Springdale man rides in 56th rodeo parade today

Lonnie Horn with his Missouri Foxtrot, Blue, stops Monday outside his home in Springdale. Horn has ridden in the Rodeo of the Ozarks parade and Rodeo of the Ozarks grand entry for 55 years.
Lonnie Horn with his Missouri Foxtrot, Blue, stops Monday outside his home in Springdale. Horn has ridden in the Rodeo of the Ozarks parade and Rodeo of the Ozarks grand entry for 55 years.

This ain't Lonnie Horn's first rodeo. The Springdale man will point his horse west today and ride along Emma Avenue in his 56th rodeo parade.

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Courtesy Photo

The Sonora Trail Blazers gather shortly after the club’s founding. Since the early 1980s, family and friends of Barbara and Lonnie Horn of Springdale have gathered for their annual rides in the Rodeo of the Ozarks rodeo parades.

Horn rode his first horse, Rocky, in the parade and grand entry in 1960. The next year, the 13-year-old used new tack he bought with money earned from picking peaches for 50 cents an hour. He tied the horse to the fence marking the boundary between the sale barn and rodeo grounds, so he could watch the Rodeo of the Ozarks competition after the grand entry.

72nd Rodeo of the Ozarks

• Parade: 3 p.m. today, downtown Emma Avenue in Springdale.

• Rodeo: 7:30 p.m. tonight through Saturday night, Parsons Stadium at 1423 E. Emma Ave. in Springdale.

• Parade: 10 a.m. Saturday, downtown Emma Avenue in Springdale.

• Fireworks: After the rodeo performance Saturday night.

Information: rodeooftheozarks.org, 877-927-6336

Horn and Rocky returned home afterward.

"It took me 30 minutes," he said. "And the horse knew every step."

He'd ride the horse at a walk on the highway (now U.S. 412), then slow down to cool him off on Habberton Road.

"And I never saw a car," Horn said. "When I got old enough to drive, I hauled him to town in back of dad's '64 Chevy pickup." Literally loading the horse into the pickup's bed.

This year, a gray horse named Blue will ride to town in a proper horse trailer. Horn had ridden only three horses over his 55 years in the parades before the death of his 20-year-old Tennessee walker, Sonny, in December.

Blue was grazing on a recent spring day in Horn's front yard where his great-grandparents homesteaded in 1903. Horn proudly sported the red Western shirt of the Sonora Trail Blazers, a riding club he and his family started for the parades.

Tradition in Springdale offers that, after the rodeo officials and personnel, queens, floats, wagon train riders and riding clubs make their way up the street, anyone who wants may bring their horses and join the parade. That's what the Horns did in the early 1980s, but their children were young.

Horn's wife, Barbara, recalled her son Raymond and niece Becky were about 8.

"We rode with young children, and the other riders tried to run over the kids," Barbara Horn said. "We wanted to ride with a riding club for more protection."

About 12 friends and families came together as the Trail Blazers. The group has been named the "best-dressed riding club" in the parade many times.

"I can't tell you how many trophies we've got," Lonnie Horn said.

The club wore matching blue denim shirts in the early days, but they couldn't find shirts small enough for the children, Barbara Horn remembered. So Icie Stults of Springdale made them and also made the club a flag. "Because we couldn't afford to have one made," she said. "And we handed down those denim shirts to other kids."

Barbara Horn first rode in the parade in about 1967, before she and Lonnie were married. Both have battled cancer and other health problems, but neither has missed a rodeo.

Barbara Horn said about 15 years ago she underwent treatment for ovarian cancer (which was discovered because of an accident with a horse at the rodeo) alongside the late Martha Harp, wife of the late Don Harp, a longtime rodeo director.

"I finished chemo in May," she said, "and Don Harp said he knew I wouldn't be (at the rodeo) that year. I told him I was going to be there."

She led her horse around the post set by Harp in the grand entry that July 1, and he tipped his hat to her.

"That was a compliment of respect," she said. "And lots of people saw it and asked me about it."

The rodeo board named the Horns parade marshals in 2011, and they led the procession.

"It was quite an honor after all the years I've rode in it and loved it," Lonnie Horn said.

He recalled a boy he grew up with named Vernon Douthit.

"He always stood at the First State Bank (now Bank of America building), and he always waved. But the year we were grand marshals, he walked over and shook my hand. He's not there any more. He died that year," Lonnie Horn recalled.

Both Horns drove Springdale school buses for about 20 years, out of Southwest Junior High.

"We know so many people," Barbara Horn said. "I just enjoy seeing people as we go down the street."

"I really enjoy it," Lonnie Horn concluded. "It's something that happens every year, and as long as I'm able to walk and be there, I'll be there."

NW News on 06/22/2016

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