Category: Rodeo LIFE Cover Feature

Dean Oliver attended his first rodeo when he was 15 years old. It may have been the heady feeling of stealing into the Snake River Stampede without a ticket, but as Dean watched a tie-down roper win $300 in a single run, he decided that rodeo was the life for him. Little did he know that he would become a record holder at that very rodeo, winning the tie-down roping ten times, and that a drawing of him would be featured on the Snake River Stampede’s rodeo poster 70 years later, heralding him an 11 time world champion.
Born in 1929 to Verne and Vesper Oliver in Dodge City, Kan., Dean was the fifth of seven children. Each child was born in a different state, but all of Dean’s childhood memories reside in Idaho. His family moved to the Gem State in the late 1930s. Dean’s father was a private pilot, and he sold automobile and airplane parts and accessories, while also managing the Nampa (Idaho) Airport. In February of 1940, Verne and his friend Guy Givens were contracted by a farmer to hunt coyotes. The men did so from Verne’s airplane, with Guy shooting the predators from an open door. During one of their close passes to the ground, Verne’s plane crashed into the side of a snow-covered mountain, killing both men.
Following the tragic accident, the Oliver family worked even harder to survive in a country just recovering from the Great Depression. Dean began working at dairy farms by his early teens. Sitting in a classroom didn’t suit the restless boy, and he dropped out of ninth grade, never to darken a school doorway again. That same year, he and his older brother snuck into the Snake River Stampede rodeo in Nampa. “When the rodeo came around, I really liked the cowboys’ western gear, and their horses and cars and trailers,” says Dean. “It looked like a fun way of life!”
Inspired, Dean began his rodeo quest that same year, purchasing his first horse for $50 dollars and riding it bareback with just a rope around its nose to guide it. He began roping fence posts and hay bales, and even the calves at the dairy farm in the cover of night. While Dean was persistent about his roping, he was equally persistent in pursuing Martha Reisenstein, the daughter of one of the farmers he worked for. They were married in 1950, the year that would mark the beginning of Dean’s rodeo competition. He purchased another horse – this one green – for $400, and spent another $10 on a roping calf, which Martha would hold until Dean gave a nod.
The self-taught cowboy made his debut at several local amateur rodeos in Idaho and soon won his first tie-down roping at the rodeo in Kuna. The taste of success was so satisfying that Dean told his boss at the dairy farm he might quit and rodeo instead. “What makes you think you’re a star? You couldn’t win anything!” The man replied hotly. Dean quit his job that summer and rodeoed until he ran out of money, returning to work in the fields until he could pay his entry fees.
In December of 1950, Dean and Martha’s first child, Sheryl, was born. Her birth kept Dean from being drafted into the Korean War, changing him from a I-A (available for service) to a III-A (deferred because of dependents). After running into questionable rules at some amateur rodeos, Dean decided to join the Rodeo Cowboys Association in 1952. He went to his first professional rodeo in Jerome, Idaho, then leaped to Albuquerque, N.M., where the top professional ropers were competing. He was afoot, no longer trying to train a rope horse, but instead borrowing horses and paying the owners a percentage of his winnings. “There were 80 ropers, and not one of them would mount me, until finally a guy put me on a great, big tall horse,” Dean recalls. He won second in Albuquerque, then went to Denver’s new coliseum the following week, where he placed second in the average. He felt so optimistic with $1,700 in winnings that he purchased a gelding named Buck. He spent $1,750 on the buckskin with a knot on its knee, anxious to find a good rope horse. Dean made a makeshift trailer in the bed of his pickup for Buck and went home with an empty wallet.
After working through the winter feeding cattle, Dean had enough money to rodeo again in May. He and Buck won several rodeos that summer, yet Dean still lacked an edge in his competition that could only come with practice. The winter of 1953-1954, Dean lived with tie-down roper Dan Taylor in Doole, Texas, and the Idaho cowboy finished third in the RCA standings at the end of 1954 with roughly $11,000. Dean stayed with another roper in Oklahoma the following winter, and despite dismounting on the left to tie calves, he still had the fastest time, finishing the 1955 rodeo season with $19,963 and a glistening gold buckle reading World Champion Calf Roper.
His professional rodeo career soared out of the chutes, and Dean was rodeoing 11 months out of the year, often putting 80,000 miles on his station wagon each season. He competed in 70 to 80 rodeos a year, winning every professional rodeo he went to over the course of his career. Dean competed in the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959 on a horse named Mickey, whom he’d searched long and hard for after retiring Buck. Mickey and Dean won five world championships in a row from 1960-1964, and Dean also won three all-around world championships from 1963-1965. He had started steer wrestling and was just as talented in the event as tie-down roping with his 6’3″, 200 pound frame. But after breaking his leg at Madison Square Garden during the event, Dean feared further injuries and kept tie-down roping as his main focus, eventually dismounting on the right when he was in his 40s for faster time.
Not only did Dean’s achievements catch the eyes of rodeo fans nationwide, but also magazines and other publications. Time magazine, People magazine, Sports Illustrated, Saturday Evening Post, and western publications all wanted an interview with the rags-to-riches cowboy. Dean even modeled jeans for Wrangler. He and Martha purchased a ranch in Boise, Idaho, with 80 acres and calves aplenty for roping. While he traveled the length and width of the United States, one of Dean’s favorite rodeos remained the Snake River Stampede. He won his hometown rodeo ten times in the tie-down roping, a record yet to be broken, while also winning the local Caldwell Night Rodeo eight times. He secured his eighth and final world title at the NFR in 1969 at the age of 38, with record earnings of $38,118 for the most money won in a single event in one year. That record has since been broken, but Dean’s eight world tie-down roping championships still sets the bar.
Dean continued to rodeo into his 40s, but sorely missed his growing family of five daughters, Sheryl, DeAnn, Nikki, and twins Kelli and Karla. Martha had travelled with him as often as she could, but that didn’t make up for life at home. Yet Dean’s involvement in rodeo was hardly over. He served on the PRCA’s board of directors in 1979 and was inducted into seven halls of fame, including the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. Texas sculptor Edd Hayes even included a bronze statue of Dean tie-down roping in a series of bronzes he called “Legends of Rodeo.”Dean also pursued his hobby of golfing, which he’d started in the 1950s, setting course records around the Treasure Valley and winning several tournaments.
Today, Dean and Martha’s home sits just off a farm road in Greenleaf, Idaho. Dean raises calves for beef cattle, but finds himself busiest during the Snake River Stampede rodeo in July, where he grooms the arena, and contracts the sheep and calves for the mutton bustin’ and the calf scramble. He has been serving on the rodeo’s board of directors since 1990, and dons his media credentials every December to work as a grip for a television crew covering the WNFR.
Dean’s story is marked with extraordinary grit and perseverance, but the rodeo legend says humbly, “I never did want to quit rodeo. When I started, I didn’t know I’d be any good. I was lucky enough that I had the ability, and I stuck with it.”

Story also available in our February 2015 issue.

Peggy (Green) Fifer was born in the small town of Meeker, Okla., where she was raised with two sisters by a single mother. She had just turned 14, when her mother died of cancer, leaving her and her two sisters in foster care for eight months. “My grandmother came and raised us in a house that we were able to purchase with insurance money,” said Peggy, who lives in Eufaula, Okla., 45 miles from her childhood home.
She met her first horse when she was four and a photographer came by with a Shetland pony to take pictures of the girls. Her horse experiences ended for several years, until she met and married a rodeo man. After graduating high school, Peggy went to business school in Tulsa, Okla., where she first met Earl Fifer. “He was real cute and had a good sense of humor,” she recalled. “I kinda fell for him.” They married and Peggy got her first introduction into the rodeo world. “On weekends they would have a rodeo at the city park. Earl would go over there and ride horses and bulls and listen to Jim Shoulders give ideas on how to ride,” she said. Peggy and Earl had two daughters, Wauthena and Earlene. “Wauthena would rather take dancing lessons than rodeo, so she stayed with her grandmother most of the time. Earlene started riding horses at the age of two. In July of every year, we would go to Pawhuska to the International Calvacade Rodeo. In 1967, Earlene competed in the queen contest and won. Wauthena rode in all girl rodeos when she was in high school. She rode Bareback Horses and bulls. She placed with her horses but that lasted one year. Earlene started the all girl rodeos too and after one bull, decided that wasn’t for her, so she continued to stay with training horses and running barrels. She ran barrels for about 5 years after graduation from high school. Earl started rodeoing more and Peggy would go with him, sometimes waiting until the wee hours of morning for him to compete.
Peggy got tired of waiting, so she volunteered to help out and that was her start as a rodeo secretary. “We would go to rodeos where we had to set up pens and the announcer stand was a flat bed truck. I would make a bed below that and put the girls there so I didn’t have to worry about them. Later, Earl was placing consistently so we traveled more and I would fry two chickens, butter a loaf of bread, make a chocolate cake, buy a bag of chips and away we would go to meet whoever was competing that night where we would have pot luck and visit before the rodeo. Lots of times it was before you  had to call in, they just entered when they wanted to.”

Full story available in the January 2015 issue.

Deb Copenhaver grew up in a ranch family in Wilbur, Wash. “I worked for a lot of different ranches riding colts,” said the 89-year-old World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider. Born January 21, 1925, Deb is considered one of the greatest bronc riders to come out of the Pacific Northwest He lived through the Depression and at 17, enlisted in the Navy during World War II. “I was in the construction battalion of the Navy, the Seabees. I had always liked construction work as a kid, so that was my reason for joining the Seabees. It was a branch of the Navy put together during WWII – the Seabees kid the Marines that they came in on the road the Seabees built.” Deb spent two years in North Africa running a bull dozer for $70 a month.
“When I got out, I made up my mind I was going to rodeo and I started going to a few rodeos close to home.” The first year, 1946, he went to Calgary and won day money in the bull riding. “I was riding broncs and barebacks, but I got a little sore and kept to bronc riding. I had a good beginning -God gave me the ability to win right off the bat. I was fortunate to win Calgary three times, New York (Madison Square Garden) twice; Denver, Ft. Worth, Houston, Phoenix, Pendleton, Cheyenne, and Salinas.”
In the 1950s, Deb teamed up with Paul Templeton, and Bill Linderman and went airborne in Paul’s 180 Cessna. “We were all over the country for rodeo—Calgary, Elko, Omaha, Kalispell, Butte. We did them all.” Dedication paid off and Deb came in second in the world in 1951, ’53, and ‘54 to his good friend, South Dakota roughstock rider, Casey Tibbs. He won it the next two years.
Deb was elected to the RCA Board of Directors in 1958. “While on that Board I had a vote in having the first National Finals Rodeo. It was held in Dallas, Texas, in 1959.”
He took his earnings from rodeo and invested in land near Creston, Wash., where he bred and raised quality quarter horses and operated Deb’s Cafe in town. “This little restaurant had belonged to my dad and was in the town that I was born in,” said Deb, who had made the last ride of his career in Pendleton in 1974 and was looking for a source of income for his family. “At that time it was a small restaurant and gas station. We bought a big building, 40 x 80, and moved it across the road and tied it into the existing building and had enough floor space for nice consequences.” The decision paid off; Deb and Cheryl built the restaurant into the heyday of Deb’s Cafe, decorated in true western style, and his ‘Steak Nights” were a hit with the town’s people as well as the country bands that he’d bring in to play on Saturday nights. Hank Thompson, Bonnie Guitar, and Earnest Tubb, and other country music greats all played at “Deb’s”.
Cheryl was not as excited about the purchase of the restaurant. “It was open 7 days a week from 5 am until the last dog went home. We did that for 16 years and raised three kids in the midst of it.” Deb’s daughter Debra is a former Miss Rodeo Washington and a respected bronze sculptor (see Art of Rodeo, page 42). His son Jeff was ’75 World Champion Calf Roper and founding  pastor of the store of the New Frontier Cowboy Church in Texas (see Christian Corner, page 7). Deb is proud of his boys Matt and Guy, who are in the construction business, and his daughter Kelly, who is a Florida businesswoman and mom to three.
It was Jeff that led Deb and Cheryl to the Lord in 1979. It wasn’t long after that they sold the restaurant. “If we are going to serve God, we are not going to serve booze,” Deb had said. “And that was the end of the restaurant. In two months time we had it sold, so our lives went on – we run cattle and quarter horses. If you are doing something that is not in God’s good will, if you pray about it, He will take you out of it.” After that, Deb and Cheryl sold the restaurant and settled into raising quarter horses and spreading the Gospel. “The most important thing that I could add is our Love for God – that’s more important now than anything you might write about us.”
Today, Deb and Cheryl Copenhaver keep busy with their quarter horses, and Deb spends time in the log chapel he built down the road from his house.  Deb says proudly. “I want to be remembered for serving
the Lord.”
 

Story also available in the December 2014 issue.

In 1954, Olin Young started his professional rodeo career at Pecos, Texas.  From there, the young cowboy competed in, and placed in all the major and small town rodeos of the time, vying for a chance at the World Title, a dream he would achieve many times in the coming years. In fact, the cowboy was so dedicated to his career, that in the early 1960’s, Young designed his own roping saddle, that was built by Windy Ryon. Later, Ryon manufactured and sold “The Olin Young Roper” at his store, Ryon’s Saddle Shop & Western Store in Ft. Worth.
Of course, winning multiple world titles requires much travel. Some memories of traveling are not always good ones, like the night he and a crew of fellow ropers were traveling from Salinas, California in separate vehicles. Glen Franklin, and Herschel Romine had new cars. Olin and Jake Bogard were in an older 1957 Chevrolet pulling a horse trailer.  Coming out of Salinas Olin was driving, vividly recalling the horrific traffic. He witnessed a vehicle almost hitting Glen. Because of it, Olin had to swerve hitting cement causing two tires on the trailer to blow out.
“That was pretty scary,” Young admits.
According to Young, during his travels, following a long day on the road, he would try to locate rodeo grounds to spend the night. He carried with him as part of his gear, an army cot so he could sleep near his horses. Of course, this wasn’t the case when his wife, Letha, traveled with him. Hotels/motels were not as commonplace as they are today, and according to Letha, there were no accommodations at all in Burwell Nebraska, Sidney Iowa, and Cheyenne Wyoming.  However, local residents would open their homes to cowboys, and their wives, if traveling with them.   As far as restaurants go, not only did Sidney, Iowa not have a motel, the town didn’t have a restaurant. The ladies from the local Baptist Church would feed the cowboys in the basement of their church.
Young didn’t always travel by vehicle, but sometimes flew to rodeos. Flying, however, didn’t come without it’s share of excitement.  Once, six cowboys decided to ride in a small plane to quickly get to another rodeo. Although six were aboard, the plane was only rated to hold five passengers.  Leaving Salinas, California headed to Nampa, Idaho, the passengers were Shawn Davis, John W. Jones (a steer wrestler), Barry Burk, Jim Kenney, the pilot, Harley May, and Young. Jones was riding in the front of the plane, and announced to the passengers ‘we got a problem.’ The hydraulic light and the landing gear came on indicating a possible malfunction.  Obviously relaying the message from the pilot, Jones announced they would have to land in the dirt beside a track. He instructed the group to ‘get out’ when the plane slowed down enough to do so. Kenney ‘abandoned ship’ before the plane even stopped.

Full story available in November 1, 2014 issue.