This Saturday, May 6, the Friends of the Ferguson Home are hosting a tea at 2 p.m. Saturday at the First Baptist Church. There will be live entertainment, a reading from Mrs. Elva Ferguson’s Book “They Carried the Torch”, photo opportunities, tea and desserts. This is an opportunity to celebrate the life of Elva Ferguson, extraordinary wife of TB Ferguson and mother of their children. If you don’t already have your tickets, contact Janine Espy at 907-252-1866.
In a series of reasons for Watonga government to support the TB Ferguson Home Museum, here is my fourth reason.
An important function of the museum is the promotion of literacy, writing and film making. In the late 1920s, the famous author Edna Ferber visited Mrs. Ferguson and the home. The product was the book “Cimarron” which loosely portrays the Fergusons as early Oklahoma Pioneers and the political involvement of Mrs. Ferguson. From this book, RKO studios produced the movie “Cimarron” which won the Best Movie Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures in 1931 and was remade in 1960.
Mrs. Ferguson helped establish a library in Watonga in 1906, a subscription library which cost $1/year to participate. For this she was awarded an Oklahoma Library Legend Award posthumously in 2007 during Oklahoma’s Centennial. You can see this at the Watonga Public Library. Writing is important for all manner of communication and reading is a great form of entertainment and communication.