Will Rogers

Where is Will Rogers when you really need him? William Penn Adair Rogers was born on November 4, 1870, on his father’s ranch near Oologah, Oklahoma. He always claimed Claremore as his hometown because, as he said, only a Cherokee could pronounce Oologah. His father, Clem Van Rogers, had built up a large ranch and become quite wealthy before the American Civil War. He joined the Confederate cause as a cavalry officer after sending his family to Texas for safety.

After the war they returned to find their cattle gone and the house in ruins. Like so many others Clem set to work to rebuild his fortune and by the time Willie was born they lived in a white frame house called "The White House on the Verdigris." Willie however, was born in the log cabin near the family home. His mother, Mary America Rogers, asked to be moved to the log house so that her son could be born like Abraham Lincoln. Clem had plans for his son to one day run the ranch. Mary hoped he would be a preacher but Will’s life would take a different course--one that would have him remembered as the most influential American of his age and a humorist who saw America as it was and told it the way it was. His daily newspaper column started in 1922 and ran until several days after his untimely death in 1935 near Point Barrow, Alaska, when the small airplane he and aviation pioneer Wylie Post were flying crashed on takeoff and both were killed.

Will’s humor mostly came out of the daily newspapers. He read every newspaper he could find. He focused on the American way of life, politics and politicians. His comments were timeless and reprints of his column are running in many papers today. His formal education was skimpy; his spelling, atrocious. But he knew people and traveled all over the world. As he said, "I never met a man I did not like."

What would Will Rogers say about America today? I think he might be too embarrassed to write much about today’s scandals in high places. He believed character was important and integrity essential. He was really a simple man who saw a basic good in most people. Of our elected officials, he said, "We send these fellows to Congress who are good old boys but they don’t seem to have any other qualifications."

Again he said, "The bad part about the whole structure of paying our congressmen is that we name a sum and give them all the same, regardless of ability. No other business in the world has a fixed sum to pay all their employees the same thing. If some efficiency expert would work out a scheme where each one would be paid according to his ability, (there were no women in Congress in those days) we could save a lot of money." Will ignored the greater flaw; there is no "we" in determining the salary of the folks in Congress. We let them set their own. No successful business I know of would do that, either.

He saw the adjournment of Congress as a blessing. "That’s when they all go on fact finding trips to far away places-- as far from their constituency as they can get." We desperately need a Will Rogers today. Someone who will take the spin off the ball and make us see ourselves in the light of who and what we are. I believe America is in grave danger today and in the years ahead if we fail to take a reality check today and turn around before we hit the wall.