Author: Ruth Nicolaus

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.”

Terry Peek craved riding bulls. And although he never made a living at it, it was his hobby, his lifestyle, and where he made many friends. The Bandera, Texas cowboy was born in 1945 in Paris, Texas, the son of Joe Bailey and Robbie Lee Peek. When he was seventeen years old, he was at a rodeo, behind the chutes, when someone asked him, “Son, do you want to get on this bull?” He thought it was a good idea, so he said, “You bet.” The man asked, “Did you sign a release form?” “I said, sure I did,” he recalls. “I didn’t even know what a release form was.”
So he found a cotton rope, wrapped it around the bull’s girth, and got on. He rode him for six seconds, got bucked off, and “from then on, I said, boy, this is fun and this is what I want to do.” The next Monday, he bought a bull rope and a pair of spurs, and his rodeo career began.
Terry, who had worked for local farmers and ranchers around Paris, had broken and ridden horses for people, earning $35 a head. After his first bull ride, he went to every junior rodeo he could get to, hitching rides with buddies or going on his own. He was friends with Sammy Andrews, Gerald Smith, who owned Wing Rodeo, and Robert Wright. Friends would meet at Robert’s, near Talco, Texas, every Sunday, to ride bulls.

He was also friends with Todd Whatley, who introduced him to world champion bull rider Freckles Brown. Freckles’ home in Soper, Okla., was just across the state line from Paris, and Terry went to work for Freckles, putting up hay on his ranch. Terry rode bulls at the Paris rodeo, where Freckles was the judge, and when Terry won a go-round, Freckles was “tickled to death,” he said. “He said, Terry, did you get your check? I said, I don’t even know where to go.” Freckles laughed and said, “Son, go right up those stairs to the announcer’s stand and there will be a secretary there with a check.” It was a check for $250, “which was huge for me. I came back, showed it to Freckles, and he said, ‘that-a-boy.’”
His parents were not pleased with his decision to ride bulls. His junior year in high school, he declared to his parents that football did not interest him anymore; he’d be rodeoing. His mother had something to say about that. “She said,” Terry remembers, “let me explain something to you. You’ve made a commitment to play football to the coach. You’re going to fulfill that commitment. You can ride bulls, but you’ll play football.” He did, but “I was thrilled when the season was over,” he said.
His parents grew to accept his choice to rodeo. “They finally understood, this boy is going to do what he’s going to do. My mother said to my dad, let’s just go to some of his rodeos and watch him, so they did.”
After high school graduation, Terry was a student at Paris Junior College. He was still rodeoing, and to him, rodeo was more important than school. He declared to his mother that he was going to quit school and rodeo full time. “My mother had this look on her face,” he recalled. “She didn’t say anything.” A few weeks later, his mother told him Sonny Sikes, the rodeo coach at Sam Houston State University, had called, asking him to rodeo for the team. “I said, ‘he does?’” And she said, yes. “They have a great team there and he’s heard about you and he wants you to come and rodeo at Sam Houston.” It was a set-up; Sonny Sikes had never heard of Terry but his mother arranged it so that Terry would go back to college.
It worked. Terry attended Sam Houston State for two years, riding bulls for them and earning a degree.
While in college, he qualified for the College National Finals Rodeo in 1967 and 1968, finishing the ’67 season as Southern Region bull riding champion. Terry was in good company, competing alongside the likes of Phil Lyne, Carl Deeton, Ronnie Williams, and other good cowboys.
His parents made a real sacrifice to send him to college. Before he left for Huntsville, his mom and dad gave him fifty dollars. It was what they were able to save for him. His mother told him, “your dad and I have saved fifty dollars and we want you to have it, to get off to a good start.” Each week, his mom would put a case of Campbell’s soup on the bus to him. Terry would meet the bus at Huntsville to pick it up. “I always had food,” he said, even if he did get tired of soup. Sometimes he’d trade a buddy a can of soup for a hamburger. In 1968, he graduated from college with a degree in ag education. He enrolled in the master’s program at Sam Houston, but got drafted into the Marine Corps. He spent two years in the Marine Corps, stationed in various places on the west coast and in the Pacific, before his honorable discharge.
When he got out of the Marines, he got a job in Coldspring, Texas, teaching agriculture. He was still competing at 35 or 40 rodeos a year, all over east Texas, Louisiana, and farther. They were regional and International Pro Rodeo Association events.
After two years in Coldspring, he moved to Cortez, Colo., spending five years there as an ag teacher and the high school rodeo coach. He was still rodeoing, this time in Colorado, Utah and that part of the country.
In 1979, Terry moved to Ft. Collins, to work on his doctorate in ag science at Colorado State University. After earning his advanced degree, he moved to Glenwood Springs, Colo., to work for Colorado Mountain College as dean of community education. He had worked with Exxon Mobil, getting students jobs with the oil company. When Exxon offered him a job, he took it. They sent him to Colombia, South America for three years, then Mexico, then back to the States: Houston, Illinois and California.

But he decided he missed teaching, so he went back to the classroom, as ag mechanics instructor and rodeo coach at Texas A&I in Kingsville (now Texas A&M in Kingsville). He loved the classroom and helping rodeo athletes. For the five years he was in Kingsville, his athletes qualified for the College National Finals every year.
It was there that he got on his last bull. Terry had quit riding at age 35, but at the age of 49, he got on one more. During an evening practice, the college bull riders couldn’t stay on. “They couldn’t ride a milk cow that night,” Terry remembered. “I said, ‘golly, you boys are pathetic. Let me show you how this works.” He got on a bull, rode for eight seconds, and when he dismounted, he fell and the bull stepped on him, breaking his pelvis and separating it three and a half inches. The college kids were laughing. “Yeah, yeah, Dr. Peek,” they said, as the ambulance came. “I was always one to take a dare,” Terry said.
After five years in Kingsville, the wanderlust in Terry returned, and he moved to Farmington, New Mexico, where he worked at San Juan College for five years. Then it was on to Roseburg, Oregon, to Umpquah Community College as vice-president. Two years later, he was on to Wenatchee (Wash.) Valley College.
He and his first wife had two sons: Josh Peek and Jason Peek (Terry and his sons are no relation to the steer wrestler Josh Peek from Colorado), and one of his grandsons, Idan Peek, needed some extra attention, so Terry raised him. After his divorce, he was single for many years. “That was good,” he said. “I wasn’t distracted. I was able to do my work and do a good job of raising that child.”
Then a chance encounter on a plane brought him his wife, Dorene. It was on a flight from Austin to Portland, and he was seated next to her. As they visited, he discovered that she was a barrel racer and her father had raised some National Finals Rodeo bucking bulls. After the plane ride, they stayed in touch, then married in 2008.
Terry retired in 2009 and the couple settled in Bandera, Texas. He still receives phone calls from former college kids who were inspired and helped by him. He was an example to them, that rodeo and a good education aren’t exclusive of each other; he was able to get his schooling done yet still ride bulls. He loves to talk to former students. “They appreciate what I did for them, and I was lucky to have them,” he said. He also has a high respect for Sonny Sikes, and the two stay in touch.
He is a member of the Rodeo Cowboy Alumni Association, a group that gets together twice a year and raises funds for scholarships for young people. He enjoys getting together with other rodeo friends.
In retirement, he golfs and works in a saw mill he and a friend purchased. He makes furniture, and still attends rodeos, including the National Finals Rodeo, Pendleton, Bozeman, Mont., and others. There are several retired cowboys in Bandera, and they get together. “We talk about how good we were, back when they bucked,” he laughed.
Bull riding was his love. “I loved to get on those things,” he said. “I just craved getting on bulls. I couldn’t wait to get on the next bull, for so many years.”
“I wasn’t one of the best, but I had a lot of passion for what I was doing.”

The Edgemont, S.D. cowboy was the 1952 National High School Rodeo Bareback Riding champion, and it wasn’t until fellow South Dakotan Shane O’Connell won it in 2013, that the drought was over.
Manke not only competed in the bareback riding, but also as a steer wrestler, cow cutter, wild cow rider, and occasional calf roper.
He was born in 1935 to Alfred (Allie) and Dorothy (White) Manke, who ranched twenty miles south of Edgemont. As most country kids did in those days, he rode the three miles to the country school every day.
By the time he was ten years old, he was riding calves at local county fairs, and as a freshman in high school, he got on his first bareback horse.
High school rodeo wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now, and there were fewer rodeos to go to. But Franklin went to several, one of them being the Harrison, Neb. rodeo in 1952, when he won the bareback riding, calf roping, second place in the cow riding, and the all-around.
That same year, his senior year, he won the S.D. state bareback riding and calf roping titles and split first in the cow cutting.
Back then, if a high school finals rodeo contestant qualified for the National High School Finals in one event, they could enter a second event, and the all-around winner could enter as many events as they chose. He finished his high school rodeo career with not only the national bareback riding title, but the all-around as well, having competed at Nationals in Augusta, Montana in the tie-down roping, too.
After high school, he came home to ranch with his parents. They owned two ranches, one south of Edgemont and the other about twenty-five miles away, in southeastern Wyoming.

But he continued to rodeo, this time in the Northwest Ranch Cowboys Association (NRCA) and at local county fairs.
In 1955 he went to a rodeo that was lacking steer wrestlers. The committee told Franklin they would pay his entry fees if he would bulldog. He’d ridden his rope horse in high school to bulldog, but the horse didn’t work out well. “I’d go to get off and he’d stop,” he said. “That left a lot of air between me and the steer.” But he borrowed a horse, rode him at that rodeo and all summer, finishing the year second in the steer wrestling for the NRCA.
His dad, Allie, team roped when he was older, but as a young man, his hobby was race horses. He had a string of thoroughbreds he’d take to the county fair races, and some of them Franklin rodeoed on. It wasn’t a perfect situation, but back then, they made do. Every now and then the race horses didn’t know when to quit. “Sometimes it wasn’t very pleasant when you rode a race horse and you went to turn a cow and the horse just kept going,” Franklin chuckled.
Franklin continued to rodeo in the NRCA. In 1956, he won the bareback riding, was second in the steer wrestling, and won the all-around. In 1957 and ’58, he won the steer wrestling both years. He competed in 1959, but injuries slowed him down.
In ’59, he broke his riding hand while riding barebacks. As the pickup man approached, he worked to get his hand out of the rigging. Before he had it out, the bucking horse stopped, throwing Franklin’s body weight over the top of his hand and breaking a bone.
The same year, he tore ligaments in a knee while bull dogging. There was no surgery for torn ligaments then; the only cure was time off. Franklin built a brace and wore it to bulldog, but his bulldogging days were coming to an end.

After 1959, he quit rodeo for a few years, continuing to ranch on the family operation, which included mama cows, yearlings and sheep. His dad passed away in 1972, and by this time, Franklin and his wife Audrey had bought another place, between the Edgemont ranch and the Wyoming ranch. Without his dad’s help, it was too difficult to run both places, and he didn’t want to hire help. They also had a grazing lease that had expired, so it made sense to sell the S.D. ranch.
Franklin’s parents owned and managed three motels in Edgemont, and after his dad’s death, his mom ran them for three years. It was more than she could handle, so Franklin and Audrey bought them from her, with the intent of running them for three years and then selling them. Two of them were side by side and shared an office, and one of them closed during the winter. They ran them for 22 years, before selling them in 1997.
In the mid-1960s, when dally team roping became popular, Franklin began rodeoing again, at jackpots and a few rodeos close to home. He never ventured far from home, choosing to rodeo at NRCA events, local county fairs and jackpots in South Dakota and Wyoming. He didn’t go full time, believing it was difficult to do both well. “You either have to be a rancher and a part-time rodeo cowboy, or a full-time rodeo cowboy. That’s how I look at it.”
Franklin team roped in the Old Timers Rodeo Association (now the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association.) He headed for a while, then switched to heeling, often partnering with Bob Stoddard of Douglas, Wyo. He enjoyed the jackpots the NSPRA held before the rodeo. He doesn’t brag, but “I guess I claimed my share of the money in the ropings.” He quit roping in 1994, after having a hip replaced.
Franklin and Audrey first met when they were in country school. He had had his eye on her, he says, and asked her out on July 4, 1953. They married later that year and celebrated their 65th anniversary in October of 2018.
And the rodeo gene didn’t end with Franklin. The couple’s daughter, Janie, was the 1971 Wyoming High School Girls All-Around champion, and their son, Jay, was the 1976 S. D. State High School Team Roping champion. Janie and her husband Butch Tinint live in Valentine, Neb., and both of Janie’s daughters competed in rodeo. Jay’s daughter and son, Katie and Ty, have also done well. Katie and her husband Jeremy Langdeau have three children who ride and compete, and Ty, who is married to Trista, has won the saddle bronc riding average at the Badlands Circuit Finals Rodeo twice. Franklin started Ty in the saddle bronc riding while in high school, buying him his first saddle. “In fact, I think he still owes me for that saddle,” he joked.
Franklin and his great-grandson Jackson Langdeau goat rope together. On foot, Jackson heads and Franklin heels, and Franklin loves it.
The couple sold the ranch in 1989, when the work with the motels became too much. They fully retired in 1997, when they bought forty acres and built a house on the east side of Edgemont. They stay busy: Franklin, traveling to rodeos to watch his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and Audrey, who paints. Her artwork is excellent, Franklin said, and jokes that they’ll have to build longer walls to hang her work.
He loved his days in rodeo. He and Audrey made it through the bad times, of which there weren’t many. They lost a granddaughter, Jay’s daughter Jayme, when she died in a car accident, but life is still good, filled with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “We’ve never really had any downs in life.”

Argene Clanton laughs, and life laughs with him.
The cowboy, an Okie, former calf roper, café and truck stop owner, veteran, rodeo committee member and daddy of three girls, loves a good joke.
And at the age of 94 years young, he’s still laughing.
He was born in 1924 to Cleve and Verda Clanton in Barnsdall, Okla., weighing in at two pounds, seven ounces and sleeping in a box in the closet. When he was born, he was a “blue baby,” and one of the midwives attending his mother asked if there was any whiskey in the house. There was; she took it, warmed a teaspoon of it, and gave it to him. He lived, and says with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ve had a few drinks since then.”
As a child, the family lived on a farm near Chelsea, Okla. He loved to rope and would try to rope everything: chickens, pigs, anything that walked across his path. In high school FFA at Chelsea Public Schools, the FFA kids would be hired out to help farmers work their cattle, sheep and hogs. Argene would load his horse in the FFA trailer, and the crew would go to work. People didn’t have good corrals and chutes in those days. Animals often got out, and Argene and his buddies got to rope them. But the animals weren’t always getting out on their own. “I guarantee you, somebody’d let one out so we’d get to rope,” Argene chuckled.
Argene calf roped with his good friend Roger Morris. Roger’s dad was a horse trader, and Argene would ride a lot of the horses he brought home. One time, he bought a cow horse and Argene couldn’t wait to get on him. Roger’s dad “wanted me to ride him, to see what kind of a horse he was. I was always a fool to get on,” he said.

So Argene decided to skip school so he could ride this cow horse. The horse “was snorty when I got him in the corner,” Argene remembered. “I got up on him, and boy, he broke in two. He ducked his head, bucked, and threw me right into the saddle room.” Argene got up and this time opened the gate to the pasture. He was going to ride this horse. He got back on him, spurring and whipping, and “out the gate I went. He hit three licks and settled down.”
It just happened that the Clanton barn and pasture was next to the school, and the principal had seen Argene riding. The next day, over the speaker, came the principal’s voice, asking him to report to the office. Argene lied about skipping school, telling the principal that his dad had asked him to get cattle in that day. The principal told him he was going to get three licks. Argene said, “no, sir.” The principal locked the door and Argene told him, “you’re going to have to give them to me.” The principal “got hot, and everything turned red.” But he unlocked the door, and “I felt better,” Argene said. The principal told him to ask his dad to come and talk to him the next time he was at school. “I said I sure will,” Argene laughed. “And then I forgot to tell him.”
In 1943, the year before he would have graduated, Argene entered the Navy. Six Craig County boys all went at the same time, and Argene was sent to San Diego to machinist school. He was on a troop transport ship, the Admiral RE Coontz AP122, going through the Panama Canal seven times hauling Puerto Ricans back and forth from Europe, where they were serving in the U.S. military. After World War II ended, the ship was stationed in the New York Bay, and Argene stayed with the ship as it was decommissioned to the merchant marines. He was assigned the task of teaching them how to run the ship, and given the option to take his thirty day leave and then return for his final two months of service, or stay for three months and then be discharged. He chose to stay. “I said, if I get back to Oklahoma, I won’t want to leave.” He was on the ship longer than any other Navy personnel; he was on board when it was commissioned and when it was decommissioned.
In 1946, Argene was honorably discharged from the Navy and came back to Oklahoma, never to leave again.
He bought a farm on Route 66, halfway between Vinita and Chelsea. He had beef cattle and dairy cattle, married Martha Carter, and started a family, having three daughters: Connie Butler, Peggy McGehee and Pam Swift. A small arena was behind the dairy barn, and friends stopped by to rope. He served on the school board for the White Oak School as well.
His paternal grandpa Grant Clanton, known as “Sweet Tater” started Clanton’s Café in 1927. Cleve and Verda took it over in the 1940s, and when they decided to retire, Argene bought it from them. He moved his family to the house behind the café and his parents moved to Argene’s farm. Then he bought the service station next to the café and ran it. After eleven years of running the café, he sold it to his sister and bought a truck stop at Big Cabin, running it for seventeen years.
He and Roger Morris competed at area ropings and rodeos. They never went pro, but they loved to rope. They stayed in the area, never venturing more than 100 miles from home, to rodeos in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas. He also competed in the calf mugging and wild cow milking.

Argene played a vital part in the Original Will Rogers Memorial Rodeo, held in Vinita every August. He has served as rodeo chairman and has been on the rodeo committee for years. When he was fifteen, he rode his horse eighteen miles, from his home to Vinita to watch the rodeo. He has gone to at least one performance of the rodeo every year of its 82 year existence, except for the three years he was in the Navy. He has carried the flag in the rodeo parade and posted colors at the rodeo for forty years. He attended the PRCA convention and the National Finals Rodeo many times, and one time, when there was no money to put on a rodeo, he and his good friend Bob McSpadden, brother to Clem McSpadden, took out a personal loan to finance it.
When he returned from the Navy, World War I veteran George Franklin paid his dues to join the Chelsea American Legion. Two years later, he joined the Vinita American Legion Post 40, and has been an active member for 72 years, serving as commander of the Legion several years.
Argene also was active in politics, volunteering as Craig County Republican Party chairman many years. He knew Clem McSpadden, a Democrat, from playing high school basketball against him and going to rodeos with him, and Clem knew Argene had influence in Craig County. When Clem ran for Oklahoma Senate in the 1950s, he asked Argene to go with him to be introduced to folks in the area. Argene knew the real reason Clem wanted him along: to open the gates. In the 1970s, when Clem ran for U.S. Congress, he asked for Argene’s help again. Argene told him, this time you’re opening the gates, and he did. “I drove, and he opened.”
In 2002, he, along with the other Chelsea veterans who didn’t graduate from high school due to their service, were asked to walk across the stage for high school graduation. His graduation party was at the senior citizen center!
Six years ago, he, his daughters, and other veterans were part of an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., where he saw the sights for the first time. The Clanton Café, which his dad started and he owned, is the oldest continuously owned family restaurant on Route 66 in Oklahoma (it’s now owned by Argene’s niece and her husband), and he still loves to dance, having taught all three of his girls by them standing on his boots.
Argene’s wife Martha died in 1992 and he married Roberta Millarr two years later. Roberta has three boys and a girl; together, the couple has so many grandkids, Argene said, “we quit counting them.”
Life is good for the old timer. He and Roger live two miles from each other and get together to tell old stories. Argene frequents the American Legion, where he likes to partake of the beverage that got his lungs working as a baby, and he counts his blessings. Life has “all been good, it really has,” he said. “Raising three girls and having two good wives, I don’t know how you could beat it.”
It’s a life-well lived.