August 15, 1935: Will Rogers and Wiley Post Are Killed

August 15, 1935, 90 years ago: Comedian and newspaper columnist Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post are killed in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska.

Born on November 4, 1879 in the Indian Territory, later the State of Oklahoma, William Penn Adair Rogers was the Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert of his day. In the 1910s, '20s and early '30s, in a nationally-syndicated newspaper column, in stage productions, and eventually on radio and in motion pictures, he combined country horse sense with urban wit to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

But he was never mean about it, saying, "When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: 'I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.' I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved."

Some other Willisms: 

* "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."

* "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

* "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."

* "If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics."

* "Prohibition is like Communism: It's a great idea, but it won't work."

* "Politics is applesauce." (A 1920s way of saying, "Baloney.")

* "Diplomacy is the art of saying, 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

* "Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."

* "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

* "Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff." (Not true: In New York City, Battery Park City was built on landfill.)

* "Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need."

* "Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like."

* "You can't say civilization don't advance. In every war they kill you in a new way." (He lived long enough to see aerial bombardment, but not the atomic bomb.)

* "We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others." (So he really was a Democrat.)

Born in northeast Texas on November 22, 1898, Wiley Hardeman Post was a pioneer of aviation. He developed an early pressure suit for really high flying, a step forward in what became spacesuits; and discovered the jet stream. Like Rogers, he claimed Native American ancestry.

In 1926, an oil-rig accident cost him the use of his left eye, and he wore an eye patch for the rest of his life. It didn't stop him from flying. He soon met Rogers, and they became close friends.

In 1931, Post and Australian navigator Harold Gatty set a new around-the-world record, taking off in his plane Winnie Mae from Roosevelt Field in Garden City, Long Island, New York (also Charles Lindbergh's starting point for his 1927 flight across the Atlantic Ocean), and heading east, including stops in Berlin and Moscow, across Siberia, to Nome and Fairbanks, Alaska, Edmonton and Cleveland, arriving back at Roosevelt Field in 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes.

In 1933, Post topped this -- two ways. He had a compass instead of a navigator, so he could become the 1st person to fly around the world alone. Aside from using Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn as his takeoff point, he used the same route, and did it in 7 days, 18 hours and 49 minutes, beating his own record by 21 hours and 2 minutes.

In 1935, he wanted to establish an airmail route between the American West Coast and Russia. He made the mistake of building a hybrid aircraft, including parts from one that had crashed. Rogers asked to come along, for material for his column. They took off from Seattle, and while Post flew, Rogers typed. Yes, he brought his typewriter on the plane.

On August 15, they took off from Fairbanks for Point Barrow, the northernmost point in the United States. A few miles away, the engine failed, and crashed into a lagoon. Both were killed instantly, Rogers at age 55, Post at 36.

Rogers is buried on the grounds of the Will Rogers Memorial, a museum dedicated to his life in Claremore, not far from his hometown of Oologah, in northeastern Oklahoma; Post, at Memorial Park Cemetery in Oklahoma City. Post never married, and is not known to have had any children. Rogers left behind a wife, Betty Blake, along with 3 sons and a daughter. Will Rogers Jr. served a term as a Congressman from California.

When I was a kid, there were T-shirts, commenting on his claim that he never met a man he didn't like: "Will Rogers never met Howard Cosell."