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Lydia Moore was raised in a rodeo family in Missouri. Her parents, Hazel and Percy worked for many rodeo and wild west show companies traveling the country with her older sister, Maudie, and younger sister, Percyna in tow. Maudie was a trick rider and roper and Percyna had a goat act. In fact, Percyna was actually born in a tent while on the road for the Colonel Jim Eskew Wild West Show.
Lydia was forced to stay home most of the time as a tot with her grandfather, John Hickey, due to poor health. “I had no stomach lining when I was born,” said the 80-year-old, who now resides in Wayne, Oklahoma. “I drank goat’s milk and built up my resistance.” She finally grew out of the condition when she was ten years old and learned the art of trick riding and roping. “My dad taught me trick roping and my mom taught me trick riding,” she said. Rodeo season back then didn’t last all year like it does now – her parents were gone from April until September and the other months they were home. When they were home, they trained horses that went on to perform in wild west shows, movies, circuses, and elsewhere.

Her parents, Hazel Hickey Moore, a noted circus equestrienne, who gravitated towards the wild west show side of entertainment when she married her husband, saddle bronc rider, and steer wrestler, Percy Moore, both instilled in Lydia a love of horses and all things western. Famed trick roping performer, calf roper, and steer wrestler, Billy Buschbom, also helped Lydia with her trick and fancy roping and gifted her with her first set of ropes. “The Buschbom’s and my family were very close friends and worked for many different wild west show companies.” As a youngster, Lydia performed with her family in dressage and trick roping acts, and won many talent contests as a teen with her skills.
Lydia’s dad, Percy, broke his leg while competing on a saddle bronc, Preacher, Dun, at a rodeo produced by Monty Reger. The rodeo was in a resort called Sylvan Beach in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. The family settled there while Percy recuperated, and afterwards was hired to manage the boarding stable. The entire family worked at Sylvan Beach. Young Lydia and Percyna worked as lifeguards, took riders from the boarding stable out on trail rides, as well as running pony rides. They also performed different circus and wild west show acts that Percy, Hazel, and Lydia were in.
Lydia was introduced to barrel racing by accident. “The annual St. Louis Fireman’s Rodeo produced by Tommy Steiner, was in town around the early 1960’s. Wanda Bush, Fanny Mae Cox, and Boots Tucker, all barrel racers from Texas, were in town for the rodeo. They didn’t have enough barrel racing contestants, which was a new event for the rodeo. Wanda reached out to a local horse facility, Valley Mount Ranch, since Wanda knew they were starting to have barrel races at that arena. Lydia was one of the ladies invited to enter.
Lydia went to a few barrel races, but due to her own family responsibilities, she was unable to pursue it. “I wasn’t driven like the other girls were. I was more interested in the administrative side.” In the early 1960’s she helped form the first chapter of the Girls Rodeo Association. “A group of barrel racers in the St. Louis area got together, and since we all worked full time, we had some administrative skills and used the guidelines of the GRA to form the chapter. We had advisors that we knew could help us, and they were instrumental.” While living in St. Louis she met one of her mentors – famed rodeo secretary June Ivory. Lydia learned to secretary and time rodeos from June, and over the years worked for many stock contractors like Beutler & Sons, David Bailey, and Jim Shoulders’ rodeo companies, and is a longtime PRCA gold card member.
After Percy Moore passed away in 1962 from emphysema, Lydia’s mom, Hazel, moved in with Lydia and her toddler daughter, Linda. (Lydia only has one daughter, Linda). Percy had been a lifelong smoker. He started smoking as a teen like most young men of that era. He either rolled his own or smoked non-filtered cigarettes. He was even hired as a young man to model for a few Chesterfield cigarette ads.
When Lydia made the move to Oklahoma City in 1967, it was with her mother Hazel, sister Percyna, and daughter Linda. She worked as a secretary for an oil field company upon her arrival. Before moving to Oklahoma, June Ivory had introduced Lydia to Stanley Draper and Bobbie Steenbergen from the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce who worked with Clem McSpadden, Buster and June Ivory as the group managing the National Finals Rodeo. “It’s hard to imagine, but during the early years of the NFR in Oklahoma City, there was little interest in the Finals. When it first moved there, tickets didn’t sell well – we had dinners and parades in downtown Oklahoma City to sell the event.”

With the NFR’s move to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma barrel racer Florence Youree worked with Stanley and Bobbie to bring on the barrel race as one of its standard events. Florence’s pitch worked and the event was sold as – “pretty girls on fast horses,” Lydia said. Needing a liaison for the barrel racers, as a go between to handle any issues barrel racers had, Lydia was hired. She worked in that capacity until 1985 when the NFR moved to Las Vegas.
Adding to her jobs at the NFR, Lydia was hired by NFR manager McSpadden and stock superintendent Ivory to handle all secretarial duties in preparation for the National Finals each year and also ran the NFR press room with Arlene Worley. “Two weeks before the finals as the livestock came in, Buster and Clem needed someone to type the stock lists, so since I lived there, I’d take my vacation during the Finals and type the lists as the contractors came in.” “It was fun – Buster and Clem were wonderful. It was great to be part of it. They were so super to work with. And I knew all the contractors from secretarying and timing rodeos.
Lydia also received the task in those early years of the NFR as the GRA Awards Chairwoman for the barrel racers garnering thousands of dollars of awards for the ladies each year. “I wrote letters to various companies and everybody I saw that had a business, I asked for awards. I was even able to get a car and a horse trailer donated. Imogene Veach Beals who owned a large western store, Veach Saddlery, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the first donor I got.” Lydia’s dedication came from her interest in doing something for the girls.
Continuing her interest on the business side of women in rodeo, she served five years on the GRA board of directors as Bull Riding and Southeastern Region Director, before being hired as the executive secretary in 1973. “At that time, the GRA had all of the rodeo events – we had a lot of all girl rodeos – we used to have approximately one a month back in the day – we had a lot of great girls. Unfortunately, they don’t have any all girl or women’s rodeos anymore.”
GRA president Margaret Clemons hired Lydia on a six month trial basis to be the secretary of the GRA – that tenure ran for two years and every two years they had an election. “I was at the meeting as the Southeastern Director and was hired by the board. I was able to quit my day job and I really became involved in the women’s rodeo part there.” Since her position came up for renewal every two years, there wasn’t a lot of job security in it. Her job ultimately lasted nearly 25 years.
When she got the job, she converted her garage into an office. “There were a few boxes of records, 400 members and $800 in the bank. (A GRA card cost $25 in 1971, for example.”) (The WPRA card cost $150 in 1995, the last year we were in the WPRA office). When she left there were 2,000 members and the association was financially secure. “We ran a very efficient office and did everything we could for the members – Jimmie Munroe and Pam Minick were great at promoting the association.” She enlisted the help of her daughter, as well, along the way. “We all enjoyed working in the WPRA office,” said her daughter, Linda Clark. “Percyna and I did the newspaper and we are all a very close unit. We’ve always worked together. I typed envelopes on an old IBM Selectric electric typewriter when I was 13 – I totally loved it.”
“She was the glue that held the WPRA together,” said Pam Minick. “She ran the association like she ran her household – she tried to save all the money she could. It was a 24 hour a day job for her.” Pam went to her house every October to help stuff envelopes for all the contestants. A prized honor she received in 1991, known as the WPRA Coca-Cola Woman of the Year, was awarded to Lydia for her years of service, passion, and devotion to women in rodeo, and rodeo in general. “I was absolutely thrilled. When Coca Cola put together that award for our association it was fabulous. Wanda Bush was the first honoree, Jimmie Munroe was the second, Pam Minick was the third, and I was the fourth.” The coveted bronze statue was created by artist and NFR qualifier Karen Galemba. Lydia feels fortunate to have seen firsthand the phenomenal growth in the sport of barrel racing that it enjoys today-barrel racing as a standard rodeo event, equal money at rodeos, and equal money at the National Finals Rodeo.
Her second award will be received in November when she will be inducted into the Rodeo Historical Society Hall of Fame. “I feel absolutely the same about this one – I’ll be emotional to be recognized at this chapter of my life. I help Linda in her business and enjoy what I’m doing. I’m blessed with good health and it’s great. I’ve been very blessed. I have a beautiful daughter and granddaughter that I love. They and their families help take good care of me.”

Lee and Dixie Wheaton have five PRCA gold cards within their family. Lee, a former multiple-event contestant, and his wife Dixie, a barrel racer, each have one. Their daughter Deena Wheaton, has hers, and Dixie’s dad, 1939 world champion steer roper Dick Truitt, had his gold card. Lee and Dixie’s niece, Trula Truitt Churchill, also has hers.
Lee began life in Rochester, New York, the son of Mel and Dee Wheaton. His dad owned a dude ranch, with weekend and overnight guests, and part of Lee and his older brother Jim’s job was to take care of the up to 100 head of horses that were kept. Each year, Mel would send for a new load of horses from the west, and Lee and Jim’s job would be to make dude horses out of them. “Some of the horses that came to us were not gentle enough for eastern dudes,” Lee remembered.
When Jim started rodeoing, Lee wasn’t far behind. Lee began riding bulls in 1947, when he was twelve years old. His dad had produced rodeos for a few years, at which Lee sometimes served as the bullfighter, and his parents were supportive. At the time, New York State had lots of open and amateur rodeos. Lee competed at rodeos put on by Pappy Westcott and his son Jackie, and the Baldwin family, among others.
Dixie Truitt was born in 1940, in Ada, Oklahoma, the daughter of Dick and Juanita Truitt. She traveled with her daddy as he rodeoed, and when she was twelve, she began barrel racing. In 1956, she got her Women’s Pro Rodeo Association card when it was the Girls Rodeo Association, and in 1959, she qualified for the first National Finals Rodeo, but her daddy wouldn’t let her compete because it was during college finals tests.

Lee graduated from high school in 1954 and amateur rodeoed up and down the East Coast. Two years later, he joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association, and went farther, traveling to the south and crossing the Mississippi River, going to rodeos in Missouri.
He was doing all three roughstock events and even steer wrestling, occasionally. In 1956 and 57, he worked for Frontier Town, a tourist attraction in New York. Frontier Town held three mini-rodeos a day, featuring one bareback ride, one saddle bronc ride, one calf roping run, one steer wrestling run, and one bull ride, plus contract acts. Lee was the roughstock cowboy and even steer wrestled a time or two. On Saturday nights, he’d drive the sixty miles to the pro rodeo in Lake Luzerne. “We’d drive like hell to get there, and contest there,” he said. He won the saddle bronc riding and the bull riding at Lake Luzerne’s series one year. He and his buddies would also take off for Cowtown, New Jersey, and compete there.
Once he expanded his territory because of his pro card, he went to Florida one January, but with no success. “I rode every bull I got on, and never won a penny,” he remembered. It was before public announcement systems and riders didn’t know their scores till they looked at judges’ sheets after the rodeo. In Okeechobee that year, he rode a bull they had placed on regularly. “Everybody patted me on the back and said, ‘that ride looked great.’” But he didn’t win anything. Afterwards, he went to the judge, Buddy Medford, and asked why he didn’t place. “Buddy said, ‘that bull jumped and kicked but he didn’t spin.’”
The next week in Kissimmee, Lee covered another bull with a good ride. “I had a bull that spun, wound it up, and again, everybody was saying, ‘that was a good ride.’” When the rodeo was over, Lee hadn’t won a dime. Medford was judging again, and Lee asked what the problem was. Medford replied, “Lee, he spun real good but he didn’t jump real good.’” They held it against him, that he was a Yankee and was a newcomer to the South.
Every October, when rodeos had slowed down, he headed back to New York. Depending on how he had done, he either got a job or hunted all winter. Then, in January, he’d head back to Florida and start all over again.
Lee met Dixie at a rodeo in Cookeville, Tennessee in June of 1961. They married in Iowa two and a half months later. They had planned to rodeo in place of a honeymoon, but Lee had torn up the palm of his hand and it wasn’t healed, so they took off. “We honeymooned in 21 states and five provinces,” Lee said, visiting Niagara Falls and other sites. The first bull he got on after marriage was one he’d won on a few times. For that ride, “I fell off like a big toad,” he said. “My buddies came around and said, “Damn, Lee, married life doesn’t agree with you, does it?” he laughed.
That fall, Dixie, who had graduated from East Central College in Ada, Okla., had a contract to teach physical education in Wichita, Kan. So they got an apartment in Wichita, got Dixie settled in, and Lee hit the rodeo trail again.
They stayed in Wichita for a year before going to Scott City, Kan., where Dixie spent four years teaching physical education: archery, swimming, bowling, basketball, tennis, and more. They moved again, this time to Dixie’s home state. “That Oklahoma girl got homesick,” Lee said. She had been working on her master’s degree and got a teaching job in Tulsa. It was 1965, and they moved to the place where they still reside, near Mounds, Okla., just south of Tulsa.
Dixie taught school in Tulsa from 1965 to 1992, teaching P.E. and coaching basketball. She was awarded the girls basketball coach of the year honors in the First Frontier Conference, and finished her teaching career at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. She switched to the classroom, teaching child development, parenting, and psychology.
While at Will Rogers High School, the school had an annual roping contest among staff. Dixie won it several times, having grown up with her dad, the world champion steer roper, her uncle Everett Shaw, a six-time RCA steer roping champion, and her maternal granddad, Cole Underhill, a steer roper before the formation of the RCA.
Lee and Dixie rodeoed through the summers and during the school year, when she came home from school each night, Lee would have her horses saddled and ready to go. They usually bought race horses and Dixie trained them for the barrels. During her years, she had four bays that she considered her best. Levan II, “Reverend,” she considered her fastest horse ever. On Reverend, she won three rounds in Salinas, Calif. one year.
Cajun was another horse that was one of her best, as was Tiny Mark, a gelding from Arkansas, and Strongwall Snip. Dixie was a good trainer, coming by it “honest,” she said. Her daddy trained his own horses, and if a horse didn’t make it as a steer roping horse, Dixie would get him.
Their daughter Deena was born in 1962, and when she was sixteen, she had her WPRA card. Clem McSpadden called Deena “the teenage sensation from Mounds, Okla.,” and she ran barrels along with her mother.
Several times, while he was injured, Lee was called on to judge. In 1965, with a broken arm, he judged rodeos in Ft. Worth, Miami, Fla., and Chicago. He also judged the College National Finals Rodeo three times.
In 1975, Lee quit riding bulls. He’d been an RCA card holder for 21 years, and he still loved the sport, but it was time to quit. Dixie and Deena were still running barrels, but Lee couldn’t go with them. “I wouldn’t hardly go to a pro rodeo with them,” he said. “I knew, if I went, I’d want to get on. I was 41 and that was old enough to quit.”

In 1980, when Dixie turned forty, her good friend Florence Youree entered her in a senior pro rodeo in Canadian, Texas. Lee went with her, and he saw that the senior bull riders were all guys he had rodeoed with for twenty years. He watched the rodeo and said, “If those guys can still ride bulls, I can too.” The senior pros were fun for them. Rodeoing “wasn’t stressful,” Lee said. “When you left home, you had money in your pocket, and you knew you could pay your bills. You didn’t have to win anything.” The two of them qualified for the National Senior Pro Rodeo Finals each year from 1980 to 1985.
In 1982, Dixie won the year-end barrel racing title for the Senior Pros. That year, at every senior rodeo she ran, she won first place. She rode Dial Doc, a sorrel gelding that she and Lee traded for one of their horses and a tractor and brush hog. Doc, Lee said, was “half lunatic,” a horse who had been soured going into the arena. But Dixie figured out a way to get him down an alley. Two great big Native Americans who were at the senior pro rodeos would get ahold of the cantle and walk him up to the gate. “As soon as he got through the gate, he’d do his job great,” Lee remembered.
Towards the end of his bull riding career in the RCA, Lee took a job with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture. He worked for them for twenty years, testing for brucellosis and later visiting horse events checking for health papers.
Dixie continued to train horses and ran barrels up to just a few years ago. Between she and Deena, they have trained eight world champion breed horses.
Dixie had a stroke a few years ago but she and Lee still live in their home of 54 years. They celebrated 57 years of marriage in 2018.
They also enjoy Deena’s son, Jesse Chelf, who is in the U.S. Army. Jesse has been stationed at Fairbanks, Alaska and has served tours in Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Germany. Lee and Dixie have two great-granddaughters.
Rodeo days were good days, and Lee loved riding bulls. “It was the biggest adrenaline rush I could imagine,” he said. “I still look at bull riding pictures and my heart gets to beating fast, thinking about how good it felt. I loved it.”
They’ve had a good life. “We feel really fortunate. We’ve both never had a job that we didn’t enjoy. It’s been a wild ride.”