Remember When or As I Recollect

 

By PAT REEDER CLAREMORE — It was an era of houses with front porches, housewives were home in the middle of the day – and they wore aprons and didn’t often let others see them cry.      It was Aug. 15, 1935 and the news rocked the world from Claremore to California and Washington, D.C., and New York – and in countries many people knew only by name.      Will Rogers and Wiley Post were dead.      The modified plane with pontoons for water landings they were flying to Point Barrow Alaska faltered a bout 50 feet up, dragged a wing in the water and crashed on its back. Two of Oklahoma’s favorite sons perished in the shallow water beside the Arctic Ocean.      Born and reared in Pawhuska, “ even to a little boy they were huge names,” said Charles W. Harris, Tulsa, president, Transportation Leasing Group and aviation enthusiast.      “Wiley Post … I knew all the things he had done … two persons, two men of very high profile with me even as a little boy. I was almost 8, my mother, younger sister and I were in California on vacation. We were visiting my grandparents in Los Angeles the summer of August 1935.      “I was aware from the news that Post and Rogers had left in a floatation equipped plane headed for Siberia. I knew enough geography to know it was a long flight - and a trying and difficult flight.      “About mid-afternoon as I recollect, the day after the 15th I assume, in the residential area of south central LA, two newspaper boys came down the middle of the residential street carrying their canvas newspaper bags hawking the extra. ‘Extra, Extra, Will Rogers and Wiley Post killed at Point Barrow,” Harris said.      “Most of the housewives in their aprons – everyone wore aprons then – came out on their front porches. I asked my mother for money and ran to the middle of the street to the newsboy.      “I can see the headlines to this moment, huge headlines, pretty unusual. Extras were essentially unheard of. Probably the majority of households didn’t have radios and the newspaper was the primary media.      “I recall the shock,” Harris reflected. “Post had a great reputation for flying around the world twice and Rogers for flying with him. It seemed impossible to believe.”      Three years later they Harris family was in Claremore for the opening of the Claremore museum. “My Dad just had to be here. We were so impressed by how stately the museum was. There were lots of people here. He was a very important figure to all of us because he had accomplished so much.”      Harris calls Will Rogers a man for “all ages. He fit into that age of a great movie star and political friends, ranked with all of them as an equal, far more revered than most politicians. He met the public and their level. That was his great appeal.      “In a time of great depression, he could say things that made people laugh. Watch him rope and they forgot the struggles of the time.”      Harris will be at the Will Rogers birthplace ranch Aug. 15 for the fly-in, honoring the memory of Will Rogers and Wiley Post. John Burrows and Evelyn Story      John Harvey Burrows and Evelyn Thurman Story tell the same kind of story, except it was in their Claremore neighborhood.      Burrows, whose father “China” knew Will Rogers, has a “fleeting” memory of playing outside and a “paper boy coming down 6th Street hawking an extra published that day by the Claremore Progress.”      He said his mother came out of the house to get a paper as did other women who started gathering on porches and in the yard in their aprons. “All the women were crying,” Burrows said — and they weren’t used to that.      Story said everyone was crying and mothers were telling the kids to go set in the swing “… we had a big swing on our porch.”      The daughter of Claremore’s Police Chief John Thurman, Will was no stranger to Story’s family. She remembers going downtown where her father stood on the “bank corner” and talked to everyone and would visit with Will when he came to town.      “Occasionally the kids would get a nickel for a coke at Collins Drug and we would see Will. He was so friendly … just like all the rest of us. We never thought about him being a movie star, but we knew he was one. I remember going to see him play polo at OMA.” Shirley Windle      Shirley Williams Windle remembers the day vividly. The daughter of Blanche Upp Williams, they were living with the Upps in Chelsea.      “Sallie McSpadden was a dear friend of my mother and her Sunday School teacher at Chelsea Methodist Church. Someone called to tell us W ill had been killed in a plane crash. I believe it was the same week as my grandmother’s death and I think we still had her body at home like they did in those days.” Anne Wallis      The day is still vivid for Anne Tacker Wallis, 12, at the time and living near Shawnee. “Dad came in from town and told us of Will’s death. My mother started crying. He was like one of the family. My sister, Sue (McKnight), was just two and couldn’t understand why our mother was crying.”      At that time the Tackers didn’t know they would be moving to Rogers County.      Wilson and Blanche Tacker signed the papers on a farm near Verdigris in 1938, the day the Will Rogers museum opened in Claremore.      Ann said her parents were “so proud of the attention their new home was getting.      “We thought we were in heaven when we got here. Anne married Russell Wallis. They live on the Wallis      Ranch north of Claremore. Juna Phillips      Juna Weigart Phillips, daughter of a cowboy and goat roper, remembers her grandparents and father were upset when the word came of the death of Will Rogers. Charlie Weigart was a cowboy on the Mullendore ranch in Juna’s youth.      She remembers the time one of Will’s friends brought him to her father’s roping arena at their ranch north of Pryor to rope goats. Hugh Carmen was a great friend of her family and he was a “clone of Will Rogers … He looked like him, talked like him … so I always thought of Will when I saw Hugh.”      Juna works in the gift shop at Will Rogers Museum. George Lamberson      George Lamberson, whose father’s family came to Oologah from Missouri and worked on the Dog Iron Ranch for Clem Rogers, remembers well the day Will Rogers and Wiley Post died.      ‘We were in Claremore in Bell’s Confectionary when the word came that Will was dead … guess they must have had a radio,” said the retired Rogers County commissioner and lifetime resident of Oologah.      They lived in the back of the G.H. Lamberson Mercantile so the word started traveling through downtown when they got home. “Not too many people knew it,” Lamberson reflected.      George was just 11 but he remembers Will coming to Oologah School and doing rope tricks. “He was very entertaining. He was at Herb’s (Herb McSpadden ran the ranch for his uncle and George was a friend of Clem McSpadden) several times … Dad worked for Will’s father, so Will knew my dad. He would come buy and see him at the grocery store. That was something for me. He was famous then.”      Lamberson’s father’s family was camped in a covered wagon now site of the Oologah power plant. Clem passed by and asked them if they wanted to work and they worked in the corn fields.      “Dad told of breaking a horse for then little Will. He was riding the horse when it threw him off west of town and one of the Green boys came by and said ‘let me get on that horse.’ My dad told that he got on and made him buck till he gave out and turned to him and said ‘he was broke’.” Wanda Jones      Retired Rogers County Clerk Wanda Jones’ grandfather Charley Harris same to Oklahoma with his family a year before Will Rogers was born and settled near what is now Talala. Harris was 9 when he met Will Rogers at a birthday paper for George Bibles and they became playmates.      Harris was winner of the 1939 100 mile horse race from Oologah to Talala to Nowata to Bartlesville and back to Oologah. As a little girl, Wanda remembers he grandmother, Ida Harris, loading the grandchildren in the car and following the race. Irene Ward      Irene Iaacson Ward, daughter of Norwegian immigrants John and Ida Isaacson, was brought to Claremore in 1919, the year of her birth. The family lived in the Oowala and Tiawah areas where she lived with and worked for Claremore families while attending high school. She married Amos Ward, member of a pioneer Rogers County Cherokee family, also from the Oologah-Talala area.      She remembers well Aug. 15, 1935. “That was my 16th birthday,” she recalled and the next day when they got the word by newspaper through the mail.      “We were playing horseshoes .The loser had to go to the mailbox. It was a dry year. I walked in dust about two inches deep. I saw the headlines and stood there reading it until it finally sunk in and I ran through the dust and ragweeds to the house. Mom thought I got bit because I was crying, tears were mixed with dust, mud running down my face. Daddy looked at the paper. It was so unbelievable …We all sat around and talked about him.      She remembers seeing Will as a child and coming down from Dr. Collins office. Will Rogers was standing on the street talking to three men. They introduced Daddy to him.”      Will Rogers was a frequent visitor with his Chelsea sisters Sallie McSpadden and Maude Lane. Erskine Hogue Stanberry (left), was a friend of Will Rogers' Chelsea sisters and their families and knew Will from visits there. Rue Hester was also a family friend and relative of Will's sister Sallie. She was in the choir that sang at the Claremore Museum dedication when it opened in 1938. Erskine Hogue Stanberry      Chelseans felt an “awful sorrow,” when they heard of the crash, according to Erskine Hogue Stanberry, 98, a pioneer educator and member of ranching and banking family.      “Everybody felt Mr. Rogers belonged to the town and he belonged to us,” she said. Rue Hester      Rue Delozier Hester best recollections of Will’s visit to Chelsea are through the eyes of her brothers.      ‘They had to take the milk cow to Aunt Sallie’s every night to put her in the pasture. If Will was visiting, he would twirl his rope and children would gather around.”      Her brothers would come home excited about the private performance.      Admittedly her fondest memories are as a high school junior. “I was in the high school chorus and we had a big important part in the program. Of course,” she said with a grin, “it was directed by Helen McSpadden Eaton,” daughter of Will’s sister.      Many of the memories people have of Will Rogers are about airplanes. Calvin C. Boykin Jr.      Calvin C. Boykin Jr., College Station, Texas, who served in the military with Will Rogers Jr. said in the 1930s his mother drove he and his younger brother to the Big Spring, Texas, airport. There he saw Will Rogers for the first and only time.      “We were told a plane that had just landed at our airport contained a very important person … I remember a gray-haired, stocky man step out of the plane and shake hands with a greeting party. After a little while the plane was refueled and it took off.”