story by Don Reichert
In 1951, Bob Penfield, Lemmon, South Dakota and Guy Ham, Rapid City, South Dakota met with the president of South Dakota State College (now University) Brookings, South Dakota to pursue starting a rodeo club. “He didn’t throw us out, but he might as well of because he did hold the door open for us so we could walk out easy. And his last words to us were ‘As far as I’m concerned, rodeo isn’t even a sport!’”
In the fall of 1952, Penfield was a senior Animal Husbandry major and a new college president, John W. Headley, was in place. Bob made an appointment to meet with the new president about establishing a rodeo club. “He was very surprised we didn’t already have a rodeo club.” With Headley’s blessing, Penfield put up notices around campus and held the first meeting as temporary chairman and the rodeo club was founded. At the second meeting, he was elected president of the 40-50 member club that first year.
Penfield said, “The first rodeo team was myself, bareback rider Zack Word, Kadoka, South Dakota; and calf roper Dave Strain, White River, South Dakota”. They competed at Ft. Collins, Colorado and Laramie, Wyoming where Penfield, won 6th place in the bareback riding to win the first points ever won by a South Dakota State team at a National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association approved rodeo.
On May 8 and 9, 1953, the SDSU Rodeo Club held its first NIRA approved college rodeo. Bob helped organize that first Jackrabbit Stampede at the Crystal Springs Ranch rodeo grounds near Clear Lake, South Dakota. Ranch owner, Elbert Wiesel, had started having rodeos in 1946 in a natural bowl on his ranch using his own livestock, “The Devil’s Herd”. Penfield and his dad had connections with Wiesel from the 1930’s when he hauled hay to the drought stricken Lemmon, South Dakota area. Wiesel also bought saddle horses and bucking horses at the Lemmon Livestock Auction owned by Penfield’s family. Because of this connection, the SDSU cowboys were able to practice at the ranch on the weekends and have Wiesel put on the rodeo for half the gross gate proceeds. At their first home rodeo, South Dakota State College took third place honors. Except for 1955, SDSU has held a rodeo at Brookings, South Dakota every year since then.
Bob was drafted into the US Army and sworn in at Ft. Riley, Kansas on December 2, 1953, his 23rd birthday. After basic training he was assigned to a medical unit at Camp Richmond, Virginia. He said “I learned to properly position a bed pan under a person so you didn’t have to change the sheets right away.” After several weeks of bedpan duty he was transferred up to the research department at Walter Reed Army Medical Center cleaning animal pens, a job he had experience with after being employed at Lemmon Livestock.
Bob took advantage of being close to rodeos on the east coast. “There were a lot of rodeos over the summer put on by a producer named Radie Evans. There was also a promoter over there by the name of Milt Hinkle that put on some big rodeos and of course there was Howard Harris at Cowtown, New Jersey.” Bob won the Maryland State Championship Bareback Riding buckle that summer and was shipped to Okinawa in the Far East that fall.
In Okinawa he served in the Ryukyu Hospital Veterinarian Section as an Animal Technician in the Ft. Buckner Animal Clinic. He met Roger James, Joe Gayette, and Tom Thomas who with the help of the US Army Special Services, put on a series of four rodeos in 1955 with three qualifying rodeos and a finals rodeo. Bob worked three events and announced all the rodeos held at Naha, Okinawa. Bob won the 1955 Okinawa Bareback Riding buckle at the finals. The contestants flew in from all branches of the service from all over the Far East for the rodeos. The Army team won a nice pair of fancy spurs that are still hanging in the Ryukyu Command Army Headquarters with information about the 1955 rodeos held there.
When Bob was 6 years old, his dad, Earl, graduated from the American Auction College in Kansas City, Missouri. “I guess from the first time I heard Dad do his auction chant, I wanted to be an auctioneer.” In 1958, Bob and his wife, Winona, bought Home Base Auction in Bowman, North Dakota. At 27 years of age, Bob became the youngest owner/operator of a Livestock Auction Market in the United States. He attended his first National Auctioneers Association Convention in 1957 and went on to serve on their board of directors and as president beginning in 1968. Over the years, Bob served on many other auctioneer boards and received many honors from county fair boards, auctioneer associations and 4-H for his many contributions.
Bob is a member of the Western Writers of America and has written 5 books about his friends in the Lemmon area and rodeoing in Okinawa. His wife, Winona, was active in the auction industry, working alongside Bob in their auction business as head auction clerk and office manager at Home Base Auction and Penfield Auctions and helping edit his books. Winona was called to Heaven in 2015. They raised one son and four daughters: Bert, Patty, Laura, Joan, and Sam.
Bob now lives in Spearfish, South Dakota near his daughters, Laura and Joan, who brought him to the Jackrabbit Stampede in Brookings, South Dakota in April. He continues to be an active SDSU Rodeo supporter.
