Will Rogers, Writer

Oklahoma's favorite son, Will Rogers, is remembered every day at the Will Rogers Memorial museum in Claremore, Okla. He will receive special attention as Oklahomans celebrate 100 years of statehood.

"A Centennial Salute to Will Rogers" will be the theme of a "Books and Authors" dinner on Friday, March 16, 2007 at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The dinner is a highlight of the Will Rogers Writers' Workshop, which will be attended from writers from all across the country, March 15-17, 2007. Additional information may be found at the workshop Web site www.willrogersok.org.

Jesse Mullins, Jr., editor of the American Cowboy magazine, will be the featured speaker at the dinner. Mullins, a graduate of Oklahoma State University, has communicated his love of the American West in the bi-monthly publication for the past 12 years.

Kem Rogers, a grandson of the beloved cowboy-philosopher, will be a special guest at the dinner. He will present the 2006 Will Rogers Humanitarian Award to John Boston of The Signal, Santa Clarita, Calif.

The two top winners of the Will Rogers Writing Contest, George Waters of Pasadena, Calif., and Eileen Mitchell of Paltine, Ill., will be recognized at the dinner.

Mullins was honored with the presentation of the Will Rogers Communicator Award in July 2006 on the occasion of the second annual "National Day of the American Cowboy", an event that resulted from a campaign by the magazine and its readers.

Under his direction, American Cowboy published a three-part series on "Will Rogers, America's Most Beloved Cowboy." He has placed Will's production of "The Roping Fool" on the magazine's Web site www.americancowboy.com.

Will Rogers Memorial Museums Under New Leadership

During an October visit to Oklahoma, I had the pleasure of visiting with Steven K. Gragert, who is now in charge of the Will Rogers Memorial Museums at Claremore.

The Will Rogers Memorial Commission named Gragert interim director and launched a national search to replace departing director Michelle Lefebvre-Carter.

Gragert, who has been serving as associate director, has edited 17 books on Will Rogers. He spearheaded the fourth and fifth volumes of "The Will Rogers Papers," published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Michelle Lefebvre-Carter has been director since 1999. A news release from the commission said she is leaving the post to "pursue other interests and to spend more time with my family."

"Members of the commission have repeatedly praised Michelle and her husband, Joseph H. Carter, the former director, for their fine work over the past 17 years," Jim Hartz, commission chair, said. "They were a team although only one drew a salary during all those years."

Gragert owned a publishing firm in addition to his employment at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and Rogers State University in Claremore, where he edited the 17 books.

During his tenure at Claremore, he has been archivist-librarian and shared in management policy and day-to-day operations.

The commission oversees the nine-gallery Will Rogers Memorial Museum at Claremore and the 400-acre 1870s living history Will Rogers birthplace ranch near Oologah.

Gragert is a very personable individual who took time out from a busy schedule for a get-acquainted meeting. At the time of our visit, he was getting ready for the annual Will Rogers Days, held each year near the time of Will Rogers' November 4 birthday.

Despite his workload, he agreed to serve as the final judge for the Will Rogers Writing Contest sponsored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in conjunction with the Will Rogers Writers' Workshop to be held in Oklahoma City March 15-17, 2007. (More information on this topic may be found by clicking on Will Rogers Writing Contest above.)

The museum visit also afforded an opportunity to see a new display of seven presidents Will Rogers wrote about. The exhibit, featuring sculptured heads from the Hall of Presidents in the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort, includes comments from the era they served, along with items from the museum archives.

Read about this attraction and Will Rogers Days activities on the museum web site www.willrogers.com. (Click on "What's New.")

The Will Rogers Writers’ Workshop, scheduled for March 15-17, 2007 in Oklahoma City, is now open for registration.

Online registration makes the process easy – no forms to fill out and mail in. All you have to do is go to www.regonline.com/107968 and follow the directions. It will only take a few minutes to enter the information and you can also pay the registration fee through a safe, secure credit card system.

The fee for the workshop is $250, if you pay by December 31, 2006. This is an earlybird fee. The cost will increase to $275 on January 1, 2007. So register early! You might win a prize.

The schedule includes a Thursday evening reception and brief program followed by two full days of instruction through general sessions and concurrent workshop sessions. The fee covers the training and all meal functions, plus transportation to events outside the hotel.

Please see the workshop web site www.willrogersok.org for additional information.

At the recent conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in Boston, I had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Zezima, a humor columnist for the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate. He also has written for Newsday, Family Circle magazine and other publications. At the conference, he was awarded third place for humor writing in newspapers with below 100,000 circulation in the annual NSNC column writing contest.

After the meeting, Jerry sent me a note saying he hoped to make it to the Will Rogers Writers' Workshop in Oklahoma City in March, 2007, and added:

"We in the humor trade owe much to Will, who was one of America's greatest humorists. We in the human race also owe much to him. He was a great humanitarian, a terrific guy and a peerless role model as well."

Very well said.

What's a blog for if not to indulge in a little immodesty now and then?

I was pleased to see the Will Rogers Writers' Workshop mentioned in John McCaslin's "Inside the Beltway" (syndicated) column in The Washington Times (although I'd rather he had written more about the workshop than about me):

Here's what John wrote:

"I was just a toddler when Will Rogers was killed in a plane crash in 1935, but I remember him coming through the small town in Okalhoma where I lived," Robert Haught, longtime columnist for The Oklahoman, tells Inside the Beltway.

Now, all of these years later, Mr. Haught, who is somewhat retired while still penning columns for the newspaper, will see his "dream come true" when directing a Will Rogers Writers' Workshop in Oklahoma City for 300 columnists, editorialists and humor writers who still might learn a thing or two from the cowboy philsopher and humorist who "kept America laughing and thinking in the 1920s and '30s."

"I developed a strong interest in him when I was working in the (United Press International) bureau in Oklahoma City and discovered a file of clippings about Will Rogers and Wiley Post," Mr. Haught continues. "I began collecting information, visited the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma, and started a collection of his books. I now use those to read his articles to residents at a local nursing home twice a month."

Articles that Mr. Haught discovered still ring true. Like the confused state of the Democratic Party today: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" Mr. Rogers observed.

Hosted by The Oklahoman, the workshop next spring is being sponsored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, in partnership with the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is providing major funding.

Anyone who wants information about the workshop may write me at willrogersok@gmail.com.

Here are some items of interest from the Will Rogers Memorial Web site:

"Only a cowboy nation could have produced Will Rogers. And only Will Rogers could have done so much to lift the people of his place and time."

That's the lead-in to the third and last of a series profile of Will Rogers published in American Cowboy. The July-August issue of the magazine is now on newsstands worldwide.

A project specially chosen for the first full year of recognition of the National Day of the American Cowboy, set July 22, it was written by Joe Carter, retired Will Rogers Museum executive director and author of two books about Will Rogers.

(more)

Will Rogers, undoubtedly would have had a witty quip about being included with literary greats such as Mark Twain, Zane Grey, John Steinbeck, Jack London and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

But there he is in the spring issue of "Persimmon Hill," a publication of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Will is included in Trish Foxwell's story about literary landmarks and writers who endowed the world with classics of the western frontier.

(more)

Outstanding books have been named winners of the 2006 Will Rogers Medallion Awards to be presented in September. The Academy of Western Artists will honor Buck Ramsey's Grass and From My Window and other poems, the authors and publishers.

(more)

The Santa Monica-Pacific Palisades ranch in California where Will Rogers did much of his writing has been reopened to the public after a $5 million restoration of the house and grounds.

A March 25, 2006 ceremony attended by members of the Rogers family and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger marked the rebirth of a spot which, next to his boyhood home in Oklahoma, held special meaning for the legendary philosopher-humorist. It was where he lived with his family until his death.

Will settled in California following his success on Broadway and his emergence as a movie star. Living first in a new development named Beverly Hills, he later built a rambling ranch home on land overlooking the Pacific Ocean which he had bought in the 1920s.

In a description of the Will Rogers State Historic Park, the California Department of Parks and Recreation stated:

"The ranch became the place where Will Rogers could relax with his family and friends, pursuing his favorite pastimes of riding and roping. At his untimely death in a plane crash in 1935, Will Rogers' ranch consisted of a 31-room ranch house, a stable, corrals, riding ring, roping arena, polo field, golf course, and hiking trails. When his widow, Betty, died in 1944, the ranch became a state park."

Will did a lot of his writing on the road - in an automobile, on a train, in the air - but at home he used a second-floor study where he turned out his newspaper columns and magazine articles.

Joseph H. Carter and other biographers have written that the years spent at the ranch were quite productive. Carter, in his new book, "The Quotable Will Rogers", says:

" In those final sixty-six months of his life, Will Rogers averaged a new movie feature every ninety days, wrote 2,612 daily syndicated columns, filed 285 lengthy Sunday newspaper articles, circumnavigated the globe twice, encircled the South American continent by commercial plane, reported on two political conventions, played numerous polo matches, was a major radio commentator with a top Sunday night talk show, and delivered after-dinner speeches largely for charitable events. Still, he spent afternoons roping calves with his children and staging cookouts with family and pals."

A detailed article about the rededication ceremony, "Will Rogers Ranch: a Legacy Restored", was published in the Palisadian-Post.

http://www.palisadespost.com/content/index.cfm?Story_ID=1839

Reports on the restoration also may be found at http://www.willrogers.com (click on What's New)

With the support and encouragement from many who share my interest in Will Rogers and good writing, I am in the process of seeing a dream come true. The following announcement was made today:

Writers can draw inspiration from an iconic figure of the past and learn ways to improve and market their work at the Will Rogers Writers’ Workshop, to be held in Oklahoma City March 15-18, 2007.

The workshop will be sponsored by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, in partnership with the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, and hosted by The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com.

The event, at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City, will be limited to 300 attendees – columnists, feature writers, editorialists, humor writers, authors, freelance and self-syndicated, print media and online writers. The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is providing major funding for the program.

NSNC President Suzette Martinez Standring said the workshop represents a major training initiative for the organization, which has members throughout the United States and parts of Canada.

"Training is a key element in our annual conferences, including this year's meeting in Boston, June 30-July 2, where we will have sessions on 'Women and Editorial Writing', ‘Courting Controversy and Effective Writing', and 'Writing for Hispanic Publications', among others," Standring said.

"The Will Rogers Writers' Workshop will be the most extensive training program we have undertaken and it will produce valuable benefits for writers of all types."

Robert Haught, NSNC secretary and workshop director, said the 2007 event will feature a program of outstanding speakers and workshop leaders. Haught, who writes a column for The Oklahoman, added: "Attendees also will enjoy the hospitality of Oklahomans celebrating the state’s centennial."

The workshop is named for Will Rogers, the multi-talented cowboy philosopher-humorist "whose words are still as alive as when he kept America laughing, and thinking, in the 1920s and ‘30s," Haught said. Rogers wrote more than 4,000 newspaper columns, authored six books and also reached the public through magazine articles, radio commentaries and speeches.

My apologies for the lack of frequent postings. Blame it on absence from home base and an antique laptop that is not a very good traveling companion. (High speed Internet, what's that?)

At a meeting of journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., I had a delightful visit with Kay Howard of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a member of the International Association of Obituarists. (Yes, there is an organization for everyone.) We had some interesting discussions after I inquired about the obituary for Coretta Scott King. One general comment I found worth sharing, which may offer the secret to a long life: "Anytime you write an obit on someone in advance, they won't die for 20 years."

Will Rogers didn't write his obit, but he did write his own epitaph. In a comment for the Boston Globe on June 16, 1930, he said:

When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it."

The marker is at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Okla.

On this date in 1927, Will Rogers wrote:

ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 3 - Had breakfast this morning with John D. Rockefeller, for which I received a fine breakfast and a brand new dime. Went out with him and watched him play eight holes of golf, for which I received another dime.

Made 20 cents clear. Received more jokes from him than I gave, as he is certainly keen and has a great sense of humor.

Had a very pleasant morning and would have stayed longer, but he run out of dimes.

Note the telegraphic style ... that's because Rogers sent these dispatches by Western Union and they were published as "Daily Telegrams".

That wouldn't be possible today. On January 27, Western Union discontinued its telegraph service.

http://www.livescience.com/technology/060131_western_union.html

One thing that impresses me about Will Rogers' writing is its simplicity. He once said, "I love words, but I don't like strange ones." It's remarkable how many of his sentences have short, simple words. Many of his familiar sayings contain words of one or two syllables. For example (number of two or more syllables in parentheses):

All I know is what I read in the papers (1)

I never met a man I didn't like (2)

Rumor travels faster but it don't stay put as long as truth (3)

I don't make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts (2)

We are here just for a spell and then pass on...So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead (2)

No man is great if he thinks he is (0)

See what I mean?