Remembering Will
Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation leaders visited the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch near Oologah. Bruce Snyder (from left), organization president; Rory Bruer, chairman of the board; and Todd Vradenburg, executive director executive director; were in Oklahoma in 2006 to unveil a painting at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore.
Half way across the United States – in California — is an organization that shares with the Will Rogers Memorial Museum a common mission to perpetuate the memory of Will Rogers. In a continued partnership support, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation has given the Claremore museum $50,000 to continue online accessibility of Will Rogers’ writings and the Will Rogers in Schools programs.
These projects “will help both our organizations take one step closer to that (the mission) goal,” said Todd Vradenburg, WRMPPF executive director.
“Gifts like this are in keeping with our common objective of educating, preserving and sharing the life of Will Rogers for all generations,” said Steve Gragert, Will Rogers Museum director.
“Since its opening in 1938, 70 years ago this Nov. 4, the Will Rogers Memorial Museum has been recognized as the world’s largest repository of the archives and artifacts of the remarkable Will Rogers,” he said. “Chief among them is the personal and public writings of Will Rogers. It is this vast trove of material that researchers, students, scholars, writers— indeed people from all walks of life and professions — seek to access to understand, appreciate and apply the wit and wisdom of Rogers.”
WRMPPF shares this goal as they have the Foundations’ goal of assisting industry members in need.
Pioneers host an annual recognition dinner and fund-raiser that draws well-known motion picture people who raise millions to support the Foundation programs.
Gragert said the gift will be earmarked for continuing the project to digitize, in an accessible and searchable format, Rogers’ published writings:
•Five of his six books,
•Six volumes of syndicated newspaper columns known as “Weekly Articles,”
•A volume of syndicated newspaper columns from national political conventions of 1924-1932,
•Three volumes of miscellaneous magazine writings, and
•A volume of his radio broadcasts.
The project also includes high tech equipment for producing images from the writings and other documents in the Museum collection.
Jacob Krumwiede, who came to Will Rogers Memorial Museum though a Rogers State University internship program and who has a degree in American history, will be working on the project, Gragert said.
He is completing an Oklahoma Centennial project of the “Daily Telegrams” portion of the project. They are expected to be online in the summer or early fall.
Gragert said given the importance of Will Rogers' prolific and popular writings, reaching the largest audience of any writer of his day, “the writings of Will Rogers should be afforded the widest, most efficient accessibility available to the public.”
A portion of the gift will be used to help support the Will Rogers in Schools program to present factual information about Will Rogers to primary, middle and secondary schools in Oklahoma. The program provides not only an entertaining “visit” with Will, but an invitation to young people and educators to visit the Claremore museum and birthplace ranch near Oologah.
Dr. Doug Watson, a retired professional and widely recognized portrayer of Will Rogers, leads this outreach and education initiative. During a typical year, he presents his program in 85 schools reaching about 5,000 students through the state.
This is not the first gift from the California based Foundation. Gragert said they provided the Museum with emergency funds for a chiller when the Museum’s air conditioning system failed and gave a 1946 portrait of Will that hung in the Saranac Lake, NY., Will Rogers Memorial Hospital as a permanent exhibit for the Claremore Memorial.
Bruce Snyder, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation president and president of 20th Century Fox Theatrical Distribution, stands in the doorway of the room where Will Rogers was born Nov. 4, 1879. Hollywood executives with WRMPPF visit the birthplace ranch near Oologah and Claremore Will Rogers Memorial Museum in 2006.
WRMPPF worked with the museum in acquiring some of Will Rogers’ Fox films, now available on DVD.
“There are all kinds of ways to support and enhance the memory of Will Rogers. We are fortunate in having them as a partner in giving numerous documents, archival items, photos and letters relating to Will Rogers,” according to Gragert.
WRMPPF merged in 2002 with the Will Rogers Memorial Fund, established in 1936 in honor of the humanitarian and entertainer. The merger allows help ranging from a monthly stipend to aid with medical rehabilitation and equipment, prescription, medication, emergency grants, vocational training and information and referrals to relevant human services organizations.
Funds are raised through various benefactors, fund-raisers and through moviegoer’s purchase of special combo packs at concession stands after seeing the Will Rogers Institute movie trailer at local movie theaters, including AMC in Claremore.
The California Foundation has a Rogers County connection, Rory Bruer, son of Raymond Bruer, spent his early childhood in his father’s native Catoosa, and is chairman of the board. He is the nephew of Dale and Pat Bruer of Claremore. He is president, Domestic Distribution for Sony Pictures Releasing.
Bruce Snyder is Foundation president. He is president of 20th Century Fox Theatrical Distribution.
Vradenburg, Bruer and Synder came to Claremore in 2006 to unveil the portrait painted by Clarence Allen, a former Tulsa World and Tribune cartoonist, art director and artist.