Category: Archive

story by Judy Goodspeed

“Going down a cotton row with a hoe or pulling a sack gave me the desire to do better. My dad was disabled from a stroke, but back then there was no such thing as a monthly check. The only solution was all ten of us kids worked, and worked hard, but none as hard as our mother. She worked in the field, managed a large garden, canned, cooked, washed by hand, patched our clothes, and kept a clean house. Even though our clothes were patched they were clean and she would always say, ‘Now you kids act as good as you look.’
“My parents Robert (Bob) Hatcher and Flora Tuel Hatcher were both sixteen when they married in 1920. They began married life on an eighty-acre farm sharecropping for Dad’s father. I was born in 1934, the seventh child at that time, three more came later.
“There wasn’t much time for anything but work, but occasionally when we’d get a break we would ride the workhorses.” Phil loved horses and desperately wanted a saddle horse.
“One of our neighbors had horses and did a little trading. I was about fifteen when I ambled over to his place to see what he had. I only had twenty-five dollars in my pocket but was willing to part with it for a horse. He had a three-year-old sorrel gelding he wanted sixty-five dollars for. We worked out a deal and I paid twenty-five down and pulled enough cotton to pay the rest. That little sorrel made a mighty fine horse.”
The little town of Randlett, Oklahoma had a roping arena and Phil became a frequent visitor. He tried his hand at bronc riding and didn’t do very well, tried bull riding and held on for eight seconds.
“I rode the bull but only because he just ran down the arena. Me and one other boy were the only qualifiers so I won second. I decided right then that I didn’t want to ride any more bulls.”
In 1951 Phil and one of his older brothers joined the wheat harvest. They had worked through Oklahoma and made it into Kansas when it came a big rain. It would be days before the ground dried out enough to get back in the fields.
“Our boss asked if we’d like to go to Cheyenne to the rodeo. That was a turning point in my life. I wanted to be in the arena and made up my mind to become a cowboy.”
Phil began to try bull dogging along with calf roping. He really preferred bull dogging and sought out guys who knew something about the event. He was still working at every job he could find which was mainly farming. His dad had died and his mother and three youngest siblings were living in a house a friend had loaned them. Phil helped her as much as he could.
It was about this time that he began dating Norma Bruce. Norma was also from Randlett and they had attended school together, but really didn’t know each other very well. Phil had dropped out of school after the first couple of weeks in the ninth grade. Norma was in the tenth grade when she dropped out of school. They were married in 1954. Phil bought a travel trailer and they started going down the rodeo trail. Years later after they were in one place long enough they returned to school and got their GED.
“I was still farming but making a few rodeos. Problem was I was riding a green horse, but he wasn’t any more green than me. Finally, Aubrey Rankin started schooling me and that helped a bunch. Aubrey bought a good doggin’ horse from Fuzzy Garner. I rode him some but still wasn’t doing much good. It was hard making a living and having money for entry fees. By this time I had taken the plunge and gotten my RCA card.”
Buster Morgan approached Phil and asked him to ride in a quadrille he had organized for the Woodward Rodeo. Phil told him the only way he’d go to Woodward was if he could enter the bull dogging and he didn’t have money for the entry fee. Buster entered him and suggested that Phil ask Lynn Beutler for a job with his rodeo company. Phil was hired to work on the feed crew making ten dollars a day. It wasn’t long before he was also making five dollars a day on the stripping crew. That job involved removing riggin’ from broncs. Then he started grooming the saddle horses and made five more dollars a day.
“This was the perfect place for me. I loved the work, could park my trailer on the rodeo grounds and be close to Norma. The only problem was the three-week layover between Tucson, Arizona Rodeo and the Phoenix, Arizona Rodeo. We moved to Burkburnett, Texas and I farmed for three weeks. Norma was pregnant so I decided to stay close to home until the baby was born.”
After Wayne arrived Phil and Norma hit the rodeo trail again. Phil still worked for Beutler Brothers, but had moved up to supervisor over the feeding crew. Slim Whaley was another cowboy who worked for Beutler Brothers. One of his duties was to buy the saddle horses used in the show and work as a pickup man during the bareback and saddle bronc events. A pickup man also works the bull riding. His job primarily is to get bulls out of the arena as quickly as possible. There is always a chance for something to go wrong so a good horse is essential. Phil was honored when Lynn Beutler asked him if he would fill in for Slim while he recovered from an injury.
“One thing that helped me decide to take the job was I knew Slim had good, dependable horses. The biggest danger for a pickup man was having to rope a mean bull and drag him out of the arena. For a short time, if the gate man isn’t quick enough, you are in a tight place with a big mad animal.”
Everything was going well for Phil and Norma. He was winning or placing in most of the rodeos he entered, mostly in the steer wrestling but often in the calf roping also. He and Norma decided they would like to buy a place and maybe run some cattle, so they started putting money aside when they could.
“We had saved a thousand dollars when I found a horse that I thought I had to have. Without telling Norma I paid six hundred dollars for the horse. Needless to say she was not happy. I think at that time in my life if I’d had to choose between rodeo and my family I’d have picked rodeo. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that.”
In 1961, Wayne started to school in Burkburnett, Texas. Phil moved the travel trailer to a friend’s yard and that’s where Norma and Wayne lived until summer. Once school was out the family hit the road together.
Phil qualified for the National Finals in 1962. He was winning and doing well so he decided to quit working for Beutler Brothers and rodeo full time. He was broke by the end of the year, so he went back to Lynn and asked for his job back. Lynn made an exception in Phil’s case because he didn’t usually hire back workers who quit, but he hired Phil.
“Lynn saved my bacon.”
Harry Vold approached Phil and asked him to work for him. Phil explained that he would work for him when he wasn’t working rodeos for Lynn if it was okay with Lynn.
“I needed as much work as possible and I really liked Harry. I stayed busy making twenty-three or more rodeos a year. To this day I think of Harry Vold as Mr. Rodeo. He started at the bottom and worked his way up and is a super nice guy.”
Norma and Phil finally started looking for a place to buy. While visiting Jim and Deloris Smith they found forty acres near Okemah, Oklahoma. We looked the place over and decided that it would serve our purpose. So Phil borrowed five thousand dollars and bought a house and forty acres.
“Being in debt bothered me, but the old man I bought the place from tried to reassure me. ‘He said you’re young and healthy. You’ll have that note paid off in no time.’”

Phil got Norma and Wayne settled and headed to Tucson. After the rodeo, he returned home to wait the three weeks until Phoenix. He loaded up his horse, hooked up his travel trailer and got about to Chandler, Oklahoma when an eighteen-wheeler pulled out in front of him. Phil couldn’t avoid hitting him. His pickup was totaled, his horse killed, and the travel trailer destroyed. Now, he was really in debt, but he picked up and went on.
As it turned out he won the bull dogging at Guymon, Oklahoma, the all around at El Paso, Texas and split the average at Denver with Bill Linderman.
“Now that was one of the highlights of my rodeo life. Bill was my idol and one of the nicest guys I knew. I went home with enough money to pay off my debt. That’s another thing I loved about rodeo, it afforded an old poor boy the opportunity to get ahead.”
In 1972 at Nampa, Idaho, Phil was running some fresh steers to see if they were going to do for the rodeo. The horse he was using was young but had never offered to buck.
“It was a crazy deal. I started to get down on my steer but changed my mind before sliding out of the saddle. When I collected myself to get back seated I must have hit the horse in the flank with a spur. He had never bucked but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He started pitching and instead of bailing out I tried to ride him. I wound up with a broken, torn up knee.
“I was an upset man. We had no income and I was going to be laid up for a spell. Just when I thought all was lost Norma announced she was going to work at the Wrangler Blue Bell factory in Okemah. Later she began working in the treasurer’s office at the Okemah County Courthouse. We survived.”
Phil was disabled for sixteen months and the doctor said he would probably never jump another steer. Twenty-three months after his accident he won second at Hinton, Oklahoma. He continued to rodeo but stayed close to home until time for Cheyenne rolled around. He had to go, but this time he flew instead of driving.
“It’s every dogger’s dream to win Cheyenne and I came close in 1974. My last steer dog fell on me and knocked me out of the running.”
In his rodeo career Phil entered won the all around at Colorado Springs twice, the bull doggin’ at Albuquerque, New Mexico, Nampa, Idaho, Little Rock, Arkansas, Kansas City, Kansas, Plainview, Texas and the all around at Weiser, Idaho. He made the National Finals in 1962 in the steer wrestling, worked at the Finals as a pickup man in 66, 68, and 70, and was a timed event judge at the Finals in 73, and 75. He retired from rodeo in 1975.
“With Norma’s help I had bought up some more land and leased some so we were running mama cows and doing okay. Wayne had graduated high school and been accepted at West Point. I did some cattle buying for people, hauled cattle, took care of cattle for area ranchers, shod horses and broke colts. In 1986 I decided to sell my mama cows and buy yearlings, that is still what I’m doing now.”
Wayne didn’t go back to West Point after his first year even though he enjoyed attending there. He decided to marry his long-time sweetheart and attend Oklahoma State University for a degree in Horticulture. He and his wife have three children.
“Norma passed away in 2008. I miss her everyday. She put up with a lot, but we were both raised in good Christian homes so divorce wasn’t even considered. She was a good woman and I give her credit for doing most of Wayne’s raising.
“I didn’t leave as big a footprint as some of my contemporaries, but no one worked any harder or loved rodeo any more than I did. I never turned my stock out even if the weather was awful, or I was out of the money. There was no quit in me.”

Dick Hermann served his country well. The former saddle bronc rider and pickup man was in the U.S. Navy for 25 years, five years in active duty, mostly in Vietnam, and twenty years in the Reserve. After he was Seaman Hermann, he became a cowboy.
Dick’s story starts as a farm kid, one of seven children born to Roy and Alta Hermann, in 1948 near Lesterville, S.D., southwest of Sioux Falls. For his twelfth Christmas, his dad gave him a set of harnesses, and Dick hitched up Corky and Princess, two of the saddle horses around the place. “They just looked at each other,” Dick laughed. His grandpa tied them together so they couldn’t split apart, and Dick trained them as a team. He remembers pulling his sisters on a toboggan on the lake near the house, behind the team. “I’d cut the corners a little sharp, and roll the girls out” of the toboggan. “They’d laugh till somebody got hurt and then it wasn’t fun anymore.”
There were plenty of chores to do on a dairy farm, and Dick couldn’t participate in after-school sports. When he was a junior, he quit school. “I wasn’t much of a school guy,” he remembered. He did odd jobs, and youthful energy started getting him into trouble. A friend suggested they join the military. “We were going to get into trouble if we didn’t.”
He joined the Navy in 1966, because the Marine and Army recruiter weren’t around. “The only guy there was the Navy recruiter,” Dick said. “I said, if I don’t have to milk cows, I’ll join the Navy.” Uncle Sam sent him to Vietnam for three years, and he returned to the States in 1970.
After getting home, he went with a friend to a rodeo, where he got on a bareback horse and broke his arm. But the experience was worth it. It was a rush, and the rodeo bug bit him. He needed a place where he could work and get on as many bucking horses as possible. Someone recommended he talk to stock contractor Erv Korkow in Blunt, S.D., so he did. “I said I’d try it for a while, and I ended up staying for 30 years,” he joked.
For the first couple years, Erv wouldn’t let him get on bucking horses. He worked, making $75 a week, plus board, which was good money, better than he had made in the military.
Then he found out about the nightly rodeo held in Cody, Wyo., for six weeks during the summer. He quit work and went to Cody, where he met up with world champion saddle bronc rider Bill Smith and his nephews Jack Wipplinger and Tom Wipplinger from Red Lodge, Mont. Smith coached them in the finer points of riding saddle broncs, and Dick’s rodeo competition career began. He competed in Cody and area rodeos, becoming a member of the Rodeo Cowboys Association (the predecessor to the PRCA) in 1972 (his permit year) and often slipping off with his buddies to the Canada rodeos.
But every fall, he’d be back to the Korkow Ranch. At that time, Erv didn’t have any fall rodeos, but he had a trucking company, so Dick hauled cattle all winter. And every spring, after helping with the rodeo school Erv put on at the ranch, he’d be off to rodeo again.
Erv and his wife LaFola were like second parents to Dick. He “treated me good,” Dick said. “He treated me like one of his boys. He’d chew on you once in a while, but that happens to everybody. He was a good man.”
And Erv always took Dick back on the labor crew each fall. “I’d go back to the ranch, and Jim (Erv’s son) would tell him, ‘Dick’s back in the bunkhouse’ and I’d pick up where I left off.”
In the 1980’s, Dick started working as a pickup man. He was in Dallas, at a Steiner rodeo, on the labor list. Tommy and Bobby Steiner wanted to know if Dick would come to Austin, to work for them, and in Austin was where he first picked up.  The Steiners were bucking horses at the ranch when the pickup man didn’t show up. Would Dick pick up? He agreed to, even though he never had before.
That fall, at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, Erv talked Dick into returning to South Dakota the next year, to pick up for Korkow Rodeo Co.
As time went on, he purchased a semi-tractor and used Erv’s trailer to haul a load of bucking horses and bulls to rodeos, plus ride broncs and pick up, all at the same event. In addition to working for Korkow Rodeo, he also picked up for Jim and Steve Sutton.
Dick credits Jim Korkow with teaching him the finer points of picking up. “He was good,” Dick said of Jim. Picking up “is all about timing, being at the right place at the right time. By watching other people, I learned. And I had different people point out different things, which I appreciated.”
In 1986, he broke his arm in June, and his leg a month later. Lying around, the realization hit him: what would he do for finances if he was seriously hurt? “I realized I had to do something different.” He decided to go into the Naval Reserve, serving one weekend a month and two weeks a year.
Dick served until 2006. In 2002, he decided to quit as a pickup man. He knew he was to be deployed in 2003, to Iraq. He and forty others were sent to train in Italy for two weeks with the Marine Corps. After the training, the group was sent home, which disappointed Dick. “Gol dang, I wanted to go.”
Since his retirement in 2006, he enjoys his home in St. Onge, S.D. in the summers and in Phoenix in the winters. He has a team of Belgians that he uses to pull wagons in the parades for the rodeos in Deadwood and Belle Fourche, S.D.

In Vietnam, Dick was one of a four-man crew on the PBR river gun boats: patrol river boats. They were little gun boats, as Dick explains, 28 feet long, and ten feet wide, with a forward gunner, driver, an M60 gunner, and a 50 caliber gunner. The job of the PBR in Vietnam was to search and destroy. Dick was on many PBR patrols with the Navy SEALS, the Green Beret, and the Army, and two of those missions nearly killed him.
Twice his life was in peril on the patrol river boats. On June 21, 1968, the boat he was in was completely destroyed, killing two of the men. He and one of his original crew, plus two new members, were assigned a new PBR, and two days later, the new boat was damaged to where Dick got blown over the side of the boat. It was 3 am, so dark a person couldn’t see the jungle tree line. When he came to the water’s surface, another boat ran over him, causing serious injury. The secret to surviving was staying in the middle of the river; the enemy was on the beach. Dick treaded water for so long his legs cramped up. He was the only survivor of the four in that incident. He nearly lost his life, but he can joke about it now. “I drank half of that dirty old river. It took me all these years of drinking beer to get rid of it,” he laughed. Out of the four men who were part of Dick’s original boat crew, he was the only survivor.
For his bravery, he received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the Navy Commendation Medal, with Combat V and the Gold Star. At one time, his days in Vietnam troubled him at night. But the dreams have subsided. “The nightmares ain’t nearly as often as they used to be.”
Rodeo has provided him with a lifetime of recollections. “I got a saddle bag full of memories and friends that all of the money in the world can’t buy,” he said. He loved riding saddle broncs, and watching bucking horses. “When I got tapped out on one, it was like poetry in slow motion. You’re so engrained in what you’re doing, you don’t even hear the whistle. There’s nothing better than watching a good horse that bucks.”

Because of his high school ag teacher, Glen Bird began riding bulls.
The Weatherford, Texas man began his rodeo career at the behest of Mr. William T. Woody, ag teacher at Peaster (Texas) High School, a career that would end up with six International Pro Rodeo Association (IPRA) titles and the high respect of his fellow cowboys. As a child, Glen attended rodeos with his granddad, who loved them, especially the bull riding.
He rode calves on the family ranch then continued the sport when he was in high school.
Mr. Woody had competed as a bull rider at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, and he saw potential in his student. Because Glen couldn’t drive, Mr. Woody would enter him in the FFA rodeos held across the state and drive him there. And because many of the FFA rodeos hired professional stock contractors, the bulls were extra rank and the high school kids turned them out, not wanting to get on them. “Mr. Woody knew all them stock contractors,” Glen remembers, “and he’d tell them stock contractors, ‘Look, these bulls are turned out and this boy I brought with me will get on them.’” So Glen ended up getting on five or six bulls at each rodeo. He may not have got them rode, but he was willing to get on them.
He remembers one time at a rodeo in Gainesville, Texas, where Adrin Parker was the stock contractor. He had a bull, No. 36, that nobody wanted. Every performance, No. 36 was turned out and Glen got on him. “He slung me all over that arena. I was so beat up and bruised up by the time I got on the bull I had drawed, Mr. Woody kept ice on me all day.” Two years later, he got his revenge on No. 36; he rode him for a third place finish.
In 1964, after high school graduation, he hit the rodeo road. He was already competing on the weekends, but now he hit the trail hard. He had gotten his IPRA card a few years prior, and, along with Hal Pilgrim, went to rodeos everywhere. “We’d try to go to a rodeo every day,” he said. It wasn’t hard. With bull buckouts at Mansfield, Texas two nights a week and a rodeo on Saturday nights, and rodeos in Simonton every weekend, there was always somewhere to ride.
And Glen and his buddies didn’t limit themselves to Texas. It was common for them to be up at a rodeo on a Saturday afternoon in Texas or Oklahoma or Arkansas, then jump in the car and make a Sunday matinee performance in California. The car was full, too. By this time, Glen and friends Red Doffin (a bull rider) and Ronnie William (a bareback rider) were in the vehicle, along with Bernie Johnson, Glen’s brother Arnold Bird, and Hulen Missildine. “They would go anywhere I entered us,” Glen said. “I always had a full car, and we’d go non-stop.”
In his glory days, Glen and his buddies were competing in anywhere from 150 to 200 rodeos a year. “The thing about it is, we loved it,” he said. “If you can’t travel, you’re not going to ever rodeo. Every day, when we’d wake up, we’d more than likely be in another state, meeting new people. It was unbelievable.” And his riding was unbelievable, too. According to Ronnie Williams, Glen’s style was impeccable. “I think he was one of the greatest bull riders there ever was,” Ronnie said. “He had a perfect style and form, he rode so perfect, that he made it look effortless. And his percentage of winning first place was unbelievable. It seemed like every time he’d nod his head, he was winning first.”
In the early days of his rodeo, Glen rode bareback horses. He didn’t like to, but for a while, he did. And his friend Ronnie knew it, and occasionally set him up for a joke. “That dang Ronnie would enter me in the bareback riding, and I’d get there (to the rodeo) and find out I was entered. But he didn’t enter me in a whole bunch of them, because I was entering him in the bull riding, and he didn’t like that.”
Glen won the IPRA’s bull riding title four times: 1966-67-68 and 1970, and the all-around in 1968 and 1970. The International Finals Rodeo began in 1970, so prior to that, whoever had the most money won at the end of the year was the champion.
Ronnie won eight IPRA bareback titles, and thought his buddy was the best in the business. “I don’t think anybody ever rode with the style he rode with, and was dominant in the IPRA all those years. It was a privilege for me to get to rodeo with him.”
Another traveling partner, Red Doffin, thought the world of Glen. “He had lots and lots of class,” Red remembered. “You talk about a bull rider that looked pretty on bulls. He just turned his toes out and rode them with style, rode them perfect. That’s the way he rode.” Glen was hard to throw off, as well. “He had good form,” Red said, “and when they throwed him off, they throwed him off on the top of his head because he tried as hard as he could try.”

Glen never suffered from a lot of injuries. He broke a leg during his first – and only – semester of college, affixing a spur in the cast so he could continue to ride. He also broke a bone in his left hand, his riding hand that took six months to heal. The broken leg and possibly returning to riding bulls too soon has affected his walking today. That’s not being tough, he insisted, in riding with a cast, “all that was, was stupidity. If I had not have done that, I would be walking so much better today.”
In 1972, he got on the last bull he’d ever ride. His legs were bothering him so badly he took the locks out of his spurs and rode with loose rowels. “I couldn’t stand the pressure it was putting on my legs,” he said. “After a while, anything you do that you burn at it like that, it makes the longevity of it short. It finally caught up with me.”
By this time he had a wife, Judy, and two children, Jennifer (White) and Jason. He got a job with Miller Brewing Co. in Ft. Worth, working there for 33 years. He also started a Limousin cow herd, selling the bulls at the Texas Limousin Association’s annual sale for years. He started his herd from some heifers and a bull that his aunt and uncle had in Oklahoma. He ended up with a herd of 35 purebreds and did very well with the breeding program. Both of his kids showed the cattle, his daughter winning Limousin Heifer of the Year.
When he quit riding bulls, Glen had to quit going to rodeos, for fear he’d get the bug again and hit the road. “I didn’t watch a rodeo on TV for ten years or so,” he said. “I wasn’t going to be able to quit them if I kept around them.” Then one day his friend Sam Roberts called, asking if he’d watched a bull riding on TV. “I can’t, Sam,” he said. “I’ll want to get to riding again.” Sam shot that idea down. “Hell, you ain’t going to do that, you’re too old,” he said. “And I thought, by gosh, he’s right, and now I don’t miss one.”
Inducted into the Texas Rodeo Cowboys Hall of Fame in 2010, Glen remembers with great fondness his rodeo days. “I had more fun than the law allows. I thought I was a millionaire. I enjoyed every bit of it. I don’t regret any part of it,” he said. “If I ever got the chance to live it over again, I would.”
And Mr. Woody, the ag teacher? They still stay in touch, even though Glen nearly got kicked out of his class the first day of school. Glen walked into the classroom with his hat on, pants stuffed into his boots, and put his feet on the table. Mr. Woody jumped up with a two-by-four in his hands and said, “We’re going to find out who runs this class right now. You or me? I’m going to ask you to take your feet off the desk and your hat off.” “I looked at that two-by-four,” Glen chuckled, “and I sure didn’t want no part of that.”
Glen and Judy spend their time now “doing whatever we want to,” said Judy, who spent most of her years at home, working a couple different jobs along the way. “We’ve been married for 48 years and we have learned that it’s about being a companion to each other and doing for each other all the time. We go to church all the time and have a lot of friends to spend time with.” They also have two granddaughters, Skylar and Taylor.