Two more Roy Rogers stories

[Jerry Peterson]

Howard Cherry is one of Roy Rogers’ biggest fans. He befriended Rogers decades ago, and, over the years, Cherry has purchased some of Roy’s movie costumes, hats, and revolvers.

The two men are the same size, so from time to time Cherry dons a Rogers outfit for a photo shoot.

Now here’s the surprise. Cherry owns the Hopalong Cassidy Museum in Cambridge, Ohio – Cassidy, another cowboy movie, radio, and television hero.

I met Cherry last year when Marge and I stopped by his museum to promote my western crime novel, Early’s Fall. At the top of this post is a picture of Cherry and me, Cherry wearing one of Roy Rogers’ hats.

Second story.

Roy Rogers was not a cowboy, except in the movies and on radio and television.

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1911 – a city kid.

And his real name wasn’t Roy Rogers. It was Leonard Slye. It was a Hollywood studio executive who came up with Slye’s movie name.

In 1912, Slye’s his father moved the family upriver on a 12- by 50-foot houseboat he built out of salvaged lumber to Portsmouth, Ohio. There he bought a parcel of land where he intended to build a house. The river flooded before he could start construction – and the flood lifted/carried the houseboat to the Slye family’s property. Thus the houseboat, now on dry land, remained the Slye family home for six years until Dad bought a farm 12 miles north on Duck Run. Leonard spent most of his growing-up years here.

How he got to California and into the movies as a singing cowboy, that’s a story for another time.

I’ll end this one by telling you that Portsmouth, Ohio, claims Roy Rogers. The city launched a Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Society back in 1982 with the express purpose of bringing Roy and Dale to Portsmouth for a homecoming.

The society succeeded, and Roy and Dale came.

Big celebration.

That celebration gave birth to the Roy Rogers Festival, the first one held in the spring of 1983. This year’s festival was number 27.

Rogers’ image is there in Portsmouth all year long, in a 30-foot high mural on the city’s flood wall. A star, signed by Roy, also is on the flood wall. And then there’s the Roy Rogers Esplanade, a Roy Rogers county highway, and . . .