Coming Monday: Will Rogers Museum celebrates 75 years this week
By RANDY KREHBIEL, World Staff Writer on Sep 15, 2013, at 2:52 PM Updated on 9/15/13 at 4:16 PM
Tourists from around the world including Malc (CQ) and Win Marshall (right), who live in Derbyshire, England, visit a statue of Will Rogers at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore on Wednesday. The statue is a replica of the one in Washington D.C. JOHN CLANTON/Tulsa World
Local
The Regents will consider architectural firms to provide construction of storm-hardened shelters in the housing area on the Norman campus.
Her biological father from Oklahoma and her adoptive parents from South Carolina spent several hours Monday and Tuesday on the sixth floor of the state's Kerr office building, where the Court of Civil Appeals meets in Tulsa.
CLAREMORE — Close to 35,000 people a year visit the Will Rogers Memorial Museum. Some know quite a lot about the late humorist, says Museum Director Steve Gragert. Some don’t know as much as they think.
“I still get a few people who ask me where Trigger is,” said Gragert, who oversees the museum that will celebrate its 75th anniversary this week.
Trigger, of course, was the horse of western actor Roy Rogers, not Will Rogers.
But there is a connection. “Roy Rogers,” the stage name of Leonard Franklin Slye, was derived from “Will Rogers” by Republic Pictures’ publicity department.
Then and now, Will Rogers’ influence reveals itself in sometimes surprising ways. Long before a generation of Americans adopted Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as primary news sources, Will Rogers said, “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”
Rogers combined humor, political commentary and a deft use of the media never before seen or duplicated since. At the time of his death in a 1935 plane crash, Rogers was the nation’s No. 1 male box office attraction, No. 1 newspaper columnist and No. 1-rated radio commentator.
And he did it just by paying attention to what was going on around him.
“I don’t make jokes,” he said. “I just watch the government and report the facts.”
For more on this story, see the Tulsa World's print and online editions Monday.
Local
The Regents will consider architectural firms to provide construction of storm-hardened shelters in the housing area on the Norman campus.
Her biological father from Oklahoma and her adoptive parents from South Carolina spent several hours Monday and Tuesday on the sixth floor of the state's Kerr office building, where the Court of Civil Appeals meets in Tulsa.
