Shawnee pleased with Angelina Jolie's tattoo

SHAWNEE — What do folks in Shawnee think about Angelina Jolie getting the coordinates for their city tattooed on her arm?

“We are thrilled, of course,” said Gordona Rowell, executive director of the Shawnee Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Shawnee is proud to be the birthplace of Brad Pitt, and we feel honored that Angelina would choose to honor our community in such a permanent way.”

Nancy Keith, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Shawnee Chamber of Commerce, echoed the sentiment.

“We love it!” she said in an email. “What other community can say they are so close to Angelina Jolie's heart?”

Not everyone was as excited, though.

“This is the first I've heard of it,” said Larry Penson, assistant principal at Shawnee High School. “Are you serious?”

The students weren't talking about it Friday, he said. It wasn't clear if they didn't know or if they knew and simply didn't care.

The tattooed coordinates denote where Pitt, Jolie's longtime paramour, was born. Jolie had the city's latitude and longitude inked on her upper left arm, beneath similar coordinates for the birthplaces of each of the six Pitt-Jolie children.

The tattoo was spotted while Jolie was on a goodwill trip to the Tunisia/Libya border, sparking brief speculation that she was pregnant. The actress ended those rumors at the Cannes Film Festival in France, telling a reporter about the link to Shawnee.

Pitt has not lived in Shawnee since he was a baby. He and Jolie flew a private plane to Oklahoma to visit his grandmother, Betty Russell, in 2008.

“All I can say,” Penson said, “is that she has good taste in coordinates.”