Richard, (Dick), Claycomb, was born June 6, 1939. He spent the first two years of his life in a two-room cabin in Fox Park, Wyo. “My dad was hauling logs from Fox Park, Wyoming to Ft. Collins, Colorado. Mom hauled water from the creek.” The family moved to Cheyenne when his dad got a job at the UP Railroad. Dick decided to take on a paper route when he was ten, at first riding a bike, and then switching to horseback, and extending the route from 22 to 145 papers. “I paid $15 for the horse,” he said. “I’d ride seven miles every night – that’s where I learned how to ride.” His mare stepped on a coffee can and severed a tendon, which ended the paper route. Dick’s next job was as an apprentice mechanic and he received his mechanic license.
Dick got his first taste of rodeo in Pine Bluffs, Wyo., at a high school rodeo, when he was 16. “I won the bull riding and was second in the bareback riding. I got $47 and I was hooked.” He won the All Around saddle at the Cheyenne High School Rodeo riding bareback horses and bulls and after he graduated from high school, he continued to rodeo in the summer and packed hod in the winter. “Packing hod for brick layers kept me strong,” he said.
Dick met his wife, Darlene Stumpf, when they were seniors in high school. They married in 1958 and they worked winters and rodeoed summers and later went to college. “Tracy was born in 1964 and Troy was born in 1966. Tracy is an attorney for Office Depot in Idaho, and she has two middle school daughters, Maureen and Emery. Troy is a principal in Gillette, Wyo., and he has three children, Sophie a senior, Lainee is a freshmen, and Jess a sixth grader. He operates a fly in fish camp in Saskatchewan, Canada in the summer. I go up there every summer to help and fish, mostly fish.”
Full story available in September 1, 2014 issue.