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Laces tied snug, tennis shoe cowgirl Pat North Ommert made hundreds of laps around as many arenas throughout the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s, dazzling crowds with her signature one-foot stand and vivid smile. The trick rider, jockey, and stunt double from California traveled and performed extensively, including 56 performances at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in New York, and riding in Powder Puff Derbies at the Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico. Yet her favorite place is still the back of a horse, and her accomplishments, whether astride or beside her equine friends, recently earned her an induction into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.
Pat was nominated 18 years ago for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame before her induction in October of 2016. “I know many of the former inductees, so I was very honored,” she says. In 1999, Pat and her husband, Dr. Willard Ommert, received the California Professional Horsemen’s Association Lifetime Achievement Award for their devotion and contributions to the horse world. Pat is also active in preserving horse trails and the equestrian lifestyle in Southern California, where she grew up and continues to live today.
Born in 1929, Pat was the second daughter of Bob and Vera North. A savvy businessman, Bob started Bob North Hardware Store in Bell, California, during the Great Depression, and the store flourished. The North’s home in Bell was eight miles away from the Los Angeles Union Stock Yards, and the vacant lots around Bell and the Los Angeles riverbed offered plenty of riding opportunities. The North family, including Pat’s sister, Laura, shared a love of horses. Vera, Pat’s mother, came to love horses after being sent to the Mohave Desert in 1912 with her younger sister. They boarded with a family to avoid the polio epidemic in Los Angeles and rode a horse to school. Vera later learned to train trick horses from a circus trainer stabled in Bell. She entered the show business, and even performed in the Hawaiian Islands with the E.K. Fernandez Wild West Show in 1934.
Pat’s sister, who had an act with their mother, was married in 1943 and retired from show business. Pat was 14 at the time and performed the Patsy North and Her Trick Horse Rex act through World War II. Her own trick riding career started when she was 16, and she performed in rodeos and fairs around California. She still holds gold card number 1890 with the PRCA. “The trick riding was easy,” says Pat, who trained her own Roman riding and jumping team of horses. “I was an athlete. During World War II, my family moved to some acreage and we raised calves and did all our own work. My Roman riding was the most fun, and I think more spectacular. The hippodrome is one of the easiest tricks, but to do it with grace is something else. The one-foot stand was really my specialty. I consider myself a tennis shoe cowgirl because I had boots, but it was usually tennis shoes for trick riding and even working the trick horse.” Rex, who was half Morgan, was Pat’s left hand horse in the Roman riding, and Juan Monroe, a registered American Saddlebred, was the outside horse. Pat competed in many of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Rodeo Roman races, and even did several publicity shots for the rodeo.
When one of the North’s horses was sick in the 1940s, the regular vet sent his new associate, Dr. Willard Ommert, to make the farm call. Dr. Will and Pat took an instant liking to each other, and they were married in 1947. “Will was my best fan and loved what I did,” says Pat. “Like my dad, he never had a problem with me performing or being in show business. It didn’t make much money in the early days, but it did take care of the horse costs, and it was always fun.”
Pat’s dad had passed away in 1951 from a heart attack, and after Pat and Dr. Will were married, Vera greatly encouraged Pat to continue her show career. Starting in 1951, Pat performed at the Salinas Rodeo with 14 or 15 other trick riders on her horse Shortcake, working her way into bigger rodeos. “Edith Happy and I worked many California rodeos together. She was a beautiful, long-torso lady who did the most beautiful stand ever,” says Pat, who performed at Salinas for 11 years. “I’m delighted that California Rodeo Salinas is using Edith’s hippodrome stand for their poster this year.”
The year 1953 took Pat to New York City and Boston for several weeks, and Dr. Will used some of his vacation time to travel with her and watch several performances. Everett Colborn from Dublin, Texas, co-owned the World Championship Rodeo Company and produced both the Madison Square Garden Rodeo and Boston Garden Rodeo. Colborn’s own rodeo in Dublin became the Pre-Madison Square Garden Rodeo. Following the Texas performance, the entire production, joined by Pat and her husband, boarded the 24 car train for New York, stopping to perform in Fort Madison, Iowa, on the way. Many rodeo and western movie figures including Tad Lucas, Jim Shoulders, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and The Lone Ranger performed in Colborn’s rodeos. Pat rode Quadrille and the trick riders did publicity work for the rodeo. “That was really fun. The head of publishing for Madison Square Garden owned a white convertible, and five of us trick riders were seen around town. We were always in our western outfits,” says Pat. “We had lunch at the 21 Club, saw the premier opening of a movie, visited the Bellevue Hospital, and had a parade. We also had a rodeo parade in Boston. I rode my Roman team and my husband rode in the parade with me. After the parade, they had a Cowgirl Special thoroughbred race in Rockingham Park in New Hampshire, which I won.”
By this time, Pat and Dr. Will’s first daughter, Annie, was three, and her sister, Janie, was born in 1954. In the 1950s, Pat acquired her Screen Actor Guild card and worked in several motion pictures as a stunt double and driver. One of her friends, showman Monte Montana, needed six women for a horse catch scene in “A Star is Born”, starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Pat was one of the six, along with her mentor, Polly Burson, Faye Blessing, Shirley and Sharon Lucas, and Louise Montana. “The last movie I worked was ‘Cimmaron’, and I was in Tucson for two weeks. They needed girls to ride and drive wagons for the Oklahoma land rush scenes. We made money on those shows, but it was a hurry-up-and-wait business. I had kids and horses at home waiting on me, and I thought of how I could use that time to be home riding!”
In the 1950s, Pat also raced horses, even while on tour with the Bob Estes Wild West Show in 1957 in Mexico City. She retired from show business in 1962, and by then, her daughters were showing in the hunt seat division. Pat also showed hunters and jumpers for a time, and when she wasn’t taking Annie and Janie to horse shows, she was traveling and working with Dr. Will. Originally in the cavalry, he was transferred to the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps after the cavalry was dismounted. He worked with Dr. Bob Miller as the official veterinarians of the NFR from 1962- 1964 when it was hosted by Los Angeles, and his renown as a veterinarian was international. He advanced equine medicine in a number of ways, performing the first equine arthroscopic surgery, and even fitting a horse for contact lenses. “Will was the chief veterinary officer for the 1984 Olympics, and he was the vet for a lot of the California horse shows. I was in the horse show world with him,” says Pat. In 1969, the couple moved to Temecula, California, where Dr. Will built the state-of-the-art Los Caballos Veterinary Hospital, the first privately owned equine clinic and surgery in California. Pat managed the neighboring Los Caballos Farm, a facility for resting and retired horses, and they also raised several colts. Pat leased the ranch out several years after Dr. Will’s passing in 2004, and continues to make her home in Temecula.
Now 87, Pat rides daily, boarding her horse a short distance away. She has four granddaughters and five great-grandsons, all of whom learned to ride from Pat. “I feel that it’s so important for kids to learn about the good earth and see livestock. I love seeing kids who know how to sit on a horse and ride,” says Pat, who supports the Pacific Crest Trail. She’s a member of Saddle Sore-Ority, along with the Rancho California Horsemen’s Association since 1970. “I feel so lucky to have been able to experience several different phases of the rodeo world. I feel I had the best of all of it.”

All Bill Smith ever wanted to do was ride bucking horses, and be like his heroes, the Linderman boys.
Smith, a three-time world champion saddle bronc rider, got to fulfill both of his childhood dreams.
The cowboy was born in 1941 in Red Lodge, Montana, and grew up north of Red Lodge in the little coal mining town of Bear Creek. There wasn’t much to do in Bear Creek. “All there was, for anybody to do,” Bill recalls, “was go to school and go to the rodeo on the Fourth of July. The Lindermans were the thing back then, and they were my heroes. All I ever wanted to do, ever since I could remember, was learn to ride bucking horses. It wasn’t about winning, it was to have a chance to ride bucking horses.”
And he did. The family had horses, and he’d ride anything he could catch. Back then, everybody had two or three head and they weren’t penned up; they ran out in the hills together. Bill and his longtime childhood friend, Chuck Swanson, would pen them and ride them all. “We’d ride the two- and three-year-olds, and we’d get bucked off and drug around.” But it didn’t matter. They were cowboys.
As young boys, they’d work on the local ranches, doing whatever they could, just to be cowboys. And they’d ride anything possible. “I spoiled lots of horses,” Bill mused. “Everything I rode, I tried to get them to buck with me.”

When he was a senior in high school, the Smith family: Glenn and Edna and their seven children, moved to Cody, Wyo. It was perfect for a bucking-horse-crazy boy. With the nightly rodeo, Bill started going, “taking his spills,” and refining his bronc riding abilities. In 1961, he bought his Rodeo Cowboys Association card (the forerunner of the PRCA), and that year, won the amateur bronc riding at the Cheyenne Frontier Days. “That was the first money I ever really had.”
From there, he was ready to hit the rodeo road full time. Starting in 1961, he rode saddle broncs across the nation, competing at every big rodeo in the U.S. and Canada and lots of little ones. He won numerous events, and some of them more than once: Houston, San Antonio, Denver, Cheyenne, Nampa, Ida.; Cody, Prescott, Greeley, Colo.; Las Vegas, Dallas, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Memphis, Tenn.; St. Paul, Ore. and more.
He loved to be on the road, and was gone most of the year. But home was still Cody, and his nickname reflected that. He was known as “Cody” Bill Smith. “They latched that on to me,” and he liked it.
Smith made the National Finals Rodeo for the first time in 1965, and then every year except one till 1978: thirteen out of fourteen years. Saddle bronc riding wasn’t necessarily easy for him at first. “I wasn’t an instant success. It took me a while to learn. I was never a natural at it.”
His childhood friend, Chuck Swanson, had moved to Cody with the Smiths. Chuck also rode saddle broncs, and was exceptionally good, Bill remembers. But Chuck didn’t hunger to be on the rodeo road like Bill did. “He was a natural, but he didn’t have the bug quite as much as me. He wanted to be a cowboy on a ranch. I didn’t have time for that. There weren’t enough bucking horses for me.”
Bill estimates he competed at about seventy rodeos a year, with his favorites being the ones with multiple rounds. Back in the day, most rodeos would be more than one round, and cowboys would stay several days in one location. He liked Ft. Worth, which was five rounds, San Antonio, which was six, and Houston and Omaha, which each had several rounds.
Bill’s childhood dream of competing alongside his heroes, Bill and Bud Linderman, came to fruition early in his career. He was entered in the Filer, Idaho rodeo, as was Bill Linderman, and it was four rounds. Smith broke his leg on the first horse, but got on the next three. “I didn’t go far,” he said of riding with a broken leg, “but I got on them. I wasn’t about to let my hero see that I was crippled. I’d buck off after three jumps, but I got on.”
He especially remembers some special horses. His favorite and one that stood out far above the rest was the big palomino horse Descent, owned by Beutler Bros. Bill drew him nine times, riding him five and getting bucked off four. “He was the greatest horse I’ve seen to this day. He could jump higher and kick higher than any horse I ever saw.” If a cowboy drew Descent, there was a good chance he’d win the rodeo, and that was true for Bill. He won Nampa on him twice and got bucked off there once. He won Tulsa on him and placed at the NFR on him.
Other horses stick out in Bill’s mind. Trade Winds, owned by Big Bend Rodeo Co. bucked Bill off once and he covered him once. Trails End, a horse owned by Oral Zumwalt, bucked him off twice. On Harry Knight’s Sage Hen, he was the high mark at the NFR, and she carried him to his first big win in 1964 in Dallas. She bucked him off several times, too. “I wasn’t above being bucked off,” he laughs. “I could hit the ground with the best of them.”
Smith missed the NFR in 1976 due to back surgery, and two years later, decided to call it quits. He was invited to a big match bronc riding at Ft. Worth, called the Copenhagen Skoal Match Ride. It paid a huge amount and included bull riding, tie-down roping, and barrel racing, all invitational. He won it, and decided to retire. “I thought, this is a good time to quit.” So he did. He was 38 years old, and “I was starting to slow down. I was still winning, but I didn’t want to keep going till I couldn’t ride anymore.”
After retirement, he and his wife Carole moved to North Platte, Neb. in the summers where he produced the nightly rodeo. He put on 72 performances each summer, seven nights a week, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It was good, he said, to get him started on life outside rodeo. “That helped me bridge the gap.”
Then he and Carole bought a place in Thermopolis, Wyo. and moved there. They have a semi-annual quarter horse sale, the third Saturday of May and the second Saturday in September. The sale started in 1983, and this May, they will host their fiftieth sale, with 58 geldings, ten yearlings and a dozen started two-year-olds. They are picky about their horses. He buys the geldings, and he, Carole, and Carole’s nephew Reid O’Rourke ride them. The horses are guaranteed, and they take great pride in having good horseflesh.

Rodeo was a good way to make a living, the best, in Bill’s eyes. “They were the best days of my life, right there, rodeoing. When you can rodeo, ride broncs, and win enough to pay your way, there’s absolutely nothing better. You gotta starve to death for a while, but once you get going, you don’t have a boss, and you can tell anybody in the world to kiss your butt and it won’t bother what you win, if you can ride.”
He holds a deep inclination for horses. “Horses are my life, from the biggest Clydesdale to the littlest Shetland pony. I love them all.”
Rodeo may have changed, but he loves the horses. “The horses still buck. That’s the thing that doesn’t change. Horses still buck.”
“I’ve had a great life, a fairy tale life, actually. A little kid from the coal mines, doing nothing but what I wanted to do my whole life.”