When he had completed the life-sized clay model, he made a plaster cast and sent it to the Valsuani foundry in Paris, where two casts were made, one for the National Statuary Hall Collection and the other for the Will Rogers Memorial, then recently opened in Claremore, Oklahoma, near Rogers birthplace.

[9] When that statue was unveiled, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcast a message live on coast-to-coast radio from his home in Hyde Park.

The WRMF was an eventual replacement for the National Vaudeville Artist Fund, which operated social assistance programs and a hospital for vaudevillians suffering from tuberculosis.

The plaster cast was restored in 2004 by Irena Calinescu, Objects Conservator, and is among the secure holdings of the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, the new name of WRMF, as of 2002.

[11] At that unveiling on June 6, Senator Joshua B. Lee said of Rogers' effect on the United States during the Depression, “His humor was the safety valve for American Life.”[12]