Cowboy Times

By Dan DeWeese, Editor at Large

Alaska horse community not only for their retail business, CW

Tack & Western Wear in Wasilla, Alaska, but also for their generous

sponsorships and tireless promotion of horse events and rodeos. A recent

issue of “Cowboy’s Digest,” a biweekly rodeo and ranch magazine

published in Montana, ran a feature on rodeo activities in Alaska that

cited the Willis family as the “Backbone of Alaska Rodeo.” Other horse

publications have covered their support of rodeo contestants in the military.

Last year, they sponsored events and fundraisers for Jake Lowery, a roper

from New Mexico who lost an eye in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart

for heroism. The Willises befriended Lowery and Garrett roped with him.

They helped raise more than $2,600 to send him to the Professional Armed

Forces Rodeo Association World Finals.

Their most ambitious rodeo project has been producing the rodeo at the

Alaska State Fair for the last couple of years. When organizers backed out

of their contract at the last minute, Nancy and Charlie volunteered to run

it. The event was so successful, they were asked to continue to produce it.

The State Fair is held in Palmer over Labor Day, attracting 200,000 people.

Close to 5,000 attended the rodeo last year.

The fairgrounds don’t have a permanent arena, so a portable corral

is brought in from Anchorage, while stock and roping chutes are hauled

in from Chugiak. Even contestants can be hard to come by as many are

military personnel stationed in Alaska, rotating in and out of the Middle

East. But the rodeos the Willises produce have been sold-out successes. Last

year, Nancy wrote a ceremony honoring Iraqi war veterans.

“The Anchorage Daily News ran a piece about the ceremony and packed

the arena to overfl owing, yet again,” Charlie said. “I don’t think there was a

dry eye in the audience or around the arena.”

In addition to running the rodeo, they also set up their tack trailer, with a

tented attachment to accommodate more product and customers.

“It’s very stressful during the fair because we’re trying to do our booth

and the rodeo at the same time,” Nancy said.

“We’ve been in the background of most all the rodeos. We’ve done a lot

of it, but we let other people take the credit,” Charlie said. “So fi nally, we

said let’s do it ourselves and it turned out really good. We had people who

were never going to get into rodeo again until they found out we were doing

it, and they all came back because they like the way we ran it.”

It’s folks like the Willises who make this a great industry to observe and

write about. You can read about their retail business starting on page 16.

P E R S P E C T I V E