Jimmie Rodgers and Will Rogers Save the Red Cross

 

This is a true story about one of the lesser known events of the great depression, a tour by

Will Rogers and Jimmie Rodgers in 1931 that saved thousands from starvation. Few

Americans today know about the tour; fewer still understand its impact. The efforts of Will

and Jimmie not only saved untold millions of Americans from the horror of famine that year,

but also paved the way for the growth and maturation of the American Red Cross. The

tour’s effects reverberate today, through such events as our friend Willie Nelson's "Farm

Aid," Ken Kragen's  "We Are The World," " Live Aid," and the many other benefits that

musicians lend a voice and a song to, and the ongoing work of the American Red Cross

world wide.  It is in that spirit that this Jimmie Rodgers Saga WILD WEST RUNAWAY

TRAIN is

These two "distant sons" performed 50 shows in 18 days across Oklahoma, Arkansas, and

Texas, starting in San Antonio, Texas.  It is said that the tour made over $250,000, which

was a huge amount of money at the time.  The Assistant secretary of the Navy for aviation

provided them with the use of a Navy Curtis "Hell-Diver" aircraft,  named Mystery Ship, and

was piloted by the famous aviator Frank Hawks, who also performed monologues and rope

tricks as an act on the tour.  Rogers and Rodgers gave all box office receipts to the Red

Cross with the stipulation that half be used for urban relief and half for rural, with a special

grant made to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.

 

The tour with Will and Jimmie's assorted national radio pleas, ultimately saw $3 million

dollars raised for the American Red Cross.  Donations checked the growth of an already

catastrophic situation.  For example, the agency fed 150,000 people per week in Arkansas

in January 1931.  By the end of February, that number had increased to 500,000 per day.

 

"Neither Will Rogers nor Jimmie Rodgers finished high school, (nor did Merle Haggard). 

They were not elected officials, not policy-makers, not economists.  Yet - through what they

saw and knew personally - they accepted and acted upon an unpleasant reality that men of

greater education and influence disregarded.  By selflessly volunteering their services, the

three entertainers gave new hope to people who were starving.  They provided an unknow-

able number of Americans with a reason to keep going, a sense that circumstances would

eventually change for the better.  Today, Will and Jimmie continue to inspire us with the notion

that in time a genuine crisis, figures will arise who have the courage to recognize the truth of

a situation-and the willingness to act accordingly and virtuously." from DeltamyHome.com

 

In that spirit, the producers and team of The Jimmie Rodgers Saga and the Me and Merle

Memoir dedicate the documentary to helping the millions of runaway, throwaway, homeless

and incarcerated children and youth of these United States of America.  The state and fate of

these millions of children in the streets and alleys, jails, detention centers, foster homes, lost,

and crying, need a National effort to help with the pain and suffering that is a mark against

who we are as a Nation and a civilized people "for God's sake...I would think."