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Dorothy Copus Brush Will Rogers was a "I'm not a member of any organized political
party, I'm a Democrat." That is one of the thousands of
memorable quotes Will Rogers gave this country. Another that
fits well with the confusing mess we are in now is, "The
truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that
could happen to you." Over the past decade or so Will Rogers has
been reintroduced to today's generation through the Broadway
hit The Will Rogers Follies. The director, Tommy Tune, who never
knew Rogers personally, said, "He became the biggest, most
popular and highest paid star of every existing media of his
time. Will Rogers was the biggest star America has ever produced."
Additionally, there are some 10 performers doing monologues featuring
Rogers' home-spun philosophy to audiences across the country. This Oklahoma cowboy captured America's heart
in the 1920s and 30s. He was multi-talented and stood at the
center of the new mass media emerging during those years. You
name it and he did it - radio, Broadway, vaudeville and movies,
where he began in silent pictures, and when sound was added he
made the transition effortlessly. He had a smattering of formal education, but
he wrote more than 4,000 syndicated columns in a 12-year span.
Hundreds of papers carried his columns and the longer Sunday
articles where he wrote about his travels and the variety of
people he met, both common and prominent. He said, "I joked
about every prominent man of my time but I never met a man I
didn't like." Politics fascinated him, and he spoke at both
the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1924. He
covered every convention from 1920 to 1932 as a columnist. He
didn't hesitate to chastise politicians of both parties, but
his timely comments were given in warm humorous words and even
those taking the heat cracked up in laughter. Rogers said, "I
don't tell jokes. I just watch the government and report the
facts." Will Rogers was born in 1879 and was part
Cherokee Indian. Both his parents were active in the emerging
frontier Oklahoma territory. They owned a sprawling ranch which
was home to thousands of Texas Longhorns. Will lived among Indians
and blacks, freed from slavery. Another of his quotes shows that
influence: "We will never have a true civilization until
we have learned to recognize the rights of others." It was a freed slave who taught him how to
use a lasso to work the cattle. He mastered the lariat and became
an expert in trick roping, which was his key to entering the
entertainment scene. He started in Wild West shows, and while
spinning the rope he began adding folksy humor in his shy way. Recognizing his wit he was hired to join the
popular Ziegfield Follies, and he was with that show for a decade.
Never did Rogers use any blue language, not even a gee whiz,
in his stories as he performed his rope wizardry. Will Rogers was more than an entertainer,
he was a humanitarian. He raised money for the Red Cross and
The Salvation Army, and during times of national emergencies
such as floods he could be counted on to help. He loved adventure and had a strong belief
in the future of aviation, and he always chose to travel by air.
He flew around the world three times, and even though he was
involved in six air crashes as a passenger in those early planes,
he never lost his enthusiasm. He was not a pilot, but the industry's
Hall of Fame honored him as "The Patron Saint of Aviation." In 1935 he joined his Oklahoma pal and renowned
pilot Wiley Post on a quest to find a polar route to Russia.
They had landed at a tiny Alaskan inlet and spent a short time
with the Eskimos there getting directions to Point Barrow. The
two men returned to their experimental plane, taxied and took
off, but 50 to 200 feet into the air the engine sputtered and
the plane plunged back into the icy waters, killing both men
instantly. I was a youngster and a radio fan on that
Aug. 15, 1935, when the word flashed across the airwaves that
55-year-old Will Rogers was dead. I wept, and those who remember
that day also remember that people across this nation wept. The
radio networks went off the air for a full 30 minutes in memory
of this extraordinary man. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a friend of Will Rogers, said, "He brought his countrymen back to a sense of proportion. He showed us how to laugh." A laugh is something we could all use today. One last quote from Will Rogers might work. "Washington, DC, newspapers say, 'Congress is deadlocked and can't act.' I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country." |