A Very OK Podcast
Episode 55: “Oklahoma’s Favorite Son, Will Rogers”
February 17, 2026
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast! (applause and cheering)
Thompson: All right. Yeah. Well, in case you are wondering, for those of you who may be listening to this, we did not cram all these people into our tiny studio in Oklahoma City. They have actually showed up for another one of our live podcast episodes tonight, and we are coming to you live from the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma. And why, yes!
(applause)
Thompson: Claremore, Oklahoma, the home of so many good things: Rogers State University, the Hammett House with the pies, with the meringue six inches tall. I see that pie in my dreams at night sometimes.
(laughter)
But we are so thrilled to be here. All of our episodes of A Very OK Podcast this year in 2026 are commemorating the 100th anniversary of Route 66. And of course, I’ve been saving Will Rogers as a topic. Bob and I have been doing this podcast for five years now, and I’ve been saving Will Rogers as our topic for five years because of this year and tying this topic to the Will Rogers Highway and Route 66, and I’m so excited that we’re finally here, and I’m so excited that we get to share it all with you tonight. Bob, are you glad to be here too?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, for many reasons. One, I’m here with good friends, but it doesn’t surprise me that we have this crowd tonight because Claremore is one of my home towns. My dad was born here in 1921. My grandma, Susie Buelah, lived down on Will Rogers Boulevard, the memorial, the old Mason Hotel with the J. M. Davis gun collection, Route 66. This is up part of my heritage. And then I’ve been, of course, working with Tad since 2016 on the museum and known Jennifer for about that length of time. I feel like I’m coming home when I come here and see a lot of familiar faces, a lot of good friends, and it’s a good community, and it’s been very, so supportive of the Will Rogers Memorial over the years, and without the community of here, we would not be in the middle of a new fundraising drive, an effort to transform the Will Rogers Memorial into a broader museum concept of education. So the community is great, and it’s good to be here again.
Thompson: That’s absolutely right, Bob. And you mentioned them. So let’s go ahead and introduce our guests for tonight. To your left, we have Jennifer Rogers, and Jennifer Rogers is Will Rogers’ great-granddaughter, and I have had the pleasure of knowing Jennifer for several years now. And you want to talk about an incredible ambassador for the Rogers family and someone who is passionate about this, the history of her family and making sure that people know and understand who Will Rogers was and why he’s important today. So Jennifer is here with us. Tad Jones is the director of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum here in Claremore. He’s been the director since 2014. Prior to that, he was in the state House of Representatives and a local boy here. And Tad does such a good job. This is an Oklahoma Historical Society museum, and we’re thrilled to have you both with us here. Thanks for joining us.
Jennifer Rogers: Thank you for having us. Thank you for coming to our home.
Thompson: Absolutely, absolutely. And, Tad, you have a great staff here, and it’s Will Rogers 24/7 around this place.
Tad Jones: It really is, and we’re in this theater we have. We just renovated a couple of years ago. It is one of the first projects that we did when we merged with the Oklahoma Historical Society was a fundraising effort. And this is just a beautiful new theater that we have to share Will Rogers.
Thompson: Well, wonderful. Well, let’s get into our topic tonight. And, you know, Will Rogers, really if we wanted to be here, we could talk about Will Rogers for the next four days and probably not run out of things to say. He’s such an important part of the history of the Cherokee Nation, the history of Indian Territory, the history of Oklahoma, the entertainment industry, you name it, journalism, the movie industry, and he is someone who is still known as “Oklahoma’s favorite son.” And so I’m just thrilled that we have an opportunity to talk about him here tonight. And Bob, I thought it would be a great place to start if we could go back to that time of the 1870s in Indian Territory, in the Cherokee Nation. Will Rogers was born in November of 1879. So give us a sense of what is this place where we’re at right now? What is it like in the 1870s and 1880s when Will Rogers is born? Set the scene for us, if you could.
Blackburn: When I give speeches about Will Rogers, I start off by calling him a Cherokee cowboy. And you have to understand, he’s not all cowboy/Cherokee. But to understand Will Rogers, you have to understand the time and place he was born, raised in the value of the Cherokee people, the values of the western ranching industry, all became who we know is Will Rogers, but the time he grew up in was the time of change. The Civil War in the Indian Territory was more destructive in terms of death and destruction of property per capita than in the state of Virginia. More death and destruction here. It was devastating for the Cherokee Nation. The progress that had been made since forced removal to building a new nation with a constitution, legislative branch, executive branch, judicial branch. The economic gains, the plantations, all came tumbling down during the Civil War. Well, in the Reconstruction Era, you can plug in Clem Rogers, Will’s dad, into this story.
He had served in a Cherokee regiment during the war, had risen to the rank of captain, was at many of the 80 engagements fought in Oklahoma, or the Indian Territory at the time, and he had to start over. The house he had built in the Cooweescoowee District before the war was burned to the ground. He lost all of his stock, his horses. Ended up having to work as a merchant, a teamster for a couple of years after the war. Raised a little money, found some sponsors. Moved back to the Cooweescoowee District, started his ranch again and started there. Built a log cabin. Later expanded to a dog trot cabin, the Cherokee Nation still operates that today, and he started building his ranch. Well, ranches in the 1860s and ‘70s had an advantage. This is the age of urbanization in Chicago, in New York City and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with the demand for beef. Well, the beef was, everyone knows, the story of beef coming out of Texas, the Longhorns being driven up the Chisholm Trail, first the Shawnee Trail, then the Chisholm, then the Great Western. Well that created a market for Cherokee cowboys and ranchers to feed the cattle on this good soil that you have in the Cherokee Nation to drive them to market, the Texas Road, also called the Shawnee Trail, to market or taking into markets that, you know, farther west. But there was a market for those cattle.
And then while the territory, especially in Cooweescoowee District, was growing from this economic surge in the cattle business, here come the railroads. Part of the reconstruction treaty in 1866 was that the Cherokee Nation and the other Five Tribes had to allow the railroads to come through their territory. The first one to open would have been the Katy in 1871. Then the Santa Fe comes in, builds through the Cooweescoowee District. It makes it more profitable for people like Clem Rogers who didn’t own the land. He could use a land, communally owned, but he had the cattle. He had the workers, put the cattle on the trains, move them to market, made a lot of money. One of the richest men in the Cherokee Nation at the time, and raising his family, and here comes the baby of the family. Kind of the darling young man that everyone adored. Older sisters who just adored him, Sallie and Maud especially. And he’s growing up the son of one of the richest men in the territory. As a cowboy, he learns to rope and ride, do the things that cowboys do at the time. Not much of a student in school. He had several chances. And of course, obviously intelligent. No telling what his IQ must have been, but he would rather be on the back of a horse out in the in the wild, riding, roping, getting to know the cowboys, tapping into that cowboy humor that was there, tapping into Cherokee humor, which is very unique indeed. There are books about Indian humor as different from other cultural things of the time. Well, Will is tapping into all of these experiences and growing up with the privileges that he had. He’s meeting people. He’s learning, a good singer, can a little bit play the piano. This was the age when there’s, of course, no radio, no movies, and so entertainment in the house would be a piano. Someone bring in the latest sheet music coming down Tin Pan Alley. Well, Will became a real consumer of music, and he loved to sing, and he would meet people around the territory.
Thompson: And he could play the piano.
Blackburn: He could play the piano, and he met Betty, who could play even better. Courted her, his life in and out. And when he finally decides to tour the world and see another side of life, as the nation was changing. Because in 1898, Curtis Act was passed by Congress that forces the Five Tribes, including the Cherokee Nation, to start the countdown to allotment of lands and severalty leading to statehood. Tried to abolish tribal government. It really never goes away. Of course it’s been resurrected since, but he’s in this time period of transition of allotment, where Clem is no longer going to have access to 10,000 acres. Times are changing. And Will, as this adventurous spirit, the Cherokees and their cousins the Delaware, had always been world travelers. It was common for a Cherokee like, Jesse Chisholm or a Delaware like Black Beaver to be in Washington, DC, one month, two months later, they’re out on the frontiers of California. They had this sense of mobility and what’s over the next ridge. Well, Will decides to explore, goes out on a grand tour, gets in with a Wild West show. That starts his show business career, but he really never gets the Cherokee cowboy out of his blood.
He always thought that wealth meant land, and ranchers all think that. And you know ranchers don’t want any more land unless it touches the land they already own. And that’s the way Will was that he would always invest in land. He always thought he had come back to Claremore, retire, be the gentleman rancher that his dad had been when his dad retired really here in Claremore as a banker and a merchant, as well as a cattle dealer. And he was that Cherokee cowboy through life, and you cannot look at Will Rogers as just another humorist or another entertainer. If you take away the Cherokee cowboy part of the story, it doesn’t make sense. But if you look into that background and follow that all the way through his life, very much a Cherokee cowboy rooted in the Cooweescoowee District with his heart in Claremore and Chelsea, and the places that he really called home. He would never change.
Thompson: Tad, it’s always a surprise when I’m giving tours at the State Capitol, and I tell people that Rogers County is named for Clem Rogers and not for Will Rogers, and it just speaks to the kind of man and the influence he had.
Jones: Absolutely, and he was very involved with the Cherokee Nation, very involved with the state of Oklahoma becoming a state. He was one of the delegates in Oklahoma City to the Constitutional Convention. The story I’ve heard, whether it’s true or not, is that he did not want anything named after him. And he was sick one day, but he was the elder statesman, and when he was sick that day, they decided to name the county after him. So whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter. We think we heard it, and we like it. And so, we think that it’s true. But that’s how we got the name Rogers County. Everybody comes here and thinks that this county was named after Will Rogers, but it was not. It was named after Clem.
Thompson: Who were his early influences because as he was growing up on the ranch, I’ve read there was a Black couple that were Uncle Dan Walker and Aunt Babe Walker that were really influential in his raising. His mother was sick a lot, and so they end up kind of taking him under the wing. Dan Walker teaches him really those early years how to rope. He said he could rope a turkey at four years old. So talk about those early influences on him.
Jones: Well, yeah, Dan Walker for sure is a Freedmen, and he was a good roper. And Will Rogers saw Dan Walker roping, and that’s where he had the passion to learn the rope. And so he was learning a little bit of the tricks and learning how to rope and learning how to take care of the cattle, and that was a big influence. Of course, his mom was also a big influence, and people say that that’s where he gets his humor was from his mom. She was also an entertainer, so she loved entertaining as well. Dad, you know, dad was not too proud of Will at times because, Will, you know, he was a businessman, but Will still looked up to his dad. But Will, he liked to be his own person. He liked to goof around, and his dad tried numerous times getting him in schools to kind of get him on the straight and narrow. But as you mentioned, he was high energy, and he loved bouncing off the walls, but he definitely learned a lot from Dan Walker and from his mom as a big influence. Of course, his sisters too. They spoiled him rotten. Women never do that to their their little brothers, right? The big sisters, but they spoiled Will Rogers. And that was a good thing.
Thompson: Jennifer, how much, when you were growing up, did your family lean into knowing and understanding who your very famous great-grandfather was?
Rogers: Very little. Extremely, very little. We grew up, I really didn’t know who he was growing up. We never talked much about him. I remember coming back here as a kid, probably around nine, ten years old. We would come back for some Will Rogers days, when Bob and Paula Love lived in the house that Tad is in now. And I remember, you know, one year it snowed, and we rolled down the hill, but we still at that time didn’t have a clue who Will Rogers was. And I share the storym it wasn’t until 1991, my grandfather, Jim, who’s Will’s youngest son, took all of us to New York for the opening of The Will Rogers Follies on Broadway. And I sat there and had absolutely no idea who he was until that, at that play. And I looked at my grandfather, and I said, I want to learn more. And that’s when I caught the fever and started shadowing him, and led me to where I am today. But we grew up, it was never a household name. We really didn’t know who he was. Had no idea.
Thompson: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. And kudos for you too for picking up the baton and running with it to keep his spirit alive.
Rogers: I joke and say I didn’t have much to do with being born into the family, but it is something that, I just feel it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a passion. And I’m really, really, really happy to be doing it.
Thompson: Bob, Will’s mother died of typhoid fever when he was ten years old, and he said, “My own mother died when I was ten years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can’t remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.” That seems to be a pretty important moment in his life, because at that point, he kind of, you know, his dad is this important businessman in the territory. You know, his sisters are getting older and marrying off. And so, I think, as you mentioned, his dad sends him off to these schools to try to educate him. They’re boarding schools. One is a military school in Missouri, but it just never quite takes, does it?
Blackburn: No, I think Will was always looking for companions. He had that sense of loneliness, of loss that was there deep in his soul somewhere. And feeling alone out on that ranch with his dad probably would have been a lonely experience probably. You know, the role of fathers have changed over the years. At one point, you’re supposed to be tough and a disciplinarian and kind of distant. Mama was going to take care of the kids at home, so that must have been a lonely period for him. And but I think his love of humanity and other people and really looking at everyone as a human being that he could relate to. He never looked down to anybody, never looked up to the highest people in politics or industry as any different from the common man. So when we think of his spirit of humanity, and that we’re all related and equal, in many ways come from those years when he was looking for those friends. And so if someone was willing to go out on a jaunt with him, he would go. Everyone in his life seemed to kind of adopt him and recognize that he was reaching out to others. So whether it was Ziegfeld or it was Texas Jack or the Wild West shows or the the producers of the movies, they felt this affinity for Will, and I think it was partly because he was so open to being a friend and being a companion. And some of his closest friends, he would take care of them in sickness and do things for them. Loaning money to people. So I think those early years of the sense of abandonment and loneliness would affect him for the rest of his life.
Thompson: Tad, his father, when he was he heard about his escapades at the Kemper Military School in Missouri, he used to pay fellow students to run down the hallway, and he would rope them, and his father would hear about these things that were going on. And he said, “I’m awfully worried about Willie. It looks like he isn’t interested in doing anything except for showing off.” And his father didn’t quite understand his natural tendencies of wanting to be that showman and kind of being out in front of everybody.
Jones: Well, there’s kids in the audience. They’re trying to get to convince to sit still in school, and sometimes they don’t. And Will did not. He’s kind of that, I guess you, a bad example today of not sitting still in school was Will Rogers. He got tons of demerits because he was always being the class clown. That’s where he partly got to practice his humor is making his classmates laugh, roping the girls, roping the guys, being a part of all that, and he just was so full of energy and just making people laugh and so. Well, he went to the military school to get disciplined. And guess what? He got 100 demerits. He was then, you know, was kicked out. And so that was just the way he is. And that’s what, in his life, he just had so much energy, and they just had a hard time keeping up with him. And I’m glad they just let him go when he when was older. He was traveling the world. Betty barely was able to keep him in the house. He was always traveling. It was that energy that he had and wasn’t held back in school. He just went and did it. And yes, it was frustrating for his dad. He wanted that discipline person, but that wasn’t who Will was.
Thompson: One of the things I love about Will Rogers is he really had a heart for his fellow man, and he really did. As Bob said, he loved being around the company of other people, but he was a compassionate person as well, and his father tried to give him the ranch to keep him at home and to try to give him a base of stability. And there was one instance that I read about where one of their steers escaped their property and ended up on another man’s land, and the steer was eating the corn. And so the other farmer, he shot and killed the steer, and so Will got really upset, brought his friend with him, and they were going to go confront this man. Well, the man’s wife ends up feeding them, taking them in for a few days, and when they were riding back, Will said, “When I saw how little those poor folks had, I wish they had killed two steers. I didn’t lose that steer. I traded it for a little human happiness. There are millions of steers in the world, but human happiness is kind of scarce.” And Jennifer, what a man to look up to. A man who had that kind of compassion, who could change that anger into feeling for his fellow man.
Rogers: I think that’s what made him so unique and so special is that he was open minded, and we get into how he was friends with Republicans and Democrats and all mankind because he didn’t judge people, and I think that’s one of the number one things that I get asked about today. If he was here, you know, he he listened to both sides, and he didn’t prejudge. Can I just change the subject for one second to that? Hopefully you guys will laugh, because we want to make you laugh. But I have a grandson. He’ll turn 10 on March 3, and and he ropes. My son-in-law, they’re in ranching, and he ropes, and he thinks he’s the next Will Rogers. All he wanted for Christmas was a real Will Rogers rope. That’s all he wanted. He just thinks I can go into the vault and grab the rope and give it to him. And Woody, dear Woody, a docent here, made him a rope. So at Christmas, he’s not doing well in school. He’s in fourth grade, and he’s struggling, and my daughter’s just about to send him to military school. That subject came up.
(laughter)
Rogers: Well, at dinner this Christmas, grandma here said, well, you know, I know somebody that didn’t make it past much, didn’t get through school. And I started telling Wyatt, my grandson, about how Will Rogers didn’t finish school. That did not go over too well at the dinner table. So needless to say, I’m like, oh, he’ll be fine. He can just go rope. And my daughter’s like, mom, you cannot tell him he can’t finish school. And I’m like, he’ll be fine. He can move to Claremore with me. It’d be great. So anyway, I just think that that’s so funny that there’s one, the lineage continues, you know, and he’s like, I don’t want to finish school. I just want to be a cowboy. So it’s so interesting that I’ve got a grandson and I, it’s just weird. I don’t know how, I can relate, I guess is what I’m trying to say. So anyway, I just thought you all enjoy that. So we’ll just follow the chronicles of Wyatt and see where he ends up someday.
Thompson: That’s wonderful. And, you know, after, Will entered the steer roping competition here in Claremore in 1899, and he it was really one of his first times he’s in front of an audience. And he said, “Once you are a showman, you are plumb ruined for manual labor ever again.” So, who knows?
Rogers: That’s true. Hey, you never know.
Thompson: Who knows? Well, I want to talk about the courtship with Betty. Betty Blake from Rogers, Arkansas, and I’ll throw this out to whoever wants to talk about this a little bit more. But this was love at first sight for Will. For Betty, not so much. There was several years of convincing that had to be done. So who wants to talk about this, what I would call a somewhat turbulent courtship in their lives?
Rogers: Me?
Thompson: Whoever, whoever. Wow. Well, you know, it’s what’s so interesting when I do events like this is, I don’t, everybody thinks that I sat around the campfire and my grandfather told me stories, and it’s just the opposite. If I could have him for ten minutes, I don’t even know where I would start asking. You know, we take things for granted, but when we sat in the audience that night and, it was May 2, 1991, watching The Will Rogers Follies, and when the curtain came down, I was sitting next to my grandfather and I looked over and the tears were streaming down his face, and I will never forget him saying, “I wish mama could have lived long enough to see this.”
He said because without my mother, there never would have been a Will Rogers. He said that over and over and over, and you know, I’m very involved at the ranch in California, and I would spend so much time there, and he was never there. I mean, you stop and think about how difficult their marriage must have been because he was never home. And, I mean, you can read his daily journals and know how often he was traveling, and not just over in Arkansas or wherever, he was across the country. And so she really was the strong bones behind the relationship and kept the family intact. And the neatest thing that I am so proud of is I knew Will Jr., I knew my Aunt Mary, and I was extremely close to my grandfather, Jim. They were the most humble, down-to-earth people you would ever know. And coming from the most famous man in the world, that just doesn’t happen. And my grandfather always said that was because of his mother
Blackburn: And Trait, I would say that if they had had a conversation before the wedding, this would have, the way it would have gone. Betty would have called Will and said, now Will I love you with all my heart. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I don’t need you, that I will be okay without you. So always remember that. And if you read her book about Will, and for our listeners out there, if they want to go get one book to start learning about Will Rogers, get the book by Betty Rogers. It’s fabulous. It’s still in print. And we have copies here at the memorial. The History Center has copies, but in that book you can see that she was part of his life. She supported him. She built him up when he was feeling a little low, and he had problems in life. He lost all of his money after creating his own little company to make some silent movies and basically was land poor. He owned land but no cash. She was there with him, saying we can get through this, finding ways to go forward. And like Jennifer said, she was that rock at home they could always come back to, and he could get his beans.
One of my famous artifacts that was in the ranch house out in California was a chafing dish in a little breezeway. He always kept a pot of beans hot during the day. So if he was out roping and riding the horses, came in, he could get a little bowl of beans. You know, one of my favorite stories about life. He was back visiting, it was either Maud or Sallie, I can’t remember which, but, he went back to LA and, all the reporters said, where are you been? I’ve been back to see my sister. And he said, well, how did you do? He said, oh, I ate great, because he loved to eat. And he said, she fixed the best beans with fatback that had come from the hogs that his brother-in-law had slaughtered and smoked and they said, well, what did she make for dessert? He said, well, she made the greatest peach cobbler, fresh peaches. But they didn’t have any, because if I’d had room for cobbler, I would have ate more beans.
(laughter)
Blackburn: But Betty would feed him, knew his tendencies because when he was The Ziegfeld Follies, he not only did the evening show, he did the after-midnight show. So he’d be out until 2, 3 o’clock at night, and then he might end up going, you know, finding somebody wanted to have a beer. And it’s been another two or three hours. Well, Betty, you can imagine, how would a wife respond to that? But she never seemed to lose that faith in him and the love that she felt, and she remained that rock that kept him going from each phase of his life as they went. And of course, she wanted to come back to Claremore as well and still owned this land where we’re sitting today when he passed away.
Thompson: For eight years, Will tries to get Betty. Eight years. They meet in 1900. He stumbles into the train station, Oologah. Betty’s visiting her sister from Rogers, Arkansas. He stumbles into the train station, takes one look at her, and just completely loses it, doesn’t say a word and goes right back out the door, and then they start talking a little bit. They start writing letters back and forth, but she was not impressed at all with his chosen profession. She had really no respect for the show business life. And we have to understand today, you know, if you marry a movie star, you’re pretty, you’re in good shape. You know, movie stars are very elevated in our society. Entertainers back in those days were not as elevated on the social scale as we see them today. So she was kind of a society lady, and she wasn’t having much of it. He did say when he married her in 1908, “The day I roped Betty, I did the star performance of my life.” But Tad, it was Betty who was standing backstage at one of his, one of his events. And Will Rogers had started trying to, he would form his own companies, kind of like these mini versions of a Wild West Show with performers and horses and all of these things. And one of the stage managers was talking to Betty backstage one time and said, you know what? He needs to get rid of all this stuff. He just needs to be Will Rogers. And Betty was very influential in helping to guide him to being a solo act.
Jones: She was, and she knew Will read all the time. Will always had newspapers with him. And she said, you know, why don’t you just talk about the news of the day? You’re reading all the time. And Will was doing trick ropes, and but you know what, there could be other trick ropers that could show up. So even though Will was a big star with trick roping, there were others that can do that as well and could start filling up that this is very popular. But when he starts talking while he’s trick roping and talking about the news of the day, that set him on a whole ‘nother level, because now every show is different. It’s not just a trick rope and him doing the big crinoline or the wedding ring or whatever. Now they’re coming in to hear which one of us is going to get talked about in the audience. Oh, he read the newspaper, and the mayor’s in town, and he’s going to, and if you get mentioned in a Will Rogers talk, then you’re the big time. You know, it’s kind of like if you get mentioned on Saturday Night Live today, oh, you’ve made it. Well, same thing. If you’re in the audience, Will would pick you out. And he’d go, oh Keith Austin, I saw you the other day and read about your story. And all of a sudden, every show is new. And so people kept coming back because Will Rogers is going to have something new to say every single night. So the trick roping then just became a side act, and his talking is what made him the big star.
Thompson: Yeah. And one of his reviews, right after he started doing that, said, “The accomplished Mr. Rogers not only delights the audience with his amazing dexterity with the lasso, but even more with his running fire of small talk.” And Tad’s actually absolutely right. Once again, you know, I give tours at the State Capitol from time to time. And of course, we have the big portrait by Charles Banks Wilson right there in the fourth-floor rotunda. And I always love stopping to talk about Will Rogers. And I tell them, because, you know, you have to put this thing in context for people. And I tell them that Will Rogers would create his act based on the news of the day. But also remember this, there were multiple newspapers that would come out during different parts. There would be a morning newspaper. Some would put out an afternoon paper or an evening paper, and he would read the newspaper preceding each act and create a whole new set of dialogue for each act. He might have three different acts in a day that he would create those stories for. Now, today, if you turn on late night talk shows, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, what are they going to do? They’re going to come out, and for the first ten minutes, they’re going to tell jokes based on the news of the day. Who invented that? Will Rogers invented that. So that’s our tie in that entertainment world. We’re still doing that today, whether it’s The Daily Show or whatever. But it started with Will Rogers.
Jones: And one thing to say about that too, all the people today, they have their own writers. Will Rogers did it all by himself, and that is just amazing to think about.
Blackburn: And too, a lot of people think that was ad-lib and that was part of the beauty and the attraction of his act. And at first, he started using some of these quips that he would prepare in advance for when a trick roping act failed. So if he missed a rope, he would he could tell a joke about it, and he knew would get a laugh. And so a lot of it came out of filling that time, but he was always prepared. He would take notes, and he would have prepared script, and he knew where he was going to use it in the act. So very deliberate, very structured. But it just seemed like it was ad-lib. It came out with that Western accent so easily, and I think that was part of his appeal as well.
Thompson: I think it’s funny that at one point, Betty offered to help clean up his grammar so that he could enunciate better, pronounce his words. You know, I just read “kinder” was one, you know, get into where you pronounce correctly. And he said, are you trying to take food off of our plate? This is our bread and butter here. This is how we’re making our money. Everybody wanted that folksy, homespun humor with those observations that he was so good at. I want to turn our attention. And we talked about it a little bit, but let’s talk a little bit about him as a family man. Their first son, William, was born October 20, 1911. And unfortunately, that very same day, Clem Rogers dies as well. Clem never got a chance to meet his first grandson, but let’s talk about him as a family man. And they go on to have four kids, correct? Correct me if I’m wrong, but they go on to have four kids. And so what kind of a dad was he? Was he a fun dad, a strict dad? I think I know the answer, but I’ll let you guys answer from the family.
Rogers: Okay. Again, you know, I wish I had more stories from my grandfather, but one that I overheard him mention in interview after interview was when he came home to the ranch in California. He was dad. He was not Will Rogers. Now, this goes back in a time where we didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have cell phones. But my grandfather always said he would come home, and he was not Will Rogers. And we all have seen all the photos of him with the kids at the ranch and playing polo and trick roping and riding the horses. And my grandfather always said, man, we had the best string of horses. There were no kids that had better horses than us. He said my dad made sure we always had the best polo horses, we had the best western horses, and what limited time he was home, he was a family man, and my grandfather always bragged about that and said he was he was 100% dad when he was home.
Thompson: And with that, let’s take a quick break.
Announcer: Ready. Set. Explore! The annual #ExploreOHS travel contest is back, and it kicks off on March 1. Your mission? Visit as many of our museums and historic sites as possible during the month of March. Compete against fellow adventurers, rack up visits, and claim the top spot! What’s at stake? An OHS prize pack plus your choice of naming a baby bison at Pawnee Bill Ranch or an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of OKPOP in Tulsa. Start mapping your route across Oklahoma now, and get ready for a March full of history, adventure, and fun! Visit okhistory.org/exploreOHS to see the rules and learn how to share your entries.
(music fades out)
Thompson: And we’re back. We were talking about Will as a family man and what kind of person he was. And from what I read, he taught his kids how to ride and rope early on as well, just like he did. Correct?
Jones: Yeah. There’s some great pictures that we have of them, and one of them is riding around at the ranch in California, where all the kids are standing on horses, roping, and that is just amazing. I’m not going to do that with my kids. We’re looking at horses, but that looks so dangerous. And you see them, they were right in the middle of it, and they got pictures of him. I got pictures of him swimming in the swimming pool, and everything he did, he did with his kids and just had a great time with them.
Rogers: You know, it was a very athletic family, if you stop and think about it. And that’s one of the things that we could talk for hours about just alone on his athletic ability because what the shape, the physical shape he had to be in to do the stunts that he did. Riding horseback is a physical, it requires, polo alone, requires such an incredible strength in your core. And then he rode Western, and he gave lessons to his friends and his family. All of those kids were extremely athletic in the sense of being in horsemanship. My grandfather rode right up until just a couple of years before he passed. And, so, you know, I just like to share that because I don’t think people knew how athletic Will Rogers had to have been to do the tricks that he did. I mean, they’re extremely physical.
Thompson: Let’s go back just a little bit because tracing Will Rogers’ path to the movies from going, he starts, you know, South Africa when he is there in Johannesburg, Texas Jack offers him a role in his Wild West Show that he has in South Africa. And that’s the first time he’s mentioned as the Cherokee Kid the best lasso guy in the entire world. And he later goes on, and he performs in that role for several years and then moves on into vaudeville and The Ziegfeld Follies. But in 1918, he gets an offer by Sam Goldwyn. And if that name sounds familiar, if you know MGM, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, very early pioneer in the movie industry, and he gets an opportunity to come out to California and have a part in the movie Laughing Bill Hyde, and he turns it down. He says, I’m no actor. This is a foreign concept to me. But Goldwyn recognized that he was a very charismatic personality, and he recognized his talent, but it took him a while to come around to the movies, didn’t it, Bob?
Blackburn: It did, Trait, but he played the same role all the time— Will Rogers. And I think the humanity came through, his facial expressions, you know, in the silent movies. And two, I think this Western persona was important even in those silents when it wasn’t in a cowboy, you know, movie on horseback, he still had that image as the Western hero and, you know, down on his luck, a hobo going here or there. But, you know, the kindness would come out. People need to remember that at the time that he started his movie career and in vaudeville even, this was the age when the cowboy mythology really begins growing, and Wister writes the novel The Virginian. This is the age of Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington and the art world and Americans who are now being urbanized more and more all the time and the growth of the cities, want something, a mythology that binds us together in America, and part of that is the frontier of land that binds us together. But this mythology of the cowboy as it represents the best in who we are, you know, brave, courageous, honest, hard day’s work. You know, that mythology starts growing at the time, and Will is there. That becomes an image of that Western man, this Cherokee cowboy, and he plays the role, and it’s a natural for him. And like I said, he liked people. And he was good at ad-libbing, even when he would get to the point in his career where there was a script he was supposed to memorize, he might read it, and then just put it aside and kind of remember the words, but he was speaking like Will Rogers, not like the character he was playing, whether it was a county judge or a steamboat captain. It was Will Rogers.
Jones: And one of my favorite stories about Will before he went out to California is he had shook the hands of Mr. Florence Ziegfeld that I was going to do your show. And they wanted him out in California right then. But Will would not leave until he finished the contract, which was just a handshake. Today you could just bolt. I don’t need to stay here. I got a contract and I can make a lot more money in California. But he had shook his hand, and that was the contract. And I just appreciate that about Will that he honored that.
Thompson: Well, and interestingly enough, Ziegfeld wanted to fire Will back when his show wasn’t as successful and until Betty told him to start doing a solo show and to start talking about the news of the day, and then Will started making a lot of money for Mr. Ziegfeld. And so I think he was probably sorry to see him go, but yes, that speaks to his character, for sure, about what kind of person he was. Now, Tad, we’re sitting in this great theater here at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum. And as we look on the walls, we’re surrounded by these great movie posters, and you all have screened several of these movies here in this theater. But tell us a little bit about some of the pictures that he appeared in over the course of his movie career, and we’d love to hear if there’s a favorite that you have.
Jones: Yes, and Bob is right. He played himself in every movie. He didn’t have a wide range, like you can see, like a Gary Oldman today, that’s all over in all his acting. Will was just always himself, and that’s what made him attractive to the fans. They wanted to come in and watch, and he did a number of movies and went to silents. He did 50 silent movies, but it wasn’t until the talkies when he became more famous because then people could hear what he had to say. Like Bob said, he would ad-lib, and they would always say his ad-libs were better than what was on the written script. And so he would do that. And then, you know, the Great Depression hit, and he was, this is also when he started his talkies in 1929, Great Depression hits, and he’s making these movies that are caring about people. I mean, there’s scenes of him cutting out his certificates of the stock market into little people because they’re worthless, you know, and people could relate to that. And I think that was something that told about his movies that they were, that these were movies about people that were struggling, and they saw that in Will Rogers, the biggest star.
And I don’t know, my favorite one is Life Begins at 40 over there. That one is, to me, one of the funniest ones. But I’ll tell you one thing that I love about Will and about Claremore is he was the biggest star in the movies in 1934, And that movie Steamboat Around the Bend, he named his boat the Claremore Queen. Now imagine The Avengers movie today, and the Avengers’ ship is the Claremore Queen. Well, that’s what that was like for Will in Claremore and Oklahoma. I mean, he is promoting to the entire country Claremore in his steamboat from that movie. So he loved Claremore. He talked about, his first character in talking movie was They Had to See Paris, and he played a character from Claremore. So there’s a guy that took Claremore right to Hollywood with him.
Blackburn: Trait, my favorite one has to be Roping Fool, though, is that he created his own company, and he knew about his own skills, and he was very much into new technology even, and they did it in slow motion. And so they had enough frames where it would still be visible in slow motion. But he filmed himself roping, doing all the tricks he had done on stage. But one of my favorite scenes, he’s in bed, and he sees a mouse, and he gets out of the bed, and he takes a little bitty rope, and he ropes a mouse. You know, as a kid, I saw that, and I tried that. Of course you can’t do it.
(laughing) But, I think, you know, Roping Fool has to be a classic. Nothing else like it. And we have, don’t we have the entire version of that? I think was preserved only about 10 to 20 percent of the old silents have been preserved.
Jones: And that film has influenced so many people in the trick roping all over the world. That film has touched people. You can. That’s one of the few you can see on the internet and YouTube, and people all over the world have got a passion for trick roping because of that.
Thompson: Jennifer, do you have a favorite or one that resonates with you?
Rogers: I love Life Begins at 40. When you said that, years ago, when I started getting involved in all of this, I had to go to the dentist one day, and they said, if you have a movie, bring a movie. And I brought a DVD of Too Busy to Work, and you they put those headphones on you, and they put the movie in. They don’t do this anymore, technology. And I was laughing so hard with my mouth pried open. And the dentist was like, what movie are you watching? I like (inaudible) so I had everybody in the whole dentist office like now knowing, they had no idea who Will Rogers was. I’m like, it was so funny, but Too Busy to Work. It’s just, it’s hysterical. He’s funny. Yeah, yeah. He’s funny. And Life Begins at 40, and we got to meet, in Mr. Skitch, that has a personal touch for me because I got to meet the twin ladies who played the little girls in the movie, and they came here to the museum and gave us the script from that movie. They were in their early 90s or late 80s then. and so that has a personal interest to have a tie to have met somebody that made the movie with him and remembered him. That was pretty cool.
Jones: And in his very first talkie, They Had to See Paris, the opening shot was from downtown Claremore. He sent the crew down for just a quick shot of downtown Claremore, and the dirt road that was there. So that’s kind of neat that again, he promoted Claremore nationally.
Thompson: You know, that’s a really interesting point too, because one of the things we love about Will Rogers in Oklahoma, he never forgot where he was from. He never went on to bigger and better things in wherever, in New York or California. And he was one of those people who got too big for his a upbringing. And I think that’s one of the reasons he still resonates with us today is because he still feels like one of us. Right?
Blackburn: Well, and too, I got to know Clem Rogers, excuse me, Clem McSpadden, Before he passed away. Clem was from Chelsea, was I think Sallie’s son, and so it was Will’s nephew. Well, I would talk to Clem McSpadden about his cousin. And you could tell that that Will had an impact on him. And one time he told me, he said when he was a little boy, Will came home to Chelsea and gave him a child saddle so he could learn to ride as a little boy. And of course, his dad was the foreman of the ranch that Will maintained for many years, and he treated family members like that, and he loved it. He idolized his sisters. And the McSpadden clan, there are a lot of McSpaddens still around Chelsea. Parts of that family’s also in Muskogee and Tahlequah. But the McSpadden band out of there, they’re all related to Will Rogers. And he would come home and spend time and just really enjoyed being home, and he wanted the rest of the country to know about it. So in his daily telegrams, he would write about going home. And so people felt like this was a real country boy that had roots in the West. And it wasn’t fake and wasn’t put on, and he was sincere enough in his performance, people were attracted to him.
Thompson: Tad, Will Rogers was alive during some of the most seminal events in American history, World War I, the Great Depression. And he became known for being able to poke fun at some of the most important people in the world, President Woodrow Wilson, President Warren Harding, and they loved it. They absolutely loved it. And, you know, sometimes I think we think of Will’s humor as being innocent or, you know, but he had some biting humor. It could have a little barb with it. Now, of course, in his style, it might have softened it a little bit, but he was able to poke fun at some of the most important people of the world. He starts writing a newspaper column where he does that in 1922. So talk about his relationship with the world’s most powerful people.
Jones: Yeah, he knew several presidents and, matter of fact, his horse, he named Teddy after Teddy Roosevelt, had a tremendous amount of respect. And I think the thing that made him, especially in politics, that made Will so amazing is he never meant anything personal. You know, today they can make everything just personal, but he never did. He always talked about the institution of Congress or the presidency, but he always had a friendship, and he could talk to anybody, and it’s no joke. And our staff does a great job of this, is talking about to kids that the number one thing about Will Rogers, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” And he said, “I’ve joked about all the prominent men in my time, but I’ve never met a man I didn’t like.” And we stress that because he liked everybody, and it’s okay to joke about things, but you want to like everybody. And he did, and everybody knew that.
So when he would write his newspaper columns or when he was on the radio, you know, even, Hoover had him. Hoover needed an audience. This is at the Great Depression’s beginning, and Hoover needed an audience for his radio program. He calls Will Rogers up and says, will you open for me? You know, and so he could get an audience. Of course, nobody knew what Hoover said. They all wanted to know what Will Rogers had to say. But that, and then FDR having to speak to him or speak at his when he was announcing his run for the presidency. So Will Rogers had a tremendous, he was so respected, spoke at both Republican and Democrat conventions, but he just treated everybody right, and there was nothing that was personal. in what he said, and that’s what made him so unique.
Thompson: Yeah. You know, once again, when I’m telling people about Will Rogers, trying to make that connection to today, you talk about a man who could walk into some of the most important places of the world and be welcomed by everybody, not only that, be known by everybody. And I try to, you know, try to make that connection. Who is that person today, you know, who is so famous that they could, no matter where they go in the world, people not only immediately recognize them, but are immediately glad that they’re there? And that’s only a handful of people. I mean, my daughter’s 14, so Taylor Swift is one of those people in her world, but, you know, worldwide and famous and trying to make that connection. But he was someone who everybody loved.
Jones: Absolutely.
Thompson: So, let’s get a little bit into, as we’re starting to sort of wrap up this part of our discussion, but he’s friends, he loves aviation. He is friends with a man named Wiley Post, who’s from Maysville, Oklahoma, by way of Texas. Wiley Post is a pilot. Wiley Post is the first person to fly solo around the world. He is the person who discovers the jet stream by experimenting with high-altitude flight, and he and Will were friends. And in 1935, Wiley wants to take an experimental aircraft and go fly around Alaska and Russia, and he invites his friend Will. Bob, I’m sure Will jumped on that opportunity because of that love of adventure that he’s had his whole life.
Blackburn: Well, adventure and mobility, goes back to his Cherokee heritage that you see in so many Cherokee adventures, but Will always loved technology. He always had the newest car. He loved to drive fast. That was one of the complaints that some of his friends had. Well, we just drove out into the desert or drove down to, you know, some little town, and he drove fast, and he wanted to go places. Well, he also then became fascinated with travel by air. And fortunately for Will, when he was really developing his persona as an entertainer, it was the golden age of aviation. And until after World War I, it was a dangerous way. No one wanted to fly from here to there because you’re likely to die. Coming out of World War I, with all of the surplus Jennys that are out there on the market, people like Wiley Post could afford to buy an airplane and learn. But what made it safer and better is that there was a reason to push technology because of the petroleum industry. All of these big companies, Phillips, Conoco had been Marland Oil. They’re all developing aviation fuel. Well they’re promoting that, so they’re promoting aviators to go higher, faster, farther, win races, promote. So it’s like the decals you see on a NASCAR car today. It was promoting free enterprise. And so you had people putting money into airplanes, they’re getting better, faster all the time. The military starts research, and Wiley is there to take advantage of all of that, and Will believes, he’s an advocate for aviation. He says it is safe. You know, between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Braniff Airline starts in 1928 at $12.50 for a one-way ticket to go on a Ford tri-motor. That was the age Will lived in, and he was taking these flights. He says, yes, it’s safe, let’s do it. Let’s have mail contracts, and he knew that that was the newest technology, and he was not afraid of that. And I think that that kind of paralleled his adventurous spirit and his wanderlust. He just wanted to know what was over the next horizon. Who can I meet over there in aviation? And Wiley Post gave him an opportunity to do that.
Thompson: Tad, can you walk us through August 15, 1935, and what happened that day?
Jones: Yeah, well Wiley was, they were flying through Alaska. They had made several different stops. And Will also joked when he got out, one of the plane stops. He said, anybody here from Claremore? You know, he’s still promoting that, still writing his daily column while they’re traveling through Alaska, and he just absolutely loved it. And then, so the last stop was going to be in Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point. And Wiley takes off, and they made a promise not to fly in the fog, is what I’ve been told. But there was a foggy day, and they wanted to get there. Well Wiley got lost in the fog. And so they see a lagoon, and they stopped to get directions, and they asked, and they say it’s just up about 12 miles or whatever up the way. So they both get back in the plane, and the plane starts to take off, and as it starts to bank, the engine dies, and it was a very shallow lagoon, and it was a very nose-heavy plane. Wiley built this plane from scratch, would have never passed any inspection, except it was Wiley Post, the guy that flew around the world twice. We’ll let him do it, and Will had total trust in him, but it was very nose-heavy. So when it turned and the engine died, there was no way to get it, and it crashed and killed both men instantly, and it was a tragic thing. And then there was a run, one of them ran to, all the way to Point Barrow to say there was a plane crash. And then the word spread throughout the world quickly about the loss of Wiley Post and Will Rogers. It was a very, very tragic day on August 15 in 1935.
Thompson: Yes. It was an Eskimo named Clare Okpeaha who saw this happen. He was out there, I think they were seal hunting, and saw this crash. Of course, this is at 8:15 in the evening, which in Alaska at that time is still well light by that point in time. And he runs the 15 miles back to Barrow, Alaska, and he tells them, hey, this crash just happened. These two men were in this crash, and they ask him, are they still alive? He says, I don’t know. All I could see was the plane crashed out in the lagoon. And so they take a boat back, takes them about three hours to get back there. And when they discover the two men, and of course, the plane was a twisted wreckage, Wiley Post’s watch had stopped at 8:15 p.m., which was the moment of the crash. And they brought them back to Barrow, Alaska, and I thought this was really poignant, that as they’re bringing the bodies back on the ship, the Eskimos are singing some of their own death songs to honor them in their own language, and I thought that was a very nice touch. Jennifer, every year here at the memorial, we honor the deaths of Will Rogers and Wiley Post, And I know you’ve been a part of those ceremonies. What does it mean to you to still continue to remember that?
Rogers: Well, I’ll, you know, just say that if it wasn’t for this museum and the staff and all the volunteers that give so effortlessly, say that five times, it wouldn’t happen, and people would not know who he was and the importance of him. And so my hat is always off to them and Tad and everybody to keep that tradition going, because we get quite a crowd that comes out to honor Will on that August 15 date and again in November when they do it in celebration of his birthday. But for a man that’s been gone as long as he’s been gone and to still pay tribute to him, it’s an honor. I mean, it’s something. I mean, I really don’t know. I mean, Elvis, I mean, people go see Elvis every year in August on the death of him, but, you know, I mean, there’s just not too many people that made that kind of an impact on the world that you can still traditionally honor them each year on that date.
Thompson: Tad, you know, I think some may wonder, be wondering and say, hey, I thought this was centered around Route 66. What did Will Rogers have to do with Route 66? What does Will Rogers have to do with Route 66, Tad?
Jones: Well, they were talking about this in 1935 when Will was still the biggest star in the world, that they oughta name this this Route 66 the Will Rogers Highway, and right after he died, they were accelerated at, Congress actually in 1936 passed a resolution that said it’s the Will Rogers Highway. And then signs that have been shown up here on the screen a time or two there, the sign that was first made, it’s on my lapel pin here, was done in 1936. And then in 1952, the movie came out, the Will Rogers story. And they did again, here’s the Will Rogers Highway. They did a drive from Chicago all the way to Santa Monica about the Will Rogers Highway, and there was more logos made and pictures done. And so Route 66 and Will Rogers Highway became one in the same, and so that’s why we promote it today. And we joke that when anybody says Route 66, remember it’s the Will Rogers Highway. There’s a congressional resolution on that. So we have a we have a Karen that does some of her own little videos that and sometimes she gets on to the director of the OHS too. She did that, if you saw that one. But we have some we have a lot of fun with that, because we’re reminding people that it was nicknamed the Will Rogers Highway as well.
Thompson: Yes, I was properly chastised by the Will Rogers Museum social media accounts.
Thompson: So yes.
Jones: Sorry about that.
(applause)
Rogers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thompson: And I do have to say, if you’re not following the Will Rogers Memorial Museum’s Instagram and Facebook pages, you should be doing that because they are continually promoting not only the museum, but the Will Rogers Highway as well, and so that’s something you should definitely be doing. But Route 66 is tied together forever and ever as being a part of the Will Rogers Highway. So as we’re getting ready to wrap up this portion of our discussion, I do want to talk about legacy. And you know, it’s important, you know, we have these museums here to learn about these people, learn about our past. But 90 years after Will Rogers has passed away, Bob, why do we still care? What’s his legacy?
Blackburn: Well, the legacy is what Will Rogers stood for, what he said, what he preached, what he lived, that you should treat everyone with respect. And I use that word very deliberately. To me, that’s one of the values of happiness. You treat each other with respect, you’re going to get it back. You’re going to have these relationships. And Will Rogers did that for those down- and-out farmers who went to the movies, paying a nickel to get in to see the movie, and they could see that Will respected others. And so I think that respect was there, and in terms of how we should treat each other today, Will Rogers is one of those examples of of a man who lived it, who taught it. And with the memorial, like when this place was opened, it was called the Will Rogers Memorial. And as a kid, I would come up here. There were only few exhibits. The dioramas were about the only interpretive story there, but it was just open, a place to come remember, but it was based on memory. So I would come in and look at the statue, of course, touch the boots as everyone does, or the shoes. And I would think of Will Rogers, and because of my family connections, I knew all about him and could still see the movies at that time in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And so the memory worked because it drew people here. Well, especially among young people.
There’s not enough memory to have a memorial. So we need to do something more to make sure his legacy lives on, and that is a new museum that we need to invest in as taxpayers in Oklahoma, as citizens who care about our community, who care about the values that that really Will Rogers preached. And so, fortunately, we’ve had a lot of very generous people say, yes, we need to remember Will Rogers, and let’s do more with new exhibits or with a, you know, an improved building that’s more accessible and new ways to learn about Will. And so that, when the Historical Society joined forces with the Will Rogers Memorial in 2016, I got to know Tad, and I’d worked with Reba Collins, Steve Gregor before that. So I’d known so many directors here, and we all knew that we had to invest and keep moving ahead and do something more, and Tad was the perfect person to be there. So we kind of got things under control, kept the support that was already there in 2016, 2018, and then developed a master plan before I retired, and Tad has continued. You jumped in there in helping. And then to me, the spirit though of this entire effort to remember Will Rogers comes back to our good friend sitting here right next to me And she really has brought the spirit of Will Rogers, and I don’t know that you’ve ever met a person you didn’t like.
Rogers: No, never.
Blackburn: I take Jennifer into a fundraising meeting, and I try to back off as quick as I can. Jennifer, you carry on, and people respond to that as people responded to Will. So we’ve got the spirit of the family, we’ve got leadership. And Tad, your leadership at the State Capitol, people of Claremore, the donors, the legislators who have voted for it, I think they understand the importance of Will Rogers that is the most outstanding person ever to come from Oklahoma. And you can argue, one of the greatest people ever from America that represents the spirit of America as we’re approaching 250 years of the American experience. And will it survive as it has? Will people continue to say, yes, we are part of a community. Let’s help each other. Let’s take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Are we going to have that Christian spirit of charity? Some people doubt it. We need to be reminded. There have been leaders in our history who said, yes, that is a way to live your life. These are the values that make us unique in America, that we should live and aspire to become. And Will Rogers can be that that image, that spirit that we need to promote and understand.
Thompson: I think we should clap for that.
Rogers: I think so too.
(cheers and applause)
Rogers: Yes, well said.
Thompson: Bob, I thought you were the best person to come out of Oklahoma.
(laughing and applause)
Rogers: Yeah!
Blackburn: Maybe in terms of balding historians who are over the hill. How about that?
(laughing)
Thompson: Jennifer, in 2024, we had a tragic event happen. And in 1930, Will and his family moved into this wonderful house in the Pacific Palisades. And a terrible fire broke out, and we lost that home. So many of his artifacts. It’s a very sad time for that history. You’ve been intimately connected with this. You’ve gone and visited the site. You’ve been talking with state officials. Can you tell us a little bit about how that affected you? And then what do we know about the future of that site going forward?
Rogers: Thank you, Trait. So yeah, January 7, 2025, the Palisades Fire unfortunately took the entire ranch, the historic stables, and the ranch house, and sadly, you know, 98% of the town itself, you know. So about 23 years ago, I co-founded the foundation that oversaw Will Rogers State Historic Park. Extremely involved at that ranch. It’s 186 acres. And it’s where Will lived at the time of his death. And, we are working, as I say, we, the family, the Rogers family, are working closely with California State Parks on what the future is. November 8, California State Parks did reopen the site for hikers, people to come and have an escape and a place to get away. They have rebuilt the trails, so people are coming and enjoying hiking. We will not, I’m fairly certain we will not be rebuilding their home. That’s an agreement between pretty much everybody involved. There will be something. I’m not sure exactly what, some type of a memorial, museum. Maybe some of the collections that they were able to retrieve could be housed there. Hopefully some of it can come back here. The future of all that is still uncertain, but I can promise you one thing. Nothing’s going to happen without Jennifer Rogers being involved in it.
(applause and laughing)
Thompson: Good.
Rogers: Yeah, that is for sure. I’m front and center in that fight, and they just love me. So sorry about it.
Thompson: We all love you. We all love you.
Rogers: Well, you know what? You have to stand up for what you believe in. And that is always, will always be a living tribute to Will Rogers, as Betty Rogers gifted it to the state of California with the stipulations. It must maintain as a living tribute to Will Rogers, as it was at the time of his death, August 15, 1935. So that is my mission, and I will see that that happens.
Thompson: Awesome.
(applause) Yeah. Tad, you’ve been working here with our great Will Rogers Foundation for the museum. You’ve been raising money. We were able to get about $7 million of money for the state, from the state, thanks to our legislature here in Oklahoma to be able to do some improvements here at the museum. Why don’t you talk about some of the exciting things that are in store starting in the next few months and then going for the next few years?
Jones: All right. First of all, Bob said put together a vision. Let’s see what we can do, and we did. We put together a big vision to what this can be in the future, and there are so many people that love Will Rogers. I want to share them. Rhys is here. He has had “Flat Will” going all over the country sharing him. And then we got the best volunteer group. I’m biased, but they’re the best volunteer group. They love Will Rogers and sharing with people all over.
(applause) We have a passionate staff about Will Rogers, and they love Will, so they’re great.
(applause) And I just get to help them, watch them all do their thing, and what we want to do is share will and grow here. And how can we tell the story better? And we’re going to build a three-story building over here, thanks again to your help getting it through the legislature and some major donations out there, and we’re going to have a three-story building with an event center overlooking Claremore, which is going to be great. Jennifer Holt is so excited. We’re going to our first-floor collections because the two vaults we have need to get fixed. I’m going to have a brand new collections room. We’re going to have new offices, which we’ll get to move all of us into new offices so we can have more space to share Will. And then with technology today, we’re going to have it where you’re going to be able have a conversation with Will Rogers. Either call him on the phone, talk to him with AI. We’ve filled his brain with all of his books, getting the character right, and you’re gonna be able to sit here in this room and have a Q&A with Will Rogers. So the technology is there, and it’s going to be fantastic. So all that is, is happening. We’re going to be breaking ground later this year, and we’re going to be sharing Will Rogers with a new generation.
And there’s two things I think about the future of Will and what he is it. One is it gives me comfort when I read Will Rogers quotes that were 90 and 100 years ago. For instance, “the Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.” That was said 100 years ago. Oh, our country’s struggling. Well, you know, Will Rogers said, quotes back then that helped me know that things can be tough, and we can get through it. And number two, he’s a great role model. He is, we share that with kids and adults alike, that we have our ten character traits about Will Rogers, and he is a great role model citizen. I would argue the number one role model citizen in our country, because he was respected by so many people. So we are going to be sharing that for the future. And it is the future is bright for the museum and the legacy of Will Rogers, thanks to everyone here.
Thompson: Wonderful. Wonderful. Let’s take some questions. Let’s take some questions. Jessica’s going to help out. Wait for the microphone, if you will, because we want your lovely voices to be heard on the podcast.
Audience member: So will the interview with Will Rogers, will it be a hologram?
Jones: Yeah. There’s a couple things we’re looking at. One, there’s a telephone call we’re looking at. We’ll get you a 1920s phone. You’ll be able to Q&A, and the other is a hologram. We’ve been working on that, and the technology is amazing, and so we’re very close to having that out there. We have, actually when we’re doing some fundraising, we have Will Rogers making the ask in a video, and it is really neat. But yes, the technology is coming, and it’s going to be fast and furious, but we’re trying to be as Will Rogers, cutting edge, of having that. So yeah, that’s what’s in the works.
Thompson: All right.
Rogers: Rhys! The king of Oklahoma Route 66. This man right here, he is making this happen. We need to applaud Rhys.
Thompson: Yes, we do.
(applause)
Rogers: He has done more for Route 66 in Oklahoma than anybody, and you’re amazing. I’m sorry.
Rhys Martin: Thank you. That’s not why I asked for the microphone.
Rogers: I don’t care. They can edit that out. I don’t care, but I’m just going to say it.
Martin: So Route 66 turns 100 this year. It’s its centennial. And for gosh, the last several decades international travelers have been the backbone of folks traveling Route 66 to experience this corridor. What would you, if you could distill this down, what would you say to an international traveler to get them to leave 66 for just a few blocks to come to the Will Rogers Memorial to learn about him as they make their way from the prairie to the Pacific?
Rogers: That is a great question, I think Bob should...
Blackburn: What I would say they need to do is, visiting Route 66 is not just about the neon signs and the remnants of a lost Americana of what was working with filling stations and roadside attractions. Yeah, that that’s the eye candy, in my opinion. What you learn on Route 66 is what’s in the heart of the people, the heritage that comes out of the soil. And if you really want to know about this Cooweescoowee District, Rogers County, and the people who who’ve grown up here, and that’s my family. and if you want to know that, come to Will Rogers Museum, and learn about this one man who came out of the soil, this Cherokee cowboy. Tells you about the Cherokee history at the frontier history, the American West. A person who succeeds in so many lines of business around the country, and so I think people need to stop and get off the interstates for sure and discover and learn. And to me, some of the happiest people are those who are curious, and they want to learn and become lifelong learners. Those are the people we want to get off and come a couple of blocks here and to see the History Center in Oklahoma City, or to go by and see Old Town Museum in Elk City, or to go to a new museum that we’re building in Chelsea that will have the Will Rogers family story. Take the time to slow down and really see what these people are about, not just the things, but the people.
Thompson: And I would add to that, what these travelers from other countries, they’re really trying to experience, what’s the heart of America, right? They want to understand what is it like to be an American? What are those values? And Will Rogers famously said, my people didn’t come over on the Mayflower. They met them at the boat. And so he is American at its heart, and he embraced his Cherokee heritage. He embraced his Oklahoma heritage. He embraced being an American. And that’s really, that’s what we all are. We’re a product of all of these influences. And if you want to know what it’s like to be an American in this, Tad has so eloquently said as well, what it’s like to be a good American with good American values, and you got to come see Will Rogers. Next question.
Audience member: Last year, we didn’t have the fly-in at its birthplace. Are we going to have it this year?
Thompson: Hand that microphone to Keith over there. (laughing) So, a couple of years ago, might have been three years ago now. Time flies when you’re having fun. We were very fortunate to work out a deal to sell the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch to the Cherokee Nation, and it was the perfect definition of a win-win. And as part of our agreement with them, the money that we obtained in that sale, we agreed that we would spend that money here at this museum. And so all of the money that went from the sale of that birthplace ranch is actually going into all of these improvements that Tad has talked about. And so the Cherokee Nation has undertaken a major restoration project out at the ranch. They have been working very, very hard to restore that original house, to make those grounds what they should be and adding programing. And, I’m not sure, Keith, when that’s going to reopen, but when it does, it’s going to be phenomenal.
Blackburn: When we started talking about that deal and that transaction, stated publicly, a lot of some people didn’t want to do it. They well, the state has invested all this money. And I say, well, wait a minute. That land that’s around Clem Rogers’ ranch place was once communally owned by all the Cherokee people. Then it passed into private hands, and it’s come down. Then the state would buy up and develop it. It’s fitting that after all of the assault on tribal sovereignty in the Cherokee Nation over 250 years to give some of that back, and that should be Cherokee property that belongs to Keith. It belongs to Jennifer, the Cherokees, and they can take great pride in it. And they are investing it like they are in Saline courthouse. They are, and the properties in Tahlequah. Sequoyah home site was another property we were able to transfer to the Cherokee Nation. It’s the right thing to do as well as the best chance to really preserve the home place, I think, is in the hands of the Cherokee.
Thompson: Keith, do you know when it’s reopening?
Keith Austin: The restoration of the home should be finished in approximately two to three months, and then the exhibits will start going back into the house with the furnishings and our new exhibits to tell the story of the ranch. Not only that ranch, but the story of of ranching in the Cherokee Nation. That will take a few months to complete. But by summertime, it will be open to the public again. And it should be ready to visit for the fly-in.
Thompson: We’ll be excited for that. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Is there anybody else out there who has another question that they want to ask? Yes.
Audience member: I was just wondering if anybody could provide some insight as to what created the world traveler aspect of Will Rogers.
Blackburn: Well, I think that’s his Cherokee heritage as well as his Western heritage. If you were a cowboy in the American West, it was a long way anywhere. So getting from point A to B, you had to be mobile. And then the Cherokees, you know, were famous for their homeland in the Appalachian Plateau, went all the way from the Carolinas to Tennessee, down to Georgia, big property, and to trade, you went to Savannah or Charleston, and to hunt, you went great distances. That mobility is part of Cherokee heritage. You know, I think that’s where that comes from. You can look at other Cherokees through time, and they were great world travelers. And I think Will embraced that, having the means to do it as a young man, not everyone can afford to take, you know, a trip around the world that he intended to do when he went to South America. But he could afford it, and he did it and never lost that urge to see what’s over the next horizon. And I kind of have a little bit of myself, oh, I’m on a hike. I drive my wife crazy. Honey, let’s just go one more ridge there in the Panhandle. What’s over that one? I just wanted to see it. And I think that’s the way Will was. How can I get over that next ridge and see what’s over there? Because he wanted to learn.
Jones: Yeah. And he didn’t want to be a celebrity man. He didn’t seek out to be a celebrity, say I want to be a Cherokee cowboy. And when the fences went up, he said, where can I just go be a cowboy? And he said, I can go to South America, and I want to get on a boat and go do it just so I can be a cowboy. I don’t want to be. But then when he went totally broke, and was then in South Africa, and he had no money. Then he saw the sign for Texas Jack, and then he got in the show biz. But he didn’t want to be. You’re right. He just wanted to explore and just be a cowboy, and then the rest of the things happened after that, which is an inspirational story in itself, that he was dead broke and destitute and saw a sign and took advantage of it. And then he just had that spirit to just go traveling and see the world after that. And I just love that about Will Rogers, because he did not seek to be that position, and he just was himself after that and became the biggest star America has ever seen. And I would argue, the most beloved citizen in American history.
Thompson: No better way to end it than that. And Jennifer and Tad, thank you so much for being our guests here tonight. Did you all have a good time?
(applause)
Thompson: Well, we did too, and we’re so glad you came out for this event, and thank you so much, and we’ll see you next time.
(upbeat music playing) You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
(upbeat music playing)
