If Wilma Tidwell Packer could have chosen a second father, she would have picked singing cowboy Roy Rogers.
"I lost my father when I was 10 years old, and I looked up to Roy and Dale (Evans) as second parents -- especially Roy, to have a father image," said Packer, of Marriott-Slaterville. "I looked up to him, and put his picture up on the wall, and tried to think of what he'd want me to do."
She never got the chance to tell Rogers and Evans how she felt about them in person, but in the 1990s, when the two were struggling with poor health, she sent a letter.
"I wanted them to know how their fans felt about them," she said.
Packer wasn't the only one. Tens of thousands of fans sent letters. Packer's is one of nearly 300 reprinted in the book "The Touch of Roy and Dale" (West Quest, 2011).
A portion of the proceeds from sales goes to a nonprofit organization the famous couple was associated with, The Happy Trails Children's Foundation in Apple Valley, Calif. The foundation cares for abused boys, age 10 to 16, who have been removed from their homes.
The book was published in November 2011, to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of Rogers' birth; a second book may be produced in 2012 to recognize Evans' birth 100 years ago.
Heroes
Rogers and Evans became Packer's heros in the 1940s, when she started watching their movies.
"I really got into them right after my dad passed away -- that's when I started looking for pictures," she said, explaining that she covered her bedroom wall with images of the couple cut from magazines. "I thought about Roy and Dale an awful lot from then on."
Packer's father died in 1947, of an undiagnosed illness, and she remembers a few things about him.
"He rode a bicycle a lot, and he'd take me with him on the bicycle," she said. "He knew how to play the accordion, and he knew how to speak Swiss."
Like her cowboy hero, he knew how to yodel.
Packer also has fond memories of her mother.
"She always had white hair," she said, adding that her mother had scarlet fever at the age of 12. "She lost all of her hair, and when it did come back in, it was white."
When Packer's father died, her mother had to work as a cook to support the family.
"Mother had four children to raise, and we helped her in any way we could," Packer said, explaining that she did a lot of cleaning, ironing and baby-sitting. "She'd leave me orders on what she wanted done when I got home from school."
In her letter to Rogers, Packer said, "I have a wonderful mother. I love her with all my heart, and I know if my dad had lived he would have given me love, too."
But because she did miss having a father so much, she turned to her hero.
"If I could have two sets of parents, I would choose you and Dale," she wrote.
Packer's mother knew her daughter admired the King of the Cowboys and Queen of the West, and listened as she talked about them and their movies.
"My mother would come in my room and she would say, 'I see you have some new pictures up,' " Packer wrote to Rogers.
Packer liked Rogers' and Evans' shows, in part, because there wasn't a lot of "mushy stuff." An uncle, who worked as a painter for a movie studio, told Packer that the two were the same in person as they seemed on-screen.
"They just were clean people, and I just thought that's the way I should be -- live a clean life, and help people when I could," she said. "I'd watch their movies, and get ideas and opinions from the movies on what to do."
That was what resonated with so many fans, according to Tricia Spencer, the author of the book.
"What you saw on-screen, that goodness and kindness, was the same off-screen," she said.
Still heroes
Packer was thrilled when her heroes, who met while filming a show, eventually married.
"I loved to watch their movies, and every time the movie would end, I would tell myself, 'Roy and Dale, someday, are going to get married.' They did, when I was 15 years old," she said.
Packer married at age 18, soon after graduating from high school, and doesn't know what happened to the Rogers/Evans memorabilia she left at her mother's house. But she still has copies of books Evans wrote, and a prized photo of the couple, signed "Wilma, Many Happy Trails, Roy Rogers."
She got the photo, in response to a fan letter she had sent, when she was about 20 years old and living in Brigham City.
"I received that picture on a day when I was ill with a very bad headache and was down in bed with it. I opened the envelope, and I was so happy!" she told Rogers years later, in the letter published in the book.
She keeps the picture on her fireplace mantle, next to pictures of her parents.
Fan mail
Packer was surprised when she was contacted by Spencer.
"I sent that letter many, many years ago, and I never dreamed that this would happen," Packer said.
The book also includes a short letter from Myrna Daly of Lehi.
Spencer acquired the letters from Packer and Daly -- and almost 40,000 others -- in 2003, at estate sales after the deaths of Rogers and Evans.
"I knew after reading the first three or four letters that there was a book in there," said the author, who lives in Riverside, Calif. "It's amazing how people poured out their hearts to Roy and Dale."
In the letters, a number of people said they named their children after Roy and Dale.
"They changed careers, and wrote about how they changed their life and chose a certain path because of the way Roy and Dale set an example, and the way Roy and Dale cared about people," Spencer said. "They embraced them as the heroes they were."
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