phelps Cortright USAF (retired) (born March 26, 1941), is an American military officer and attorney from Oklahoma who served as the Adjutant General of Oklahoma under Governor Frank Keating from 1995 to 2003. Concurrent with his service as Adjutant General, Cortright served in Keating’s Cabinet as the Oklahoma Secretary of the Military.

General Cortright joined the United States Air Force on February 14, 1964. On May 12, 1964, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and entered undergraduate pilot training at Webb Air Force Base in Texas. He is a command pilot with over 5000 hours of military flying time in the T-33, T-37, T-38, RF-4C, F100, A-7, and F-16 aircraft. He flew 217 combat missions while serving in Vietnam from September 1966 through July 1967.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, Cortright returned to Oklahoma and became the operations officer with the 125th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He later became the Squadron’s commander. He then served as the Commander of the 138th Tactical Fighter Group, also based in Tulsa. From 1988 to 1992, Cortright was appointed the headquarters commander of the Oklahoma Air National Guard. In 1992, he served as the Air National Guard Assistant to the commander, Pacific Air Forces at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

In 1995, Governor of Oklahoma Frank Keating appointed Cortright to serve as the Adjutant General of Oklahoma, succeeding Gary Maynard. As Adjutant General, General Cortright was the highest-ranking military official in Oklahoma, ranking only behind Governor Keating in his role as Commander-in-Chief. General Cortright oversaw the Oklahoma Military Department and the Oklahoma National Guard. The General remained in that position until the end of Keating’s term in 2003.[2] He was succeeded by Air Force General Harry M. Wyatt III.