May 18, 2023
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…
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April 21, 2023
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…
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March 24, 2023
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…
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February 28, 2023
[ “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…
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November 17, 2022
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…
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October 20, 2022
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…
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September 23, 2022
A cloud of dark, billowing dust is one of Willard “Bill” Phillips’ earliest memories. Towering several thousand feet, the cloud enveloped Bill and his three siblings while they were playing in the yard on the family ranch 7 miles north of Brownell, Kansas. That day went down in the history…
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August 18, 2022
When his grandfather gave him a dollar bill to buy tickets at ten cents each for the pony rides at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, Pete Leibold was in heaven. From that first introduction to horses, Pete’s life-long passion for rodeo began. Born in 1949, he was raised by his grandfather,…
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July 21, 2022
Story by Dan Ariaz It’s a marvel a career in fighting bulls would lead to a career in fighting the most dangerous insect on earth. The feared mosquito infects hundreds of millions of humans worldwide and kills millions a year. When the bucking chute opened, a door to save millions…
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June 23, 2022
Roland ‘Butch’ Tirelli was born January 14, 1941 in the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City to Rachel Lopez and Frank Tirelli. Butch grew up in Brooklyn. Although his father was not in his daily life, he did have an ‘off and on’ relationship with him. Butch’s mother married a…
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May 23, 2022
"There’s just something about getting on one of those horses and having them do the best he can, and you yourself do well.” Good horses, whether they are saddle broncs, roping horses or cutters, are what make Don Lee Smith’s world go round. The Texas native spent the first part…
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April 25, 2022
Because of her grandfather, Dallas Hunt George began a lifelong love of horses, rodeo and rodeo queening. Born in Lincoln, Neb. in 1938, the now-Arizona resident served as the first Miss Rodeo Nebraska in 1956 and then as the 1957 Miss Rodeo America, at age eighteen. But eight years prior,…
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