Biographers agree that the strong marriage, fidelity, loyal friendship and trust between Will and Betty Rogers were the keystones of Will Rogers' incredible career and life success.
Losing his Mother at age 10, Will Rogers' next 19 years were adventuresome but with small design or little long term purpose. The tide changed at age 29 when he married.
The magic of an eight-year friendship with Betty Blake of Rogers, Arkansas had blossomed into a towering romance that had started in 1900. "Getting Married," was inscribed in the calendar book of the vaudeville performer: November 23, 1908. For the next 26 years, Will Rogers would soar in popularity and lasting greatness. The secret leavening was Betty Blake.
With all possible tenderness, he thrust his bride from a simple life in Arkansas into the bustling world of show business, stardom, communications, power politics and high finance. Betty Blake was perfect for all challenges. She steered her husband adroitly and properly. An ideal wife and mother, she also was the quiet, stable, innovative advisor and peerless partner.
It was at the Oologah, Indian Territory train station where the couple met. If it were not love at first sight, certainly a friendship was born that would survive strange and severe tests.
A carefree 21-year-old cowboy, Will Rogers stepped down from the Kansas City express and there, in the station, was Betty Blake. Slender, soft voice, light complexion with short cropped, light brown hair. Magic!
The seventh of nine children born September 9, 1879 to James and Amelia Blake of Silver Springs, Arkansas, Betty's father died when she was three. Her widowed Mother moved the family to Rogers, Arkansas — a town whose name cannot be traced to Will Rogers' ancestry. Betty had been born nearly two months before Will Rogers' November 4, 1879 birth in Indian Territory.
Betty Blake's widowed Mother provided a happy home under tough economic conditions which meant the children all worked.
Betty Blake was a good student, but employment precluded her graduation from the local academy.
Talented in music, she played several instruments and was a popular actress in local theater. She clerked in a mercantile store, set type for the Rogers Democrat newspaper then became a railroad telegrapher.
Stricken by typhoid in 1899, she lost her hair and, as it grew back, she styled it into the boyish bob that would greet Will Rogers. To regain her health, she moved to tiny Oologah where her sister's husband was railroad station master.
Will Rogers then shyly joined Betty Blake in evenings of traditional entertainment with friends. At Christmas, she returned to Arkansas but letters followed from "Injun Cowboy W. P. Rogers."
Will Rogers wrote of "love" and a "broken heart" and twice met with Betty at various places. The romance gave way to travel lust and Will Rogers left for a trip around the world and into wild west shows.
Four years later, at the World's Fair in St. Louis where the visiting Betty Blake was watching a wild west show, she was surprised to see her old flame, Will Rogers, dash into the arena with his rope twirling. Daringly, she sent a note back stage and the couple met for dinner then went separate ways.
Letter writing resumed as Will Rogers ventured into vaudeville and, finally, the couple married in Arkansas and honeymooned on the show business circuit.
Busy as a homemaker and a Mother with a hard-working husband, Betty Blake Rogers nonetheless quietly counseled her Will Rogers as his career unfolded. They lost a son, Fred, but continued to look ahead. Betty was the force behind the scenes. She managed finances and kept the undisputed loyalty of her husband until his death.
By the time of the 1935 crash, the surviving children were young adults. The day their father died:
The bereaved widow and children reacted with poise but bewilderment and continued their lives in glaring spotlights of public interest. The children would grow to ripe ages and retirement after success in their own careers and ways.
Will Rogers Jr. would gain fame in public affairs, politics and acting. He retired in Tubac, Arizona where he was laid to rest in 1993 at age 81. Two sons, Clem and Carlos died at the dawning of the 21st Century.
Mary Rogers was a stage and movie star who, saddened, became an American expatriate returning to California where childless she died at Santa Monica in 1989 at the age of 76.
Jim Rogers, after a stint as a newsman and motion picture actor, became a successful rancher then moved to active retirement in Bakersfield, California. He was deeply involved in the Will Rogers Memorial Commission of Oklahoma overseeing the Claremore museum and Oologah birthplace. Jim died on April 28, 2000, at the age of 84, and was laid to rest with his parents in Claremore. His loving children are Kem, Charles and Bette. His widow, Judy, remains at the family ranch. Kem Rogers succeeded his father on the Will Rogers Memorial Commission of Oklahoma.
Nine years after the fatal crash in Alaska, Betty Blake Rogers died of cancer in their ranch home atop the hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Her body was taken by train to Oklahoma and laid to rest under the sarcophagus at the Will Rogers Memorial at Claremore.
Through her generosity, Mrs. Rogers had bequeathed the land and the priceless collections of Will Rogers memorabilia and papers to the world through a pact with the people of Oklahoma — Will Rogers' home folks.
The Will Rogers Memorial Commission, with public financing, constructed the historic, Oklahoma limestone museum and friends financed building the family tomb. Will and Betty Rogers, with their children, are in appropriate repose at Claremore but the legacy reverbrates six decades later.