Happy Father's Day!
To celebrate today's post is the program from the 1962 Ben Johnson Memorial Steer Roping. This event was begun in 1954 in honor of the late Ben Johnson (Sr.), our Ben's dad, who had died in 1952. He was a very beloved, highly respected Osage County personality, foreman for more than 20 years of the vast Chapman-Barnard Ranch and a winner several times over of world championships in roping. Ben went to work for his dad at the age of 11 when he became a full-time working cowboy at the Chapman-Barnard Ranch and as you can imagine, Ben Sr. was a huge influence on him.
Here are a few pages from the program but there are a lot more and you can see the entire program here:
http://benjohnsonfanpage.shutterfly.com/print/797
There are a lot of ads for businesses that are now long-vanished, I suspect, and any old-timer from Osage County would probably feel very nostalgic looking this program.
Whoever originally owned this program carefully noted the times of all the contestants. Looks like Ben came in no. 11. ;) Clark McEntire is the father of Reba McEntire and Johnny Miller (handwritten at the bottom) is Ben (Jr.)'s nephew. Both McEntire and Miller are world roping champions too. John Tallchief is from the famous Tallchief family that includes ballet dancer Maria. Everyone on the list is a famous rodeo contestant and Ben probably knew them all very well.
![Image](http://i742.photobucket.com/albums/xx61/pvitari/Ben%20Pics%202013/BJRoping-25M-2_zpsd7c66368.jpg)