Friends Will Rogers Never Met… Will Rogers--a long ago American favorite whose gentle humor and keen observations made a world smile often, and sometimes even think--claimed he never met a man unworthy of his liking. Dying too soon in a 1935 plane crash, this gift to America from the Oklahoma Territory would have included women, too, had he not lived in an age of unbridled chauvinism. Caught in the jaws of the Great Depression, we needed him.