Wreath-laying ceremony and flyover at Will Rogers Memorial Museum

On Friday, August 11, at noon, the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore will host a wreath-laying ceremony and flyover to mark the anniversary of the August 15, 1935, death of Will Rogers and Wiley Post in an Alaskan plane crash.

Jennifer Rogers Etcheverry, Will Rogers’ great-granddaughter, will be joined by several generations of descendants of Will’s sisters, Sallie Rogers McSpadden and Maud Rogers Lane, for a wreath-laying rite at noon Friday, August 11, at the family tomb on the grounds of Will Rogers Memorial Museum.

Boy Scouts will lead in the Flag salute. As the wreath is placed, Fran Moore will sing the national anthem, and “Taps” will sound by Noah Grantham.

The public is welcome to join the family as they place the wreath at the tomb in the shadow of the statue of Will and his horse Soapsuds riding into the sunset, followed by a flyover by pilot Tom Egbert, a Will Rogers Memorial Museum roper docent.

A few years after Will‘s death, August 15, 1935, in an Alaskan plane crash, a tomb and sarcophagus, designed to the specifications of his wife, Betty, was constructed on the hillside below the museum, which opened on his birthday November 4, 1938. His remains were moved to the tomb along with their young son, Fred Stone Rogers, followed by Betty when she died in 1944. Since then, their daughter Mary; son Jim; his wife, Astrea; and Jim and Astrea’s son Kem have been interred in the tomb.

Photo: Jennifer Rogers Etcheverry, great-granddaughter of Will Rogers, at the family tomb on the grounds of Will Rogers Memorial Museum. Rogers-Etcheverry is the daughter of Kem and granddaughter of Jim and Astrea.