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Buddy Cockrell got to do a wide variety of things throughout his life. The Texas-born cowboy competed in high school and college rodeo, played college and professional football, owned ranches in Australia and Brazil and a gold mine in Costa Rica. He was born in 1934 and raised by his mother, Alice Gray Cockrell, and maternal grandparents, O.H. and May Etta Ingrum east of Pampa, Texas, on a farm and ranch.
His granddad started him cowboying and working when he was six years old, and Buddy learned to rope from Perry Franks, a hired hand on the OK Ranch where they lived, a well-known Texas roper and Turtles Cowboy Association member.
Buddy learned to steer wrestle in an unusual way. His uncle had horned purebred Hereford cows, and there was a cattle trail on the place, not far from the house. On horseback, Buddy would run a Hereford down the fence line, diving off his horse and onto the cow. He wasn’t usually able to throw the cow, but it gave him the chance to learn how to plant his feet, slide and get an arm hold. One day, one of the cows’ horns broke, and his granddad asked how it happened. Buddy never said a word, and no one found out. And when he began steer wrestling the real way, with a hazer, “he said he never knew how easy it was,” his wife Geneva said.
Each morning, he and his older brother Lee would milk before school, get on the bus and ride twelve miles. They attended a one room school till they got to junior high, where Buddy’s height and size gave him an advantage in sports. He was a natural athlete, lettering in the shot put, basketball, and football, and playing defensive end and offensive tackle in football.
In 1953, the year he graduated, he played on the Pampa High School basketball team, which was state champs. He was the regional heavy weight Golden Glove boxing winner and was chosen to be on the National High School All American Football team. He was also competing in rodeos by then, match roping other cowboys and winning. Buddy sharpened his roping and steer tripping skills by gathering and branding calves and doctoring for screw worms.
The summer after high school graduation, he competed in the Texas High School Finals Rodeo and won the boys’ all-around saddle by placing in the calf roping and winning the steer wrestling. He competed in pro rodeos that summer, winning some and losing some. “I won more than I lost, or I couldn’t have kept going,” he said. “Money was tight at home and I needed all I could bank for college.”

Buddy was in the field when Pop Ivy, one of the Oklahoma Sooner football coaches, visited. “I was out on the tractor plowing late one evening when a man stopped by. He had come to recruit me and offered me a scholarship,” Cockrell said. “It was better than driving a tractor, so I agreed.”
He played two years at Oklahoma University, under the tutelage of Bud Wilkerson and as part of the team’s 47 game winning streak. He didn’t rodeo, as Wilkerson didn’t want him to. Then Hardin Simmons University’s coach Sammy Baugh came calling. He offered Buddy a football and rodeo scholarship, so he transferred, doing both sports at Hardin Simmons and earning a business degree with a minor in economics. He competed once at the College National Finals Rodeo.
After college, Buddy headed back to Pampa to work on the family farm. But football wasn’t over for him. Pop Ivy had moved on to coach with the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, and he called Buddy, asking him to play for them. Buddy drove to Canada and signed a one year contract. When he got home, he found out he had been selected by the Cleveland Browns in the twenty-eighth round of the draft. But he stuck with his word and spent a year playing ball in Canada.
The next year, he went to Cleveland to play for the Browns. But during a scrimmage before the season started, he was blindsided by one of his own players, injuring his right knee. It required surgery, and Buddy never played for the Browns. He worked hard to rehabilitate the knee.
By this time, Sammy Baugh, his college coach, was coaching the New York Titans. He called Buddy and wanted him to come to New York. Buddy spent three years with the Titans (they became the Jets in 1962). The Denver Broncos asked him to play, but by then his knees were bad and he quit football.
Buddy returned home to rodeo and farm. He roped calves and steer wrestled, often traveling with his brother Lee, who was a calf roper. He competed close to home and added steer roping to his repertoire. His best season was in 1977, when he was the PRCA season champion steer roper. There were three years (1976-1978) when two champions were awarded in each event. World championships were determined by the highest amount of money won at the NSFR. Season champs were awarded based on total season earnings. Buddy earned $11,386 that year; Guy Allen, ninth during the regular season, won the world title with earnings of $2,585 from the NFSR.
He and his brother never drank; they had seen the effects of alcohol on their father. But that didn’t stop Buddy from having a good time. Good friend and fellow steer roper Howard Haythorn remembers that Lee and Buddy would get one room with one bed while rodeoing. Lee would take care of horses, eat a good solid meal and go to bed. Buddy would be gone all night, having a good time and coming in when Lee was getting up. “Lee would get more sleep but I had more fun,” Buddy laughed.
Wherever Buddy went, fun and good times followed. He wasn’t scared of anything. His wife Geneva relates a tale of when he, Larry Nolan, Tom Henry, and Tuffy Thompson were headed to a steer roping in Nebraska. Their pickup died and there was no way to start it. Buddy said, “If I can get that big horse out of the trailer, I promise you I can pull this pickup and you can jump it.” Nobody believed him, but Buddy hooked his horse to the pickup, got it to move, and the pickup started.
That same trip, the four of them were at their destination, where they ate supper and checked into a hotel. Two women in the bar decided to follow them to the hotel. Buddy and Tuffy were upstairs in their hotel room, with Larry and Tom on the first floor. All of a sudden, they heard a bang and glass flying. The women had accidentally driven their car into the wall, at Larry and Tom’s room. Buddy said, “what’s going on?” and Tom’s reply was, “girls, if we’d have known you were coming, we’d have opened the door for you.”
After his football career, Buddy had several businesses. In 1971, he built a 25,000 head cattle feed lot east of Pampa, selling it seventeen years later. He and two other men built a 10,000 head hog operation outside Lefors, Texas, selling their hogs to Jimmy Dean’s processing plant in Plainview, Texas.
In 1980, one of Buddy’s biggest adventures began. He flew to Australia to buy carrier airplanes. While he was there, he looked up an old rodeo friend, Carey Crutcher. Crutcher convinced him to buy a ranch (called a station in Australia) and Buddy was in the cattle business Down Under. The Blina Station was 640,000 acres with approximately 12,000 head of cattle. It was 100 miles from the closest town, Derby, and Buddy stayed six months of the year, while his son, Dan worked at the ranch year round.

While he was in Australia, he attended and competed in rodeos, introducing team roping to the Australians, supplying timed event cattle for them, and winning an all-around saddle at his last rodeo in the country.
He loved working at the station. The cattle were wild, some of them never having seen humans, and they would catch the bulls by roping them, tying them to the massive trees in the outback, and winching the animal into trailers. Then they were hauled back and put with the herd in the corral. One of Buddy’s worst injuries came when roping a bull. The bulls had been mustered and hauled into the corral. When Buddy roped one, it took off over a feed trough, catching the rope around his leg and breaking it. The bone was sticking through the skin, when Dan, his son, put him in the back of the pickup and drove him to Derby. There, doctors wrapped it, readying it for a flight to Perth for surgery. Buddy insisted that it was wrapped too tightly, but the doctor didn’t listen. When he was in flight, he asked the attendant to loosen it, cutting off over half of it to relieve the pressure. “He’s had some wild wrecks,” his wife Geneva said.
Buddy’s business ventures didn’t end in Australia. He, along with partners, briefly owned a gold mine in Costa Rica and a ranch in Brazil.
He didn’t ever touch alcohol, but he loved his Coca-Cola. He kept a cooler of it in the back of his pickup, and often drank 42 oz. a day.
He was an excellent horseman, Howard said, and his daughter Amy was too. “She was a good hand.” He knew good horseflesh, his wife Geneva said. “He has a super, super eye for a good horse,” although he hasn’t ridden for three years.
Buddy and his first wife, Joyce Moyer, had three children: Mel, Dan and Amy. He met his second wife, Geneva, in 2000, and together they have five children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Amy and her husband Kyle Best ranch near Douglas, Ariz. Dan and his wife Drucy ranch at Higgins, Texas, and Mel lives at Amarillo. Geneva has two sons: Ty and his wife Kimberly Harris and Krece Harris, all of Decatur, Texas.
At age 83, Buddy has Myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease that weakens the skeletal muscles, causing difficulty in swallowing, walking and talking, and double vision. He got bucked off a horse three years ago, and since then, his health has declined.
But Buddy has always met life’s challenges with a smile, ready to tackle them. “He lives life to the fullest extent,” Geneva said. “He’s been very blessed, and he’s always thought he was bulletproof.” He doesn’t worry about things. “He’s led a very carefree life. I worry and get grayer and grayer, and he says, why worry about it? Things will work out if they’re supposed to.”
Howard Haythorn loves his old friend. “He’s a giant of a man, and not only in stature but in personality. He’s larger than life but he’s soft-spoken. He’s a lot of fun to be around.”
Buddy is a 2010 inductee into the Texas Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame and a 2014 Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame member.
He’s had a life that he would never have guessed, said his wife Geneva. “I don’t think he could have even dreamt up what would happen. He’s always been the kind, when he saw an opportunity that he was going to rise to the challenge.”
“I’ve been blessed,” Buddy said. Life “has been good to me.”

story by Gail Woerner

Joleen Hurst Steiner is a petite ‘tells it like she see’s it’ cowgirl who was born in Woodward, Oklahoma in 1952. She grew up in Fort Supply, Oklahoma, which she said was “in the middle of nowhere”. She had two sisters and a brother. Joleen was the third child. Her biggest desire as a youngster was to have a horse. Her sister felt the same way. Joleen remembered getting a pony when she was nine. Then her folks bought her and her sister full-sized horses. The girls both trained their own horses.
At first Joleen competed in Little Britches rodeos and Junior Rodeos. She entered the pole bending, breakaway calf roping, goat tying, and barrel racing events. She broke a breakaway calf roping record at the age of 13 at the Little Britches Finals Rodeo in Littleton, Colorado.
Joleen admits her horse was a good horse for barrel racing, but not National Finals quality. When her sister married she gave her horse, Hot Shot, to Joleen. In 1970, she joined the Girl’s Rodeo Association (GRA) and with her mother at her side she made all the Oklahoma rodeos, and ventured even farther to Colorado, Kansas, all the Texas rodeos, New Mexico, Arizona and even the West Coast. She loved the California rodeos because the weather was always so good.
Joleen admits when asked ‘what was the hardest part of barrel racing’ she thought nothing was hard. She was young, life was good and she had a good horse. She would read the GRA News to decide which rodeos to go to. She picked the rodeos that added the most money and that is the direction she and her mother headed.
When asked how much she practiced her answer was, “Never!” She laughingly admitted, “I just hung on to Hot Shot, and we were in the money a good deal of the time.” We know she worked harder at it than she admits, but she truly enjoyed every minute of it. She felt the rules in barrel racing were fair for everyone when she was competing.
As we discussed, the changes that have occurred since her era she immediately mentioned “No one complained about the ground in my era. Whether it was sandy, too hard, or whatever, we just dealt with it.” Joleen also said there are a lot more quality horses bred to barrel race today than she saw in her days in the arena.

Concerning the barrel racing horses, she feels that often trainers expect the horses they train to turn a barrel a certain way. “I feel they should allow the horses to decide how they choose to make the turn. The horse knows best what fits them.” She also said you can tell which horses love it as much as their rider – it shows.
In 1970, Joleen was having a good year and her dad told her if she won the barrel racing at the Cow Palace he would buy her a trailer with living quarters. That win qualified her for the National Finals Rodeo, in Oklahoma City, as one of the top fifteen barrel racers in the world. There were nine rounds of barrel racing and she won three second places and two first places. “If I didn’t knock over a barrel I placed,” she admitted and laughed. That first year she finished 7th for the year.
“When I hit the road in 1971, I was in heaven. My mom cooked wonderful meals, and we stayed on the rodeo grounds in my new gooseneck trailer. It wasn’t as common to stay on the rodeo grounds as it is today, but it was much easier, Hot Shot was with us, and it was fun.”
The following year, 1971, she qualified for the National Finals Rodeo again, finishing in third place in the world, and third in the Average. There were ten rounds of barrel racing and Joleen had three second places, and three third place wins, but this year something happened that changed her life forever. She met Bobby Steiner, a bull rider.
Her mother didn’t think much of bull riders. Mrs. Hurst was much more interested in Joleen finding a nice calf roper to marry. “Mom thought bull riders were lazy. All they had to do is bring their bull riding equipment in a bag to a rodeo. Mrs. Hurst felt a roper that had the responsibility of hauling his horse and keeping him sound would make a better husband for her.” Joleen was determined. She saw something in Bobby she hadn’t found before. He was very confident. They had their first date at Belton, Texas on the 4th of July. He picked her up in his big Oldsmobile 98 and she was impressed. She asked him if it was his dad’s car. She thought the car was way to fancy for a bull rider. After all, she was driving a little Ford pickup. Bobby informed her it was his car. Their first date was a drive-in movie in Temple where they saw “Bandolero” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.
After that they ran into each other at various rodeos and continued to date. The following year after the Houston rodeo Bobby asked Joleen to marry him. They married in June, 1972. Their family eventually expanded to three with the birth of Shane. Sid was born fourteen months later. Joleen had her hands full with two little boys, and a husband, so the barrel racing stopped.

The following year Joleen began to help Bobby with his bull riding career. She entered him in all the rodeos and helped him plan to get to all of them. She said, “You might call me Bobby’s navigator. I made sure his entry fees and turn out fines were paid and took care of the business end of the sport.” (This was all before PROCOM).” She traveled with him until the doctor told her, when she was 7 months pregnant, that she needed to stay at home. Bobby won the World Championship in Bull Riding in 1973, and was 2nd in the Average. He retired from bull riding shortly after that.
Bobby began helping his dad, Tommy, with the Steiner Rodeo Company at that time. The legacy of Steiner Rodeo Company began with Buck Steiner, Tommy’s dad running it with Tommy. Then Tommy and Bobby ran it together. Joleen carried the American flag and helped in many other ways. She helped Mildred Farris, the secretary for Steiner Rodeo Company, keep time. “When we had rodeos overlap, liked Belton and Pecos, I would secretary the smaller one,” explained Joleen. When they sold the rodeo company in 1982, Bobby and Joleen spent their time raising their sons and ranching.
The Steiner family has always been tremendously benevolent to many groups and totally supportive of rodeo and the rodeo family. Some of the innovative things started in rodeo was done by Steiner Rodeo Company, including the electric eye for timing the barrel races, and instead of having the barrel racing event next to last they had it as their third event in each performance.
Son Sid became a steer wrestler and went to the National Finals in 2000. In 2001, he was absent from those top fifteen in steer wrestling. But in 2002 he came back with a vengeance and won the Steer Wresting Championship and the Average. He followed in his dad’s footsteps and retired from steer wrestling shortly after winning the World title. This family is totally family-first and admit they don’t like being away from home. Son, Shane, is a musician and although he has played in numerous venues he enjoys his life performing at Steiner Ranch Steakhouse down the road from his home. Now the grandchildren are making their marks in bareback riding, barrel racing and wake-boarding sports.
When doing this interview with Joleen, Bobby stuck his head in, and made this statement, “I may not have been the best bull rider, but I sure got the best looking barrel racer!”
By the way, Joleen’s mom became a major fan of Professional Bullriders and knew all the cowboys competing as well as the bulls. I guess she decided bull riders weren’t so bad, after all.

Deep in Scott Tucker’s soul there were seeds of rodeo that drove the Jacksonville, Florida boy towards his destiny, and roots were developed that have entwined family, rodeo, and future generations of cowboys and cowgirls forever. Scott was born in 1946, an only child to his parents, Lucille and Holmes Tucker, but being a cowboy was more in his DNA than it was in his family upbringing. His dad graduated in 1939, from Yale University where he attended on a full-ride boxing and football scholarship; and he went on to work for General Foods, before settling in the automobile business. Although his parents were far more interested in life in the city, Scott was drawn to the Pecan Park horse racing track, where he started jockeying horses when he was just 12-years old. Only destiny knew then, that he was starting down a path that would lead him to become an integral part of one of the most notable rodeo families in North Carolina.
Scott rode racehorses with Sonny Burris on the brush tracks, helping to start colts and train them to use the starting gates until his weight exceeded the 135-pound maximum allowed. Scott jockeyed the legendary Quarter Horse, Go Dick Go, in brush track races before the horse went on to make history as the winner of the first All American Futurity in 1966. Sonny was a boxer and jockey, that also rode bareback and saddlebronc horses; and he helped 12-year old Scott, step onto his first bareback horse at a Callahan, Florida rodeo. Scott did try following his dad’s path in life, and played football his freshman year of high school, but frustrated that the football schedule conflicted too much with his rodeos, he gave it up.
Once Scott had his driver’s license, it was only the rodeo road on Scott’s mind. Scott started out entering bareback riding at open rodeos, before getting on bulls, which quickly became his favorite event. In 1962, Scott attended a Jim Shoulders bull riding school and the memory of staying atop the legendary bull “Tornado,” is forever etched in his memory. In 1963, he got his first membership card for the IRA, known as the Interstate Rodeo Association at that time. Scott started working as a rodeo clown, “Scooter,” when he was 15-years old, and quickly became enthralled with the new job he often performed between riding in his events. The challenge of outmaneuvering the bulls, was as exciting as staying on top of them.

Although Scott’s parents were very proud of Scott’s success, they were far too nervous to come watch their fearless cowboy at the rodeos, so Scott often traveled solo or with rodeo friends that became his rodeo family. At 16-years old, Scott was cruising the interstates between rodeos, in a 1958 four-door Oldsmobile, decked with its giant tailfins, pulling a 13-foot travel trailer to sleep in. Scott thinks that rig is what got 14-year old Vicki Kidd’s attention when they met at the Silver Springs rodeo in Maryland. Meeting Vicki would prove to further cement the path of Scott’s life. Vicki Kidd was a barrel racer, and daughter of C.W. and Helen Kidd of Charlotte, North Carolina. The Kidd family was instrumental in bringing rodeo to North Carolina in the mid-50’s, after C.W. had fallen in love with the sport while he was stationed in Florida, in the Air Force. The Kidd’s started the Rockin’ K Ranch, which was a family commune of sorts, raising future cowboys and cowgirls around a central rodeo arena, and has hosted rodeos for over 60 years now. Not only did Vicki fall for the handsome, blue-eyed cowboy, but her parents did as well, taking the 16-year old in and treating him as their own.
Scott would travel to rodeos, staying on the road most of the summer, returning to Florida to complete the school year. In 1963, the summer before his senior year, he and Lyle Wiggins made it up to Frontier Town in upstate New York, in the heart of the Adirondacks. “Frontier Town was an old western town theme park that put on three rodeos per day. I got a job there as a stagecoach driver, and later became the arena director for the rodeos.” The rodeos would highlight one or two competitors in each event, plus feature a trick rider, and there are many PRCA cowboys that got their start there. “It was the best place a young person could rodeo, besides the rodeo shows each day, there were a lot of jackpots within about 30-miles of Frontier Town. I was loving it up there, and making about $500 to $600 per week, which was a lot of money back then.”
Scott graduated from high school in 1964, the year that he earned his first SRA All-Around Champion Cowboy title. He went on to win the title again in 1965, 1968, 1970, 1971 and 1973. When he left home for the summer in 1964, the plan was for him to PRCA, and SRA rodeo through the summer, before heading west to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he had a full-ride scholarship to New Mexico State University; but seeing Vicki Kidd again that summer, changed his college plans completely. “I didn’t want to go to New Mexico as planned, I called my dad and told him I wasn’t going. He wasn’t very happy about me giving up the scholarship, but I told him if he’d pay my tuition at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, that I’d cover everything else.” Scott graduated from NCSU in 1966, with a degree in agriculture and livestock management, rooming with Vicki’s brother, Buddy, while they attended school there. “Buddy was such a fine person, always willing to help anyone. He always had good horses, and he would always let anyone that needed a better horse at a rodeo, ride them.”
In 1966, after Scott left NCSU, and just three days after Vicki graduated from high school, the two soulmates were married, starting a union that would last for over 50 years, before Vicki’s passing on October 12, 2016. Scott also joined the Air National Guard, in 1966, serving for 6 years in the engine shop, as an airplane mechanic.

The eastern cowboy couple traveled the roads of the rodeo circuit, chasing dreams while being blessed with new friends across the country. Vicki had a passion for horses, barrel racing, and supporting her roughstock riding husband. Vicki was the 1968 SRA Champion Barrel Racer and was crowned as the very 1st SRA All-Around Champion cowgirl in 1971, winning it again in 1974. Scott was doing quite well as a bull rider in the PRCA, ranking #7 in the world standings in June of 1970, but responsibility was beginning to tug on the roaming cowboy, so the couple continued to rodeo but made more of a permanent camp in Charlotte as they laid a foundation for their family. Scott had traded a good horse for some asphalt equipment, the beginnings of his paving business, Scott Tucker Paving and Grading, which he still operates. Scott and Vicki had their first child, daughter Keri, in 1967, and their son Jason was born in 1971. Also, in 1971, Scott dominated in the Coastal Rodeo Association, winning the All-Around Champion Cowboy title. Although Scott continued to find many successes in rodeo arenas across the east, looking back he wishes he would have continued his PRCA run to finish the 1970 season, thinking about the chance he may have had at that world champion gold buckle.
Scott and Vicki continued to rodeo as they raised a new generation on the Rockin’ K, alongside Vicki’s brothers, Buddy and Jerry, and their budding families. The arena was often filled with champions and celebrities passing through while on their own rodeo circuit travels, and the art of rodeo was being practiced there on a daily basis. Cowboys like Red Duffin, who traveled with groups of cowboys and good horses, often practiced when he came through, and helped anyone interested in improving their steer wrestling skills. Scott served as the president of the SRA in 1979 and 1980 and was the vice-president for six years. Scott was also on the board of directors of the North American Rodeo Commission. Scott was responsible for producing hundreds of rodeos at arenas all over the east, and was the captain of the Southern Rebels, a rodeo team that competed at rodeos such as the Calgary Stampede. In 1983, Scott decided to focus more on the next generation of rodeo stars and he and Vicki stepped into the supportive role for their kids’ and grandkids’ rodeo dreams. Scott was the president of the NCHSRA in 1987 and 1988. Scott has been a pillar in the rodeo community, often stepping up to judge rodeos when needed, turned to when questions arise, and encouraging young rodeo athletes wherever he goes.
The legacy that has continued from Scott and Vicki Tucker has went on to include their children, grandchildren, as well as many uncles, aunts and cousins that all participate in rodeo competition or production. Inevitably, the passion that Scott felt in his heart for rodeo so many years ago, will burn inside the many that will follow in his footsteps for years to come.