Kin of Rogers’s trusted worker visits Oklahoma museums

Family connection
Trudi Sandmeier’s grandparents were very much a part of the Will Rogers family. She recently visit the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore and immediately felt a closer kinship with the Cherokee born in Indian Territory, who lived in California while always claiming Oklahoma as his home.

Trudi Sandmeier’s grandparents were a part of the Will Rogers family at their California ranch.

“My man Emil” is how Will sometimes spoke of Emil Sandmeier who was a longtime employee. His wife Gertrude joined the “family” when she was hired to teach French to Mary. They lived on the ranch for a time upstairs in the guesthouse over the garage.

Trudi has accepted the challenge of continuing the heritage of her grandparents and works with Will’s Rogers children and grandchildren in preservation of the California.

In addition to love of the Rogers family, it is a natural for the graduate of UCLA and Cornell with a graduate degree in historic preservation and planning. “That is very much a direct result,” she said, of her experience with the ranch and her grandparents.

After graduate school and return to California — and into her grandparents old home— she has taken a position as director of education of Los Angeles Conservancy.

She made her first visit to Oklahoma, the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore and Oologah Birthplace Ranch this year during the National Historic Preservation Conference in Tulsa. Historic Preservation’s role is to advise and educate about preserving historic buildings and cultural sites.

Trudi is involved in the countywide historic preservation organization in LA and on the board of the Will Roger Ranch Foundation.

As a child she visited the California ranch with her grandparents. “They had an immense respect for the family. They were very proud to work for them.”

She was privileged to see the family’s lifestyle not known by most. “I got to go behind the ropes to see how the Rogers’ family lived.”

Emil Sandmeier, who visited Claremore in the late 1970s, did whatever Will needed him to do. “He was part valet, part business manager … his man Friday,” Trudi said.

He continued to help Mrs., Rogers until going to Texas in 1936 for the Sesquicentennial (130th anniversary), where he recreated the ranch living room in one of the exhibit spaces on the Texas State Fair grounds. “He was there six or seven months during the construction and fair,” Trudi said
She has found it a pleasure as well as responsibility of her legacy to be involved with the Rogers family in preservation of the ranch and raising funds to support the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation.

“It’s nice to see the family still working together.

“It s very much my responsibility to carry on stewardship at the ranch.”