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| Will Rogers Visits Osawatomie Library |
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| News - Osawatomie | |||
| Written by Kevin Gray | |||
| Wednesday, 20 May 2009 07:00 | |||
With a convincing voice, the perfect hat and, best of all, rope tricks, “Will Rogers” told stories of his life and adventures during the second Osawatomie Library Speakers Series last week. Rogers was more than a cowboy. He was a complex identity, a loving husband, family man, writer, movie star, stage actor, radio personality, newspaper columnist, world traveler and adventurer, early aviation booster, political commentator and defender of the common man. Rogers was brought to life May 11 by Doug Watson, a retired English professor from Oklahoma Baptist University who taught American literature and Western civilization for more than 25 years. Since 1991, Watson has been involved with historical characterizations — first with both the Great Plains Chautauqua and National Chautauqua Tour and more recently with state humanities programs across the country. His characters have also included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen Crane. He has been portraying Rogers since 1998. Watson began his performance with his subject’s youth, which Rogers spent in what would become Oklahoma. “I was born in Indian Territory in 1879 close to Oologah,” Watson said in a voice much like Rogers’ from the movies. Rogers’ father ran cattle on Cherokee land and made drives to St. Louis to sell the stock at $35 to $40 a head. “That was good money in those days,” Watson’s Rogers said. The performance covered Rogers’ life: He didn’t live much of his adult life in Oklahoma (he was 28 in 1907), but he was always “Oklahoma proud,” visited family there often and spoke frequently about the great potential of the new state. Back in his school days, his father told him Indian Territory would be a state someday. “He said I’d better be ready for that, so he sent me to about every school in the territory,” Rogers elaborated. “I got cross with teachers in every school I went to and didn’t stay around for long. My problem with school was restlessness.” Rogers picked up the ability to perform rope tricks. By 1920, he was a fixture in show business, and he continued on to movie stardom in the early 1930s. In the early 1920s, he emerged as a popular newspaper commentator and radio entertainer. Before the decade’s ended, he was being mentioned as a possible political candidate and had penned two volumes of “Letters of a Self-Appointed Diplomat to His President,” as well as thousands of daily and weekly newspaper columns on society, the economy, politics and life in general. In all of this, Rogers stood for the common man. “You would have to have your eyes closed to know times (the 1930s) were hard for people. People had lost jobs. Farmers needed rain, because the farms were blowing all the way to Iowa. But the farmers still have a better chance of getting relief from the sky than from the government,” Watson’s Rogers said. Rogers jokingly said that in every town he visits, he reads the local paper. With that, he took a copy of the Osawatomie Graphic out of his pocket. “This was a quick read,” he said with a smile. adding that he had a newspaper editor friend at the Emporia Gazette named William Allen White. “He writes all these stories he tries to sell to other, bigger papers, and when he gets rejected enough times, he’ll run them in his own paper.” Rogers blamed the hard times of the Great Depression on those who came west earlier and cut the trees and plowed up the grasslands. “Mostly what people want or need are jobs. They will take handouts, but they want the opportunity to make a living to put food on the table for their families.” Watson, who lives in Shawnee, Okla., volunteers at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . He has a Web site at www.watsonswill.com.
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