Madison County man marks 73 years of rodeo in Springdale

SPRINGDALE -- Frank Fitch has seen a lot of rodeos -- most of them from the same seat.

Fitch attends the annual Rodeo of the Ozarks every year. Friday night's performance marked his 73rd. The rodeo at Parsons Stadium closes tonight with a fireworks display 20 minutes after the competition ends.

Fitch usually chooses a seat near the top of the south end of the wooden, east-side bleachers. "When the sun goes down, we usually get a southeast wind blowing," he said. "It's easier to catch at the top."

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This year Fitch and his family sat fairly low in Section N because, at age 83, he has trouble climbing to the top.

"That shows great dedication and true love for the sport," said Sach Oliver, a member of the Rodeo of the Ozarks Board of Directors. "Fans like that are the backbone of why the rodeo continues after 73 years."

Today's Rodeo of the Ozarks looks quite different than it did in 1945, Fitch said. The livestock was held in the sale barn owned by rodeo founders Thurman "Shorty" Parsons and Dempsy Letsch on East Emma Avenue. The pens used to showcase animals at auction were called into service as roping pens. "And they built some bucking chutes for the horses," Fitch recalled.

That first rodeo was a daytime affair on July 3-4.

"During that first rodeo in 1945, the ropers were men with quite a bit of age," Fitch recalled. "And the bronc riders were mostly teenage boys."

The rest were fighting in World War II, he said, but competed in 1946 when they returned.

Fitch recalled rodeo legends Jim Shoulders and Casey Tibbs, who competed in Springdale during the 1950s, and also cowboys who were his neighbors in the Hindsville area: Jack Fullerton, Jim Fullerton, Henry Will, Bob Frost and Virgil McCoy.

Fitch remembers Howard Seward of Hindsville roping calves when the cowboy was in his 30s. And he remembers another local calf roper, Wayne Byrd, earning $250 to $300 in one night. The winner of this year's tie-down roping competition -- today's version of calf roping -- will earn $4,607 for his one-night performance, according to Rodeo of the Ozarks' rodeo secretary Shelly Hall.

Fitch enjoyed watching Bunky Boger of Springdale put his trained buffalo and Brahma bull through their tricks as the rodeo's specialty act.

"And the Clark brothers -- Gene and Bobby -- they were the clowns, and they had this old Model A. That thing would rare up and go flying across the rodeo arena, with its front end up in the air. Then, all of the sudden, it would come down like that," he said, slamming his hands on the kitchen table.

Fitch lives today on top of a mountain near the Buckeye community in Madison County. His father bought the land when he moved the family from Kansas when Fitch was 14.

"Dad was having a hard time breathing during the Dust Bowl," Fitch recalled. "The doctor said he needed to move to a cooler climate."

The elder Fitch settled his family in Madison County. "He said he could tell by the way the country was built, that this would be the most prosperous part of Arkansas," Frank Fitch said.

Living in a rural area in the 1940s seemed kind of isolated, and word from the outside world only trickled in, Fitch continued. The family had to walk to Huntsville to catch a bus to Fayetteville, and it traveled over dirt roads until it hit the college town. "You had to go when the bus was ready to go," Fitch said. On one of those trips to town, Fitch's mother, Eva Davidson Fitch, saw a sign with cowboys advertising the fledgling rodeo.

"We've been going ever since," Fitch said. The tradition continued with his children and grandchildren.

"My mom was always partial to cowboys," Fitch said. "She liked the rodeo. Bronc riders were her favorite."

Fitch's father did a little rodeoing in his younger days, and the cowboys who worked the Fitch farm would have their own competitions from time to time.

Usually, the family watched just the daily rodeo performance, counting the grand entry as their parade.

"I'm the 'last survivor' of the bleachers falling," Fitch added with good humor.

For that 1945 rodeo, organizers rented bleachers from the University of Arkansas. They fell with 300 fans on them at the end of the rodeo, injuring a few, according to a history of the Rodeo of the Ozarks written by Kim Allen Scott provided by the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.

"I didn't see what happened because everyone stood up," Fitch recalled. "An old bull had a cowboy down on the ground. He was wallerin' but he did get up and walk away."

As everybody moved to jump on the seats to see and then tried to sit back down, the bleachers fell.

"I just rode them down," Fitch said of the bleachers. "But then you had some old boy who weighed 250 pounds stepping on you."

Fitch said he likes rodeo because he likes the competition between a wild animal and a human. "There weren't two or three (cowboys) fighting among themselves."

He also noted he has never seen a fight among audience members. "They have been well-behaved and respected each other. It's not like a cowboy movie with fist fights," he said.

Fitch's favorite rodeo event is saddle bronc riding. "Back in Kansas, we'd put a saddle on an old wild horse to see if you could stick on it and ride until you broke it," he recalled. "And I always enjoyed a good calf roper or steer wrestler because you've got to use some skill and quickness there."

Fitch said he thinks he preferred the rodeo in the old days because the animals weren't athletes, they were rugged animals rodeo organizers would pull from ranch and farm stock. The animals bucked farther into the center of the arena.

"They've taken some bad spills," Fitch said of cowboys he's seen. "Bucking horses would rare up and fall backward with cowboys still in the saddle. Some of them walked off, and some of them they had to carry off.

"I like to see a man make a good ride. I like to see him get off the horse with honor -- not to the ground, his belly first -- that could butcher a person. You'd be surprised how hard that ground is when you go belly first."

NW News on 06/24/2017