Local Educator and Cowboy Honored

By Wendel Sloan

The National Western Cowboy Hall of Fame and Museum in Oklahoma City, inducted B. J. Pierce (MA 62, BA 49), at age 89, on Sept. 26, 2015. The Hall includes such luminaries as Western actor Slim Pickens, all-around cowboy Bob Crosby, bull riders Ty Murray and Lane Frost and steer wrestler Homer Pettigrew of Grady.

B. J. received a bachelor’s in industrial arts from Eastern in 1949 and a master’s in education in 1962. He met Pattie Rawls at ENMU, fell in love and got married. He played basketball for the Greyhounds under Coach Al Garten. After finishing the 1944-45 season 3-20 and 3-17 in 1945- 46, he decided that riding horses to rope calves was more rewarding than being ridden by coaches.

B. J. Pierce

He won three consecutive International Rodeo Association (IRA) calf-roping titles from 1952-54 – the only three-time IRA calf-roping champion. With a combination of speed and skill, in his first summer of rodeoing during college, B. J. won $13,000 — enough in the 1940s to pay his and his wife’s way through college for all four years. He estimates he won around $130,000 in his rodeo career, which one would multiply by several times in today’s money. B. J. says he saved money by “camping out in a tent with a sleeping bag and using a Coleman stove for cooking.” B. J. also competed in team roping, steer roping and wild cow milking during his competitive years. B. J. continued to rodeo well into the 1960s.

In addition to his rodeo career, B. J. taught for 31 years in Clovis schools and was the principal at James Bickley Elementary. “I loved all the action in the classroom and the different personalities. You’d be surprised at how many former students I see all the time,” said B. J. “They’ve all gone on to successful careers. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who was a failure. If I did, I would go have a talk with them.”

B. J. says some of the faculty and staff that stand out in his memory from his ENMU days are Dr. Carl Parker, Thelma Mallory and Claude Burns Wiebel in education, O. M. Williamson in agriculture, and Eugene Mann, the publicity and publications director.

“I am very happy with what I’ve accomplished in life, including being inducted into the rodeo hall of fame. It’s been very satisfying, and everywhere I go I run into people I know. “I’m happy as a lark because I have a lot of nice people around me. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.”