Three Days - Three Men Part 2

Rogers – The Will Rogers Museum at Claremore, tells the story not of the most famous but the most beloved man of his time.

William Penn Adair Rogers was born at Oologah, Oklahoma in 1879 to a prominent Cherokee family in Indian Territory. Oologah and Claremore are located in Rogers County, named for his father, Clem Rogers a rancher and local leader. Clem Rogers was a proponent for Oklahoma Statehood and in 1907 would be the oldest delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention before Oklahoma’s annexation as our forty-sixth state.

Variety was the essence of Will Rogers’ life story. He attended Indian boarding school in Missouri and later attended the Kemper Military Academy. While at Kemper he read the New York Times every day. Though a good student he dropped out of school in the tenth grade returning home to become a ranch hand.

When he was twenty-two, with a friend he left the Rogers ranch to start his own ranch in Argentina. The enterprise failed and not wanting to return home Will set out for South Africa to break horses for the British Army during the Boer War. Fortuitously the war ended shortly after his arrival. He quickly took a job with a circus / wild west show as a trick rider and roper. He named his act The Cherokee Kid. From South Africa his wanderlust took him to Australia.

In 1905 he landed in New York City and became a Vaudeville performer doing rope tricks, telling jokes, and talking about current events. Rogers was engaging with a dry sense of humor. Will possessed an everyman persona, was extremely engaging, He was a natural entertainer.

Will married Betty Burke in 1908 in Claremore. Rather than settling down in Oklahoma, the couple returned to Broadway where in 1915 he gained notoriety as a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies. He starred and performed for Florenz Ziegfeld for seven years. In 1918 Samuel Goldwyn recruited him to act in silent films. Will Rogers quickly became a big star. America loved him. In many of his films he played himself. Amazingly the movie star performed in seventy-one films (fifty silent and twenty-one talkies.)

Knowing a winner when they saw one the New York Times first enticed Will to write a column for them. Rogers stories and commentary on current events were carried in four hundred newspapers and read by forty million people (in 1930 America’s population was one hundred and twenty-three million.) Will also became a radio personality with his own radio program from 1929 – 1935.

Rogers died in a plane crash with noted aviator, Wiley Post in 1935 at the age of fifty-five. During his life he excelled at many occupations: Indian Cowboy, Ziegfeld Follies, Newspaperman, Radio Pundit, Movie Star, and Philosopher.

The Claremore museum built shortly after his death was funded in part by citizens of Oklahoma in honor of their most favorite son. Near his grave is the statue, “Riding into the Sunset”, of Rogers astride his horse Soapsuds. The sculptor was Electra Waggoner Biggs. Electra’s other castings of “Riding into the Sunset” are at the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth and Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

The Museum is physically too big for what is on display - but not for the man who is memorialized. Beyond the display cases and the repetitious plethora of painted portraits the story is best told through the filmstrips and Will’s movies being shown in the main theatre, galleries, and nooks.

My biggest treat while there was meeting one of the costumed docents, Andy Hogan. Andy is pretty close to Will Rogers doppelganger. He was dressed like Rogers hat to boots. He talked like Rogers and he did rope tricks. Foremost Andy was a Will Rogers encyclopedia. It was like talking Jewish geography for a couple old guys from Cowboy Country. Obviously, we talked about Rogers, we talked about the Gilcrease, we talked Fort Worth, we talked Waggoner Ranch, we talked Big 12 Football. No matter what the subject Andy knew about it!

Rogers was the right man at the right time. America needed him through the Great Depression. While he dabbled on the edge of politics; “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat!” he was an Everyman. When twenty percent of Americans were unemployed, he made them laugh when they needed hope, reassurance, and laughter.

The two quotes, I liked best from this homespun philosopher were: “Tomorrow is a better day.” and “My forefathers didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

Will Rogers most famous quotation was, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” I came away from his memorial thinking, every man who saw or heard Rogers, liked him!