'Westerner Who Changed America'
Will
Rogers highlighted as
'Westerner Who Changed America'
When Jesse Mullins Jr. picked five westerners to celebrate in the November-December issue of “American Cowboy,” he didn’t know how their lives intertwined.
Not until the editor of the widely circulated magazine contacted Joe Carter at Will Rogers Memorial Museums did he know the connections between the “Five Westerners Who Changed America.”
In the introductory story in the latest issue, available on the newsstand this week, Mullins credits Carter for the “unexpected” connections among Will Rogers, Buffalo Bill Cody of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, John Wayne and Theodore Roosevelt.
Five pages of the slick-finish magazine are devoted to the stories.
Carter, former Will Rogers Memorial Commission executive director and Rogers’ biographer, wrote the section on Will Rogers. Lyn Nofziger, Reagan friend and advisor, wrote about him — and Dale Walker, Western historian, wrote about Buffalo Bill and Roosevelt. Wayne’s old friend Andrew J. Fenady
wrote about him.
Mullins said Carter pointed out the relationship of Will with the others.
Reagan was an aspiring actor when Will was killed in 1935. He was considered for a test for a part in the “Will Rogers Story,” played by Will Rogers Jr. Reagan was the winner of the first “Will Rogers Communicator” Award.
Will Rogers was just 13 when he attended the Chicago World’s Fair and the Wild West Show.
Carter has said it may have been the defining moment in his career when Will saw a trick roper and from that moment started perfecting his roping, a centerpiece in his career as an entertainer.
Will, Reagan and Wayne shared a history in movies and with director John Ford.
Will was turned down as too young to join Roosevelt’s voluntary cavalry regiment at San Juan Hill. He entered a roping a Oklahoma City where Teddy Roosevelts’s Rough Riders we holding a reunion and Roosevelt, a candidate for vice president on the William McKinley, ticket attended.
“American Cowboy” is a magazine of western lifestyle, travel and entertainment filled with frontier legends, cowboy culture, movies, travel and events.