Will Rogers, Jr. will speak in the Texarkana College Auditorium, Tuesday, December 4 at 11 a.m. Admission to the Student Senate sponsored event is free to all TCC and ETSU – T students and $1 for the general public.
Newspaper publisher, foreign correspondent, United States Congressman, a tank commander in Europe in World War II, a government administrator in California and in Washington, movie actor, lecturer and TV host and commentator, such a thumbnail account of the colorful career of Will Rogers, Jr.
The oldest son of Will Rogers, Sr. and Betty (Blake) Rogers, Will Rogers, Jr. was born in New York City on October 20, 1911. At the time of Will Jr.’s birth, Will Sr. was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies. For the next few years, the family lived in New York City, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. In 1919, Will Sr. began appearing in silent pictures and the family moved to Beverly Hills, California. Will Rogers, Jr. attended public school.
Upon high school graduation, he entered Stanford University. There he set a backstroke swimming record, captained the Stanford Polo Team, debated over the radio against Oxford University in the world’s first transcontinental debate, and with his partner won the Western Conference Debate Championship. He worked on the Stanford Daily and also was editor of the off-campus publication “News.” He majored in philosophy and graduated with the class of 1935.
On August 15th of that year, his father was tragically killed, with Wiley Post, in an airplane accident near Pt. Barrow, Alaska. A few months later, Will Jr. purchased the “Beverly Hills Citizen,” a weekly newspaper upon which he had also worked as a high school correspondent. For his newspaper and the McNaught Syndicate, he covered the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37. By the late 1930s, the “Beverly Hills Citizen” was the largest weekly newspaper in the world.
In June, 1939, he married a former Stanford classmate, Collier Connell. They had first met on the Stanford Daily where she was woman’s editor and he was just joining the staff.
They have two children: Clem Adair, a Navajo boy, whom they adopted, was born December 2, 1938, and Carl Connell, born to them January 27, 1952.
A Democrat and active in political affairs, Will Rogers, Jr. was elected in 1942 to the United States Congress from the 16th District of California, in a campaign while he was serving as a Second Lieutenant in the U. S. Army. In Congress, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and was active in helping to set up the soldier voting bill.
He resigned from Congress in 1944 to re-enter the army and was sent to England to join the 814th Tank Destroyer Battalion attached to the Seventh Armoured Division. His unit landed in France a month after D-Day, and his was one of the reconnaissance platoons that raced across France in General Patton’s dash to the German border. In the Battle of the Bulge his unit lost several men and all their vehicles, but managed to escape by hanging onto the sides of friendly tanks. He was wounded in the battle of the Ruhr in the last week of the war and spent several months in hospitals in England and France.
Back as a newspaper editor in Beverly Hills, he won a hard fought campaign for Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in 1946, but lost to the republican incumbent, William Knowland. In 1948 he was campaign manager for Southern California for President Harry Truman. In 1951, Warner Brothers asked him to play the part of his father in “The story of Will Rogers,” with Jane Wyman as co-star. It was the first professional acting he had ever done. He went on to star in several motion pictures – – “The Boy from Oklahoma,” and “Wild Heritage.”
In 1967, Steward Udall, then Secretary of Interior, appointed Rogers Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Moving to Washington, Rogers specialized in Indian education – – spending two thirds of his time out on the reservations. Rogers left this position in 1969, but remains a part-time consultant to the Bureau.
In recent years he has divided his energies between his real estate business in Beverly Hills and his ranch in Tubac, Arizona. He continues active in Indian affairs, making occasional trips for the Indian Bureau. A well-known lecturer, he continues active in this field. He is a member (since 1946) of the National Congress of American Indians. Currently he is working with the Alaskan Federation of natives on their pending legislation. He is also honorary Chairman of Arrow, a national organization for Indian welfare. With Bryan Sterling, a research specialist, he is preparing a book on the films of Will Rogers, Sr.