Author: Ruth Nicolaus

Harry Straw married well.
When he married Betty Jane Webster, the sister of world champion steer roper Shoat Webster, he got an incredible horsewoman for a wife, the use of her horses, and the advice of her brother, Shoat.
He was born and raised in Nowata, Okla., the son of Homer and Lillie Straw, with a daddy who roped, and Harry would tag along to rodeos with his father. His dad made a living driving truck, hauling hay to western Oklahoma and grain on the return trip. The family lived on 125 acres of corn, oats and wheat, and Harry and his mother milked ten cows by hand, separated the cream, and sold it to Gus Andrews in Nowata for grocery money. Harry hunted possums at night with his possum dog, making thirty five cents a hide. “It was kinda tough,” he said. “That’s how I was raised.”
He learned to rope at Deacon May’s place. Deacon had a roping pen, and when Homer came over to rope, Deacon’s son and Harry would run calves in.
During his high school days, he worked for his uncle, who owned a Phillips gas station in Nowata, pumping gas for fifty cents a day.
After high school graduation in 1955, he went to work for Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville, working in the plastics department.
And in the evenings, he’d rope.
Harry would come home after work, and Betty Jane would have the horses ready. “I’d get home by five, she’d have horses loaded, saddles in the pickup, and away we’d go,” he said, to a rodeo where he’d rope calves, steer wrestle or steer rope.
His wife was better with horses than he was, he readily admitted. “She could do more with a horse than I could,” he said. “Shoat had her pretty well tutored before I got her.” She also trained horses, and “she could rope better than I could,” he said. But Betty Jane only roped at home, never at a contest.
Harry roped evenings and weekends, never going too far out of Oklahoma, and concentrating mostly on steer roping. Steer roping was his strength, and his daughter Jeannie McKee remembers camping out at Cheyenne Frontier Days with her family while her daddy roped. He competed at amateur rodeos and in the Rodeo Cowboys Association as well.
He worked for Phillips Petroleum for 33 years and was part of the research team who developed plastic pipe. Phillips built four plastic pipe plants across the country: in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Pryor, Okla., and Harry was sent to train employees and work with the machinery. “They’d send me to get them out of trouble when the machines acted up. I’d go there, and train them.”
Harry often practiced with Shoat, his brother-in-law, a four-time world champion steer roper (1949-50, 1954-55) and twice runner-up. Shoat made his own horses, and Harry usually rode one of his. One of his favorites of Shoat’s was Deck, a calf horse and son of Leo. “Shoat made him, and boy he made a good one,” Harry said.
Another horse he liked to ride belonged to Willard Combs. The famous steer wrestling horse Baby Doll “was a dream to bulldog off of,” he said. “She was all right. She done the same thing every time, she’d run right up (to the steer), and let you down, not try to cripple you or cut in front of the steer. She done everything just right.” Harry rode the little blaze-faced dark bay anytime Willard or his brother Benny offered.
But, in his estimation, the best horse he ever got on was one owned by his wife. Betty Jane’s aunt Kate (Choteau) Lowry, the wife of Fred Lowry, took her into one of Fred’s pastures one day. “We was out in the big pastures on the Lowry ranch,” Harry remembered, with 35 mares and weanling colts, “and Kate told Betty Jane to pick a colt. That colt made the best steer horse I ever had.” The horse, named Chico, belonged to Betty Jane, not Harry, and “she never did let me forget that,” he chuckled.
Betty Jane broke and trained the gelding, who was a Hancock horse. The horse liked to buck. “He didn’t buck hard, but he had to crow hop out there every night, till he was eight years old.” One time, at Cheyenne Frontier Days, someone offered Harry $5,000 for Chico. “I just laughed at him,” he said. “There was no way I was ever going to sell him, or do anything with him but rope on him.” And Chico wasn’t Harry’s to sell anyway. “He didn’t belong to me, he belonged to my wife.”
Aunt Kate Lowry had a big heart and was willing to help anyone, including her niece and nephew. She didn’t ride much, Harry said, but she helped pay his entry fees. “When I first started roping, she’d stop by the house to see my wife and me, and she’d always ask, did I need a little entry fee money. Aunt Kate would help anybody.” Harry was reluctant to take her money, but in the early days, he did. “She’ll always have a soft spot in my heart.”
Harry rodeoed with the likes of Harry Swalley, Don McLaughlin, Sonny Davis, Troy Fort, and Sonny Worrell. He remembers their friendships and the characteristics each one had. Swalley was like Harry, a cowboy with a fulltime job, who “was the only guy who could work hard enough to keep up with Shoat,” he said. And Don McLaughlin, for his ability to remember cattle. “Don could be at a roping where they had 100 steers, and three years later, he could tell you what everybody (drew) and what they did on them.”
Harry spent a lot of time with Shoat in the practice pen. Shoat was “an extremely, extremely hard man on his horses, his dogs, anybody who worked for him or practiced with him,” a family member said. “He was rough and tough and hard to please.” But Shoat was never hard on Harry, and he attributes that to his wife. “I don’t know what Betty told him, but the only thing I knew was Shoat was scared of his little sister, and she didn’t weigh 95 lbs. Still to this day, I don’t know what she told Shoat, but he never treated me like anybody else.”
Harry and Betty Jane had two children: a son, Lee, who married Christie and has two children, Tori, and R.J., and daughter Jeannie, who married rodeo announcer Justin McKee and their daughter, Kassidy. Justin says people love Harry. “My father-in-law is the most well-liked human being who ever lived.  He’s everybody’s favorite guy, non-judgmental, the most genuine, likeable, nice guy there ever was. Anybody who knows him, would agree one hundred percent.”
“I had an awful good life,” Harry said. “I’ve been the luckiest man alive. I had the only woman who would ever live with me, and I’ve had some awful good horses to rope on, and Shoat to rope with and help me. I’ve had a pretty good life.”
In 1955, he and Betty Jane moved to Lenapah, where they lived until Betty Jane’s passing two years ago. Harry just recently moved to a nursing home, and spends many days at the McKee household, surrounded by the love of his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter.
Harry served in the Army and was stationed in Washington State from about 1948 to 1951.

 

Charley Lyons had one of the most unique acts in rodeo, one that has rarely been duplicated.
The Montana man built his reputation as a rodeo clown with his washtub saddle bronc act. With a #3 washtub bolted to a saddle tree and filled with flour, Charley would put it on a bucking horse. He’d sit in it, with legs over the bronc’s neck, and explode from the chute. Crowds loved it and it catapulted Charley onto the nation-wide rodeo scene.
He was born in 1938, the son of Ed and Vera Lyons, in Milliken, Colorado, just outside of Arvada. The city kid grew up with 4-H livestock: pigs, cattle, and horses, and somewhere in his youth, he decided he wanted to be a clown. His first rodeo was an FFA rodeo in Greeley, when he was a senior in high school.
After high school graduation in 1957, he went straight to the rodeo industry. The first few years were slim, but as committee members and stock contractors heard about his acts, he was hired for more and more rodeos.
In addition to riding a saddle bronc in a washtub, Charley had other acts. He had a pure white trick horse named Soapy who would crawl on his knees like an Indian scout, play dead, and sit like a dog. He had a half-Brahma steer named Roberto, who had foot-long horns. Roberto was broke to ride, and Charley rode him in parades and grand entries. He’d also ride Roberto in the barrel racing, dressed in a dress and wig and calling himself Charlotte. He also had a palomino Shetland pony named Dandy, and during the steer wrestling, dressed as Batman, he would bulldog a mini steer named Pistol.
Charley had a variety of solo acts, and he  rounded out his repertoire with other acts, involving kids from the crowd (and later, his own kids). They milked his donkey named Ruba or were part of his very large family stuffed into a hollowed-out car.
Charley did more than clown. In those days, rodeo clowns often worked as bullfighter as well, and he was also a contestant in three events: bareback riding, steer wrestling and bull riding. He worked acts between contesting his events, and during the bull riding, the producer saved his bull for the last one. One time, at a small rodeo, they were short of contestants, so he had to work all five events, “and he couldn’t rope worth a darn,” his wife, Carol, laughed. There was no time to spare, he said. “I did all three events and worked two or three acts in between times. In my day, if you didn’t have a few acts, you didn’t get any jobs. Them bullfighters were a dime a dozen, but a clown could stay busy.”
He started out with stock contractor Hoss Inman, from Colorado, and worked many of his rodeos, before fanning out across the country. He worked rodeos in the Dakotas for Korkow and Sutton, in Iowa and Minnesota for Bob Barnes, in Canada for Harry Vold, and for the Christensen Brothers in the Northwest. He worked Pendleton, Ore.; Burwell, Neb.; Deadwood, S.D.; Fort Worth, Texas, and a whole bunch of other rodeos in between.
It was in the early 1970s that Charley and his wife Carol Lehl, who had married in 1961, decided where they wanted to settle. They had traveled across the country and found a beautiful place in Montana, just outside St. Ignatius, and decided to buy a place there. They made an offer on a ranch, it was accepted, and they moved there in 1972, calling the ranch the TUB and incorporating the TUB brand onto their Simmental-cross cattle.
As is typical among bullfighters, Charley had his share of injuries, just “broke a few bones, nothing serious,” he said. He broke his back twice, two legs, both arms, and at a rodeo in South Dakota, was unconscious when his head was knocked off the spinal cord. There was a doctor in the crowd who knew how to adjust it back on.
Some of the nastier bulls he recalls include one of Hoss Inman’s, named the Devil’s Partner, a fighting Mexican bull who would “darn sure come and eat your lunch.” Hoss also had another bull named Shorty who was fun to fight. “If he ever hit you, he’d back up and apologize. They’d have to rope him and drag him out of the arena, every performance.” And it was one of Erv Korkow’s bulls, Sonny Liston, who got ahold of him and knocked his head off his spinal column.
With the washtub, Charley rode whatever horse the stock contractor ran into the chute for him. Stock contractors liked the tub, he said. “They’d take a good solid horse that was slowing down, and he’d be good for another four or five trips” after he’d had Charley and the washtub on him.
And there was no getting off on the pickup man. “There was no way a pickup horse would run into that fog,” he said. “I’d catch my timing, bail out after a while, and try to land on my feet.”
Charley and Carol had three children: C.J., Anna and Katie, and before the kids were in school, they all traveled together. “We had a trailer house, a twenty-footer, and lived on the road,” Carol said. Charley had a two-ton truck with a big box he built on it for the animals, and the house trailer was pulled behind it. The family left in May and returned in October. The truck was full of animals: Charlie’s bulldogging horse, Carol’s barrel horse (she barrel raced for a short time), and the clown act animals: the trick horse, trained steer, donkey, and Shetland pony. When they pulled into a rodeo, it was like “the circus was in town,” Carol laughed.
Charley’s rodeoing slowed down after he bought the ranch. With three kids, 200 mother cows, hay to put up and irrigating to do, he stayed closer to home, and in 1972 he quit rodeo. He worked at a paper mill for a while, retiring in 2006, and the couple sold their cow herd in 2008. They rent out the pasture and continue to put up hay.
In 2014, he was inducted into the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. He and Carol attend the rodeo clown reunions and they have never missed a year of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo for the past three decades. In 2001, his washtub act was recognized and honored in one of the opening ceremonies of the Wrangler NFR.
He loved fighting bulls as much as he did clowning. “It would give me a big thrill to stand out in front of that chute and nod for the producer to turn out his fighting bull.” He fought the first Mexican fighting bulls that were brought into the U.S. at a rodeo Buddy Heaton promoted.
And his rodeo days were good ones. “I met a lot of good people rodeoing, and still have a lot of friends I stay in contact with.”
The couple’s children are married: C.J. to Miae, Anna to Jim and Katie to Ray. They have three grandchildren: Clay, Amanda and Mian.

Larry Clayman comes from a long line of rodeo clowns. He is third in the line of Claymans, including his daddy, Bill, and his granddaddy, Stanley, who were in the business of making rodeo fans laugh and protecting bull riders from angry bulls.
Clayman, who was chosen as the 1973 National Finals Rodeo bullfighter, was born in 1941 and “raised up” in the Missouri Ozarks, in the southwest part of the state. He worked his first rodeo in Mansfield, Mo., with his grandad at the age of 13. For two performances, he got paid twenty bucks, and “I thought, my gosh, I’ll never see another poor day,” he laughed.
Larry had already signed up for the Marine Corps when he was approached at an amateur rodeo in Okmulgee, Okla., by a legend in the rodeo world. World champion Jim Shoulders walked up to him, asking if he would clown rodeos for him. It “about floored” the barrelman to have the legend standing in front of him, but he had to decline, as his commitment was to the Marines came first. Shoulders told him about the rodeos held at Camp Pendleton in California, and that he should meet a Colonel who was working at Pendleton.
When Larry got out of boot camp and was assigned to Pendleton, he got to meet Colonel Ace Bowen, the man Shoulders had told him about. That acquaintance led to Larry meeting one of old original stock contractors in California, Andy Jauregui, an immigrant Basque sheep herder-turned contractor who was also the 1931 world champion steer roper. Andy owned J Spear Rodeo Co., and hired Larry to work his first professional rodeo. His dad and granddad had only worked amateur rodeos, but after being hired by Andy, Larry never worked another amateur. It was in Bishop, Calif., and he worked alongside Slim Pickens.
Larry clowned rodeos at Camp Pendleton, and then worked a lot of rodeos in southern California for Jauregui.
At the  end of his four years in the Marines, he was stationed in Washington, D.C., at Marine Corps Headquarters, with top secret clearance, working for generals and colonels. He became acquainted with Howard Harris, Cowtown Rodeo, and began working his weekly rodeos in New Jersey.
While he was in D.C., Jim Shoulders was putting on a bi-weekly rodeo in Leesburg, Va., on a polo field. Larry clowned for him, as well as for other stock contractors up and down the East Coast: Foy and Reynolds, among others, in Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Delaware, all over.  He worked for stock contractors across the country: Cotton Rosser, Harry Vold, the Alsbaughs, Keslers, Suttons, and Korkows,
After discharge from the Marines in 1965, he went back to California. Cotton Rosser’s Flying U Rodeo Co. and Any Jauregui’s J Spear combined to make the Golden State Rodeo Co., one of the biggest in the business. He clowned and fought bulls for them, which was a great thing, he said. “They had more rodeos than anybody, and kept me busy.”
Larry wasn’t working exclusively on the coasts. Throughout his career, which spanned three decades, he worked some of the biggest rodeos in North America: the Calgary Stampede, the National Western in Denver, Madison Square Gardens, the Cow Palace, the National High School Finals, the Indian National Finals, the College National Finals, and, in 1973, the National Finals Rodeo, which he worked with Jerry Olson
as the funnyman and Tommy Lucia
as barrelman.
Back in those days, the bullfighter and rodeo clowns were one and the same; the sport hadn’t evolved to where different people do each job. Larry was proud of his roles and loved doing both of them. “I was considered a good bullfighter, and took a lot of pride in that,” he said. “I loved to fight bulls. It was fun, exciting, and a challenge. And yet I loved to make people laugh.” He credits his grandpa with that trait. “It was natural for him to make people laugh.”
Larry was best known for his chimpanzee, Todo. He bought Todo in 1967 when he was six months old. For the next fifteen years, Todo traveled the rodeo road with Larry, making people laugh everywhere. One of his first acts was as a “doctor.” Larry would dress Todo in a white uniform with a red cross, with a red cross on his bag. Larry would be “down” from losing a shootout with the other rodeo clown, and his help would drive an “ambulance” into the arena, with Todo in it. Todo would jump out of the ambulance with his bag, stethoscope dragging on the ground, and bring the house down. He would give Larry CPR, jump on top of him, and make the monkey sound – “ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.”  Todo loved it. “He could hear the crowd roaring,” Larry said. “He got the biggest kick out of it.”

Todo also Roman rode a team of horses, slapping one of the horses on the backside, throwing him off. As the horses made the circle around the arena, Todo would tumble across the circle and get back on.
Todo was Larry’s main act, but he had others like a poodle named Squirrely Shirley who had “beatcha” bugs… scratch in one place and they “beatcha” to a new spot. He had a border collie act, and had trained horses that laid down, sat up, bucked him off, counted, and, while they napped together, stole the blanket off of Larry.
One of his greatest honors was being part of a rodeo tour in Europe in 1970. It was organized by Buster Ivory, and the group, called Rodeo Far West, performed in Italy, Switzerland and France. Larry took Todo as one of his acts, and  also drove truck, hauling equipment and livestock. The tour lasted three and a half months. World champion bull rider Freckles Brown was also part of the tour, and Larry got to be good friends with him during that time.
In 1977, Larry decided to put on a pro rodeo in Springfield, Mo, and then he began a pro rodeo in Branson, Mo., six nights a week, all summer long. Harry Vold and Jim Shoulders were hired as stock contractors, and Jerry Olson came with his dress acts and worked as the barrelman. He got so busy producing the rodeos that his clown/bullfighter career slowly phased out.
And Todo had to be put to sleep for safety reasons in 1980. That was the final straw. “I didn’t intend to quit clowning, but it broke the straw in me a little bit,” he said. I didn’t have the umph, the fire in my belly, to go back on the road.”
And he wanted to live a normal life. He announced a few rodeos, but began trucking as his second career. He’d driven truck as a kid, and loved being around them. At the age of 75, he’s still driving. “Everybody asks me why I don’t retire. Heck, I don’t want to. Somebody’s gotta keep America rolling,” he joked.
Larry had a son, Stan, who died in an auto accident, and Stan has two sons, Joseph and Isaac, who live in Arkansas. Larry has three other kids: Kimberly, Matthew, and Michael, and five grandchildren. He and his wife Renee have been married twenty years.
He remembers fondly his rodeo days, and has no regrets about his work. “I never dreamed I’d fight bulls at the (National) Finals. I never dreamed I’d have that kind of success. I loved the rodeo business and it was so good to me.” He met a lot of people, went a lot of places, and had some unbelievable experiences.
He worked rodeos in nearly every state, he remembers, and one thing he is proud of is that he never missed a performance due to injury or illness. “I take pride in that,” he said, even though he suffered broken arms, legs, and had teeth knocked out. “You just keep working.”

HL Todd was larger than life.  Whether it was riding his famous horse Rufus as he steer roped, hosting cowboys at his home in Burlington, Colo., or chewing on one of his signature cigars, he stood out in people’s minds.
The Colorado cowboy, who will celebrate his 79th birthday this year, qualified for the National Steer Roping Finals four times and took numerous victory laps at such rodeos as Pendleton, Cheyenne, and everywhere in between.
He grew up the son of John and Bernice Todd, hardworking farmers in northwest Kansas who were good people but had no use for rodeo. “They didn’t like nothing about it,” HL remembers. “It was like pulling teeth, when you loaded up to go to one.”
Their middle child of three, born in 1937, began roping at the neighbor’s. Elmer and Albert Garrett had a roping pen, and that’s where HL got his start. He was sixteen or seventeen years old, and he was looking for something different than farming. “I’d be out there, (in the field) in August, in the dust and it’d be hot and I’d be sleepy, and I was going to figure out some way to make a living without running this tractor,” he recalls.
He roped in high school a bit, then in college at Kansas State University, he competed in the calf roping and steer wrestling.
After college graduation, HL moved to Burlington, Colo., where he worked for an insurance company for ten years. In the early 1970s, he got into the feedlot business, with a 10,000 head operation. After ten years in the cattle business, he went broke and went back to the insurance company, living in Kansas City and Oklahoma City before moving to a ranch near Chickasha, Okla.
He roped steers on weekends and when he could get away from work. He won rounds and placed at rodeos across the country: Cheyenne Frontier Days, Walla Walla, Wash., Miles City, Mont., Pendleton, Ore., Ponca City, Okla., everywhere he went.
And he and his wife Rita’s place became a stopping spot for fellow cowboys. Their home north of Burlington included an indoor arena. It was on the way for those cowboys from Texas as they headed north for the summer run. “A lot of those steer ropers and calf ropers would come and stay with us,” Rita said. “They were coming from south Texas, and Burlington was over a day’s drive. They’d camp there, go to county fairs, and then go on to Cheyenne and Pendleton.”
Some of the names legendary to the sport of rodeo stayed with the Todds. James Allen, the father of eighteen-time world champion Guy Allen, came with his kids. Sonny Davis, Olin Young, Roy Cooper, Dick Yates, Jimmy Brazile, and more sat at the kitchen table with the Todds. They stayed in their campers or living quarters, and Rita cooked supper for them. Beef was plentiful, in the feedlot business. Cowboys often brought their families along, and HL and Rita’s two daughters, Kim and Kelly, loved it. Their home was a gathering place. “The kids loved it,” Rita said, “and I did, too. It was fun.”

Clark McEntire, the father of country music superstar Reba McEntire, roped steers in the same era as HL did, and he often stayed at the house with his four kids. After roping all day, Rita would fix a big cook-out, and the McEntire kids, mainly Pake and Reba, would pull out their guitars to sing and entertain. “Mom jokingly said they had to sing for their supper,” Kim remembers.
Jeff Todd, HL’s nephew and a team roper, remembers the big personality his uncle had in his rodeo days. “He was just always a figure that was larger than life,” he said. People comment to him that they always wanted to be like HL when they grew up. “He was the guy who, everything he did, was first class. He wasn’t flamboyant, but he always had nice horses and took good pride in his stuff.”
He didn’t always catch, but if he did, he won, Jeff remembers. “That was his mojo. He had that winner’s knack. He might completely miss one in the first round, and then win the next round. He was always a go-round threat.”
HL rode good horses and his best-known horse might be one he raised, a roan gelding named Rufus, who was the AQHA’s 1995 Steer Roping Horse of the Year at the age of nineteen. Rufus was also ridden by HL’s son-in-law, Jimmy Hodge, who made the National Finals Steer Roping three times. The horse was the envy of every cowboy in the arena. One time, at Cheyenne after slack, as HL went to put horses away, one of his granddaughters said to her grandpa, “I want to ride Rufus.” Tee Woolman, overhearing her, said, “Yeah, and so does everybody else around here.”
HL qualified for the National Finals Steer Roping in 1973, 1975, 1976, and 1982, and continued to rope professionally till he was in his sixties. He won a go-round at Cheyenne at the age of 52, and went on to rope in the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association. He quit competing about seven years ago.
HL mentored young cowboys, including the 1978 Tie-Down Roping Champion Dave Brock, and another steer roper, Rod Pratt. As a youngster, Pratt and his family neighbored the Todds, and Rod worked for HL, rebuilding his arena. “One thing led to another,” Rod remembers, “and he taught me how to rope.”
Rod remembers HL with the big cigar in his mouth. “He always chewed on a cigar,” he said. “He’d light it twice, and it’d go out, and then he’d chew on it.” But when he spoke, it was time to listen. “He was pretty quiet and laid back, and you could tell when he spoke seriously, you needed to listen.”
Pratt qualified for the National Finals Steer Roping eight times, winning the average in 1987. He rode one of HL’s horses for the last five rounds in 1987, and placed in every round. “If I needed something, he always helped me,” he said.
HL worked hard to be a good roper, Rod said. “He was a good athlete. He had to work at it, but he wanted to, so that’s the driving factor right there. The ‘want to’ makes you do a lot of things well.”
In addition to teaching him how to rope steers, HL taught Rod some life lessons, like how to enjoy the moment. “It didn’t matter where you were, he enjoyed life. Wherever he was, he enjoyed being there. He never did let life get him down.”
HL and Rita enjoy retirement in Johnson City, Texas.  Their older daughter Kelly married Mark Dykes and they have two daughters and a son, and their younger daughter, Kim, married Jimmy Hodge, and the couple has twin daughters.

If it wasn’t for Will James, John Gee might never have been a cowboy. The Montana man grew up reading the western books written by James, while he and his buddies dreamed of riding bucking horses and living the cowboy lifestyle, and Gee did just that.
Growing up in Delta, Ohio, on the west side of Toledo, John, also known as “Doc,” delivered newspapers to buy his first horse. “My father helped subsidize the horse,” Doc remembers. “I was nine or so.” Five years later he was at local county fairs and rodeos, riding bareback horses and bulls.
He and childhood friends Tom and Don Decker and their buddies traveled together to rodeos, and Decker remembers when they rode at a rodeo in Findlay, Ohio. “They had a horse that was pretty rank,” Tom Decker said. John got on him in the saddle bronc riding. “The horse threw him over his head the first jump and took him down the arena, kicking every jump. John was unconscious for a short while, and on the way home, he didn’t remember his ride.” On the way home, he came to. “He didn’t remember anything. We told him his ride was like a Will James book,” he laughs.
The boys were in training, Decker said. “We knew we’d have to be tough so we could become cowboys. We had to take cold freezing showers, to see who could stand in the shower longer.” The boys were daredevils on horseback, too. “”We’d ride this crazy horse down a gravel road, one-hundred miles an hour, bareback and double,” Decker said. “The horse was a renegade. John used to put the horse under the edge of the roof, and (the horse) would lift the rafter.”
After high school graduation in 1953, John headed west. His interest in agriculture took him to Colorado A&M (now Colorado State University), in part for the education, and in part for their rodeo team. When the team was chosen that fall, John was not on it. “I was pretty broken up about the deal,” he said. In those days, a person could compete on the team or individually, so John went to some rodeos by himself and won. He was working three events: the bareback riding, steer wrestling, and bull riding. That spring, he was chosen for the team. Being voted on the team was done partly for a person’s talent and partly for if they had wheels:  “In those days, the team was picked by the people who were going to rodeo,” John says. “You put your name on the board, and the events you worked. And then each person who had their name up there got to vote. So you voted for somebody that had a car, you voted for yourself, and you voted for whoever you thought would be the best cowboys.”
With paying out-of-state tuition, John had to concern himself with entry fees. “You didn’t go many weeks without winning something unless you were subsidized in some way,” he said. His
dad, a truck driver, wasn’t paying his fees. “We weren’t that affluent.”
In 1954, his first year of college, the Colorado A&M team won the national championship, and John won the National Inter-Collegiate Rodeo Association’s Steer Wrestling title. In his sophomore year, he won second place, and his third year of college, he won the title again. The Colorado A&M rodeo athletes knew how to get lots of points. In those days, there were no college regions and students could compete anywhere in the nation, “so some of us would get in the car and go to a rodeo and get on other people’s horses,” John recalls. Fuel was a quarter a gallon. “One weekend, we had a team 30 miles from the New Mexico border, and a team 30 miles from the Canadian line.” Because they borrowed horses, they could travel easier. “The Texans, if there were six on a team, there were probably six outfits, because they all hauled their own horses. We had an advantage.”
After his first year of college, John switched his major from agriculture to animal husbandry. “Unless I married a rancher or inherited one, I couldn’t afford to be one.” After three years at Ft. Collins, he transferred to Ohio State to get his doctor of veterinary medicine degree.
He graduated from Ohio State in 1960 and immediately headed back west. Doc, as he would be better known by, got a job for a veterinarian in Great Falls. Three years later, he went out on his own, establishing his practice in Stanford, Montana.
And he kept rodeoing. He got his Rodeo Cowboys Association membership, predecessor to the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association, in 1961. He worked all three events, never hitting the road full time due to his veterinary clinic, but going hard enough. Among his rodeos, he competed in Denver at the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo many years. He spent a few summers rodeoing in Ohio and back east. His practice never let him get too far from home.
He rode bulls until 1964, quitting because he had married. He rode bareback horses for another ten years, and steer wrestled till he was in his forties.
Doc’s wife, JoAnn Cremer always had an eye for horses, he said. She was the niece of well-known Montana stock contractor Leo Cremer, and grew up around rodeo. They met at a college rodeo in Bozeman. In her early years, she didn’t have a chance to rodeo, but after they married, she began running barrels. “She was a very good coach and fan,” Doc said. “She was always ready for the next good one,” eldest daughter Maria said. One year, Maria finished 17th in the Women’s Pro Rodeo Association barrel racing standings, missing qualification for the National Finals Rodeo by two places. JoAnn “laid a lot of groundwork” in getting Maria ranked in the top twenty, Doc said, even helping drive from rodeo to rodeo.

 

Doc was and still is humble about his accomplishments “Dad always said, “God first, family second, work and rodeo after that,” Maria said. His family reflected those values. John’s son, John J., finished in the top twenty in the PRCA steer wrestling standings three times. The third time, his family only realized it later.  “That’s what my dad believed in,” Maria said. “You take care of other things first.”
After he finished PRCA rodeo, he spent several years competing in the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association. He loved to compete. “He was pretty fun to watch,” Maria said. “He still gets that competitor grit in his eye.”
He also judged PRCA and open rodeos, taking horses along that needed to be seasoned. “They usually figured he was the best bronc ride of the day,” Maria chuckled. He judged the open rodeo at Roy, Montana, for years.
Doc was part of the group that started the Stanford, Mont. pro rodeo in 1965. The Jaycees, of which he was a member, produced the rodeo, and Doc was instrumental in building the arena from scratch.
Last summer, he celebrated 50 years as veterinarian in the Judith Basin, Charles Russell Country in Montana. Childhood friend Tom Decker was on hand for the celebration. “We passed the mike around,” Decker said. “Everybody just loves him. He’s one of those kinds of people.” Decker, who served on the Board of Directors for the Russell Museum in Great Falls, kept in touch with Doc and his family. “He’s always been a hero of mine, and a mentor to me. His character is the finest. His Christian faith is what makes his character what it is.” Even on the rodeo trail, Doc went to church every Sunday. “If there was no ride, he walked,” Decker said. “He was razzed by a lot of his rodeo buddies about going to church.”
His clients in the vet business love him, too. “He’s adored in Montana,” Decker said. “The people of Montana dearly love him. He’s a wonderful human being, and his Christian values are the center of it.”
Doc and JoAnn had four children: John J., Leo, who passed away at age 19, Maria and Theresa. JoAnn passed away two years ago. At the age of 81, Doc still goes out and helps at his son’s feedlot and, if the phone rings for a call to doctor an animal, he answers. His grandkids continue the rodeo tradition. John, Jr.’s son, Luke, won the Montana Circuit bull riding title in 2014, and has qualified for the Montana Circuit Finals eight times: five in the bull riding and three in the steer wrestling.
Even though rodeo had its place behind his faith, his family and his work, Doc loved it. “The people we’ve met, they’re priceless. You can go practically anywhere and see people you know and enjoy. That part is especially, in my advanced age, the great part of it.” He also loves to see his son, John, and grandson, Luke, compete.
“This guy is a sensational human being, and I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Decker said.

Clem McSpadden called him the best match roper of his time.
Henry Hainzinger may have never won a world championship, but he was well respected for his roping across the prairies of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and beyond.
He got his start at roping two blocks from his home in Bartlesville, Okla., with a neighbor, Art Saylor, who had a horse and goats. When he was twelve, he was spending time on Art’s horse, roping goats, and getting better at his craft.
Many small towns had roping clubs, and Henry was part of the Bartlesville Round-Up Club. In those days, without social media, video games, and Ipods, kids made their fun at practice nights and Sunday afternoon ropings. Henry was one of them, and when they all got together, they often held match ropings: two calf ropers who went head to head, on two or four runs, with the fastest average time winning whatever had been bet, usually five or ten dollars, occasionally as much as one hundred dollars.
Henry usually came out on top of the match ropings, and that’s what McSpadden referred to when he talked about the cowboy.
He quit school at the age of sixteen and went to work for a local machine shop. In the summer of 1952, he worked for world champion steer roper Fred Lowry at Lenapah, Okla., breaking horses. Fred, who was the uncle of world champion steer roper Shoat Webster, would have Henry take horses to Shoat’s place for Shoat to look at and try. Fred was instrumental in Henry’s career, giving him tips and advice as they roped together nearly every day.

In 1956, when he turned 21, he joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association, and his rodeo travels extended beyond jackpots and local shows to Little Rock, Denver, Ft. Worth, and farther.
By that time, Henry spent his winters working in the machine shop in Bartlesville and saving money for entry fees so he could spend his summers roping.
He often traveled with Ike Anderson, who he grew up with. Ike, who is 80 and still lives in Bartlesville, remembers some of the good times. He and Henry were at the Sidney, Iowa rodeo, on their way to two more that weekend, when they got the news that the county fair in Sedan, Kan., wanted to feature the two of them match roping and pay them $100 each. They left their horses in Sidney, and “drove like madman,” Ike said, to get back to Sedan. Ike’s mother hauled an extra horse to town, and Henry borrowed a horse. Henry beat Ike, “we got our $100, and drove like a son of a gun to get back to Sidney.”
Henry was a jokester, Ike said. Once, at a rodeo in Kansas, the calves were “big, fresh black calves, off the cows, and it was like roping a mountain lion,” he said. Ike backed into the box, nodded, and his horse stalled on him. “The calf was going nine-oh across the arena, and finally the horse decided to go. I came a mile late, and ran this calf down the end of the arena, back up the other side, and through the hay where they’d fed the cattle the night before.” Ike roped the calf in 55 seconds. “I came back out of the arena, so angry I could have bit a piggin’ string in two. Henry comes up to me and says, ‘If you ever make another run like that, I’m not going to rodeo with you,’” Ike laughed. “That’s how we tormented each other, all the time. It was special.”
In those days, calf roping was different. Ropers had a two minute time limit to rope and tie before they were disqualified, and they dismounted differently than today’s ropers. Henry was part of the era that roped, dismounted from the left, then ducked under the rope to flank and tie the calf. “We were still in the Dean Oliver mode of the right handed calf roper,” Ike said. “By the middle of the 60s, (that style of roping) was obsolete.”
But in that north central part of Oklahoma, Henry and Ike were part of a special group of ropers. “With that era of the 50s, if you came into the Bartlesville community, there were a bunch of guys who were tough to beat,” Ike said. “I can’t remember a lot of that style of roper that was tougher than that bunch of guys was.”
Henry remembered a unique roping he won in 1954, near Fairfax, Oklahoma, where the ropers roped deer. A rich oil baron had a section of ground with domesticated deer on it. The deer were run through the chute, and the ropers backed into a box. They were mature animals, and not hard to rope, Henry said. “It was like roping a goat. I believe it was easier than roping a goat. They held their heads up.”
In 1957, when he was 23 years old, Henry took an adventure to California, hoping to extend his roping in the fall, when there were no rodeos at home. “I’d filled my pockets roping (at rodeos) and didn’t want to come back to work,” he said. He assumed they roped calves in California, but they did more team roping than calf roping, “and I didn’t know nothing about team roping,” he said. He stayed with Virgil Berry, Ace Berry’s dad, and when he came home, he was broke. “I had a nickel in my pocket when I come home.” Before he came home, he’d purchased cashews and nuts for his family. In Arizona, he stopped to fuel up, and his bill was $4.50. He handed the cashier his Phillips 66 credit card, but there were no Phillips 66 stations in Arizona. “I’m sorry, son, but we don’t take Phillips 66 cards,” he was told. An old Indian was sitting at the station. He was willing to buy one of his Australian shepherd puppies, but Henry said no. Instead, he sold the cashews to the Indian, paid his bill, and headed home.
Ike remembered another story regarding Henry. The two of them roped at the annual rodeo held at the Cooper Ranch, between Bartlesville and Tulsa, and the lady who owned the ranch hosted a party at the house following the rodeo. Henry was the calf roping and all-around champion. Contestants were served drinks and food from a waiter in a bow tie and formal white jacket. After partying all night, the lady announced, “We’re going to stop the party and go to Collinsville, and the all-around champ is going to buy breakfast.” “I’ll never let him live that one down,” Ike said. “I bet it cost him over one hundred dollars to feed everybody, and money wasn’t easy to come by for all of us.”
Rodeos back then were often two or more head, requiring cowboys to stay in town overnight. Henry knew how to beat the heat on the hot summer days, waiting for a performance to begin. He’d pay ten cents for a movie and stay in the air-conditioned theater all afternoon. “I’d take my nap inside the movie house, while a lot of them were laying out in the sun, and they’d be played out,” he said.
In 1962, Henry married Ora Lee, a barrel racer, and a few years later, moved to Ponca City. After their marriage, he continued to rope but didn’t go as far from home. He bought a bulldozer, and had a successful business in the oilfield. He and Ora Lee raised two children: Hank and Nancy. Both competed in rodeo, and now the next generation is competing: Nancy’s daughter, Kathryn Todd, won the all-around in 2013 at the National Junior High Finals and was reserve champion in 2014.
Henry loved his life of rodeo, roping, and work. “I enjoyed every bit of it,” he said. But whatever he did, he studied and practiced. “You gotta study it, whatever it is you choose to do. If you don’t study, it ain’t going to work. You’re just playing.”
The rodeo life wasn’t always easy, Henry said. “It ain’t all peaches and cream in that rodeoing.” But the good days outnumbered the bad days. “I had a lot of fun.