Category: Back When They Bucked

[ “Never did I think I would be that caliber of cowboy to be inducted into the hall of fame.” ]

“I think I was just cut out to be a bareback rider. I love that event and the attitude it took to be a bareback rider. And a bunch of my lifetime heroes ended up being bareback riders. It was what turned me on,” says J.C. Trujillo. When the Arizona-born cowboy nodded his head and burst into the sport of rodeo as a child, it swiftly became a way of life, presenting him with opportunities, lifelong friendships, and numerous accomplishments, which he rode to the buzzer and continues to enjoy today. One of these accolades includes his induction in November to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, an honor that J.C. says comes from the many people who stood behind him all his life.
Born May 10, 1948, in Prescott, Arizona, J.C. started rodeoing at age 6. He and his older brother and sister, Frank and Irene, were launched into the sport by their parents, Albert and Stella Trujillo. “My mom and dad were so instrumental through my whole rodeo career that I just wish they were here to see this also,” says J.C. of his recent induction. “They drug us around to rodeos, paid entry fees, bought horses and horse trailers. They were by no means wealthy people, but we pinched our pennies and got to all our rodeos. Every honor I receive is because of my mom and dad.”
J.C. and his siblings and cousin, Joe Vecere, who grew up with them, competed in all the events of the Arizona Junior Rodeo Association. J.C. moved into high school rodeo and won state his senior year in the bareback riding, traveling with his dad to the NHSFR held in Watonga, Oklahoma in 1966. On the way, they stopped at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and walked through the hall of fame. “Never did I think I would be that caliber of cowboy to be inducted into the hall of fame.”
J.C. took third in the nation at the NHSFR, and despite his rodeo successes, thought he wanted to be a football player. He joined the Eastern Arizona Junior College team in 1967. “Those were big guys. I was too little and too slow, and it was a good thing, because they were the ones who convinced me I wanted to be a bareback rider. I was only there for a semester and then I went to Mesa Community College and rodeoed on their team.” From there, J.C. competed on the Arizona State University rodeo team, winning the college finals in 1968. He had already obtained his PRCA card in 1967 and pro rodeoed while finishing his degree in elementary education, graduating from ASU in 1972. “But I went to rodeoing and never used it. But teaching runs in my blood, because I used what I gained there to do rodeo schools all over the country.” J.C. taught with his good friend and a fellow rodeo champion, saddle bronc rider Shawn Davis, along with champion bull rider John Davis, and later, Gary Leffew. “We did three or four a year while we were going down the road, sometimes more. I really enjoyed those schools. It was fun to get to know the kids and I could see myself in a lot of them, trying to learn how to win.”
Winning came to J.C. with hard work and the sacrifice of thousands of miles on the road. He crisscrossed the country, sometimes flying but more often driving. J.C. clinched more than 30 PRCA wins alongside his 12 qualifications to the NFR, including the Turquoise Circuit title in 1975, Mountain States Circuit title in 1985, four wins at California Rodeo Salinas, two at the Pendleton Round-Up, four at his hometown World’s Oldest Rodeo Prescott Frontier Days, and many more. One of his most unique achievements was splitting the bareback riding title with T.J. Walter at the Command Performance Rodeo in 1983, a White House invitation-only event. President Ronald Reagan awarded them their buckles.
J.C. won the world title at the NFR in 1981, a newlywed to his wife Margo, the backbone of their rodeo life, whom he married in 1980. They met through mutual rodeo friends, and Margo was no stranger to the rodeo world, having grown up with her brothers, John and Mike, who eventually founded Growney Brother Rodeo Company in 1979. Margo and J.C. welcomed their two daughters, Annie and Sammie, into the world, and the family traveled to as many of J.C.’s rodeos as possible, sometimes sleeping overnight in a van. There were not luxurious living quarters trailers at the time. They made Steamboat Springs, Colorado their home in the early 1980s. J.C. purchased a 50-acre ranch outside of town with his $50,000 winnings from the Calgary Stampede, won in 1982. “I had a friend that owned it, and when he was changing things around, I bought it. I’d seen so many people in the rodeo business that did well, but when they retired they ended up with nothing to show for it. But we were fortunate enough that we have a little to show for it, other than great memories.”
A year later, J.C.’s rodeo career took a hit when he got hung up on a bronc during the 1983 NFR in Oklahoma City. He was aboard Jim Sutton’s bronc Big Bud when he got hung up, dislocating his knee, breaking several ribs, and puncturing a lung. J.C. sat out much of the 1984 season as he recovered, competing in enough rodeos to land him in the top 20 that year. He contemplated retirement, but wanted to experience the finals one last time, which moved to Las Vegas in 1985. “I made the finals that year, but I was missing a pretty important part of raising kids and it was time for me to bow out. That year at the finals I was 36, the oldest guy in the bareback riding there. I won third in the average and about $28,000 and thought it was time to quit. It was pretty important for me to quit a winner.”
J.C. traded his bronc rein for ski poles after that, taking a job in the race department at the Steamboat Ski Area. Margo also worked there, teaching in the ski school. A few years earlier in 1982, J.C. had attended the second Cowboy Downhill after hearing what fun it was from all his friends who attended the year before. “I’d never been on skis, but I went to the Cowboy Downhill and started skiing, and it became a great love of mine.” Larry Mahan, who was one of the founders of the Cowboy Downhill, introduced J.C. to Billy Kidd, an Olympic skier who lives in Steamboat, and the two champions of their sports hit it off. As part of the race crew, J.C. set up courses and prepared the ski mountain for everything from world cup competitions to amateur races. “I got to hang out with guys who really skied well, like Billy Kidd, Hank Kashiwa, Dick Haller, and Jim “Moose” Barrows, who were pro ski racers. One of the reasons I liked it so well was that ski racing and rodeo had a lot of things in common. Both are a single sport, not a team sport. It was me and a bareback horse or me and the ski mountain, and I liked that challenge,” says J.C. who was even invited to a celebrity ski race in Vale, Colorado by President Gerald Ford.
Never one to let the grass grow beneath his cowboy boots, J.C. ran an outfitting business from his and Margo’s ranch for more than 20 years. He guided elk hunts, along with three or four other guides he hired, and Margo hosted and cooked for the visiting hunters, even packing a few elk out herself. “We had six mules and about ten saddle horses, and when they started getting old and I started getting old, we decided it was time to bow out. Our last year was in about 2017.”
While running the outfitting business, J.C. also divided his time between Colorado and Arizona, working as the general manager of Prescott Frontier Days from 2004 until 2020. He and Margo had moved back to Prescott, where J.C.’s parents were still living at the time. “I enjoyed it. It was being part of the rodeo business, and it was a whole different experience on the other side of the fence. We were there for 16 years and then we decided we needed to spend more time in our Colorado place. Now we spend most of our time up here.”
J.C. and Margo know the road between Colorado and Arizona well, however. They spend their winters in Aguila, Arizona, heading south in their RV before too much snow accumulates at their ranch, which sits at about 8,000 feet with the National Forest out their back gate. They load up their horses and stay at Silver Bit Ranch, owned by their friend Scott Whitworth. “We stay until the snow is about gone, which is late April or early May. Margo and I both team rope. She’s a really good header and a really good heeler, so I just do whatever other end. We jackpot a little bit but not much. We’re practicers, and we enjoy the camaraderie and being horseback.”
Their two daughters and their families also live in Arizona. J.C. and Margo’s seven grandchildren all rodeo, from the Arizona Junior Rodeo Association all the way up to the professional level. Their grandson JC Mortensen finished 21st in the PRCA bull riding this season, and his brother Jaxton Mortensen, competes in the PBR.
All of their children and grandchildren attended J.C.’s induction into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, along with his brother and sister, cousin, and members of Margo’s family. “I was thrilled in 1994 when they inducted me into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, and to be in the same halls as all my rodeo heroes I had in my lifetime is just unbelievable for me. It’s very surreal. Probably the biggest honor I have received is that my family can be part of it.”

[ Pro rodeo cowboy-turned-cartoonist entertains with “Earl” cartoons about the western way of life ]

Wally Badgett was a ranch kid-turned rodeo cowboy, then deputy sheriff -turned cartoonist.
And through it all, he’s had a sense of humor.
The Miles City, Montana man was born in 1952 on a ranch 75 miles south of Miles City, the son of Kirk and Lora Badgett.
Wally was intrigued by the sport of rodeo because of his older brother, who competed, and after high school, attended Sheridan (Wyo.) College, where he rode bulls and was the 1971 National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association champion bull rider.
He competed in high school rodeo in every event but steer wrestling. After high school graduation in 1970, Badgett went to Sheridan, where he rodeoed collegiately two years, before he moved back to Montana.
From 1972 to 1975, he was on the pro rodeo trail, competing in the saddle bronc riding, calf roping, and bull riding, and qualifying in the bull riding for the 1974 National Finals Rodeo, finishing eighth in the world standings.
By 1975, he stayed closer to home, rodeoing in Montana and the surrounding states, and four years later, he was done. A self-professed homebody, he was married to Pam (they married in 1973) with two little children at home. And it was time to quit. “I had never left the arena in an ambulance,” he said, “and I thought, I’m way overdue.” With a family to support, “you start to think of other things.”
And he was pain-averse, he joked. “I’ve always hated pain, and I’m kind of a no-pain guy. Obviously, riding roughstock can be fairly painful at times.” His worst injuries were a broken ankle and pulled groins.
Wally and his brother leased part of the family ranch for awhile (his mother had had a serious stroke when he was four years old, and his dad was forced to sell the ranch to pay for her care.) Then, one day, while in Ashland, Montana, he ran into the deputy sergeant. The sergeant mentioned that they were looking to hire a police officer, so Wally applied and got the job.
For three years, he was a deputy sheriff in Rosebud County,(Forsyth), then the next nine years he spent as deputy sheriff in Custer County (Miles City).
It was an injured back that drew him into his next profession: drawing.
While laid up due to the back injury, he drew cartoons to entertain himself. He’d drawn as a child, but never anything serious.
And thus Earl the rancher was born.
As Badgett’s cartoons featuring Earl and his wife in various ranching situations grew in popularity, he got busier with the artwork.
“People were starting to call the sheriff’s office looking for the cartoonist instead of the cop,” he quipped.
He had to make a choice: continue in law enforcement, or build on the cartoon skills.
“I chose (cartooning) because there’s less chance of getting shot,” he joked. “I was always worried about getting shot (as a sheriff). I might have been the shakiest gun in the west. I was always worried someone would steal my gun and beat me up with it.”
Badgett’s cartoons with Earl and his situations tickle the fancy of ranchers, farmers, and those in the western lifestyle. They can be found in about 150 publications, from Texas to Canada, in rural and livestock newspapers.
When he started, his cartoon content was “inside cowboy humor, and if you weren’t a cowboy, you might not get it,” he said. “I realized, if I’m going to make this work, I have to draw so the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker can understand it, and it’s still funny.”
Badgett is always looking for content that he can work Earl into. “I keep my ears open. In our western world, you can be talking to someone, and they say something not intended to be funny, but it’s hilarious. I write those things down.”
Earl is depicted as a hard luck rancher whose cows tend to be thin, and whose wife often outwits him. He drives a 1950s truck and does some of his ranch work with a team. It’s a throwback to Badgett’s youthful years on the family ranch. He fed cattle with a team and has always been fascinated with that.
Badgett never gave a name to the wife, but occasionally, tongue-in-cheek, he’ll call her “She Who Must Be Obeyed.”
Every Earl cartoon Badgett draws has a dog in it (“I don’t think I’ve ever known a rancher that didn’t have a dog,”) and a magpie.
The magpie came by accident. Badgett included the bird occasionally, but one day, someone told him he looked for but couldn’t find the magpie in the latest Earl cartoon he’d read.
So Badgett, whose pen name is M.C. Tin Star, went back and included the bird in his previous cartoons and now draws one in every one. “It’s my trademark,” he said.
Much of his drawing is done in the winter, when the weather is cold. “The days are short, and sometimes I might do two or three or four in a day. I usually operate in a state of disorganization and confusion,” he joked.
Badgett served as the rodeo coach at Miles City (Mont.) Community College for about twenty years, first as assistant coach, then as head coach. He retired from that role in 2021.
Justin Miller was one of Wally’s rodeo athletes from 2008-2010.
The Lockwood, Mont. cowboy rode barebacks in college rodeo and appreciated his coach’s willingness to help.
“If you were going to work hard (in college rodeo), he was going to work hard with you. He would do whatever it took, for whatever you wanted,” Miller said. “He wouldn’t give up on you or leave you wanting. He’d help you out as much as you wanted.”
In his pro rodeo career, Wally held the record for the high marked ride bull ride in Houston for several years, at 85 points. “That doesn’t sound like much now,” he said, noting that markings have gotten higher.
He also said that bullfighters are more proficient now. “Back in my day, there might be one bullfighter, and he may or may not be any good. He might outrun you to the fence, but at least there might be someone to help you up if you got there, too.”
He and Pam have a son, Brett, who is married to Joni and lives in Miles City, with a daughter, and a daughter, Whitney, who is marked to Fakhrul Hasan; they have a son and a daughter and live in California. Both children are artistic; one of Brett’s sculptures, a half-life size of a steer roper, stands at the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in the back garden.
He cowboys for a local ranch, when they need him, but mostly stays home and enjoys Montana and rural life.
He refuses to use any digital device, social media, and doesn’t text. “I’ve seen a lot of changes, and I’ve been against almost all of them,” he joked. “But they happen anyway.”
Badgett is a 2023 Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame inductee and the third recipient of the Saddle of Honor, joining the 2018 Saddle of Honor recipient Charles M. Russell and 2019 recipient Jay Contway.

[ “We had fun when we rodeoed, and it was good to us.” ]

or fifteen years straight, bull rider Dave Garstad never finished a Canadian rodeo season in less than fifth place in the Canadian standings.
The Stettler, Alberta cowboy dominated the rodeo scene for more than two decades, beginning in 1959 till he retired in 1980.
The eighth of nine children born in 1943 to Norwegian immigrants Magna (Juleson) and Olav Garstad, he and his brothers rode one of the family’s milk cows. “She bucked really well without a flank,” Dave said. “She’d turn back and spin right at the gate.” Weighing 1400 lbs., riding her gave the boys the rodeo bug.
Back then, near Veteran, Alberta, where he was raised, the local farmers and ranchers would have cow riding during the multi-day brandings. Men and boys could pay an entry fee of $3 or $4 and ride. At the age of fifteen, Dave won the contest and $400, which was a lot of money in those days.
And that success determined his fate in life: rodeo.
He was a three-event cowboy, riding barebacks and bulls and steer wrestling, but bull riding was his forte.
Because of his $400 winnings, he could buy a Canadian Pro Rodeo Association membership and compete professionally. But his mother wouldn’t sign for him, as a minor. So George Myren signed the release form and he became a full-fledged member.
He rodeoed professionally as he finished high school. He had “senior matriculation” – high enough grades to attend university – but he chose to rodeo. Dave still remembers what the school principal told him. “He said, for somebody that had the academic promise that I had, I was wasting my time in the rodeo business.”
But it wasn’t a waste.
He rodeoed across the country, and ventured to the States in the winter of 1963, hitting the big shows: Odessa, Denver, Ft. Worth, Amarillo, and on down the line.
His first time rodeoing in the U.S. was an interesting story. He’d gotten to the rodeo in Big Sandy, Montana, but didn’t have his RCA (predecessor to the PRCA) card. He phoned the RCA office, in Denver at the time, requesting a card on short notice. He got results: Bill Linderman, president of the association, called the rodeo secretary in Big Sandy, giving her Dave’s new card number.
When he was broke, he worked in the oil patch in northern Alberta and British Columbia to make some money. But there weren’t too many lean years. At first, he was winning $12,000-$15,000 a year, getting on 120 bulls and 60 horses. A person could live on those wages.
But as he got more experience, he was making $20,000 to $25,000 a year, when a regular income might be $10-$12,000.
In 1967, he was the Canadian champion bull rider, having won more money than any other bull rider in the country. That year, he won eleven rodeos and placed second at 37. “I won a lot of money, considering the times.” He was sixty cents short of qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo, due to missing two rodeos while he courted Linda, who would be his future wife. “That’s the girl I wanted,” he said, “and I ended up with her.”
From 1963-1978, he never finished lower than fifth place in the year-end standings in the Canada Pro Rodeo Association.
Bull riders covered more bulls then, he said. “We didn’t have the misfortune of being thrown off eighty percent of the cattle we got on. You might ride sixty or seventy in a row before being bucked off.”
Two of his brothers rodeoed with him: Gid and Dave’s twin, Mark. Sometimes they traveled together. Their dad, Olav, passed away when Dave and Mark were nine years old.
One year, Dave, rodeoing in the Midwest and the South, got on the bulls of 33 different stock contractors, and only got bucked off two of them.
He was a three-time Southern Circuit CPRA champion, and in 1980, qualified for his first Canadian Finals Rodeo. (The Canadian Finals Rodeo didn’t come into existence until 1974).
At the Finals that year, during a ride, the bull’s head came up as Dave’s head came down. The bull’s horn broke his left cheek bone and the horn tip crushed his eye, causing him to lose sight in that eye. After that, he retired. He and Linda had two young sons. “We had little kids, (ages three and five) at home, so I had to make some money. You can’t be bumping your head when you’re not physically fit,” he said.
After rodeo, he was a rig hand in the oil field, then in the 1980s, he went into the service business, monitoring drilling mud for ten years. Intelligent and a quick study, he understood every facet of the drilling business, knew the lexicon and the earth’s formations. He soon became a drilling foreman.
Typical of bull riders, Dave had his share of injuries. He broke his back once, and as a kid, broke his jaw, requiring him to live on canned milk for a time as his jaw was wired shut.
His worst injury was at Baird, Texas. After the buzzer, when Dave went to reach for his wrap, the bull bucked into a post, dumping Dave on the ground. The bull stepped on his back, breaking a shoulder blade and ten ribs on the same side. The ambulance driver, who had been drinking, forgot that Baird had a new hospital and drove his patient twenty miles farther than necessary to Abilene, Texas.
When Dave was released from the hospital, his brother, Gid, drove him to a motel. While there, he sneezed, causing a rib to puncture his lung, so he was back to the hospital. The “big-time” doctor at the hospital refused to see sports-related injuries because he felt they were self-inflicted. But the head surgeon was willing to treat him.
He was in ICU for a week, and when he flew home, the stewardess checked on him every five minutes, making sure he was OK.
Linda remembers a funny story from this hospital incident. She called him every morning, before work, to see how he was. One morning on the phone he gasped for air and couldn’t talk. She was upset, thinking he was getting worse. They talked that evening, and he explained: he had been laughing at Archie Bunker on TV. “He laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe,” she said.
Linda worked as a lab and X-ray technician; the couple had two sons, Ned, and Nate. The family traveled together when they could. The boys “always thought the bull riding should be first,” Linda said, “so they could go to the playground.”
The best part of rodeo, both Dave and Linda agree, is the people. Dave often traveled with Myrtus Dightman, Mel Hyland, and Tom Silverthorn, among others. “I could count on them,” he said.
“Rodeo is its own big family,” Linda said. And travel teaches lessons as well. “You learn so many life skills and coping skills out on the road.”
The couple lived in Big Valley, Alberta for 48 years, before moving to Stettler last year.
In addition to their sons and their spouses, they have three grandsons and a great-granddaughter.
Dave said desire is an important part of rodeo. “With any sport, if the desire isn’t there, you can’t do much at all, and in rodeo, that’s really evident.” He was inducted into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2014.
He thinks about that first check he won, $400 for riding a cow at the ranchers’ branding. His rodeo career started, more or less, by accident. “If I’d have gotten stomped on that day, instead of winning, it would have been much different.
“We had fun when we rodeoed, and it was good to us.”

Jerry Beagley has enjoyed a Western way of living from the time he was born. He was born in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, October 2, 1954 to Otto and Evelyn Beagley. He was an only child. His dad was foreman for the Chain Ranch, located in Kansas and Oklahoma. The Chain Ranch ran 2,500 mama cows. His dad always had good horses. In addition to his dad being foreman of the Kansas part of this major ranch he was also in demand as a pickup man at various area rodeos.
When Jerry was 4 years old his dad would put him on calves and run alongside holding him by his belt, so he wouldn’t fall off. Jerry was seven when his parents took him to the 1961 National Finals Rodeo in Dallas. As he watched the cowboys compete he asked his mother, “Do you think I will ever be good enough to compete at the National Finals?” She said, “Of course, son, you will be good enough.” Jerry said his mother never lied to him, so he always knew he could do it. The first big bull he rode was at a rodeo in Turley, Oklahoma at age 12.
As a youngster he competed in Little Britches Rodeos in goat tying, flag races and more. His sophomore year in high school at an FFA rodeo in Freedom, Oklahoma, they were using feisty wild Hereford cows. The stock contractor told Jerry’s dad Jerry couldn’t ride one of his cows. Jerry’s dad bet him Jerry could. Jerry knew his dad didn’t make a lot of money, and was concerned that if he didn’t ride the cow his dad would lose the bet, and his money. Jerry did ride the wild cow, even though he lost both of his boots during the ride. He made the whistle! He also was the Kansas High School Calf Roping Champion. In 1972 he was the Little Britches Bull Riding Champion and All-Around Champ.
“I had extremely positive parents” said Jerry. “ They told me I could do whatever I set out to do. They made me believe in myself. ” He was valedictorian of his Medicine Lodge Senior class.
He attended Fort Hayes (KS) State University and majored in Math. He was on the rodeo team and won the 1974 NIRA Bareback Riding Championship. He transferred to Southeast Oklahoma State University and at the College National Finals, in 1977, held at Bozeman, Montana, he won the Bull Riding Championship and the All-Around.
Sylvia Mahoney, author of “College Rodeo, From Show to Sport” wrote: “Jerry Beagley’s eighty-two-point ride on Black Satin in the final round led to the bull riding buckle and helped his team win the Men’s Team Championship.” That was the year he decided to start concentrating solely on bull riding.
Jerry got his Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA) permit in 1974 and his card the following year. Previously he had been making a living competing in amateur rodeos. Before he turned pro he had gone to approximately 120 amateur rodeos each year.
Jerry’s mother was right when she told him, at age seven, he would be good enough to go to the National Finals. He went to his first National Finals in 1978. He was the Reserve Champion in 1979, just after World Champion Donny Gay, in spite of the fact he was injured after the 2nd round at the Finals. He also qualified for the 1980 and 1982 National Finals.
Injuries are part of rodeo, some events are more injury-prone than others, and bull riding is one that definitely causes injuries.. Jerry was injured in 1979 when he broke his jaw and had to have stitches in his face due to his injury. The following year, 1980, he qualified again and this time the bull broke his ribs in the second round. He tried for two more rounds to compete but it wasn’t working. Jerry jokingly said, “Yes, I rode bulls — I rode bulls before they began tipping their horns.” This did not deter Jerry from continuing to ride bulls, but when he quit in 1986 he explained it this way, “I quit because I didn’t want to get bitter about something I liked so much. I loved riding bulls.”
Jerry held Bull Riding Schools in various Midwestern locales. It was going so well he taught bull riding as far west as Hawaii and Florida to the east. But that wasn’t enough for Jerry so he took his Bull Riding Schools to Canada, Australia and Brazil. Jerry said, “Lots of students that sign up will never become bull riders. I tried to teach them how to have the right mental attitude, how to win, how to get from rodeo to rodeo, and much more. I wanted them to leave my school having learned something more than just how to ride a bull for their $200.”
The era in which Jerry contested was when those serious contenders found ways to get to several rodeos during the same weekend by flying. He got his pilot’s license and flew in small planes to get to as many rodeos as he could. In 1978 he competed in 175 rodeos and 169 rodeos in 1979. He and Brian Claypool, another rodeo competing pilot, flew together a great deal. Claypool was in a plane that went down somewhere in mountains near the California-Oregon border, May 22rd, 1979. Brian and three other cowboys were killed. The wreckage was not found for months until a hunter found the remains in a remote area. Jerry explained, “If I hadn’t opted to stay home and put together an anniversary celebration for my parents, I would have been on that plane.”
Other cowboys Jerry traveled with were Jerome Robinson, Lane Frost, Ted Nuce, Lyle Sankey, Bobby DelVecchio and Steve Lance . Jerry traveled alone more than he did with other competitors. The work ethic his parents instilled in him early in life kept him on the road getting to as many rodeos as he could possibly get to. In fact, Butch Bratsky said: “They called Jerry ‘Milemarker’ because he got to more rodeos than most cowboys could or would get to.”
Jerry worked extremely hard to get the Justin Sports Medicine Program up and going because he believed it was important in the world of rodeo. He worked with Dr. J. Pat Evans, the doctor that was responsible for keeping Dallas Cowboys football players healthy for their games. Dr Evans started having medical people available at each rodeo to keep cowboys with minor injuries able to compete, and advising them medically if necessary.
The Christmas after Jerry turned 18 his dad gave him a hundred dollar bill. Jerry drove to Tulsa and bought as much nylon parachute cord as the money would buy. “I took it back to college and started braiding and creating reins in the dorm. They make great reins and presently I have quite a group of people braiding for me in their homes. It’s called cottage labor and individuals work making items at home, send it to the company and are compensated for their efforts.”
Jerry owns his own businesses, Jerry Beagley Braiding Company Inc. and Ott Ranch Saddles. He sells horse equipment wholesale, which includes over 400 items, for all kinds of horses – barrel racing horses, calf roping and more. He sells to over 200 stores in the United States. He also sells all over the world, including Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Brazil . Jerry met, at his bull riding school, the man who ended up providing through Jerry’s company the bull riding equipment for bull riders in Brazil. I don’t think it was more than a handshake, but it has been very successful for both of us.” said Jerry. He also met Adriano Moraes, from Brazil, who became the first Professional Bull Riding World Champion three times, 1994, 2001 & 2006. They have had a twenty-plus year friendship. In the early 2000s Jerry received the Small International Import-Export Company of the Year, in Oklahoma.
Martha Josey competed in barrel racing the same time Jerry was competing in bull riding and they became friends. Martha said, “Years ago at the Mesquite rodeo my hand slipped on the reins, when I was competing. When I finished I told Jerry and he created the ‘Martha Josey Knot Reins’ which have been selling for over 40 years. Jerry has such a good work ethic he could out-rodeo every one else. I can’t say anything that isn’t good about Jerry.”
Jerry married Beva Farnham, from Canada, and they had two children. Their daughter Martha who competed in rodeo in various events through college, presently she is a full-time mother to two children. Son, Brian, never was interested in the rodeo world, he found his passion in motorcycles and such. He lives in Canada and has two children.
The National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association Alumni Association was formed in 1982. Jerry became involved to be able to help students go further in their desired professions. He is a Board member and when U. S. Tobacco dropped their support for college students he became a strong supporter of the fund raising part of the organization making every effort to get more sponsors to provide scholarship monies. Sylvia Mahoney said about Jerry: “He is one of the silent people that is always working to discover new ways for the Alumni Association to raise funds to support the rodeo teams. He donated a saddle to be raffled off to raise funds for the project.”
Jerry is a self-made man who has accomplished many things in his lifetime. He has given back by his efforts to rodeo in numerous ways. He has helped many young people just starting their rodeo careers. He is revered by those who competed with him and worked with him. He is his own man – an individual, honest, determined and perseveres, while displaying humility. He admits he owes it all to his parents, friends and Jesus.

Ed Sundby averaged 70,000 miles a year on his 1966 Ford pickup with a little white topper camper, while he rodeoed, and he loved every minute of it.
And to make money for entry fees, the North Dakota cowboy did some Roman riding as a specialty act.
Born in 1952 to Orvin and Ginger Sundby, he was raised in Williston and started out in horse shows and doing the cow cutting. But it was too slow-paced for him.
“That wasn’t enough action for me,” he said, so he started with Little Britches Rodeo, then progressed to high school, college, amateur and the professional ranks.
In high school, he was a steer wrestler, bareback rider and cutter, then added saddle bronc riding and bull riding.
He was the 1968 North Dakota High School Rodeo All-Around winner, and in college won the bareback riding for the Great Plains Region three times (1970-71, 74), twice while at the University of North Dakota-Williston, then at the National College of Business (NCB) in Rapid City.
He and his dad believed in practice.
His dad, who never competed much but had been a steer wrestler, built an indoor arena.
The Sundbys borrowed bucking horses from Marvin Brookman and Jack Fettig, and had plenty of steers.
“There were nights when I would bulldog fifty head of steers,” Ed said. “Dad would haze for me. He enjoyed it as much as I did.”
Then, he’d ride two or three bareback horses, and the next night, switch to saddle bronc riding. It was good practice time. “When I practiced, I practiced with a purpose. You have to, if you want to go on with rodeo.”
Even in the winter, they practiced, seven nights a week. The only time they didn’t was if it got to -5 degrees F, because they thought at that temperature it was too hard on the horses. The barn wasn’t heated, but with the bucking stock and steers, it was comfortable, he said.
Orvin liked it as much as his son did. “He was down in the barn with us, every night. He really loved it.” Orvin believed in hard work; his work day started at 5 am, and after work, they’d be in the barn practicing till 10:30 or 11 pm each night.
While in high school, Ed added a bit of Roman riding to his repertoire. He had been Roman riding a mare and her son, a gelding, in the practice arena at home.
As he got better at it, he was asked to perform at rodeos, mostly amateur, with his pay going towards his entry fees.
For a time, he put his younger brother Lynn, thirteen years his junior, on his shoulders as he Roman rode and jumped the horses.
The UND-Williston college rodeo team practiced at the arena, as did many of Ed’s friends, including college teammates Mark Ellis, Don Schwalbe, and Rick Woodward.
Between his time at UND-Williston and NCB, he sat out of college for a year, while he worked for his future father-in-law.
Ed had met Connie Schatz, also a high school rodeo contestant, at a high school rodeo, and he jokes that she chased him. “She was running after me,” he laughed, “and she just wouldn’t leave me alone.” While she finished high school, Ed worked for her dad, till she was college age. Then the two of them went to Rapid City’s NCB.
They courted for several years before marrying in 1974. “She had to chase me for a couple years before she caught me,” he joked. But in seriousness, he said, “She was always the one for me.”
After college, the couple moved to Williston. Ed began pro rodeo competition, but felt the obligation to get a job, rodeoing on weekends. “I thought, if you’re married, you should have a job,” he said.
For several years, he was a heavy equipment operator. Then his dad, who owned a federal meat processing plant, asked him to join the business. When Orvin passed in 1982, Ed and a partner, Gene Storoe, purchased it. When Gene wanted out, Ed got out as well, selling the company.
Then he went into the oilfield business in the abandoned well segment for several years, including buying and selling equipment.
After that, he managed Schatz Truck Stop in Minot for 18 years, then went back to the oilfield, till he retired in 2019.
Ed had become a Rodeo Cowboys Association (forerunner to the PRCA) member in the early 1970s, while in college, and continued to rodeo for the next decade.
He competed at a few N.D. Rodeo Association events, but at the time, cowboys couldn’t do both associations: they had to choose one. So he chose the pros. “And it was the right move for me. I did all right.”
At first, he did the steer wrestling and the three roughstock events, but by 1976, he concentrated solely on the steer wrestling and bareback riding.
He traveled across the western half of the nation, from Denver to Edmonton, and from Calgary to Texas. He and Connie’s honeymoon was at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, where he joked, “I was going to leave her at Alcatraz, but they didn’t want her.”
In college, he made lifelong friends, rodeoing with Paul Tierney, Monte Melvin, Billy Zurcher and Doug Corrington on his rodeo team. “College was great,” Ed said. “We didn’t get a lot of schooling in.”
He didn’t drink or smoke and attributes his good health to that fact. “I’ve never had a drink and never had a cigarette,” he said. “I was serious about what I wanted to do.” Hauling his steer wrestling horses was part of the motivation to not drink. “I always drove,” he said. “I never let anybody else drive, and I wanted to know where my hat was the next morning and where my vehicle was.”
He rodeoed against Tom Miller, who was a student at Black Hills State University (Rapid City, S.D.) from 1967-1971.
Ed “rode awfully well,” Tom said. “He was very correct in the way he rode. He just didn’t buck off many.” Tom remembered Ed always having a smile on his face. “Ed was very much a gentleman and a good person. Still is.”
Ed has made sure to give back to the sport. He held bulldogging schools for young people at the family arena in Williston, and judged rodeos, including high school events in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, and some pro rodeos as well.
He figures it was his duty to contribute. “I felt it was a way to give back,” he said, “to the people who helped me.”
Ed’s last ride was in 1982 in Sidney, Montana. Between work and a family, it was time to stay closer to home.
He and Connie have two sons: Ty, who lives in Bismarck, N.D., and Cody, a former PRCA and PBR bull rider who lives in Williston. They have two grandchildren and a great-grandson.
The couple spends winters in Gold Canyon, Arizona and summers in Hill City, S.D.
He enjoyed the sport. “When I went to a rodeo, I loved going. If I won anything, it was a bonus.”
The friends are life-long. “They’re amazing, and they’re for life. It’s like college. You never forget your college buddies, and rodeo is the same way. If you see them after 30 years, you pick up right where you left off.
Does he miss it? “I’d have to say I do. If I was 18, I’d love to start all over.”
Ed is a 2016 inductee in the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, a 2018 inductee in the University of North Dakota-Williston Sports Hall of Fame, and a PRCA Gold Card Member.

[ Cowtown Rodeo “Best Show on Dirt”
spanning five generations.]

Congratulations to the entire Harris family for their induction of their Cowtown Rodeo, located in Pilesgrove, New Jersey, to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. Grant and Betsy Harris, 4th generation of Harris’ to own the rodeo are thrilled with the honor. Betsy said, “When I got the call I didn’t recognize the number, and hung up on him. But he called right back. Grant never gets excited, but he’s excited over this recognition by the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.”
Grant’s great-grandfather, Howard Harris, started a livestock auction in Woodstown in 1926. Many farms growing vegetables, corn and hay existed in that part of New Jersey and they all needed mules and horses to do their farm work. The auction was a necessity and did well.
Rodeo in the family started as early as 1929 When Grant’s great-grandfather, Howard Harris, and son ‘Stoney’, started a rodeo in conjunction with the Salem County Fair. The Miller brothers, of 101 Wild West fame, good friends of the Harris family, had a hard time financially and were stranded in Washington D C in 1931. The Harris family bought some of the broncs owned by the Millers, and purchased one-way tickets for some of the Miller cowboys to return to Oklahoma, if they would help put on the Harris’ rodeo in Woodstown, New Jersey. The Woodstown rodeo continued during the 1930s Colonel Jim Eskew, well known rodeo and wild west producer, wintered in Woodstown and also shared his knowledge with the Harris’ family. They also put on rodeos in various locales around the northeast, including the 1932 New York State Fair Rodeo in Syracuse; a Sesquicentennial rodeo celebration for Philadelphia in 1926 and assisted the Madison Square Garden rodeos, in New York City, in the early 1950s.
During the War Years, the rodeo was not held. Howard Harris, Grant’s dad, went to college at the University of Idaho and was on their rodeo team. In 1954 Howard qualified for the NIRA Finals and won the All-Around Cowboy honor. He entered the saddle bronc and bulls events, roped and was in the wild cow milking.
In June 1955 rodeo in Woodstown began again, and Howard named it ‘Cowtown New Jersey Rodeo’. It was held from May through September. ‘Cowtown NJ Rodeo’ joined Rodeo Cowboys Association (R.C.A.) and it was the first summer rodeo to get approval to become a member.
Cowtown Rodeo had a problem after only being in the R.C.A. four weeks. Television was just getting accepted and a Wilmington Delaware Channel approached Howard about televising the Cowtown Rodeo. At this time, 1955, R.C.A. considered television to be ‘taboo’ for rodeo, and would only ‘ruin’ the sport. However, Howard knew having the rodeo on television would be good for Cowtown business and he accepted the Channel’s offer. Not only did the television feature the rodeo, the cameras panned the audience. People came in droves, hoping to be seen on television.
In 1958 an ABC television affiliate, Channel 6 in Philadelphia, had picked up Cowtown New Jersey Rodeo. Although Howard had submitted the plans to R.C.A. it was not approved and ‘Cowtown New Jersey Rodeo’ was on their blacklist. ‘Cowtown’ was receiving such good revenue from being televised Howard continued to allow it to be televised, meanwhile paying a fine of $3,000 to R.C.A, the largest fine R.C.A. had ever assessed, up to that time. By the mid-1960s, the attitude of R.C.A. changed and ‘Cowtown’ was no longer fined nor on their blacklist. In fact, the Harris’ signed a contract with the Philadelphia ABC affiliate and every performance gave them two one hour television rodeos, then it went into syndication. Cowtown outgrew the original arena in 1967 and built the existing arena that seats 4,000 fans today.
Meanwhile, Grant began competing at the age of 5 in the Jr. Bull Riding at Cowtown. By the time he was a teenager Grant continued to compete at Cowtown, as well as other area rodeos, and doing quite well. He joined the professional ranks at age 14 and got his RCA card at 17. He attended Casper College, in Wyoming on a full rodeo scholarship. Grant was the R.C.A.’s Northeast Circuit Saddle Bronc Champion in 1975, ’77 and ’78.
Grant was seen competing so often when Cowtown was being televised, that he had quite a following. When he went to the Denver rodeo in January, 1977, Grant was 23 years old, but he was hounded by teen age girls who were seeing the taped rodeos with him, as a teenage saddle bronc rider, from years past.
Grant was not just a competitor, even in his young years he was always very involved in the working part of the Cowtown rodeo and had gleaned as much as possible from his talented dad. He was also the pickup man for each performance. Junior Meek, a bullfighter and steer wrestling competitor from Texas spent a summer working for the Cowtown Rodeo and also did the bullfighting. He said about Grant’s dad, “He was a real cowboy. If you didn’t think so, just try and keep up with him all day. If you roped ten cows, he’d rope fifteen.” He also said, “Lots of cowboys from the West thought you could go back east and easily win a rodeo. That wasn’t so at Cowtown.”
In 1978 Howard decided to retire, and he and wife, Irene, moved to Oklahoma. Grant and bride, Betsy Douglass, bought the Cowtown rodeo from his parents. Betsy handled the secretarial end of the rodeo and much of the publicity. Eight years later Grant bought the auction company and flea market, that had started in 1929, from his granddad, ‘Stoney’. Betsy held various officer positions in the circuit system once PRCA started the circuit system. She was President of the First Frontier Circuit from 1993 to 2019, and before that was secretary and treasurer. The last four years she has been the stock contractor representative. Betsy traveled extensively across the country representing the northeastern circuit group. She retired in January of this year, after 45 years of service. She still attends the PRCA Convention, held in Las Vegas just prior to the National Finals, as does Kate & RJ. “I go to represent Cowtown Rodeo and Three Hills Rodeo livestock, and go to the secretary/timers meeting, and see my kids and visit with old friends,” Betsy explained.
Grant and Betsy have two daughters, Courtney and Kate, that have been involved in Cowtown as long as they can remember. Courtney married Jake Morehead, and are co-owners of Three Hills Rodeo in Bernard, Iowa. They have three children, Sam, age 16; Lily, age 15 and Cade 13.
Kate and husband RJ Griscom, have owned Cowtown since 2019, when buying it from Betsy and Grant. They have two children, Nate, age 10 and Olivia who is 4. Grant and Betsy, aren’t retired by any means, and still work for Kate and RJ. Plus they still own the flea market, and their 1,800 acre ranch, where they raise enough feed for their beef herd and their rodeo stock.
The 5th generation, including Kate and Courtney, and their husbands are totally immersed in rodeo business, and also are taking the up-and-coming 6th generation to youth rodeos. They raise most of their own bucking stock, but they admit there is more buying and selling than earlier when Cowtown owned all their own stock.
Today Cowtown Rodeo is advertised as “Best Show on Dirt!!” It is held on Saturday night, beginning the end of May and continuing through the end of September. The arena also has the PBR Bull Riding there on particular weekends in July and August.
Kate and sister Courtney were always their dad, Grant’s right hands. From age 10 they worked every summer either at the flea market, the auction barn or the rodeo. Kate admits they didn’t see all of it as work, as some of it was definitely fun. But while they worked growing up they learned every aspect of rodeo.
Kate married RJ Griscom in 2010, and although he was raised on a farm, he had also become a professional electrician. Kate said laughingly: “That only lasted about a year, then he became totally involved with the rodeo, the flea market and auction.” When asked how she balanced her responsibilities for Cowtown Rodeo and their children, she said, “It’s been easy, except right now Nate, age 10, has sports practices and rides bulls. But we make it work. We’ve got great support.”
When asked how she handles what her folks do as well as their own jobs for the rodeo, Kate said, “The folks keep doing what they’ve always done. I won’t take over doing what mom does until she asks me.”
When I asked how they would handle the family going to Colorado Springs to receive their honor of being inducted, who would stay at Cowtown Rodeo and put on that Saturday night performance, she said, “We’ve got a very good group of guys and gals that have been with us for a long time. They know how to do everything. We won’t be worried about it.”
Cowtown Rodeo in Pilesgrove, New Jersey, is in excellent hands. The honor of being inducted in to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame is an honor that surprised the Harris family completely, but according to those who have been to Cowtown Rodeo and know the Harris’ history and what they have accomplished are in agreement – this honor is certainly one they have earned.
Harris Male Ancestors Kept Journals:
Very few families can boast that their history was kept by the male members of the family in diaries or journals. But the Harris family from Woodstown/Pilesgrove, New Jersey, can give you accounts of happenings from the time they arrived in America 327 years ago.
The Harris ancestors came from Wales in 1696. They landed in Manhattan and continued on to Salem County, New Jersey, where they settled, receiveing a deed to their property dated 1696. Their Salem County livestock brand was registered with the King of England in 1706.
Various men of this family did interesting things during those early days. Their experiences and adventures would never have been remembered if these early ancestors had not used diaries and journals to pass on the history of their family and what they accomplished.
During the Revolutionary War John Harris joined the Continental Army and fought at Valley Forge with George Washington. His responsibility was to take cattle and wagon loads of food to the soldiers. He was also a bombardier, responsible for aiming the cannon during battle. Later he was assigned to an area in western Pennsylvania because the government anticipated the British would attack them from the West at this location – but it never happened. It was the custom of the government to give soldiers money when they mustered out. But because the government ran out of money, they gave Captain John Harris a parcel of land at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Monongahela River. At that time it was the opinion of everyone that ‘No white man would ever live that far west!” Because of that opinion Captain John sold it for a gallon of whiskey!! Today that area is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Imagine what the family could get for that parcel of land once it became such a viable city.
The Harris family for generations have been fortunate the men of their earliest days here kept journals and relayed such important information through their writings. It is something that 95% of our families wish they had on their families in written form.

Rodney Towe held down a fulltime job while he rodeoed, with a rodeo career that spanned fifty years.
The Hilmar, California cowboy worked for 36 years at the Turlock Irrigation District, while he rodeoed, hitting sometimes as many as 60 rodeos annually.
Born in 1941 in Fillmore, Calif. to William and Minnie Towe, he grew up on the Rancho Sespe. His dad was an irrigator for the citrus orchards that dotted the ranch.
As a child, he loved the gymkhanas that took place. “I was a gymkhana nut,” he said.” He rode a grade mare, purchased for $150.
The family moved to Oxnard, California, where they built an arena on their two acres. They formed a riding club, the Rio Riders. As a teen, his mother pulled the trailer to Turlock, where he competed at the California State Horsemen’s Association Gymkhana and won the state championship in the ring spearing once and was two times a runner-up behind his uncle Frank Cox.
But he wanted to do more than gymkhanas. His cousin Gordon Cox, two years his senior, wanted to be a bull rider. So in 1955, Gordon entered himself and Rodney in the steer riding at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Rodeo in Salinas. The boys drove six hours from home to ride; out of 75 riders, Rodney won it.
“Gordon hated me all the way home,” he chuckled. “He was supposed to be the bull rider.” For first place, Rodney won a pair of black and white Acme boots with black wingtips.
“That was the start,” he said, of a rodeo career that would take him across the nation.
At age seventeen, he started riding bareback horses at amateur rodeos. A strong upper body, in part due to tumbling and gymnastics, helped him succeed, along with a natural athleticism.
After high school graduation in 1958, Rodney went to work in a variety of places. He did construction, drove a forklift, installed ceilings, whatever he could find.
And he continued to rodeo, competing at the Western Approved Rodeos (WAR), the California fair rodeos. The family moved to northern California in 1961, where he cowboyed for $10 a day, worked for the turkey plant in Turlock, and rode bareback horses.
He began team roping, too, at jackpots and area arenas.
But it was the bulldogging that intrigued him. “I kept watching it, and it looked like a lot of fun,” he said. One day, Frank Costa asked him if he’d like to do it, and offered his old baldy mare to him to try. Rodney was nervous. Riding bareback horses “wasn’t no big deal,” but jumping onto a steer was. Three times, he ran by the steer, and “I couldn’t get off.”
John Wheatley, Sr. was hazing for him, and on Rodney’s fourth try, “I made up my mind, I’m going to jump this steer,” he said. “I jumped plum over the steer and under the hazing horse, who rattled me like a tin can down the arena. I landed on my feet, so I could catch the mare and do it again.”
His new career began. It was 1963, and two years later, he was done riding bareback horses. “The steer wrestling fit me better, and wasn’t near as hard on my body.”
In 1964, he won second for the year-end steer wrestling title at the WAR rodeos, behind John Wheatley, Jr. In 1967-68, he won the year-end.
Rodney practiced with and competed against all of the California cowboys of the day: Jack Roddy, Harley May, Bob Marshall, Tommy and Larry Ferguson and Jim Warren.
In the early 1960s he got his Rodeo Cowboys Association permit. For the next two decades, he competed not only in California and the Northwest, but across the nation: Cheyenne, Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Dickinson, N.D.; Red Lodge, Livingston, Calgary, and more.
He had several good horses throughout the years.
One of the first ones was a barrel-turned bulldogging horse named Dexter. Another was a horse named Woodstock who “ran like a locomotive, and scored like a champ”.
Another mare he got was Duster, a bay mare who was broke by Rodney’s father-in-law and was “so simple and easy to ride, with a super-soft mouth. She’d let you catch every steer.” Duster had a filly colt, Twinkle Star Bars, who was broke and trained by Rod’s father-in-law and who Rod used as a hazing horse.
One of the best horse stories Rod has goes to one of his later steer wrestling horses, Mama. In 1971, he flew to Springdale, Ark., to bulldog. He needed a mount, so Jim Poteet asked Bob Littrell who owned Mama, if Rod could ride her. “Damn, Jim, you know I got everybody” mounted on her,” Bob said, which included 18 bulldoggers. But he relented and let Rodney ride her. Rod won second in the first round and second in the average, behind Roy Duvall.
He rode Mama at Cheyenne, winning third on her. So he asked Bob if he would sell her. “These Okies would kill me if I sold the mare,” he told Rod, knowing the Oklahoma steer wrestlers mounted out on her.
In 1972, Littrell had a career-ending broken leg. The next February, as Rod sat at a restaurant, eating breakfast with Jim Warren, Barry Burk came in and told him, if he still wanted to buy Mama, Littrell was willing to sell.
Rodney and Jim looked at each other, “we ran to the phone, and bought her,” Rod said. They paid $4,000 for her, “which was a lot of money,” and brought her to California. “We rode her everywhere.” Bob Marshall was a part-owner of Mama, on whom he won the 1973 world title.
Rod met his wife of 50 years, Deb, when she came to California with a friend who was dating Jim Warren at the time. Deb grew up on an Arizona ranch, roping and riding, so she was familiar with horses and rodeo.
The couple has four children: sons Odle and Traxel, and daughters Zantha and Abbra.
The kids went with them when Rodney rodeoed, traveling in their 24-foot motorhome.
In the early 2000s, Rodney became a committeeman for the Salinas Rodeo. He had won the steer wrestling there in 1980 with a buckle, and eight years ago, the committee honored him as “committeeman of the year,” with another buckle. His job is to take care of the roping box.
In 2012, he jumped his last steer, at the age of 71. He attributes his longevity to the fact that he stayed healthy, and “I was just loving what I was doing, and having fun.”
Juggling work and rodeo wasn’t easy. He worked 40 hours a week, which included evenings so he could leave early on Fridays to make a rodeo. And he had to shift his focus from work to rodeo and back again, where the fulltime competitors only had to think about rodeo.
“The other guys I was competing against were rodeoing for a living, and that was all they were thinking about. They’d get someplace and have time to practice. It made it tough. It was very hard, and it kept me from wining a lot of money.” Even with part-time rodeo, he came within $10,000 of making the National Finals Rodeo in 1980.
But the job was a necessity. “I had a job, with insurance, to take care of my family. That was important, taking care of my family.”
He was still bulldogging until ten years ago.
“It was fun for me. I saw so many guys with more talent than I had, that quit. It wasn’t fun for them, it was just a job. I never could understand that.”
His family was behind him, all the way. “I had the full support of my wife and kids, or none of this would have happened,” he said.
He and Debbie say the best part of rodeo is the people, “the people you meet and get acquainted with, from all parts of the country. You can reconnect with them ten or thirty years later, and it’s just like it was yesterday.”
He looks back fondly on his rodeo days.
“We had quite a time.”

RL Tolbert has jumped out of burning buildings, tumbled down cliffs, crashed cars and been shot numerous times.
But he’s walked away from every near-death experience.
That’s because the Vale, Oregon cowboy served as a stuntman in the movie industry as well as being a rodeo contestant.
That’s him getting the girl out of the wagon in “Back to the Future III”, before the wagon goes over the cliff. That’s him driving the six-horse hitch in the same movie, and tumbling down a staircase in “Silverado.”
He’s been a stunt double and worked as a stuntman in such movies as “The Sacketts” (1979), “Shadow Riders” (1982), “Silverado” (1985), “Three Amigos” (1986), “Mask of Zorro” (1998), “Conagher” (1991), “The Quick and the Dead” (1987), “Lonesome Dove” (1982), “Back to the Future II and III” (1989, 90), “The Rookie” (1990), “Far and Away,” (1992), “Tombstone” (1993), and many more.
Born in 1941 in Fountain, Colo., both of his grandfathers worked with horses: AR Ward, as a farmer, and Ed Tolbert, building roads in Kansas with horsepower and later driving a coach at the Royal Gorge’s Buckskin Joe tourist attraction.
By the time he was in his early teens, he was working at local dairies while attending school. He worked at the Littleton race track, then spent a year in Watsonville, Calif., with his mother, after his parents divorced. By age 15, he was back in Colorado, working at the Appelt Ranch.
In his twenties, RL broke horses for ranches all over Colorado. He spent time on the Butler Ranch, the Trinchera Ranch, the McQuaid Ranch, anywhere where they still fed cattle or hayed with horsepower.
Situated in the Rockies, with long, snowy winters, RL had told his fellow ranch cowboys, “when the first snowflake hits me, the second flake will be in my tracks because I’m leaving here.”
So that winter, he went to Colorado Springs, where he found an indoor arena, local cowboys held jackpots, and RL fine-tuned his saddle bronc riding.
“I knew how to ride horses that bucked,” he said, from breaking them. The learning part that took place at the arena was how to use the equipment and working on his technique.
RL also rode bulls as well, anything to make a little money.
While there, in 1964, he met another bull rider from Iowa, who talked him into going back to Iowa. There, he worked for PRCA stock contractor Bob Barnes, as a pickup man, driving truck, feeding and loading cattle, doing whatever was needed, and sometimes working five events: the three roughstock events, plus tie-down roping and steer wrestling, at Barnes rodeos where contestants were lacking. He had gotten his Rodeo Cowboys Association (predecessor to the PRCA) card in 1962.
After a year of that, he went to work for Jake and Lynn Beutler and Beutler Brothers, driving truck and picking up. He rode saddle broncs and bulls at the Beutler rodeos where he worked.
From the late 1960s to 1970, RL worked for Larry Mahan in Phoenix in the trailer business, then moved to California in the early 70s, using the Golden State as his rodeo base.
While he was rodeoing in California, he went to work for Cotton Rosser and the Flying U Rodeo Co., driving the chariots that Cotton used for his specialty act.
Through rodeo friends, RL got hired at Great Adventure, a huge amusement park in New Jersey. The park had a wild west show, with chariot racing, jousting, Roman riding, and a stagecoach hold-up, and RL got hired to help with that. He spent three years, from 1975-1977, working at the park, and on the weekends, he headed to Cowtown, N.J., for the weekly rodeos.
In those days, cowboys would winter in Tucson during the winter rodeo run, while they hit the rodeos in Odessa, Denver, El Paso, Scottsdale, and Phoenix. While RL was there, he made friends with several stuntmen, including Chuck Hayward, who was John Wayne’s main stuntman.
He also became friends with Glenn Randall, Sr., a trainer who had trained Roy Rogers’ and other celebrities’ horses, and Glenn’s son, Glenn, Jr. He learned more about horsemanship and training by working with Glenn, Sr.
Once RL got his Screen Actors Guild card, Hayward helped get him established in the movie industry.
He was a stuntman for dozens of movies, rigging wagon wrecks, car wrecks, falling horses, and more.
He doubled for Sam Elliott, Barry Corbin, Christopher Lloyd, and others. He doubled for Lloyd when Lloyd played “Doc” in the “Back to the Future III” movie and rigged the six horses to the DeLorean car, hooking the car’s steering into the wagon tongue.
He trained horses to fall and had three special ones. El Guapo was his favorite. A bucking horse, he used him for bucking in the movies till he later turned him into a liberty horse. The horse was “a really good raring horse,” he said. “He was excellent.
Juan was one of his falling horses. A thoroughbred, the horse was hard to work with. RL would get mad at him and vow to sell him, “then he’d bail me out.” Roanie was another of his beloved horses; as a four-year-old, Sam Elliott rode him for the movies “Quick and the Dead,” and “Conagher.” Roanie and El Guapo are buried side by side.
For about twenty years, from 1979 to the early 2000s, a lot of the six-horse hitches in the movies were driven by RL.
He became a member of the Screen Actors Guild in 1975, the Stuntman’s Association of Motion Pictures in 1977, and is also a member of the Directors’ Guild of America.
In 2002, he and his wife Kim, who had married in 1986, moved to Oregon. RL had admired the country when he had been there in his rodeo days.
On his farm near Vale, he raised alfalfa, oats and wheat, horses, goats and llamas. In 2015, they sold the farm.
From his first marriage, RL has two daughters, Robin and Stephanie. With Kim, he has a son, Elliott, and a daughter, Tessa. Kim passed away in 2021. The couple has seven grandkids.
RL still craves getting on saddle broncs. “I loved riding broncs,” he said. “I’d still get on one. That’s what I miss most, more than anything. And maybe meeting a lot of girls,” he chuckled.
He’s had a good life. “You really can’t beat it. It was all good times.”
RL was a 2018 Silver Spur recipient for his work in various western movies as a stuntman. Examples of his stunt work can be found at https://www.reelcowboys.org/members/LifetimeMembers/TolbertRL.php

Lots of kids grow up aspiring to be a cowboy or a police officer, but only some accomplish that feat. And even less manage to do both. Bob Wiley is the exception to that rule.

Long before Bob Wiley was able to fulfill his childhood dreams, he was learning fundamental life lessons while running track and playing football for Kingsburg High School in central California. The Fresno County Swedish village is now home to just over 10,000 residents. It was and is a small, quiet town by California standards.
Back in the 1950s, Wiley was a star athlete alongside his classmate Rafer Johnson who would go on to win Olympic gold as a decathlete in 1960. Standing an inch over 6-foot, Wiley was the right hand running back to Johnson’s left when the pair played for the Kingsburg Vikings.
“We won our division in both football and track my senior year,” Wiley said who is now 85 years old and lives just 30 miles down the road from where he was born and raised. “Porterville College had a real strong football program. They recruited me to play for them out of high school. I played football for two years there and that’s where I met my wife, Sonja, because she’s from Porterville.”

Cowboy Town
When Porterville College was still trying to entice Wiley to play for them, they had an unknown advantage.
“I went down to Porterville, and discovered it was a Western town,” Wiley said. “People around there had different roping events going on and lots of horse activity. I liked it, so I went to school there.”
The grandson of Swedish immigrants, Wiley grew up on the family farm where he could often be found swamping grapes and peaches. Horses were always part of the landscape, but they certainly weren’t the talented athletes that Wiley would later come to own.
“Some of my earliest memories as a little bitty kid were of my dad and his friends packing into the mountains on horses to go hunting,” he said. “They’d plan for months, and I could hardly wait to go.”
Always interested in horses and roping, Wiley watched people rope any chance he got. At the impressionable age of 15, he was introduced to calf roping for the first time and decided that’s what he wanted to do.
“A friend of mine taught me how to tie and that’s how it really started,” Wiley said. “I bought a horse for $85 and a calf for $15. I didn’t have an arena to rope in, so I just chased that calf around a little pen at home. I essentially taught myself how to rope by doing that.”
High school athletics took a lot of Wiley’s time, but roping was always in the back of his mind. He found his groove in college and rodeo took center stage.

A New Cowboy in Town
“When I got out of college I started working right away and I’d practice roping until 9 at night, then go inside to eat, head to bed and do it all over again the next day,” Wiley explained. “Then I’d rope all day on Saturday and Sunday.”
For most of Wiley’s roping career he was working part-time as a deputy in Porterville while traveling the countryside to rodeo.
“I’d practice in the early hours of the morning until about 4 when I’d go home to put on my uniform and go to work,” Wiley said. “I’d come home around 3 and sleep for a few hours before doing it all again. That was usually my schedule Monday through Wednesday and then the rest of the week I was getting ready for a rodeo and traveling.”
“I finally started getting good and winning a little,” Wiley said. “It wasn’t until 1961 that I was good enough to do it full time.”
That same year Wiley qualified for his first National Finals Rodeo in Dallas. They moved to the L.A. Sports Arena the following year before heading to Oklahoma City in 1965. He’d compete in five NFRs in total, all in consecutive years and in all three locations.
In 1963, Wiley was the reserve world champion behind one of the greatest calf ropers of all time, Dean Oliver, who was inducted into the PRCA Hall of Fame in 1979.
There were plenty of times when Wiley was gone for a month or more at a time. Wiley’s wife and kids spent a lot of time on the rodeo trail right alongside him in the first few years.
Their oldest daughter, Andrea, was born in 1959, followed closely by Acia in 1962 and later Robert in 1967. When the kids started school, their time on the road dwindled. Especially in 1963 when Wiley was making his strongest run at the NFR.

A Gold Buckle Career
“I got started early that year, probably in March, and I was roping pretty good,” Wiley said. “I had a good horse that year too. It all started in Springville, which was kind of a hometown rodeo for me. I won that and I just kept on winning.”
Wiley headed east for the summer so he could hit some of the biggest venues in pro rodeo: Calgary, Cheyenne, Great Falls, Saint Paul, Burwell, Bozeman, and Billings before heading back west for Salt Lake, Ogden, Eureka and Klamath Falls.
“If you’re going to rodeo and try to win something for the year, you have to go to all the big rodeos,” Wiley said. “When you went like I did in ‘63, it’s hard for little kids to be in the car all the time like I was.”
Even though Wiley loved roping competitively for himself, teaching people the finer details of the event became one of his many passions in life. Throughout the 60s he put on multiple calf roping schools for both tie-down and breakaway roping.
“I had quite a few students over the years, but I never charged more than enough to cover the cost of the calves,” Wiley said. “I was mostly doing it to pass my own time really. I liked teaching them how to do it and it kept me involved in the sport when I wasn’t roping myself.”
In 1965, Wiley made his last run at the finals. He didn’t know it initially, but his life was destined for a career outside the arena.
He started that year out strong and won enough to keep him in the top 15, but he was preoccupied to say the least.

A Golden Badge Life
“I got the idea that I wanted to be sheriff and after I announced my candidacy, I campaigned for 22 months,” Wiley said. “I was in full-bore campaign mode, so I wasn’t practicing or competing at all by the fall of ’65.”
Early success in the spring kept Wiley in seventh heading into the finals. He shut the campaign down for a week to compete in Oklahoma City for the first and last time.
“Before the finals my wife and I flew to Amarillo to see my friend Lee Cockrel to ride with him up to the finals,” Wiley said. “Lee took an extra horse for me because I hadn’t ridden my horse in a few months. I won just enough at the finals to pay for the trip there.”
Even though this wouldn’t be Wiley’s last time in the arena, it was his final year as a full-time professional calf roper. As soon as he got back to California, Wiley picked up the campaign trail right where he left it.
In November 1966, Wiley was elected Tulare County Sheriff where he would serve his community for 24 years and win a total of seven elections.
“When I took office in January, I was only 30 years old,” Wiley said. “As a kid, I was always interested in policemen and my family had several law enforcement members that would come and visit us. It was always interesting to me.”
Just like every endeavor before, Wiley put his full weight into being sheriff. He changed the face of the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department, which transcended into revolutionizing jail training programs.

A Life of Discipline
When Wiley first decided to throw his hat into the ring for sheriff, the department was doing the bare minimum. Most notably, it wasn’t taking care of its employees the way Wiley thought they should.
“It was one of the lowest paid operations in the state that didn’t offer any overtime pay, no uniform allowances, and no retirement plans,” Wiley said. “It was tough at first, but I had a lot of good ideas. I knew I wanted to work in the schools with the young people to get a handle on the drug problems.”
It all started when Wiley placed deputies in schools and created educational programs to teach kids about the dangers of drug use. They even introduced kids to ammo, grenades and dynamite so they would know what they are and that they shouldn’t mess with them.
It was a novel approach to a rapidly growing problem. First illustrated by his roping schools, Wiley enjoyed teaching people new things and improving efficiency any chance he got.
“Lots of people copied our school educational programs,” Wiley said. “I also developed a jailer training program that was recognized by the Department of Justice. I went to several jail training programs, and their trainers had never worked in jails. I didn’t like that, so my staff and I developed our own program.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that Wiley made his way inside the jail houses and left his mark there as well. He helped remodel some and build a brand new one. In 1987, his work in the county was commemorated in Visalia when the jail was named the Bob Wiley Detention Facility.
Wiley’s time as a sheriff is a testament to his upbringing. The order and efficiency he instilled in his department kept the cogs running smoothly for a long, effective career.
“My mom was real particular about not abusing people; not making fun of anyone for any reason and not making snide remarks,” Wiley said. “There’s a lot of people that make a habit out of pushing people around and whenever I found out about that, I put a stop to it.”
Over his career, Wiley implemented two narcotic units in his department, solved multiple homicide cases, found lost children and was one of the first to have a K-9 unit. By his retirement in 1991, Wiley was the senior officer of the 58 county sheriffs in California.

A Cowboy at Heart
Getting back to his cowboy boots and roots, Wiley and his wife traveled the country following the NSPRA schedule for a few years. Even competing in Canada at one point.
“At the time, I didn’t have a great horse to rope on, they had gotten really scarce and thus very expensive,” Wiley said.
Dabbling in roping schools for a few more years helped Wiley pass the time before the turn of the century. By then, roping and riding was becoming increasingly difficult.
“The last time I roped was in 2003 and it hurt to come out of the box and to get off,” Wiley said. “I got crippled in the hips and it made it hard to move the way I needed to for calf roping.”
Even though Wiley officially hung his hat up from roping and teaching almost 20 years ago, rodeo is never far from his mind.
“I was lucky that I won quite a bit of money roping,” Wiley said. “I had a good life, and I was young and sound when I needed to be.”

[ “He had that internal fortitude and a lot of try.”]

Bill Nelson dominated the rodeo world for a short time, in two events.
Saddle bronc riding might have been Bill Nelson’s strongest event, but he won the world in the bull riding in 1971.
The California cowboy competed at the National Finals Rodeo in both the saddle bronc riding and bull riding, but it was the bull riding in which he came out on top of the world.
He was born in 1944 in San Francisco, the son of Bill and Irene Nelson. Even as a little kid, he wanted to be a cowboy. He came by it naturally; his dad was from Winnemucca, Nev., and his uncles had made a living by rounding up wild horses and selling them to the U.S. Army at the beginning of the 20th century.
After high school graduation, Bill attended Cal Poly and “one thing led to another,” he said, “and pretty quick I was riding bulls.”
Riding bulls was an easy discipline to start. “All you had to do was buy a bull rope at the feed store,” he said. With other events, a person needs a horse and more expensive equipment.
He caught on quickly to riding bulls, but he really wanted to ride saddle broncs. He taught himself, “but it took forever to learn to ride broncs.”
He bought his membership to the Rodeo Cowboys Association, forerunner to the PRCA, in 1966 so he could compete at the San Francisco’s Cow Palace, and rode bulls there.
By then, he was in college at Cal Poly. At first, he went to school in the fall, winter and spring and rodeoed in the regional shows and worked, trying to make money. Before the school year was over, he was calling his dad and needing to borrow money.
His dad asked, do you want a job? “I said, ‘no,’” Bill replied. When he told his dad he was going to rodeo in place of a job, his dad said, “oh, crap, you won’t have no money.”
But he did. “Things went to clicking, and I had more money than I had the year before,” he said.
Bill changed his college schedule; he attended in the spring quarter only, so as to compete at the big winter rodeos. He remembers winning $3,000 in Houston. “It doesn’t sound like much, but we thought we were rich,’ he recalls.
He began winning more money, so he’d take off in the fall and winter to rodeo, then while he attended college in the spring quarter, he’d rodeo up and down the West Coast and in California.
And he was winning money, so much that he qualified for the 1970 National Finals Rodeo in the saddle bronc riding, the next year in the bronc riding and the bull riding, and in 1972, in the bull riding. In 1971, he finished as the world champion bull rider and seventh in the saddle broncs.
Bill also competed collegiately, finishing as the regional all-around champion twice and the saddle bronc riding champ twice and qualifying for the College National Finals Rodeo three times, finishing one year as NIRA reserve champion saddle bronc rider.
He graduated from college in 1972 with a degree in animal husbandry.
In those early days, when he was young, it was fun to rodeo. “We went wherever we wanted,” he said. “We didn’t have to go back and forth to school or work. We’d just take off and go. If we were tired, we went fishing. We enjoyed ourselves, and we had fun.”
In 1973, his dad had a heart attack, and Bill turned out of Calgary and went home. Then his mom got sick, and he married, and “one thing led to another, and after that, I just rodeoed on the weekends.”
He began his lifetime career of managing ranches for absentee landowners in California and Oregon.
He continued to rodeo, but it was more on the weekends only. It wasn’t so enjoyable anymore.
“You’d have to drive all night to get to the rodeo, then drive all night to get back to work,” he said.
He entered his last PRCA rodeo in the early 1980s. He had competed at Caldwell, winning second in the bull riding. But when he got off, he felt a muscle tear: it was a torn groin. “I thought, somebody’s trying to tell me something,” he said. “Things like that hadn’t happened to me before.” He got on a couple more bulls to prove he wasn’t scared of them, then he quit rodeoing.
Bill preferred riding saddle broncs over bulls, but it was the bulls that paid the bills. “If I hadn’t been riding bulls, I’d never have had enough money to ride broncs.”
He remembers some of his favorite bucking horses.
He got on Beutler Brothers’ saddle bronc Descent four times. “I rode him twice and he killed me twice,” he quipped. The first time he got on him was in Tucson, and when he bucked off, “I did a somersault, he was kicking so hard.” Years later, he had him in Nampa, thinking, “Boy, I’ll get rich now.” But he got bucked off again. “He threw me so high the stirrups came off my feet and I was still going up. I lit under the pickup horse.” He did ride the horse once, to win second in Denver.
He also recalls a buckskin named Whiz Bang who was first owned by Andy Jauregui then by Cotton Rosser. Bill drew him fourteen times, four of those consecutive. “He’d rare out and buck me off,” Bill said. “He killed me.” In Yuma, Ariz., Shawn Davis was the judge for one of those buck offs. The horse “drove me into the ground right in front of Shawn, and Shawn said, ‘well, kid, you spurred him out good.’” Bill said to himself, “Big deal. I spurred him out for three weeks in a row and I ain’t rode him for six seconds total yet.” After those four consecutive buck-offs, Whiz Bang only bucked Bill off one time. “I won a lot of money on Whiz Bang.”
His parents supported their son in his rodeo.
“My dad loved it,” Bill said. “He wouldn’t let me play football because it was dangerous, but riding bulls was OK.” For a while, his mom was scared of the bull riding. “If she came to a rodeo, when the bull riding started, she’d go hide. She was scared to death.” But when Bill needed money, she helped finance him.
“A couple years later, when I was broke, she’d pay my fees for half.” One year he competed at Reno, and she went with him. She paid his fees, he won second, and she took her half of the winnings and was ready to pay his fees the next week, too. “I told her, no, I have money,” he chuckled.
“She ended up being my biggest fan.”
It was at the beer stand in Reno that he met his wife, Cindy. They married in 1974 and had two sons: Jay and Billy.
Bill was a world champion when J.C. Trujillo came onto the pro rodeo scene, and Bill mentored J.C.
“When I got out of college and hit the rodeo trail fulltime, he had already won the world’s championship,” J.C. said. “He said, you need somebody that knows what they’re doing. So I jumped in his pickup that he called the Watermelon. He had the experience and the know-how. I ended up going to the National Finals that year.”
Bill had perseverance and determination, J.C. said. “He had that internal fortitude and a lot of try. He would tough it out on a lot of bulls that would buck some guys off. He’d cowboy up and get to the whistle on them. He was a pretty talented cowboy.”
Bill managed a ranch near Whitmore, Calif., before he and his wife Cindy moved to Idaho to be closer to their sons and their families.
Jay is married to Kara; they have a son and a daughter. Billy is married to Shanna and they have three daughters and a son.
Bill reminisces on the best parts of his life.
His family and kids rank at the top.
But the years he rodeoed, when he had no bills and no responsibilities, were good years. “I had more fun than anybody going down the road.”

Cranberries are about the farthest thing you can think of from rodeo – and yet – one of the most interesting, versatile and capable cowboys for the last sixty years has had both cranberries and rodeo as primary interests in his life. Mel Potter is a cranberry farmer – a proven professional roper – a stock contractor – and breeds, raises and trains some of the top horses in the rodeo arena.
Here is Mel’s story: Granddad Melvin Potter began raising cranberries in Wisconsin in 1880. The family marsh where cranberries come from is still in operation today. His son, Roy, followed in his footsteps, as did Roy’s son, Mel Potter. The cranberry business goes dormant during the winter. As Mel says, “Wisconsin is like Siberia in the winter.” The cranberries are frozen in the marsh during the winter, but when spring comes the cranberries come back to life. Mel’s family also raised mink, and that could have been the catalyst for why Mel got an Animal Science degree from the University of Arizona.
Mel was born in 1935 to Roy and Josephine Potter. When he was 9 his family began spending the winters in Arizona. Mel went to school in a two-room school with twenty other students in grades 6th through 7th. Back in Wisconsin all of Mel’s contemporaries were into the regular sports – baseball, basketball and football. But at Mel’s school in Arizona the kids at school rode horses and roped or rodeo’d as often as they could. It was not surprising that Mel took up roping and team tying (which was big in Arizona at that time). He even rode a few bulls. He knew he wanted to be a cowboy. Mel competed in 13 Junior Rodeos and during high school he qualified for the 1951 High School National Finals, held in Sulphur, Louisiana.
At rodeos in Arizona, Mel watched the ropers from that area that always won – John Rhoades, Lynn and Chuck Sheppard. Mel was all ready competing at area Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA) rodeos. He said at that time RCA would let non-members compete, but if you started winning any money you had to join. Mel was only 16 when he started winning, so he joined in 1951.
Mel and Wendy were married in 1954. They went off to the University of Arizona where Mel was on the rodeo team. He won the All-Around at the University of Arizona rodeo when he was a senior. They have two daughters, Jo Lynn Alexander, born in 1958 and Sherry born in 1975.
After graduation Mel and a friend, Russ Gregg, got the bright idea to travel back up to Wisconsin and compete in some of the rodeos there. They thought all the ‘toughs’ (top winning cowboys)) would be at rodeos in other locales, not Wisconsin. They just knew they could win lots of money. It was quite a shock when they got to their first Wisconsin rodeo at Madison and all the ‘toughs’ were there, too! Mel and Russ joined the labor list at the rodeo and that helped them get paid enough to be able to compete. The biggest surprise is those ‘toughs’ looked after Mel and Russ, and they also got lots of free advice from them, which they appreciated and needed.
As time went on Mel’s roping kept getting better. He qualified in the calf roping event for the first National Finals in 1959. He won the 5th go-round and won $434 at the Finals. After the Finals he went home in Wisconsin. He realized he had a worn-out stationwagon, a horse trailer that needed new tires, a crippled horse, and enough money from his winnings to enter maybe seven or eight rodeos. His dad, who Mel described as a hard-headed businessman, said, “What do you think of rodeo now?” That’s when Mel decided to go in the cranberry business. However, he continued to compete in rodeos. In fact, he learned to fly so he could get to more rodeos and still be able to work. He also moved his legal residence to Arizona.
A few years later Mel, Jack Brainard and John Snow decided that the big money in rodeo was in the stock contracting business. Brainard had learned a great deal about stock contracting by being associated with stock contractor Leo Cremer, from Montana. Both Mel and Jack had competed and John was a rodeo announcer. The three men started a new company in 1964 named Rodeo, Incorporated (Rodeo, Inc.). They heard Oral Zumwalt, a well-known stock contractor from Missoula MT, was selling out and they purchased 10 good broncs from his string. Most of Rodeo Inc’s rodeos were in the mid-west as well as State Fairs in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa and Minnesota.
Mel said, “One day I got a call from Feek Tooke, who said he had some horses we could use. I had never heard of Tooke and I called my friend, Bill Linderman, President of RCA, and ask him about Tooke. Bill said, ‘If you can get his best horses you’ll have the best bucking stock in the business. But I think he’d rather sell you his wife than his horses.’” The three partners flew up to Ekalaka, Montana and Tooke showed them his horses. He knew all their breeding and history. Tooke said, “These are my best old horses, and he pulled out 20 for them to buy.” Tooke said he would take $500 a horse. As the three owners of Rodeo, Inc. stood there figuring out how they would borrow the money, Tooke said: “Boys, just pay me what you can now and pay the rest when you make it.” And with a handshake the deal was made.
“We bucked ‘em at our first rodeo after that and they darn near bucked every cowboy off, no matter who they were. They were rank broncs. The first year we had them we sent six to the National Finals,” explained Mel. In 1966, Rodeo, Inc. had the NFR Top Saddle Bronc, Tea Trader. Their bronc Sheep Mountain got that honor in 1967. Major Reno was Top Saddle Bronc for 1968 and for 1969 Major Reno tied with Big Bend’s Trade Wind for Top NFR Saddle Bronc. They were all Feek Tooke bred broncs. “All the breeding programs in professional rodeo, at that time, except Kesler, were out of Feek’s horses. He sent us horses two more times, which were top rate. We were lucky to have had such a relationship with him. I was a pall bearer at his funeral,” said Mel.
“On one of the flights back from Feek’s we didn’t know exactly where we were but we saw a rodeo being held. We landed and it was Mobridge, North Dakota. We saw a bronc that was so good, named Chief Crazy Horse, we bought him for $127.50. He was one of the best we ever owned, too. We were stock contractors for ten years before we had out dispersal sale, during the National Finals. I never worked so hard at anything as I did then. But I learned so much during those years. The last three years we made money and had some great rodeos,” Mel laughed. “I feel like I’ve been on vacation ever since.”
When asked, Mel said Dean Oliver and Jess Goodspeed were two of his biggest competitors. “Jess Goodspeed taught me how to beat the top guys,” admitted Mel. “He bought some of the best calf roping horses.” Other competitors he mentioned were Toots Mansfield, Roy Cooper, Don McLaughlin, and Cody Ohl. For steer roping he named Guy Allen and Shawn Burchett.
Mel admits when he first began contesting he didn’t realize how important the horse was in roping. He learned quickly having a good horse was a necessity. Mel’s first horse, at age 16, was Pal, an unregistered gelding out of Oklahoma Star and a Bert mare (both sire and dam are in the AQHA Hall of Fame). In time Mel observed that 50 to 60% of the cowboys in timed events were riding horses that came from Driftwood, an AQHA Hall of Fame horse. His friend, Dale Smith, allowed him to compete on his great horse, Poker Chip, from the Driftwood strain. Mel realized then how much a great horse can improve one’s ability to win.
The Potter Ranch in Marana, Arizona, is well known in the horse industry as being a top Driftwood breeding ground. Mel and wife, Wendy, are partners. They married in 1954 and have two daughters. Jo Lynn Alexander, who was an All-Around Cowgirl in High School, and Sherry Petska, World Champion Barrel Racer four times. Wendy also barrel raced and qualified for the 1970, ’71 and ’72 National Finals.
Mel first bred his roping horse, Red Ghara (a Bert mare) to Speedywood, a son of Driftwood, which produced Speedy’s Redwood, (they nicknamed “Charlie”). The colt’s ability at a young age was just what Mel was looking for. He has been quoted as saying Driftwood genes produce early maturity coupled with longevity and speed. There have been numerous well-known and successful Driftwood bred horses, from Potter breeding, in the past 50 plus decades. Mel says Dinero is probably the best horse he ever bought. Dinero has had 18 horses go to the PRCA National Finals over the years in barrel racing, team roping and steer wrestling. Hailey Kinsel’s great horse, DM Sissy Hayday, better known as ‘Sister, is Dinero bred. Daughter Sherry and husband, Cory Petska have won over $400,000 on Dinero.
Mel admits there came a time when daughter, Sherry, was winning Barrel Racing World Championships he became known as “Sherry’s dad”, in the rodeo, but those things only make him smile. He said her horse, MP Meter My Hay, better known as ‘Stingray’ was probably more famous, at that time, than any of the other great Driftwood horses.
Regardless of the reason why rodeo people know the name Mel Potter, you can bet it’s because of something Mel has done, and done well. He’s been recognized for the good things he has done in the sport of rodeo, the breeding horse world, stock contracting and obviously the cranberry world, too. Potter & Son is one of the largest supplier to the Ocean Spray Cranberry Consortium. “Cranberries allowed me to do these rodeo and breeding activities that I, and my family love so much. I was still roping until two years ago,” said 87 year old Mel.

he 2022 Ben Johnson Memorial Award honoree fits the requirements to a T! Charles Walter Sylvester Jr., better known in rodeo as “Chuck” is the recipient this year which will happen during the Rodeo Historical Society’s Rodeo Weekend at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City on November 12th. Chuck becomes the 24th cowboy to receive this award. The honoree has been given annually since 1998 when Clem McSpadden was chosen to receive the prestigious award.
The requirement of the Ben Johnson Memorial Award, given annually to a living person who has been involved in the rodeo industry for a number of years and has contributed to the growth and betterment of professional rodeo. Involvement with youth and/or community activities also is a pre-requisite for the honor. The recipient must be someone who, like Ben Johnson, Jr., creates a positive image for rodeo and the Western lifestyle.
Chuck was the General Manager of the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo, from 1978 to 2003. This important January Denver event has so many different activities going on it is mind-boggling to imagine his responsibilities. During his leadership the ‘National Western’ changed from a nine day event to sixteen days and the attendance increased considerably. Chuck brought the Draft Horse Show to ‘National Western’ in 1981, the event’s 75th anniversary. In 1985 he brought Jerry Diaz, well-known Charro, with his amazing roping artistry and many more talents which spawned a new addition — the Mexican Extravaganza & Rodeo which became one of the night shows of the ‘National Western’. Chuck was also responsible for expanding the facilities with the addition of the building of the Event Center. It took Chuck, and Board member Pat Grant, speaking with every business group in Denver to raise the interest for a bond to be passed that was necessary for the building to happen.
In 1995 the new building, called Equestrian Center, was opened. The horse show events moved in, as well as the Dancing Horses Night Show. The Mexican Extravaganza & Rodeo took the place of equestrian events in the Coliseum, along with Professional Bull Riding. When Chuck retired in 2003 he was quoted to say: “My job description for forty years was finding someone else to do the job! They are the ones to put on the show.”
During Chuck’s tenure as General Manager of the ‘National Western’ he served on the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) Board of Directors two different times. The first, in 1985, was when the National Finals moved to Las Vegas. He admits it was enjoyable but tedious. The Vegas location brought bigger crowds, but the need for more seating. They added seats, between the arena fence and the original first row, and called them Gold Buckle Seats. The additional revenue from seat sales helped pay expenses. Chuck decided to do the same thing at ‘National Western’, by adding more seating and call them God Buckle Seats. They sold out, and ‘National Western’ made an extra $100 thousand the first year. His second time to be on the PRCA Board, was between the mid-1990s and his retirement at NW. Although the circumstances were different he considered it “a real enjoyment but challenging serving on the PRCA grievance committee. Harry Vold was Chairman along with Dean Oliver and Bill Smith.” One of Chuck’s highlights on the Board was promoting and getting final approval to introduce and start “Extreme Bull Riding.”
It is obvious that Chuck Sylvester thinks ‘outside the box’. When asked to be the chairman of the National Western’s 100th Anniversary in 2006, for the parade he chose to have over 200 loose ewes herded by Border Collies down 17th Street, through the heart of downtown Denver.
A special event Chuck never misses happens once a year – the Roundup Riders of the Rockies, of which he has been a member for 35 years. They take a week-long horseback adventure in the back-country of Colorado during late July; many memorable moments have happened during this time for him. He was selected “Colt of the Year” his rookie year, 1987, and “Roundup Rider of the Year” in 1999. He became a Life Member in 2012. 2022 is the 74th year for Roundup Riders of the Rockies.
Chuck’s great-grandfather, Charles E. Miller, homesteaded the family farm in 1866. It is located on the South Platte River, in LaSalle, CO. Chuck and wife, Roni Bell, are the fourth generation of the family to live there. He was born in 1937, the youngest of four. He always felt fortunate that his parents were hard working farm people. In jest, Chuck said he felt like Abraham Lincoln because the house he lived in had no electricity, indoor running water, plumbing, telephone, TV and toilets. However, there was always food on the table and lots of love from his parents and family.
Chuck began rodeoing in high school at Greeley and continued when he went to Colorado A&M in 1955. As a Rodeo Club member, in college, he helped produce the ‘Little National Western Stock Show Skyline Stampede Rodeo’ at Colorado A & M (now named Colorado State University). While in college he won the bull riding in Logan, UT, and placed in the saddle bronc event at Pocatello, Idaho. Chuck graduated with a degree in Animal Science in 1961 and a masters in Ag Economics in 1985.
Employment for Chuck always involved agriculture, rodeo or the western way of life. He worked for A.S.C. and Soil Conservation Offices; for Farm Chemical as a salesman; and as Assistant Boulder County Agent. His interest in helping youth began by working with County 4-H programs. His judging team won the ‘National Western’ Livestock judging contest in 1965. He also was involved with the Boulder County Fair and the Longmont Jaycee Rodeo. This set his career course for life with fairs, rodeos, livestock and equine events.
The Colorado State Fair hired Chuck as Assistant Manager in 1969. During his tenure he helped plan the Fair’s 100th Anniversary in 1972. As part of the anniversary he re-introduced the Draft Horse Show and inaugurated the Colorado Centennial Farm Award, which is given to family farms that have been working farms for over 100 years in the State of Colorado. This Award requires the families of farms qualifying for this Award to complete a written form proving their eligibility.
Seeing the need for a non-existent organization to handle certain ag-related, rodeo-related or stock-related events Chuck was never hesitant to form a new organization so those active in the program could be treated or judged fairly. He did so by helping form the Association of Rodeo Committees and the Colorado Association of Fairs and Shows. He held the office of President with both groups to get them up and running properly.
When Chuck retired from the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo he never missed a beat. He soon became the Executive Producer of “There’s Got To Be A Pony,” written by Roni Bell under the pseudonym Arem Roder. It was a performance requiring a huge cast blending Pueblo Symphony, Dr. Jacob Chi conductor, symphonic music with equestrian performers presented at the Evening with Dancing Horses. Some of the cast members who were also associated with rodeo included Jerry Diaz, Vicki Adams, Hadley Barrett, Austin Anderson and Greg Whitaker.
A cattle-raiser on his Wyoming ranches for over fifty years Chuck finally sold all his cattle in 2009 and presently leases his ranches. He continues to buy land in Wyoming because, “Wyoming is more ‘agriculturally friendly’ than Colorado.”
A past President and director of the Godfrey Ditch Company Chuck has also been on the Weld County Fair Board, a member and former director of the Greeley T Bone Club, past board member of Colorado Boys Ranch, the Continental Divide Trail Alliance, just to name a few of his additional activities.
Protecting private property rights hit a nerve with Chuck and in 2007, he and wife, Roni, co-founded the so-called Good Neighbor Law, and subsequently helped with three more Good Neighbor programs. In 2009 Chuck co-founded Land and Water USA which gathers facts, truth and solutions that will protect one’s Land and Water rights. He and wife, Roni, have worked with scientists, educators, politicians, attorneys and research analysts from around the world to teach people what constitutes private property, and how to defend that property on federal land.
In September, 2013 a flood devastated their 145 year old farm and 110 year old farm house. After seven months of restoration, they were finally able to move back in to their home and their Colorado Centennial Farm. You can find Roni on her old Ford tractor, she named ‘Bar B’, and Chuck on his front-end loader, as they work together to move dirt and trees to make their farm the best it can be.
As the 2022 honoree of the Ben Johnson Memorial Award Chuck Sylvester joins the following earlier recipients of this prestigious honor: Clem McSpadden, Buster Ivory, Dale Smith, Chuck Sheppard, Don Harrington, A. J. “Jack” Cooke, Jim Shoulders, Mel Potter, Cotton Rosser, Larry Mahan, Billy Minick, Neal Gay, Dean Oliver, Walt Garrison, Bill Smith, Tater Decker, Joe Beaver, Mike Cervi, Jack Roddy, Kelly Riley, Clyde Frost, Doug Clark, and Carl Nafzger.