Report to alumni, honored guests, and current students.
Remarks delivered by Dick Risk, president of the Will Rogers Stage Foundation, at the Will Rogers High School 85th Anniversary assembly on September 11, 2024, exactly 85 years after the first day of classes in 1939. The assembly was presented by the Will Rogers High School Community Foundation.
We are gathered in this beautiful facility, an art deco masterpiece, for this special occasion. We are in this place only because it is a special occasion. Normally, the general public is not allowed on school property for security reasons.
In late 2015, former principal Nikki Dennis and I were in this auditorium recording a video to promote Will Rogers as a school of choice. We looked around and said it’s a shame that the public cannot see this auditorium – unless there is a special occasion. That’s when we decided to hold a concert here.
I brought the Kington Trio here in early 2016 for a Woody Guthrie tribute, and again in December of that year to perform their Christmas repertoire. “Holiday Cheers” was shown on PBS affiliate networks and stations over the next six Christmas seasons some 346 times in 83 markets. Sharing the greatness of Will Rogers High School with the rest of the country.
In collaboration with the Church Studio, we had two tribute concerts to my 1959 classmate, Leon Russell, in 2019 and 2022. The first of these was released earlier this year for PBS and, to date, has been shown 175 times in 69 markets, and it continues to be shown.
Based on the success of the fund drive to replace the original theatre organ in 2022, we had enough left over to organize the nonprofit Will Rogers Stage Foundation to produce professional entertainment for the public to keep them visiting our beautiful school. I am the volunteer leader of that entity. A plaque listing some 75 donors, mostly alumni, will soon be displayed in the foyer of this auditorium. (We say FOY-er in Oklahoma.)
We just presented our tenth concert this past Sunday, a Queen tribute band from New York, Xtreme Queen. We will soon display posters of all ten past concerts in the lobby.
Our Lerner & Loewe concert last fall, with a professional orchestra and chorus and three classically trained opera singers, has been accepted for showing on PBS as two one-hour programs. We hope that happens before the end of the year. We have recorded two other shows that will follow on PBS.
On November 24 we’re bringing back to Tulsa a 1960 Will Rogers graduate who is in four halls of fame, legendary blues guitarist Elvin Bishop.
We have purchased a lot of high-tech equipment for the stage.
We appointed and are sponsoring Artist-in-Residence Mike Huffman, a Broadway veteran, to perform at our theatre organ.
And finally, we partnered with the Will Rogers High School Community Foundation to send eight students to New York to see “The Outsiders,” winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, based on the book written by Will Rogers alumna Susan Eloise Hinton for a creative writing class while she was a junior. That book is required reading across the country for middle school students. Because Susie was more interested in developing the story line than doing her instructor’s daily homework assignments, she received a D in the course.
Check out our website: WillRogersStage.com. THANK YOU