Locals legends nominated to Cowboy Hall of Fame

 

Two Ravalli County men have been nominated for induction into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center for 2012.

Pete Sacks, Corvallis, has been nominated in the Living Category, and Irvin G. Wortman, Stevensville, (deceased) has been nominated in the Legacy Category. Ballots have been distributed to trustees in each district of the state and voting will be done in the next couple of weeks, with the inductees named to the public in early June.

This is the fifth year that Montanans have been inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, which has temporary housing and headquarters in Wolf Point, MT. A permanent site is in the process of being selected and will be announced soon.

Irvin Grover Wortman was born July 31, 1917 in Gallatin Gateway, MT. He went to school in Bozeman, and started competing in rodeos when he was fourteen years old.

In the mid-thirties, he headed south and got a job on the King Ranch in Texas, where he cowboyed and rodeoed. He met his lifelong love down there, Rena Hymer, and they were married on December 15, 1938, in Tucson, AZ.

Rena traveled to rodeos with Irv until 1945, when he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as a military policeman. After discharge he went back to the rodeo circuit, his wife by his side.

Irvin was a member of the Turtle Association, a precursor to the RCA, which is now the PRCA. He rodeoed hard between the years 1938 to 1945, and 1947 until 1956. He was an all around hand, competing in Saddle Bronc, Bulldogging, Bull Riding, Calf Roping, Bareback Riding, and Wild Horse events—and he had success in all of them. Saddle Bronc Riding was always his favorite event.

To support his wife, and his rodeo habit, he worked various jobs, and shod horses after work, until way past dark, in order to make ends meet, and earn entry fees and traveling money.

Some of his rodeo achievements include:

1938 Pendleton Roundup NW Bucking Horse Contest, 1^st place, and a Hamley saddle

1943 or 44 Arizona rodeo—All Around, 1^st in Bulldogging, 3^rd in Saddle Bronc, and 3^rd in Bareback

1948 Black Hills Range Days, 1^st in  Bull Riding

1949 Midland Empire Fair, Billings, MT, set a new World’s Record in Bulldogging, clocking  3.1 seconds

1950 Huron, SD Rodeo, All Around Champion, 1^st in Bulldogging, 4^th in Calf Roping

1951 Huron, SD Rodeo, All around Champion, 1^st in Bareback, 2^nd in Saddle Bronc

1952 Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, 1^st in Wild Horse Race, 2^nd in Bulldogging, 3^rd in Saddle Bronc

Tucson, AZ, Convair Stampede, date unknown, 1^st in Bulldogging, 3^rd in Saddle Bronc, 3^rd in Bareback Bronc, 3^rd in Bull Riding

Mobridge, SD, 1^st in Bulldogging, 3^rd in Saddle Bronc, 3^rd in Bull Riding

Irv competed and placed in many rodeos, including the North MT State Fair Rodeo produced by Gene Autry, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Walnut Grove, MN, and others–winning in four different events. His family enjoys his many buckles.

According to his daughter, Lanell Turner, Wortman had the ability and skill to become a World Champion, but never achieved that because he wouldn’t rodeo without his family, and it simply became too difficult to go on the road with four people at that time, since he was not earning enough to support his family, take them on the road, and pay rodeo fees.

In 1953, Irvin, Rena (“Dinks”) and their two children, Rick and Lanell, moved to Stevensville. Irv went to work for the U.S. Forest Service. They bought forty acres on Burnt Fork Creek, and went into ranching.

Both Irv and Dinks had a love for, and a rapport with, animals of all kinds. They raised good Quarter Horses, which Irv trained and sold to the rodeo crowd, along with a herd of cattle. They purchased an additional forty acres, and continued to expand their livestock business. In later years, they added llamas and miniature donkeys to their menagerie. Irvin even had a llama trained to pull a cart. Irvin’s abilities as a “horse whisperer” were well recognized, long before the term became known—in fact, you could expand that to include all classes of animals, as he had a rapport with all of them that ventured into the realm of the mysterious.

Stan Swartz, DVM, retired, and a long time friend and business partner of Irvin’s, describes him as “a cowboy’s cowboy, with skills and understanding of horse psychology and behavior. Irv was a great humble human being, kind and full of empathy for others.”

Swartz also heard Irvin described by others cowboys to be a “tough, and gifted hand.”

He was personally modest and close mouthed about himself, letting his abilities speak for him.

Stan tells a story on Irv when he was aged sixty plus, and still breaking colts for the general public—many of them hard to handle. Stan says, “One day Irv came over to where we needed to move some cattle, and as usual, brought a young, green horse he was breaking. I noticed he had his bareback rigging on him, instead of a saddle.

“After a little while it became apparent why, as the colt broke in half, and was really tearing up both the air and the pasture. Irv just rode him through it, with a big grin on his face, gathered up the colt, and said, ‘Good thing I brought my bareback rigging today’.”

Daughter Lanell Turner has a special memory of her parents in their later years. They had a calf to doctor, and it was out in the pasture, so Irv decided to rope it—but not on horseback. He got Dinks behind the wheel (and, according to Lanell, she was so short, she looked under the wheel) of their old pickup, and he mounted himself on the tire, which was attached to the front of the truck. Away they went, gunning and bouncing across the field—up and down, around and around, until the old calf roper caught the calf!

Irvin was a true horseman. In his later years, after he had both of his hips replaced—one twice, because he got horseback too soon—he built a specialized chute and mounting platform, where he would put his colts for gentling, sacking out, saddling, and mounting. They were cross-tied, and he would wallow all over them, and they would be pretty well bomb proofed before he rode them off.

Irvin literally died horseback, when 77 years old. He rode off on a young horse, and the colt came home without him. It was obvious from the torn up ground where he was found that some kind of altercation had taken place there, but since what happened was between Irv and the horse, and the horse wasn’t talking, only God knows the details. He was a true cowboy, and he died with his boots on, doing what he loved most—riding horses.

Irvin G. Wortman passed away on October 1, 1994, and is buried at Riverview Cemetery, Stevensville, MT.

The information for the rodeo years was taken from a number of old newspaper clippings from the time, which had been saved by Irvin.

Pete Sacks was born in Fort Lupton, Colorado, in 1924. He moved with his family shortly thereafter to South Dakota, where his father raised wheat and flax on Indian ground. The crash of 1929 wiped out the Sacks family financially, so they moved to Missoula, and his family worked at the sugar beet mill during 1929 and 1930, after which they sharecropped on the Dussault Ranch.

When Pete was in the 6^th grade, his family moved to Frenchtown, again sharecropping sugar beets, and also milking cows. Pete by this time was earning his share for the family, hoeing sugar beets, and milking the cows.

In 1945, the Sackes moved to the Bitterroot Valley, and from 1945 until 1947, they leased and ran the Fort Owen Ranch, in Stevensville, putting up hay, and raising cattle. Pete had developed a love, and a feel, for horses by this time, and was training some colts for the public, along with his family ranching duties.

In 1947, Pete and his family bought the ranch on Birch Creek near Corvallis where he still lives today. They raised some sugar beets, then went into the cattle business, and bought another ranch property.

Pete married Viviette Seal in 1948, and they made their home on the Birch Creek place. Pete continued to ride in conjunction with their cattle operations, and in 1952, he got interested in calf roping, joined the PRCA, and went to as many rodeos as his time would allow. He mostly competed locally, and followed Oral Zumwalt’s rodeos pretty steadily.

In 1958, he bought a really good calf roping horse, “Bay Rum,” from Bud Pilcher, and did very well competing on him. Bay Rum put a rider in the right position on a calf, and had an impressive hard stop, once the loop was on the calf. In addition to his abilities as a calf horse, Bay Rum was a good hazing horse, and Pete used him many times as Benny Reynolds’ partner. The hazing money Pete made helped pay his expenses to get to the next rodeo.

Pete’s interest eventually shifted from calf roping to team roping, and he can head a steer with the best of them. He traveled as he could around his ranching responsibilities, traveling to Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and all across Montana. He and his wife used to go to the big Century Roping in Elko, a five-day event, every fall, where they had a very good time, and Pete always did well.

If Pete had not had two Bitterroot ranches to run, he could have done well on the national circuit—he had both the talent and the horses to do it—just not the time. And speaking of his horses, he trained his own horses, and still does.

Pete has roped steadily since 1952, either calves or steers, at least once a week, and sometimes more than that, if there are local jackpots to go to. He has roped regularly at Mytty’s Lolo Creek Arena since it was built, and has won many buckles there. In fact, he has won over 30 buckles so far, and will probably win some more before he’s done—he’s only 87!

Pete sold the bulk of the Birch Creek property and the cattle in 1973, and then owned a backhoe business until 1995, meanwhile training, riding, and roping whenever possible. In 1982, he won a saddle, riding his good horse, Snazz, in Clarkston, WA.

He is a charter member of the St. Mary’s Saddle Club, Stevensville, was a member of PRCA while calf roping, a member of the Northwest Rodeo Association (NRA), a member of the Montana Team Roper’s Association (now the Wranglers Team Roper’s Association), and is a lifetime member of the U.S. Team Roper’s Association.

In 60 years of roping, Pete has only had two major wrecks. Back in his calf roping days, he roped a snuffy calf, and when he threw his coils, one came down and caught his left hand, which was on his horse’s neck, wrapped around the hand, and as the calf hit the end of the slack, it pulled Pete right out of the saddle, slung him through the air, and slam dunked him out by the calf. His left little finger was hanging only by a hunk of skin, so Pete laid it in the palm of his hand, and got hauled to Stevensville to Doc Spencer. Doc sewed it back on to the best of his ability (he had been an army doctor), made no guarantees, bandaged him up, and sent him on his way.

Two weeks later, at a roping in Conrad, Pete caught his calf, went down the rope, flanked and tied the calf—and could not open his hand. The pressure of throwing the calf had bent the metal brace clear around. It really tested the sewing job on Pete’s finger, but they got him straightened out, and he still has the finger, although it’s a little crooked.

His second wreck happened in the 1970’s sometime, when he decided to be a heeler on a steer at the Pony Palace in Hamilton, MT. His dallies didn’t line up right, and he donated his right thumb, and has stuck to heading ever since.

In 2007, the Pete Sacks Classic Roping event was held for the first time at the Mytty Arena in Lolo, and has become an annual event. In 2008, Pete, roping with his nephew, Randy Sacks, won the event, and the special embroidered jacket. He still ropes weekly, and still ropes with the best—for instance, the Tryan family.

When asked about his long cowboy career, Pete says he’s “real lucky,” and that he’s “real thankful.” He also says he “enjoyed every bit of it.”