Hundreds of Silver Spurs volunteers never stop behind the scenes to put on traditional annual event
If you count the two annual Silver Spurs Rodeos as one event, fans attend about four events if you see every annual rodeo at the Silver Spurs Arena.
Mostly the patrons come, enjoy the show, buy some fries and a drink, maybe a hat and a belt buckle … and we’ll see you in six months.
Meanwhile, the Silver Spurs Riding Club doesn’t take any of that time off, working year-round, behind the scenes, to put on an event that is every bit as intricate as a Broadway show.
That work is done by around 300 Spurs volunteers, many in generational families that were a part of the first rodeos in the 1940s held as benefits for the World War II effort. It’s the real reason something so unique has endured in this community for over 80 years.
Committees handle the details of everything—tickets, concessions, sales, entertainment, animal stock—and members jump right in, doing some of the same work and tasks they’ve handled for decades.
Tickets, concession, sales, entertainment, animal stock—it’s all quite literally home grown. While the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) brings in a few of its staff to time and score the event from the pro side, it’s folks who might be your parents’ and uncles’ age, who started working at the rodeo when they were your children’s age, who annually put on a rodeo billed as “the largest east of the Mississippi.”
“It’s a lot. I tell people that if it goes off without a hitch, it’s the committee that did it,” said Overall Rodeo Chair Scott Ramsey, a former Rodeo Big Boss. “If there’s an issue, I take the blame.
“I couldn’t even begin to count up the amount of man hours we put in. We’re all volunteers and most of us have done it all our lives.”
George Kempfer, another former Big Boss—that becomes a theme when you dig into these committees—is the stock committee chair, who heads up all the whole process of getting the bulls, horses, steer and rough stock ready to put on a rodeo that’s top-notch to both the spectators and the competitors.
“The wonderful thing about the Silver Spurs is there’s so many people doing different things, but it’s the same things they’ve been doing for years,” he said. “It’s a 12-month-outof- the-year process, but it’s near and dear to us and we love it.”
Kaye Whaley is this year’s Big Boss. That means while she still rides in the Quadrille (the “square dance on horseback”) like last year’s Big Boss Randy Booth, the concessions committee lost a member this year while she works with the other committees to be the face of this year’s rodeos, while still making time to chair the Rodeo Parade on Saturday.
“Oh yeah, I’m already getting, ‘You’ll be back in the concession stand next year, right?” she said with a laugh. “Being on the Board, we handle so many things that aren’t rodeo-related, but that just shows the reach of the Club,” she said. “Just in the years since my husband (Steve) was Big Boss (in 2009), it has really taken off.”
Whaley said she got her start in the concession stand as a kid, working with her grandmother.
“That’s where you wanted to be if you wanted to get fed,” she said. “Later I worked in the ticket office, when you’d actually call in to get your tickets and we’d print them out. And then there was the souvenir trailer that was behind the old (outdoor) Spurs arena, which we thought was larger than life because we rarely came into town outside of the rodeo.
“My mom ran the snow cone cart, and my dad was a stock contractor. So I’ve seen a little bit of it all.”
Ramsey sees things as an organizer and a competitor, after having competed for 20 years himself.
“Anything that happens in the arena, everything the crowd can and can’t see, we have to run that,” he said. “I see eye to eye with the competitors.”
He meets year-round with folks like Kempfer to get the timed-event cattle and rough stock ready. While the Spurs works with two other stock contractors, many of the animals folks see in events like bull riding and saddle bronc— and just about all of them at events like Boots, Bulls and Barrels and Monster Bulls—are raised by the Spurs. The Spurs’ own arena in Kenansville serves as a training ground.
“We raise and feed them and run the breeding program to raise more colts,” Kempfer said. “We have to train the young stock (in Kenansville), so we’re working year round. It’s a big rodeo with added purse money, so they have to be the best.”
The stock committee makes them available a week ahead of the rodeo for the PRCA draw, then is responsible for penning them in the arena’s back lot hours before the day’s performance. They’re also the ones that lead the stock through the maze of gates to where the cowboys mount their rides, hopefully for high scores to win that prize money.
“We used to hope (the bulls and broncs) bucked everybody,” Kempfer said with a laugh. “But we want to see high scores, so we’re rooting for the cowboys, too.”
Whaley said she loves how everybody jumps into action to do what comes naturally every year.
“The rodeo is still the same, but the production is a lot bigger,” she said. “Having (the TV show) Yellowstone showcase the life of cowboys have helped, but we have remained affordable family entertainment.”
It’s entertainment that has been a year—and in many cases, a lifetime—in the making.
