WILL ROGERS, A TRUE AMERICAN

On Thurs. Oct. 16th, we hooked up our ranch house and headed to Oologah, OK. population of 1,100. We arrived at Will Rogers childhood home. Will Roger's is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son".

Will Rogers full name was William Penn Adair Rogers. He was named after Cherokee Leader Col. William Penn Adair.

He was born in 1879 in this home and to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory, now present day Oklahoma. Both his parents were part Cherokee. His father was Clem Rogers. He fought in the Civil War as an officer on the Confederate side. He became a Cherokee senator and judge in Indian Territory.

Will Rogers always stated his ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower but they met the boat.

He was the youngest of 8 children, but only 4 of them made it to adulthood. The 7 room ranch house was constructed by his father in 1875. It was named Dog Iron Ranch and originally it was 60,000 acres. They raised longhorn cattle and other livestock. Will learned to ride and about ranching life. An ex-slave worked for the family and taught young Will had to lasso.

It was a self guided tour with a nice video that constantly played through-out the house as you toured it. The rooms were nice size and very comfortable. The Roger's did a lot of entertaining to well known folks and dignitaries.

(OOPS! Even though I rotate my pictures, they are still coming up sideways. A call to my Blog teacher, Janna is in order)

We then headed on a short drive to the town of Claremore to the Will Rogers Museum. This parcel of land was a 20 acre hill that Will Rogers and his wife Betty bought in 1911. Betty donated the land to the State of Oklahoma in 1937. Ground was broken in 1938 for the Will Rogers Museum. Additions have been added over the years and the museum in now 26,000 sq. ft.

There are 12 galleries of priceless artifacts including paintings, photo, video, films, bronzes, saddles, movie posters and memorabilia pertaining to his life. I watched several films on his life. There was a bigger than life bronze of him. It was cast twice, one here for the museum and the other is in the Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building.

Will Rogers was a cowboy, trick roper, vaudeville actor, author, humorist, social commentator, humanitarian and movie star. He stared in 71 movies, 50 being silent films and 21 "talkies". He wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns and became a world famous figure.

He raised thousands for the Red Cross and Salvation Army and gave lots of his own money to disaster victims.

One room was called the Last Journey. It was filled with framed front page headlines of newspapers from around the world of the plane crash that took his life. In a display case was his personal belongings that were retrieved from the wreckage, his typewriter, duffel bag, shoes, hat and glasses.

Wiley Post was a good friend of Rogers. He was a famed American Aviator during the period that was known as the Golden Age of Aviation. He helped invent the pressure suit and discovered the Jet Stream as he broke records of flying in 50,000 ft. altitudes in his pressure suit.

Post assembled 1 plane from 2 wrecked planes.
They were from a Lockheed Orian and a Lockheed Explorer. He ordered pontoons because they would have to land in water up in Alaska. They did not come in in time, so he took pontoons off of  a much larger plane making his plane nose heavy.

They flew to Alaska and made several stops. While heading to Point Barrow the weather turned bad and they became uncertain of their position and landed in a lagoon. They got out of the plane and stood on the pontoons to ask a group of Eskimo's who were at their hunting camp, where Point Barrow was. The Eskimo's told them a several miles and pointed in the direction.

Account from Eskimo Clare Okepeha who spoke broken English: "The red plane took off, it go up, engine spit, start, than stop, start some more little, then plane fall just so". Okepeha ran 15 miles to Point Barrow to the U.S. Army radio station. It took him 3 hours to reach the Army Settlement. Totally exhausted, he told Sgt. Stanley Morgan of the crash and said "Bird man dead, red bird blow up" and he described the 2 men. Morgan knew that it must be the 2 famous travelers and radioed the War Dept. and a recovery team was sent to the site.

The plane had the right wing sheared off and landed on its back in 2' of water. The Eskimo's retrieved the bodies and wrapped their bodies in blankets and place them in their Oomiak, an Eskimo opened boat made of seal skins stretched over a frame. They towed them to shore and began singing hymns in their native language.

Rogers pocket watch was still ticking. Post's wrist watch was smashed and the time stopped at 8:18 p.m Alaska time which fixed the time of the accident.

Shortly after Post's death, his widow sold the famed "Winnie Mae" to the Smithsonian.

At the time of Will's death, the Roger family lived on their 186 acre ranch in Pacific Palisades, CA. The ranch became a State Park in 1944 after Betty's death.

In 1944 his body was moved from a holding vault in California to the memorial. Betty was buried next to him in 1944.

I so much enjoyed reading about this amazing man's life.

Will Roger's was a True American and Hero who loved his country.

I highly recommend if anyone gets to Claremore, Oklahoma, to stop in and spend the day.