Car ride to Memorial opening special

Admission
Although there was no admission charge to the opening of the Will Rogers Memorial in 1938, these ticket tags were dispensed to participants. John Smtih, who attended with his mother and aunt, preserved his tag.

John Smith was six-years old, when his mother, Gazelle, and her sister drove to the Will Rogers Memorial for the dedication and unveiling of the Jo Davidson statue in the rotunda.

He remembers the day vividly because they drove to the Memorial “It was kind of unusual to even get to ride in a car” He remembers the “mob in the rotunda … They drug me through there. It was packed, all I could think of was how to get out.” He recalls Gov. E. W. Marland talking at the veiled statue.

Always a football fan, he remembers Oklahoma Military Academy played Bryan Military on the gridiron that day, part of the festivities “The parade traveled down 3rd St., now Will Rogers Boulevard. We had to park in a field north of the parade route ... field is all there was then. People watched from rooms in the Sequoyah, Mason and Berwick Hotels, standing on verandas and lining the streets. They claimed more than 50,000 people in Claremore that day, an amazing deal for the town of Claremore. The two-lane concrete highway to the hill was packed with cars.

“It was an unbelievable crowd. Uncle ‘Doc’ Payne, Andy Payne’s father, rode with cowboys, real working cowboys who had worked with Will on ranches.
Bands and Oklahoma A& M Cowboy quartet were here. Some participants came to Claremore on the train, unloading downtown to make their way up the hill.
As a Will Rogers Jr. High teacher (and longtime junior high football coach), Smith had a scrapbook given him by Susie Musgrove Hicks filled with clippings of the day, tickets to the ball game, things he shared with his students every year on Nov. 4.

Smith came to Claremore when he was four. His mother, left a widow when he was 19-months-old, bought an old barn in Radium Town and moved it to 11th and Muskogee, and soon moved it to 11th and Missouri, where she spent the rest of her life. Smith still owns the property.