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Episode 6: Chester Reynolds
Howdy folks, it’s the second week of December 2024 and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we look share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West – and those still shaping it today.
On Nov. 11, 1955, Chester Reynolds joined 3,000 others at a spot a few miles northeast of downtown Oklahoma City known as Persimmon Hill.
The crowd included hundreds of people on horseback from local round-up clubs. Oklahoma’s governor was there, joined by a few of his fellow governors from other Western states. They all listened to a speech by Will Rogers Jr.
The dedication of the land was one big step in the creation of what was then called the Cowboy Hall of Fame, which is now our home at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
A few years earlier, such a place had been just a wild idea for Reynolds. After the dedication, he wrote a letter to Glenn Faris, the project’s general manager.
“I visited our Persimmon Hill before starting on my return trip to Kansas City. Seeing the site was an emotional experience for both Mrs. Reynolds and myself. It was not hard for me to visualize our dreams. In my mind’s eye, I could see our building and hear people coming up the walks.”
That’s touching to read now, being part of this museum every day, but it’s even more so because during this week, December 11, 1958, Chester Reynolds died before ever seeing the doors open to the building he imagined that day.
The seed of Reynolds’ dream was planted in 1947 when the Kansas City businessman visited the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma. The Memorial opened in 1938 and celebrated the life of Oklahoma’s favorite son, who died three years earlier.
The trip stuck in Reynolds’ mind. Rogers’ life story had inspired crowds of visitors. Couldn’t the stories of America’s other great cowboys – and the American West itself – inspire even more?
According to Bobby Weaver’s book on the history of the Museum, “That concept became the driving force that dominated Chet Reynold’s thinking for the rest of his life because, above all, Mr. Reynolds was an idea man.”
Reynolds had been drawn to the world of the West and Cowboys in his professional life. Though Reynolds’ life started humbly, first as a homesteader in Colorado, then as a General Store owner in Kansas.
He began selling Union-Alls, denim coveralls created by the Lee Corporation. He was so successful as a salesman that the company hired him to travel through Nebraska to sell work clothes. Reynolds began moving up Lee’s ranks, and as he did so, he became more and more focused on its Western wear. That put him into contact with working cattlemen and professional rodeo cowboys.
Side note: In the early 1920s, when he was Lee’s General Sales Manager, Reynolds made a splash in the advertising world when he created Buddy Lee. Buddy was a 12-and-a-half-inch tall doll-slash-mascot who would model different Lee clothing at stores nationwide. Buddy Dolls were used in ads, sold to kids, and, in the 1990s, Buddy Lee made a comeback in a revamped Lee marketing campaign.
Buddy’s fame and increased sales shot Reynolds to the top of the company. By 1952, he was chairman of the board of directors.
His work gave Reynolds ample opportunity to talk about his idea of a rodeo hall of fame everywhere he went. He chatted up cowboys, colleagues, competitors, and anyone who crossed paths with him. “Sounds like a good idea, Chester,” they would tell him, which was enough to keep him going.
At the 1953 Frontier Days Rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Reynolds held a press conference to announce that he would contact the governors of 17 Western states and organize an organization to build the Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.
The road from that announcement to Oklahoma City took some twists and turns. A site selection committee took proposals, narrowed down the prospects, and by 1955, had narrowed the finalists to Oklahoma City, Colorado Springs, and Dodge City, Kansas.
Oklahoma City boldly offered 37 acres of land and $500,000 towards building the museum. That was enough to convince the board of trustees. The Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame had its home.
This brings us back to that day on Persimmon Hill when Reynolds dedicated the grounds and turned into reality what he had been thinking about for nearly a decade.
He’d left his job at Lee to pursue the Hall of Fame idea full-time. He was determined to see it through to building the museum and inviting in the public.
It would take until 1965 for the Cowboy Hall of Fame to finally open its doors to the public. But Chester Reynolds wouldn’t be there.
In October of 1958, Reynolds entered the hospital for abdominal surgery. He had complications, and his health deteriorated. On December 11, 1958, Chester Reynolds died.
He was 71.
Our museum, of course survives. Next year, in 2025, we’ll celebrate the 70th anniversary of that 1955 dedication ceremony and the 60th anniversary of the 1965 opening of the museum building. We continue to celebrate Chester Reynolds’ original ideas and the history of the West that inspired him.
And with that, we’ll cut the ribbon and call it done for this episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with the words of Chester Reynolds during the museum’s dedication ceremony on November 11, 1955: “We are here today with a high resolution to see that the memory, deeds and rich tradition of all who will later be honored in the shrine to be built on this site, shall not be forgotten.”
Much obliged for listening and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
