The Cowboy And The Senorita, Part Three

Roy Rogers started a club for his young fans, called the Roy Rogers Riders Club.  Any child who sent in his or her name and address could become a member. They would be sent a "Rogersgram" delivered by "Trigger Express." The rules of the club were simple:
Be neat and clean.
Be courteous and polite.
Always obey your parents.
Protect the weak and help them.
Be brave but never take chances.
Study hard and learn all you can.
Be kind to animals and care for them.
Eat all your food and never waste any.
Love God and go to Sunday School regularly.
Always respect our flag and our country.

I believe those rules are just as good now as they were back then.

The values Roy and Dale promoted in their movies and TV shows - the good guy always wins and he has a strong moral code - were values they held in real life. There was no pretense about them. They were a prime example of WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get. They were transparent before that word became a political buzz word.

Parents could drop their children off at the movie theater when a Roy Rogers movie was playing and know they wouldn't see anything objectionable. Roy was a straight-shooter with no shades of gray. Not only children looked up to him - men wanted to be like him and women wanted to marry someone like him. If ever a movie star could be called a hero, it was Roy Rogers. He and Dale stood for everything that was good, both in the movies and on TV and in real life.

In 1982, the Victor Valley Child Abuse Task Force was formed to help stem the tide of child abuse, neglect, abandonment and death in the High Desert of San Bernardino County in Southern California. To honor the participation and support given by Roy and Dale, in 1992 the name was changed to Happy Trails Children's Foundation. The Foundation is still going strong, still providing help to children. Roy and Dale's legacy lives on. The current executive director, Joel Dortch, still remembers the day in December, 1950 that Roy came to his hometown of Birmingham, AL.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans deserve to be remembered with respect and gratitude. I'm sure that when they passed on (Roy in 1998 and Dale in 2001) God greeted both of them with, "Well done, good and faithful servant."