Couple wed 53 years remember Memorial opening
Russell and Anne Wallis
Will Rogers Museum — It is a storybook romance and marriage that traces the beginning to Nov. 4, 1938, the day Will Rogers Memorial Museum was dedicated.
Russell Wallis, 14, was riding in the first-ever Will Rogers Day Parade, a family tradition that has continued 70 years.
Anne Tacker’s parents, Wilson and Blanche, came to Claremore that day to finalize purchase of a Verdigris River bottom farm, the beginning of Riverbend Farms.
It would be almost 10 years before Russell “stole” Anne from her Marine boyfriend — home on leave — who took her horseback riding on the Wallis Ranch.
In a letter to the editor of the Claremore Progress on Nov. 5, 1938, the day after the Will Rogers Memorial Museum opened, Fred Wallis of the 77 Ranch wrote: “Thank boys of the National Guard for the way they handled crowds (estimated at 25,000 for the parade and 50,000 for Beneath the Oklahoma Skies performance.) Also tell the world that Herb and Bogue McSpadden, all things considered in the world, for the way they handled and marshaled the 500 head of outlaws, tell the world they did not learn it out of a book. And Bill (Kates the publisher), also tell the town of Claremore, one and all, they showed us the right spirit and we thank you all …” |
Both of them remember well Nov. 4, 1938.
Russell’s father, Fred Wallis, who with his wife, Gertrude, settled the 77 Ranch in the Oowala neighborhood in January 1930. was a friend of Herb McSpadden and had a chuckwagon for that first parade. Russell rode horseback with a group of cowmen and ranchers, wrangled by McSpadden, nephew of Will Rogers and manager of Will’s birthplace ranch.
Russell remembers his dad driving the wagon, not because he wanted to, but because a man who worked for the Wallis’s had a little “too much firewater” the night before and “Dad had to drive.” That chuckwagon became a tradition in Claremore parades and at the Will Rogers Roundup Club Rodeo.
A teen-ager, not too concerned with the solemnity of the day, he remembers the “town was full” and there had been a “little bit of snow.”
The Tackers, who hailed from Shawnee, were in Charley Hardy’s office Nov. 4, 1938 to sign papers on their new farm, Anne said. An older daughter, Aline Hicks, lived here and had been taking her parents to visit farms for sale “My mother loved the big trees,” said Anne, of the property now home of her nephew Greg Tacker.
Already admirers of Will Rogers, the Tackers went home excited about the opening of the museum and the prospects of living in Will Rogers’ hometown.
Anne remembers the day Will died and her parent’s reaction. Her dairyman father had made the daily milk run to town and heard about Will’s death. “Mother started crying,” she said.
The family moved to Verdigris in 1939. Anne graduated valedictorian of her 1941Verdigris High School class before attending Tulsa School of Business, Accountancy, Law and Finance. She worked in the Sears account department.
Russell jokes he got his bride by “special order.” But the fact is he stole her from a Marine boyfriend who took her to the 77 Ranch to ride horses, including a ride to the Rogers Ranch.
The Marine went back on duty and Russell “took over” and took Ann for his bride on a Sunday afternoon, March 4, 1945 at First Christian Church.
On Monday he went to Oklahoma City to take his military service physical. He passed — but was told he probably would never be called because his older brother was in the service and he was needed on the ranch.
It was a cold winter day when the Fred and Gertrude Wallis, their 3-year-old son, Kenneth, and two of her sisters came to Oklahoma. Fred Wallis had emigrated from England with his family when he was two. Gertrude was the daughter of German immigrants.
“I saw in the paper it was 16 degrees below zero here that year,” Russell reflected.
He attended Oowala School, but got his education in life roping and riding the 77 Ranch, where he has been a cowman all his life — and still runs cattle.
Anne quit working when son, Ron (Oologah veterinarian Dr. Ron Wallis) came along. In 1956 she was talked into becoming a part-time secretary at the Claremore First United Presbyterian Church — a position she held 45 years.
Although they didn’t know Will Rogers, the Wallis family history was intertwined with the Will Rogers Ranch and the McSpadden family.
“Sunday afternoon, my brother and I crossed at Scudder Ford, across from the ranch, and roped goats … “big old angora goats.”
He remembers when Will Rogers bought Herb a new 1935 Ford, “a black four-door. I remember because my folks had one just like it.”
The families shared so much in common with the close-knit farming and ranching families of those days. Russell and his late brother, Kenneth, treasured their friendship with the McSpadden family. “We took our mares to be bred to Squirrel, (called Squirrel because he had such small ears) a McSpadden-owned stud out of Oklahoma Star.”
He recalls Oklahoma Military Academy cadets riding the Academy’s horses to the Rogers Ranch, where they” forded Scudder Ford and Herb summered them.”
He can close his eyes and see Herb “rolling his own cigarettes in brown papers.”
Clem McSpadden, Herb’ eldest son, and Russell rode in the infamous 1939 100-mile race. “It was 40 miles one day, 40 miles the next day and 20 miles ending in Nowata — “starting in Oologah and riding by the Rogers’ place.”
“ It was hot and sunny one day and the next it was pouring rain.”
On the way home, Russell spent the night in the historic home where Will Rogers was born. “After a banquet in Nowata for the riders, we rode to the "Rogers place.” Russell ended up staying two nights. “My folks had to come pick me up because the river was up.”
A fixture in the Will Rogers Roundup Club, Russell and Anne are the surviving active charter members. They have ridden in most of the Will Rogers Days and rodeo parades since.
They still make their home on the 77 Ranch in the house built by his parents in 1939 and look forward to the grandson and great-grandchildren coming home to ride the pony they keep to entertain the children.