A final tribute to Will Rogers
Aug. 22, 1935: Thousands of mourners lined up at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale to bid farewell to cowboy humorist Will Rogers, who was killed in a plane crash a week earlier.
“A brokenhearted city and her sister communities commended to the silence of the tomb the mortal remains of their favorite son -- the beloved Will Rogers,” The Times reported. “The prince of wit and wisdom was accorded a final tribute of such impressiveness as probably never before has honored a private citizen in America.
“With a demonstration of almost idolatrous worship, 50,000 persons, ‘bound by that mystic bond of brotherhood that makes all men one,’ filed past the bier of the cowboy-philosopher as it lay in state under a grove of trees.
“On the faces of all, men, women and children, were the unmistakable lines of poignant desolation for the loss of the man who had brought more sunshine in their lives for his having lived.”
In 1944, Rogers’ body was moved to the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Okla.
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