In the heart of Oklahoma, a name echoes through time like a cherished legend.

From highways to schools, businesses, and even an airport, his name is etched into the very fabric of this state.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Will Rogers..." (applause) With his mesmerizing rope tricks, Will Rogers rode a trail that led him to the pinnacles of fame.

A media pioneer of his era, he had an instinctive ability to blend homespun humor with common sense commentary "It's better to have termites in your house than a legislature."

Making him a trusted friend in countless American homes.

Will Rogers effortlessly bridged divides, counting movie stars, presidents, and kings among his closest confidants, while never losing touch with the everyday people back home.

But it is in the heart of his home state that his memory shines the brightest.

Will Rogers was born in 1879, on November 4th, Election Day.

He liked to joke that because his mom couldn't vote, she had nothing better to do.

So, she had him.

Will Rogers never lived in Oklahoma.

He's Oklahoma's favorite son, but he was born in the Indian Territory, just outside of Oolagah, a couple of miles.

And he raised in Indian Territory.

His dad was a very prominent Cherokee.

They were some of the early settlers.

They came over before the Trail of Tears, settling on the Verdigris River, just outside of Oolagah, built a house that became known as the white house on the Verdigris.

Clem and his wife, Mary America Rogers, raised their family at the sprawling Dog Iron Ranch.

Will was the youngest of eight children and was just 10 when his mother died in May of 1890.

He was devastated by the loss of his mom.

She was the nurturing one that really took him in, and he was extremely close to his mom.

So, I think that when he lost her, it was just really that he really never got over, but he never talked about it.

They say that Will got a lot of his sense of humor from her and her good demeanor.

But Will was just kind of a wild soul.

The ranch in Oolagah is in Rogers County, but the county is not named after Will Rogers.

Will's father, Clem, who was a great businessman, great rancher, great leader.

In fact, he was a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention.

The story is that Clem was sick one day, and he didn't want anything named after him, but he was sick one day there at the Constitutional Convention, and on that day, they named Rogers County after Clem Rogers.

He was very prominent, extremely respected, and had this amazing ranch that he worked hard to put together and build.

His dream was just to have his only son continue that legacy, and Will did the opposite.

They went to the World's Fair where there was a guy who was doing rope tricks, and Will Rogers, as a young man, saw those rope tricks and decided, "I can do that."

He'd rope anything.

He'd rope the turkeys, he'd rope the coyotes, he'd rope the calves, he'd rope the cows, the horses, he'd rope his friends.

His dad gave him what he named the Dog Iron Ranch in Oolagah.

Will ran that for three years, but that was a business, and Will didn't want to be a businessman.

He wanted to have fun or just be a cowboy, and so he decided to give the ranch back to his dad, got with a friend of his, and decided to go to Argentina.

Before leaving, Will had a few errands to run.

Will met Betty Blake at the train station.

She was working behind the counter there, and he had ordered a banjo, and he went to pick it up, and that was their first encounter.

You've heard of love at first sight, and this probably is one of those stories, because Will walked in, saw Betty, he got so nervous when he saw her that he left and forgot to pick up what he went there for.

She went back to Arkansas, but they continued writing, and then he started his round-the-world trip around the Southern Hemisphere, and was sending her letters.

Will wanted to see the world, go south, and live the life of a gaucho.

He wanted to go where there were no fences, although it was his dad who was building the fences, so he got a pal, and they went to Argentina, and they was gonna make it big time in Argentina.

Well he went broke.

Found out there was a big cattle drive that was heading to South Africa, so Will hopped on that to make a little money, went to South Africa.

He's dead broke in South Africa, not sure what he's gonna do, and he saw a sign for Texas Jack's Wild West Show, and Texas Jack needed somebody that could do the big crinoline, which was a big lasso trick that Will Rogers fortunately knew how to do.

With the money from Texas Jack, Will Rogers headed back to Oklahoma, and joined Colonel Zach Mulhall's Wild West Show.

He got his first story in the New York Times by when a wild steer at a rodeo broke loose at Madison Square Garden, Will got his rope out and roped the steer and saved the crowd.

And now all of a sudden, people want to see this cow puncher from Oklahoma that saved people's lives, and now Will is kind of a commodity that people want to see.

And so then he gets into vaudeville.

He would come up on stage with a horse, and he would do trick ropes, and there were jugglers and magicians, and then, of course, the dancing girls.

But Will didn't go for the big city chorus girls.

His heart belonged to Betty.

They courted here and there, and eventually, after seven or eight years of trying, he liked to say that roping Betty was the greatest trick that he ever did.

Billed as the Cherokee kid, he held New York audiences spellbound with his rope tricks, but he was not using his greatest gift.

He was not supposed to talk.

He would go on stage and do his rope trick, and no talking whatsoever, and it wasn't until he messed up on a rope trick and made a comment and said, "Well, I got all my feet through but one," and the audience laughed, and he just fed off that laughter.

And then he was an avid reader, and Betty said, "You know, you ought to talk about what you read in the newspaper," and so he did.

And so he started adding to his shtick that, you know, what's going on in the world of politics today?

And that's where he became the first Johnny Carson and Jay Leno.

Every comedian honors him and said, "He was the first comedian."

He truly was.

Now, instead of just seeing him trick rope the horse again, now the rope became kind of a side deal, and Will became a person that was starting to talk about the issues of the day, and so every show became different.

And that's when Ziegfeld Follies called up and said, "You know, we want you to come work for us."

He signed on with Florence Ziegfeld as an act in between the girls changing, as he said, from nothing into nothing.

(laughs) He said that was his job.

So W.C. Fields was a big one in the shows then.

Eddie Cantor was one, and Houdini was in some, and, you know, it was hard to follow up with Houdini.

I mean, that was such a unique show.

Will was always a big headliner, because people wanted to hear what he had to say.

Before his show, he would look to see who's in the audience, and he would have spotters go tell him, you know, there's a senator or there's a governor.

So when he would come out and do his show, he just went right to them.

There'd be a famous person in the audience, he would toss the rope and lasso him and pulled him up on the stage, and it was a great honor.

Will was performing in Baltimore, and Woodrow Wilson was gonna be in the audience, and Will got very nervous, because, you know, the president's there to hear him, and they actually had to push Will out on stage.

He did not want to go out, and so he made a joke about Poncho Villa and how they were about to get Poncho Villa, but they couldn't catch him, because as they head across the border, our guys got stuck in all the red tape, and, you know, everybody's kind of looking.

You know, what's Woodrow Wilson gonna do?

Is he gonna laugh?

Is he gonna--how dare you?

And he laughed, and that just released Will Rogers.

In 1918, Will Rogers made the next jump in his career and starred in his first silent film: Laughing Bill Hyde.

He started getting into the silent movies, and that's what really, you know, put him on the map.

He did more silent movies than he did talkie movies.

But he really didn't like the silent movies, because he felt like that it did not give him an opportunity to communicate.

Silent movies weren't his best thing, but there was a lot of money in that, a lot of opportunity, and so eventually they said, "You know, you gotta come out to this place called Hollywood and see if you can make a living."

They went out to Hollywood.

They lived there for a little while, but the people of Hollywood didn't like the smell of Will's horses, you know, and so Will decided to buy some property in Santa Monica, which was way out--it was back then, it was way outside of town.

His California ranch is spectacular on its own, but he used to entertain Walt Disney.

He taught Walt Disney how to play polo.

Spencer Tracy how to play polo.

Clark Gable.

He rented the Charlie Chaplin set, and he took his little horse, Dopey, over there and got a rider, and he then produced what we now call Roping Fool.

He still holds, for the Guinness Book of World Records, a trick that's never been duplicated, and it's in the Roping Fool.

It's three ropes, three lassos, and he catches the horse, the front--over the head, it crosses at the chest in his front two feet.

He catches the rider, and he also catches the horse and rider.

It's never been duplicated, and so many people have tried.

They're still trying.

It's amazing what he could do with a rope.

Now that he had the money to travel, Will circled the globe three times, making friends along the way.

From what my grandfather told me, his love was travel.

He couldn't wait to be on the next adventure.

I don't think he sat there making a movie and thought, "This is so much fun.

This is what I want to do the rest of my life."

I think he made it, paid the bills, and then he couldn't wait to go somewhere.

He was an adventurer.

He would send letters home.

Some of those would end up in the Claremore Progress at the time, but they were just little snippets of what he had seen and where he was.

And he started writing these columns.

First he was asked to write the long columns, and they were for weekly newspapers, and he wrote those.

And one time, as he was leaving to go to Europe, and he was going to bound around Europe.

And that was when he met with the publisher of the New York Times.

And he said, "Well, just send me a telegram anytime you see something."

It was syndicated about 600 newspapers were running his columns then.

He was the most read columnist in the world.

40 million people read his columns around the world.

He wrote more than 4,000 columns.

"Madamoiselle join vous parlez-vous Coca-Cola?"

In 1929, Rogers signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation and made his first talking picture called "They Had to See Paris."

Sound films made him a bigger star than ever before.

"Stick him!

Stick him!

Go on!

Get him in the giblets!"

Talkies is what really got his career going, because people then could hear Will Rogers talk.

But he was just kind of the same character, just a down-to-earth person.

- "Then how are we to know of your birth?"

- "I kinda gather from you that you" "You doubt I was born" He mostly Ad-libbed those things.

He went on the set.

They said, "I guess you guys know what this movie's about."

He said, "Well, as a matter of fact, we've been out ropin' calves.

Never got around to reading the script.

Can you just tell us what to say?"

And they went from there.

But they said that he'd get these scripts, and his Ad-libs were better than the script as an ordinary rule.

- "What time of day is it?"

- "It lacketh a little of noon, sir."

- "Daylight Savings?"

"No, I guess not.

That's good."

At the time of his death, he was the number one box office draw if Shirley Temple didn't have a movie out.

By 1922, Will was a world traveler, star of stage and screen, and had the most popular newspaper column.

Where else was he to go but on the radio?

"It's time to hear Will Rogers and his trusty alarm clock."

"Broadcasting from Los Angeles, California" Coast to coast radio, first time a big hookup.

He would do a Sunday night show where he'd get on and chatter.

"Well I distinctly want you to understand" "that this is not any of Rogers' comedy."

"This comedy, if any, it belongs to the" "President, and the Supreme Court, and the US Constitution."

Americans were able to hear Will with his Oklahoma drawl talking about the events of the day.

And that drew--I mean, he was number one on radio.

He had the number one show because people wanted to hear his voice.

"Congress is really just children that's never grown up."

"That's all they are."

They would all--they'd stay home to listen to Will Rogers instead of going to Sunday evening services.

During one of the darkest eras in American history, President Herbert Hoover asked Will Rogers for a favor.

It's a very important time in our country's history.

We have the Great Depression, and everybody's wondering what we're going to do, and the president wants to give a speech.

And how do I get an audience?

Well, let's get the biggest star in America to do the opening.

"Don't get scared and start turning off your radios.

I'm not advertising or trying to sell you anything."

And he asked him to come on and speak and said, "Will you please do something to get the confidence of America, to make them feel good?"

"Now, I say, and have always claimed" "that things would pick up in '32" "Well, why '32?"

"Well, because '32 is an election year."

When Americans were suffering so badly, Will was able to communicate with the people and even be funny.

"We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation" "in the history of the world that ever" "went to the poor house in an automobile."

He never lost his ability to relate to the common man.

I mean, he would always come home, and he would talk about Claremore all the time.

He'd talk about Oklahoma.

You know, just always had his feet on the ground.

Betty raised those kids, but my grandfather always said that when his dad was home, he was Dad.

So when he would come home, my grandfather always said, "We'd go--all of us would get on a horse, and we'd go trick-rope and trick-ride."

And there's home movies with Will showing the kids out in the arena tricks.

By the early 30s, he was the most trusted man in America.

The big boys were his friend, like Rockefeller.

He's got a great picture with Rockefeller, and he handed him a dime for a bet that he lost.

And with Henry Ford, in 1934, he went to the World Series and sat in the booth with Henry Ford.

Will was just as comfortable talking to one of his former neighbors, or childhood friends, near Oolagah, as he was with President Franklin Roosevelt.

He was talking about trying to meet with Trotsky in the Soviet Union.

You know, Trotsky was kind of on the outs after the Revolution, and Will really wanted to meet with him, and he said, "You know, if I just meet these people, you know, I get to know them, and you know, there's just never been a man I didn't like."

He truly meant it.

He tried to see the good in everybody.

In 1928, Will ran a mock campaign for president in the pages of Life magazine.

The Marx Brothers volunteered to be his running mates.

But Henry Ford, for instance, took it very seriously and said, "Will Rogers, this is no joke.

This is the man we need to have for president."

Actually, we nominated Will and gave him our votes one time, and so, yeah, and they said Will was actually sleeping in the press box and heard that and had a good laugh about it.

Will was the patron saint of aviation.

Now, so many people in America were afraid of flying, and commercial aviation was going nowhere.

He went on a tour of Europe and saw that Europe was ahead of the United States in developing commercial aviation.

He also, when he came home, he became friends with Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 had crossed the Atlantic.

Will wanted to promote aviation, and that's why he became friends with his fellow Oklahoman, Wiley Post.

He understood the promise, and every chance he'd get, he would ride in a plane.

Sometimes, he'd see there was an airplane, an airmail plane out there.

He would buy stamps and put them on his flight suit so he could fly as a piece of mail.

A lot of people don't realize that we really owe a lot to Will Rogers for having our Air Force.

He was a proponent to have our Air Force built.

I mean, he saw that coming.

He said we need to get in the air, because the next war, that's where it's going to be fought from.

When Billy Mitchell became very controversial, making the argument in the U.S. Army about why we needed an Army Air Corps, he took Mitchell's side, and it became very, very important, and public opinion went with Billy Mitchell.

I wish so bad that he could see today's technology in the air and space.

He would have been the one wanting to go to the moon.

(cockpit closes) "Woohoo!"

(laughs) He believed in it completely, and when Wiley said, "Hey, let's fly to Alaska," Will didn't even hesitate about doing that with Wiley Post.

Wiley was seeking a new mail route for the postal service, and so he was the very top of the world in Alaska.

There was an old man up there that Will Rogers wanted to interview, who had spent 50 years below zero.

He had written something to that effect, and he wanted to interview that guy.

On the morning of August 15, 1935, they took off from Anchorage and headed toward Point Barrow.

The weather was bad, so Wiley got lost, and so they saw smoke curling up from an Eskimo village, and so they landed on the water.

One of the funny things that Will said, he'd get off the plane and go, "Hey, anybody here from Claremore?"

You know, make those jokes.

At the top of the world, those people knew, the Eskimos, They knew who he was, and so he signed some autographs and got directions and visited with the locals for a little bit, and they got back in the plane and took off.

Witnesses said they took off, and it was foggy.

They lost sight of the plane immediately, but they said they heard sputter, and they were not very high at all, and they literally just came right back down, nose first, and were both killed instantly.

No one knows why that plane lost power and crashed.

The locals immediately went out to the plane.

It was waist-high water.

I mean, they were not in deep water and retrieved the bodies, and one of the gentlemen ran to town and let everybody know.

When the word of the death of Will and Wiley came back to America, the news presses had special editions.

Congress adjourned for the day, and everybody was so sad.

It was the biggest news happening in the whole world.

For people around the world, it was as if a member of the family had died.

Businesses closed, movie theaters went dark, and NBC and CBS Radio went off the air during the funeral.

At the age of 55, Will Rogers had touched the lives of millions.

People hour after hour walking by the casket.

Mourning Will Rogers.

And he was buried in California.

Until the Will Rogers Memorial was built years later, and then his body was transferred there.

Land for the Memorial in Claremore was donated by Betty so that people from all over the world could come and hear the story of an Oklahoman who was a friend to millions and genuinely cared about his fellow man.

I think his legacy is one of good citizenship.

He is a person that was respected by everybody, the rich, the poor, of all races, of all nationalities.

He had tremendous empathy towards people.

He was a huge humanitarian.

When there was a large earthquake, he would be on that plane going over to raise funds for those people.

I think that that's probably what he would like to have been best known for.

From a family standpoint, he was an amazing father, even though he was pulled by so many people to do all these amazing things.

He just wanted to make people happy, you know, he really did.

He wanted to see people smile and wanted to ease their struggles that they had in their life and wanted to help them when they needed it.

He was just a good person all around.

"Coolidge come into our lives at a peculiar time "in our existence.

It was time about 2 - 3 years after the war.

"He was just the man we needed.

"He didn't do nothin' but that's what we wanted done!"

(laughter, cheering and applause) (alarm clock ringing) "Shoot I just got started telling you what all they was going to dig up in Washington."

"But goodbye and good luck to you.

Thank you."

(applause)