A Good Ride

Tom Parker went to high school rodeos in Wyoming with Chris LeDoux. Parker hailed from Lander and Chris competed out of Cheyenne. Tom was later called to military service and chose college afterward. Now he is the highly-regarded rodeo coach at Casper College. Among his charges in the last decade has been Chris’ son, Beau. “Chris would come out whenever he wasn’t on the road. He was very helpful,” said Parker. Family was everything to Chris LeDoux.

But in those early days all that mattered was riding bareback horses. He had a vast reservoir of “try.” He listened to the older riders and adapted his occasionally out-of-control style accordingly. Chris’ power was in his persistence…and guts. And you could see it all in his face. “I did everything I could to match that trademark grimace,” artist Mike Thomas told me this week. The Buffalo, Wyoming sculptor’s “Good Ride Cowboy” is being created in a bigger-than-life bronze statue that is now in the hands of the capable Hall family and their valued employees at Caleco (kah-LEE-ko) Foundry in Cody.

Our capable cameraman and editor, Mike McCrimmon, joined me at Caleco last Thursday evening to catch up on the LeDoux bronze progress. Let us share our findings with you here:



We’ll be visiting with Mike Thomas in his Buffalo studio in the near future and will return with an update in short order.

On this day we remember with sadness the loss of Chris LeDoux five years ago. There is anticipation too. Seeing that statue unveiled in Kaycee on land Chris and Peggy own will be very, very special. One of their boys used a pair of Chris’ boots to create prints in the still wet cement of the walk that leads to the statue. The prints fade and finally disappear at the statue base. He is still with us. Just listen to the wind.