“He was extremely fast from the horse to the calf, he was well mounted, and he was a competitor. He wanted to beat you and still be good friends while doing it.”
Roy Rodriguez let his actions speak louder than his words.
Whether it was in the rodeo arena, on a rodeo board, with his family or at his job, the Clayton, Michigan man did the right thing, even if it didn’t benefit him.
A calf roper, team roper, and bulldogger, he dominated the rodeo arenas across the upper Midwest for several decades.
He was fast, well-mounted, and for him, rodeo was a business and a way to provide for his family.
Roy was born to Juan and Beatriz Rodriguez in 1944, the youngest of six children, in Cotulla, Texas. When he was two, his parents moved to Michigan because of the promise of better paying jobs. His dad went to work for a company that made motor parts for the Ford Motor Co.
In Texas, Juan was handy as a ranch cowboy and with leatherwork, but also with a rope. He competed against some of the toughest ropers of his day in match ropings, beating many of them. But he didn’t have the wherewithal to rope full time.
When he came north, he worked at a dairy farm for a short time before beginning at an auto parts factory, where Roy would join him after high school.
Juan was a founding father in the Michigan Ropers Association in 1948-49. He competed in the organization, as did Roy and several of his brothers. At the age of 55, Juan was the MRA champion. Two years later, his son Ray was champ, and in 1974 and 1978, Roy was champ.
In addition to the Michigan Ropers Association, Roy was a member of the now-defunct Midwest Cowboys Association.
He graduated from high school in 1962 and a year later was working for the same company as his dad, starting as a laborer, then, two years later, as a foreman. By the age of nineteen, he was in charge of a multi-million dollar plant from 11 pm to 7 am each day.
He was a “weekend warrior,” competing on the weekends and being home for a job Monday through Friday.
He followed in his dad’s footsteps with his roping abilities. Calf roping was his strength, but he team roped and steer wrestled, too.
He competed not only in the MRA and the MCA, but Mid-States Cowboy Association (the eastern association, compared to the western association), winning the tie-down title in 1978 and 1983. He also competed in the International Pro Rodeo Association. He was consistently in the top fifteen in all of his associations. Finals weren’t always held, due to a lack of funding, but when they were, Roy was at them.
In 1966, Roy was drafted and sent to Vietnam for a year. He was discharged in July of 1968.
While in Vietnam, he became acquainted with another rodeo cowboy, Ned Londo. Roy was in Fire Direction Control, Ned was in the 11th Armored Calvary Black Horse, on the gun. As is typical in the military, there was plenty of slow times, with nothing to do. Roy and Ned found a coil of rope , made a dummy and roped the dummy to kill time.
But their biggest fun was a bit of rodeo in the jungles of Vietnam. Kids would walk by, heading to the rice fields with the Brahma cattle they used in the paddies. One time, it turned into a dare. “I don’t know if he said it or I said it, but one of us said, if you rope him, I’ll ride him,” Ned said. So Roy roped the Brahma and Ned rode it. “She didn’t buck much but we had fun and the kids enjoyed the show.” The village elders did not appreciate the rodeo, however, and the commanding officer spent the evening in the village smoothing things out!
A year after his return to the States, Roy danced with a brunette girl at the dance hall by the lake. Later that night, at the hamburger joint, they met up again, and he asked her out. It was love at first sight, Sharon said. They married on Valentine’s Day, 1969.
Roy made his own rope horses. His first horse was his dad’s, a big buckskin that stood 16 hands and weighed 1,600 lbs. When he went to buy his own horse, he found a black barrel horse in Oklahoma with the reputation of stopping so hard he flipped people over his head. The horse had been sold to a woman for the barrel racing, but it was also a calf horse. When Roy asked how much, the woman priced the horse so low “I couldn’t turn it down,” he said. He bought it, named it Smoky, and that weekend, went to a couple of rodeos and a match roping. “I ended up winning the match roping, placing at both rodeos, and I paid for him.”
Smoky was “no speedster but he was quick,” he said, “for probably a good 100 feet. He’d get out of the box so quick, I’d get a shot off quick and I wouldn’t have to run my calves so far. He was quick and he was stout. He basically looked like a miniature draft horse.”
Roy was the first calf roper in his part of the country to dismount on the right. It happened by accident. It was the early 1960s, at a rodeo in Michigan, and Roy was late in arriving. His dad advised him to not break the barrier, because the calf was fast. “When that calf came out, he flew,” Roy remembers. “I caught up with him at the bucking chutes. I was committed on the right side, and we were running so fast, I finally ended up throwing the rope and flew off the right side. And from that day forth, I got off on the right.”
His wife Sharon was a farm girl, not a rodeo girl. She had always wanted a horse, so when they married, Juan bought her a saddle with a high back. “It was like a death trap,” Sharon laughed. “It had big swells in the front and the back came up. When you got in that saddle, you weren’t going anywhere.” She learned to ride and enjoyed it.
The couple volunteered in several associations. In the 1980s and 1990s, Roy was president and Sharon was secretary of the Michigan Ropers Association. They held the same roles in the Mid-States Association for three years.
When their children rodeoed in high school, there was no high school association in the state of Michigan, so they, along with others, traveled to Ohio to compete. After a few years, Roy said, “this is ridiculous. What does it take to get a high school association in Michigan?” It required $300. He went on a campaign at his rodeos, asking for donations. By the time the collections ended, he had $1,500. He and Sharon were founders of the Michigan High School Rodeo Association in 1989 and stayed on as board members till their kids were through high school.
Their children: Raul, Ryan and Mindy, all competed in rodeo at one time or another. Raul was a roper, finishing third in the National Inter-Collegiate Rodeo Association in the steer wrestling. He continues to rodeo and is a PRCA judge. Ryan, a rodeo clown, worked PRCA events for years, including the 2010 National Finals Rodeo. Mindy, a barrel racer, qualified for the National High School Finals Rodeo.
Raul remembers his dad always stood for what was right, even when no one was watching. He often told his kids, “this is not going to benefit you,” he’d say, regarding whatever situation they were in, “but it is the right thing to do.” He always dressed western for rodeos. “When you went to a rodeo, you’d better look the part,” Raul said. “Boots polished, jeans starched, a long sleeve shirt and a hat.”
In addition to his fulltime job, rodeo board memberships and competition, he and Sharon had 160 acres, a couple dozen head of cattle and horses, a stud and brood mares. He was plant superintendent by the time he retired from his job in 2004 after 44 years of service.
He roped his last calf in 2009. He’d had his knees replaced and didn’t want to put them through jumping off a horse.
He’s won two calf roping titles in the Mid-States (1978, 1983) and two in the Michigan Ropers Association (1974, 1978). In 1974, he finished in the top twenty in the world in the International Pro Rodeo Association.
“He was fast when nobody was fast,’ remembered his friend, Jeff Tracy. The Orient, Ohio cowboy roped against Roy numerous times. In the Ohio area in the ‘70s and ‘80s, cowboys were making runs of eleven, twelve, and thirteen seconds. But when Roy came to town, he was tying calves in the tens. “He was extremely fast from the horse to the calf, he was well mounted, and he was a competitor. He wanted to beat you and still be good friends while doing it.”
Oftentimes Roy and Sharon’s oldest boy, Raul, rodeoed in high school in Ohio without his parents. Roy made Jeff Raul’s parental guardian while in the state. The Rodriguez family “isn’t big on patting themselves on the back,” Jeff said, “but they let their actions do the talking.”
Roy had a family to support with his rodeo. When he bought his first house, he had a decade to pay it off. “I got it paid in ten years, with the help of rodeo,” he said.
“He had a family to support,” Jeff said. “He was good. No matter where you put him, he would have been an excellent athlete. It just happened that he roped calves.”
Roy and Sharon have four grandsons and one granddaughter: Paxton and Preston, the sons of Raul and Polly; Rad and Riot, the sons of Ryan, and Reese, the daughter of Mindy and Gary Fetzer.
He’s loved his life. “I’ve been blessed, with almost everything I’ve done. I have a wonderful wife, I have good kids, and good grandkids. So what more can a person want?
“I would do it all over again. I’d do it just like I did it the first time.
“I’m blessed.”