Lucky 13

On March 13, 1949 he won the first rodeo contest he’d ever entered. He wore the back number “13” at the National Finals Rodeo and won the bareback riding competition in 1962. And on August 13, 1987 Ralph Buell shot a hole-in-one playing golf. “Thirteen is not unlucky for me,” says Buell.

Ralph is sitting at his dining room table in Cheyenne, Wyoming where he retired from a house painting business several years ago. Ralph and his wife have a lovely brick home in a section of town called Western Hills. You might know a house painter would have a brick house. Buell has propped on a chair a poster-sized photo of himself. I’d never met Ralph until a couple of weeks ago. I can’t say who Ralph Buell was before. Today he is slender, clear-eyed and gracious toward the strangers gathered around him. The photo depicts a much different person physically. I think it is safe to say Ralph has changed. As a doctor once told me many years back: “You have to modify your lifestyle.” Another medical person later said something to the effect that if I planned to enjoy retirement some alterations were in order. Maybe medical people convinced Ralph too. I’m not sure. Whatever happened; it worked. Good for him.

Buell rode bucking horses for a living from 1952 to 1968. He won twenty big rodeos including San Antonio, Fort Worth, Pendleton, Prescott and Cheyenne. He championed “The Daddy” the same year – 1962 – that he got the gold buckle at the national finals. It was the first year for the NFR in Los Angeles. The previous three were staged in Dallas. During most of the 1950s the biggest rodeo of the year brought cowboys to New York City for a month of competition in Madison Square Garden. Ralph Buell was there for eight years and found the time in New York pretty enjoyable overall. He still chuckles about the fellow and his kids who came up to him before the rodeo one night. “Anybody get hurt last night?” the man inquired. “Were they supposed to?” replied Ralph. The ranch-raised have a gift for quick comebacks.

Ralph had a nemesis horse he could never really master. “Come Apart” did just that to most who mounted for an eight-second try. Buell got past him during the 1962 national finals and that helped secure the champion’s buckle and saddle. The day (or round) money back then was about $400.

As I watched Ralph Buell thumb through his leather-bound book of picture memories it struck me that the most important, and meaningful, act in this person’s life had little to do with his accomplishments in the rodeo arena. Of much more value to Ralph and those around him is proving he was no longer that man pictured at the end of the dining room table.