Elk City, Okla. – Leon Willsie loves the Elk City Rodeo.
He loves it so much, he and his wife Catherine haven’t missed a year of it for at least the last thirty years.
His first trip to the Elk City rodeo was at age four, in 1948, when, dressed in his cowboy outfit, he walked into the rodeo gate, with his dad following, and walked around the entire arena, “checking out the livestock, the cowboys, and I kept on going,” he said. “I never looked back till my dad picked me up and headed for the seats.”
Growing up on the ranch southwest of Sayre, near Delhi, his parents took him and his brothers to the Elk City Rodeo nearly every year.
After graduating from Delhi High School in 1962, Willsie attended Southwestern Okla-homa State in Weatherford, graduating in 1966 and marrying Catherine the next year. He worked as an insurance underwriter and attended Oklahoma City University School of Law at night, graduating in 1975.
That same year, the couple moved back to Sayre, and Willsie opened a law office, where he’s been practicing law ever since.
They have had the same box seats at the rodeo since the early 1990s, Catherine estimated.
They’ve attended rodeos across the country: Rodeo Houston, the Calgary Stampede, Ft. Worth, Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days, and the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.
But Elk City, to Leon, is about as good as it gets.
“I’ve been to Houston, Ft. Worth and Cheyenne, and I wouldn’t trade any of them for the rodeo at Elk City.
“It’s one of the finest rodeos in the nation. You’ll see as good of bucking stock at Elk City as you do at the National Finals Rodeo.”
When he was a kid, he remembered when the bucking bulls would escape the arena.
“The bulls would buck off the rider and go through the fence,” he said. “Cowboys were all over the parking lot, roping bulls and tying them to highline poles.” Willsie remembers a bucking horse named Timber Topper who, in the 1950s, bucked through the fence and into the grandstands. He was finally corralled.
To keep the kids safe, his dad had his mother take Leon and his brothers to the top of the grandstands.
“I hated that, because I wanted to be down in the dirt, by the fence. My dad and uncle were sitting down by the fence, and I thought, ‘if they can, why can’t I?’” Friends stop by to visit the couple at the rodeo.
“We’ve been there so many years, people come by to say hello, because they know where we’ll be.”
The couple attends all three nights of the rodeo, and Leon doesn’t plan on changing the routine.
The Elk City Rodeo “has been a great rodeo, something we’ve enjoyed every year for many years,” he said. “And I intend to keep going as long as I can keep going.”
The Elk City Rodeo is September 1-3, 2023, with performances each night at 8 pm. Ticket sales start August 21 and can be purchased at Circle A Western Wear, at the ticket booth at the Beutler Bros. Arena, and at the gate (while supplies last). For more information, visit the rodeo’s website (www.ElkCityRodeo.com) or its Facebook page.
For more information, visit www.ElkCityRodeo.com.
