New Will Rogers book available

CLAREMORE — Settle back, relax and enjoy learning about Will Rogers in the very things he had to say. You will see in “The Quotable Will Rogers” by Joseph H. Carter what Will had to say more than 70 years ago is just as fitting as if it were today. The book, released for January sales, is available in the Will Rogers Museum gift shop. Each page of the attractive easy-read book of Will Rogers’ life as an entertainer, humorist, radio personality, actor and newspaper columnist — from his birth in1879 to his death Aug. 15, 1935 — contains a Will quote. Beginning with “I was born on Nov. 4, which is election day … My birthday has made more men and sent more back to honest work than any other day in the year.” Ending with “When I die my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read ‘I joked about every prominent man of my time but I never met a man I didn’t like.’ I’m so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come around my grave you’ll probably find me sitting there proudly reading it.” These words are carved in granite and grace the museum where Joe Carter was the executive director 10 years and where wife, Michelle Lefebvre-Carter was named to that post in 1999. Thousands of people wander through the Museum and pause to look out over Claremore from the hilltop where Will had promised his wife he would build a retirement home. His family gave the property to the state of Oklahoma after his death as a site for the Museum, which opened Aug. 16, 1938. A few of Will Rogers quotes appear on the museum walls. Visitors chuckle as they read. They turn to one another or call out to their partners to come read or listen to something Will said. Carter’s book is a collection of many never-before-published photographs. Quotes are those well-known and those not often heard or seen in print. Will had a lot to say on politics and government and everyday life. Carter has taken some of the greatest quotes from Will’s many years of writings and gathered them in this attractive book that will bring pleasure to readers. Check these out … In an age when plastic is the preferred way to paying … “We don’t have to worry about anything. No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go out and buy it on credit.” In a time when corporate leaders are going to prison ... “Villains are getting as thick as college degrees and sometimes on the same fellow.” When gun sales come under fire… “When the judgment day comes, civilization will have an alibi. ‘I never took a human life I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.’” When we have troops in Iraq… “Somebody is always telling us in the papers how to prevent war. There is only one way in the world to prevent war. And that is, for every nation to tend to its own business.” When the high cost of medical care is one of the most talked about subjects … “There is nothing that keeps poor people poor as much as paying doctor bills.” About an issue close to Oklahoman’s hearts … “Over home a congressman is never any better than his roads.” “The Quotable Will Rogers is a journalist’s view of Will Rogers’ life and his most important quotes,” Carter said. “It is a 95-page quick read, edited for mass readership. The Papers of Will Rogers, on the other hand, is a very scholarly treatment of an important figure in American and world history. Keeping alive the history, the philosophy, the humor and life pattern of Will Rogers are the main aims of both approaches.” “My by-line is on the book,” Carter said, “but the credit goes to the staff through the years collecting quotes. No doubt they are the best of what Will Rogers had to say.” Larry Gatlin, starring in “The Will Rogers Follies” road tour coming to Oklahoma later this month, wrote the foreword. The book is available now at the Will Rogers Museum gift shop at an affordable $12.95. The museum and gift shop is open 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will be open New Year’s Day. • • • CLICK HERE • • • TO VISIT THE MUSEUM STORE AND GET YOUR COPY TODAY!