| Abstract | Chester A. Reynolds, President of the H. D. Lee Company in Kansas City, Missouri, called the first meeting to discuss the building of the Cowboy Hall of Fame on January 20, 1955. Reynolds was born in 1887 in Fostoria, Ohio, and grew up in McCracken, Kansas. In 1953, "he formerly announced that he would invite the governors of seventeen western states as well as prominent cattlemen and leaders in the sport of rodeo to serve on a board of trustees of a shrine to be called the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Museum." Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, won among the final three cities for the location of the museum. Although Reynolds got the museum idea started, he died in Kansas City, Kansas, on January 7, 1958, and did not get to see the further development of the museum. |
