Betty Blake Rogers

Betty Blake Rogers (September 9, 1879 June 21, 1944) was an American author. She was the wife of actor Will Rogers and worked to uphold her husband's legacy after his death. Her efforts led to the creation of the Will Rogers State Park at the family's Santa Monica ranch and the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Biography Betty Blake was born on September 9, 1879, in Monte Ne in Benton County, Arkansas, which was at the time the small village of Silver Springs. Blake returned to Arkansas just before Christmas of that year and the two exchanged a few letters before falling out of contact. In the following years, Blake clerked at the H. L. Stroud Mercantile Company and set type at the Rogers Democrat.

Blake met Rogers again in 1904. She had gone to St. Louis to visit another one of her sisters and attend the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Rogers had recently returned to the United States and was performing at the fair. Having heard that Rogers was performing, Blake sent him a note and he invited her to the show and dinner. Blake later recorded in her biography of her husband that she was embarrassed by Will's profession. She specifically hated the outfit he wore for that performance: Blake gave birth to their second son, James Blake Rogers, in New York on July 25, 1915. She subsequently gave birth to one more child, a son named Fred Stone Rogers, on July 15, 1918. Fred died of diphtheria on June 17, 1920.

In 1919, as Roger's film career was taking off, the family moved to a ranch in Santa Monica, California.

Death Rogers died in an airplane crash in Alaska on August 15, 1935. Although he was originally buried in California, in 1942 a new sunken garden was built in front of the Will Rogers Memorial, and he was interred there in 1944.

Blake died on June 21, 1944, in Santa Monica, and was laid to rest with her husband in the tomb in Claremore.