Oral History Program Steven Money Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 14 June 2018 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Steven Money Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 14 June 2018 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum honors men and women whose lives exemplify the independence and resilience of the people who settled Utah, and includes artists, champions, entertainers, musicians, ranchers, writers, and those persons, past and present, who have promoted the Western way of life. Each year, the inductees are interviewed about their lives and experiences living the Western way of life. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Money, Steven, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 14 June 2018, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Steven Money, conducted on June 14, 2018 by Lorrie Rands. Steven discusses his childhood love for the farm, his work and involvement leading the rodeo, and his hope for his legacy. This interview was conducted via phone call. LR: Today is June 14, 2018. We are doing an oral history interview with Steven Money for the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Hall of Fame. It’s about 11 o’clock in the morning. Again, Steven, thank you so much for your time. Let’s just start with when and where were you born? SM: Okay. I was born on September 24, 1951, and I was born in Spanish Fork, Utah. I did move to Provo for a short time, but Spanish Fork has been pretty much my hometown all of my life. LR: Okay. Did you grow up on a farm? Where did you grow up? SM: I always loved to farm all my life, and my grandma and grandpa had a farm, and the best thing that I could always look forward to was spending the summer on my grandma and grandpa’s farm. As I got older, I used to spend a lot of time with it, and I just always wanted to be a cowboy and be on the farm rather than being in the city. I just never liked it, so I stayed with my grandparents quite a bit. As we got older, my grandpa gave me a piece of land here on the farm, and we built a house right on the Money Farm. My cousin is running it now, and I’ve always helped with the farm work all my life. It’s something that I really enjoy. LR: So your family home where you lived with your parents—you didn’t live on a farm, you lived more in the city? 1 SM: Yes, that’s correct. My parents lived in the city. We lived in Spanish Fork, and then we moved to Provo for four or five years. My parents got separated, and I went and lived with my dad because I wanted to be close to Spanish Fork, where I could go down on the farm. I have five brothers, and I chose to go with my dad, and the others went with my mom. LR: Okay. So, growing up in Spanish Fork, is that where you went to school? SM: Yes, that’s correct. I went from, I believe it was second grade through half of sixth grade, in Provo, and the rest of it was all in Spanish Fork. LR: Okay. I know you said you’ve always loved the farm life and always wanted to be a cowboy, but when did you really start working with horses and being involved with that type of lifestyle? SM: Well, it was probably after I got married in 1971, about two or three years later. I formed a partnership with R.S. Quarter Horses; happened to be Rod Davis, Steven Money, and Tommy Lloyd. We started our own quarter horse business— training, raise[ing] horses, breaking horses, and running on the chariot and everything. That’s when I got really, really high into the horses. I was Vice President of the World Chariot Association for 12 years, and I was President of the World Chariot Association for five years. I was the one that moved the World Chariot Races out of Pocatello to Ogden, where they are to this day. LR: I’m curious. You talked about this love of farming, so what did you like about farm work, or that idea of being a cowboy? SM: Oh, everything. Everything. Doing the farm work was always enjoyable, ‘cause that’s where the horses were, and I could go ride my horses and got involved in 2 4H down here. [I] was part of the 4H Club, and I couldn’t wait to always do it. I'd get on my horse and go for a ride. I started competing. It just kind of got in my blood, but I just wasn’t as happy unless I won first place. I drove everything to make sure that I tried my best to get first place; I just had that competition in me, and I had to win or I didn’t. So I practiced really hard at everything that I did. I loved the farm work, even hauling the hay to weeding beets to everything, I really did enjoy it. I think the reason why is because I could be close and ride the horses, and the cowboy atmosphere. LR: So this is something that, as you said, was just in your blood. When did you…I’m trying to understand when you started competing. SM: Okay. When I got the horses, or when we started the horse business in 1973, then I got involved, and I joined the Diamond Fork Riding Club. That would be around 1977, I would say. We started competing in all of these shodeos—and they used to call them a shodeo—every riding club had a fun day. We used to go to them, and there was team roping and calf roping, and then your barrel racing and pole bending and ribbon pole and everything. That’s when I really started competing hard into the rodeo industry, and then we started riding in some rodeos. Me and my friend started riding bareback in rodeos. We never did go after it that much, but we stayed active in the riding clubs, and we really got involved in the trailer race, it was called. That’s what I really got known for, ‘cause in 18 years in our district, we never ever got beat. We used to have it in Spanish Fork at the rodeo. Carried it on to region and then on to state, and was really, I 3 consider, one of the better ones competing in all of the events in the riding clubs. Then, as far as the rodeo itself, we entered a few rodeos and rode bareback horses and didn’t think that was our cup of tea, so we stayed in the riding club doing the riding club events. LR: Okay. You mentioned a trailer race. What is a trailer race? SM: There’s two of you on a team, and you're sitting in the truck, and you have a horse trailer hooked behind you with a horse in it. Then your saddle, your blanket, and your bridle is sitting in the back of your truck. Usually there’s about six outfits in the arena at a time, and you're sitting there, and all of you are in your truck. And you say, “Go,” you have to jump out of the truck and go back, take the horse out of the trailer, put a blanket on it and a saddle, take and bridle it, and then one of you jumps on the horse, rides around the arena. They always had four barrels around the arena; you had to ride around them barrels, come back. You have to unsaddle it, unbridle it, put the halter on it, load it in the trailer, put everything back in the truck, jump in the truck, and turn on your headlights. We were in Heber, Utah, one time, and we did it in 42 seconds. I think if you look at the Utah State Riding Club, you’ll see my name in the trailer race quite a bit. LR: Wow. That actually sounds like a lot of fun. SM: It was a real, real big event. People used to film us to figure out what we did. We just had a good horse. We both were just lucky, but like I say, we won district 18 years straight, and regions, we were first and second; state, we were first and second. We were always the ones that they had to beat. We was very, very successful. 4 LR: That sounds like fun. So during all of this, you had a full-time job? SM: Correct. We just did this on weekends, usually. LR: So what was your full-time job? SM: I worked at Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Company for 21 years, and just thought I could better myself. There was an opening for Spanish Fork City at the golf course, and I applied and got that at the golf course, and started as assistant superintendent up there. That was in 1991, but what I had been doing since 1984, after I got… Well, I don’t know if you wanted me to tell you this or not, how I got involved with the rodeo? LR: Yes. SM: Okay. I became president of the Diamond Fork Riding Club, and I wasn’t quite president yet, but I was really involved in it and loved the rodeo part of it, putting the rodeo on. So I kept going up, and when I got President, there was always an argument about who owned the rodeo—Spanish Fork City or the Riding Club? There was always trouble. I went to a city council meeting and explained everything that goes on to it, and it was a big… The newspapers said, “Shootout at the OK Corral City Council Meeting Last Night.” Anyway, me and the city council worked out all the details and come to an agreement of what the riding club had to do and what the city had to do and that. Then the city manager, Mr. Dave Oyler, asked me if I would stay on and represent the city, because there was two people from the riding club and two people from the city. I don’t know if he could see the burning desire in my heart, 5 wanting to make this rodeo better, because at this time we were only adding $500 per event, and we pretty much had just a jackpot rodeo. I remember telling him distinctly, when he asked me if I wanted to stay on here, I said, “I do, but I want to be bigger than Salt Lake and Ogden in the future.” And he said, “Well, go for it. They put their pants on the same way we do.” I really took it to heart, and it became part of my life. The rodeo, I worked on it all year long, and there was no better satisfaction in my life [than] to see them fans when they left, when they said, “Wow, what a show.” I just couldn’t get enough of that. That’s all I ever wanted to do, was make them fans say, “Wow, what a show.” It just kept growing and growing from then on, and everything else was on hold, and all I had was the rodeo in front of me. LR: The Fiesta Days, how does that enter into the rodeo portion of it? [Be]cause it looks like it was closely integrated with the rodeo and the riding club. SM: Yes. See, the riding club would put the rodeo on, and that’s what I was saying, but they never could advance it because they didn’t know if they owned the arena, or if the city owned the arena. Then the city would get involved in it, and nobody would come, because they just didn’t know who. I joined forces with the riding club and the city and made us all one person. The riding club started putting the rodeo on in 1941, but it was just a rodeo. You needed all parts of it. You needed everybody involved, and when I became president, I got us all talking to each other and come up with an agreement. That agreement’s still valid; it’s the best thing that ever happened. 6 There was always a wall in between the riding club and the city. They never supported all the rodeo, and when I come in, I just removed that wall and made us one great big partnership. The riding club then wanted to do better, the city wanted to do better, and we did. We did real well on it by joining forces and making it one big, happy celebration that everybody wanted to improve on and make it better. That’s the best thing that ever happened in my life. The rodeo, what happened—I don’t know where it would have been to this day, I really don’t. LR: It almost sounds like you were the glue. SM: Well, I really was. When I got inducted into the Spanish Fork City Hall of Fame, or Fiesta Days Hall of Fame, that’s what it says: how I made the rodeo what it is, because I made both parties together. We just went straight uphill from then on. LR: So, out of curiosity, what goes into running or preparing a rodeo? SM: Well… geez, everything. When you're preparing everything that goes into it, you have to get your stock contractor—and that’s one thing, I’ll back up. I think that’s why I had a little bit of leverage when I came to the golf course, because they knew what I had been doing—the city managers and others—because I had, since 1984, not working for the city, but I took over one of their biggest events for seven years, being on the rodeo, and what they did to the rodeo. So when I went to this application at the golf course, they hired me. I was only up there for one year, and then they moved me down to the fairgrounds because they didn’t even have a manager down there, and I think they knew what I could do. So they moved me to the fairgrounds, and that’s where I spent the whole time getting ready for the rodeo. 7 You have to hire your stock contractor, and when you do that, you got to go see which one’s the best that you can fit [with] the money that you have. You can’t go hire the top ones if your money’s not there. You have a budget. What cowboys you’re going to bring in, your advertising, your specialty act, your sponsors, your ticket prices, how you’re going to sell your tickets—that was all on my plate, the entire thing. With that and running the fairgrounds, it was a big job. LR: It sounds like it. So when you were looking for your stock contractor, would you use the same one every year, or would it change up every year? SM: We had a stock contractor at the time, and the first thing I knew that we needed to do was to change contractors. So I got the city, and me and the city manager went down to California, and I watched three different stock contractors. When I was down there, we come up that we really like this John Drowning, but he had another rodeo kind of close to that time. Back and forth, we talked a lot of times, and we brought him from California to Spanish Fork. That was probably the biggest, best thing we ever did. The move that we had made, it was just night and day from what we had. We had to surely pay for it and everything, and the best thing about it is me and John become the best friends that there ever was. He helped me more with the PRCA [Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association] part of it, and since people with the PRCA, the top people, was getting to know John Drowning. Then Louis Fields come in; he was in the stock contractor business, and he was right there, Payson, Utah, and he had a real deal up in Washington. John was up there the week before in Washington—call it senseless—so John stayed 8 there rather than traveling clear down to Spanish Fork, and Louis traveling clear up there, so they come to me and ask if they can switch. It was the smartest move for them, and it was a good move for us, because Louis was doing a real good job at the time. Louis was up into it, and when Louis got out of the stock contractor business, his partner still stayed in it. We had him for a while, and I told him that he wasn’t putting on a good show and we needed a change. He didn’t, so I fired him, brought another guy in, Ike Henke, and we had Ike Henke for, oh, 10, 12 years, and he was going downhill, and I fired him, and brought in another one. So you usually use your same stock contractor, but sometimes they get complacent, they get relaxed in there, because they know that they have it, and it’s time to replace them. If you keep hiring them back and hiring them back, sometimes they don’t bring their best stock with them and put forth the effort because they know they’re gonna be back. They just get complacent, and they need to be replaced. I see that with a lot of rodeos. LR: Okay. So I’m a little curious. It sounds like you’re extremely busy, so I’m wondering, did your family get involved helping you with this? When did you have time to spend with your family? SM: That’s probably one thing that I could be, I don’t know, sorry about. My family’s grateful for what I did, but I didn’t get to spend the time that I should have with my kids growing up because I was working so much. They went when they could, but this rodeo… I went with them when I could, but a lot of times, I was caught up with rodeo stuff. That’s probably one thing that I regret is not spending as much 9 time as I should have, because I was so involved in this rodeo. I slept and ate rodeo for 365 days out of the year, and that’s all I did, was worry about the rodeo. LR: Wow, okay. SM: So I did cheat them out, I guess. LR: How did you meet your wife? SM: We were in high school together. We graduated together, and we started dating our senior year in high school. We graduated in ‘69. I went on to college for a year, and she went on to college for hair beautician. She graduated, and then when I got a pretty good job at the pipe plant, could see that I was doing alright, and we got married in April of ‘71. LR: Okay. How many children do you have? SM: We have five children. I have three girls and two boys. The worst thing that ever happened in my entire life was I had one son that was 13 years old, and he got hit by a car and died. They were going on a scouting trip, and they went down, and the truck pulled out on the road and one of the sleeping bags spilled out. He ran across to put it in, and when he run back across, a car hit him and killed him when he was 13. That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever went through in my life. I hope people never have to do that. He went to every rodeo with me. Wherever I went, he went. He got to know all the contestants and everything. He would go to the rodeo, and he would be over there with the contestants— and I don’t know why, but mostly the barrel racers—he’d be walking their horses. He walked Fred Whitfield. I went up to the arena, during the rodeo; when I got there, Lance was getting on Fred’s horse. I said, “Lance, what are you doing?” 10 Fred Whitfield came around the barn and said, “What’s the matter, Steven?” I said, “I apologize for my son.” He said, “He’s my bud! He’s going to cool down my horse.” He was going to cool Fred Whitfield’s horse down. Joe Beaver, Jay Parrs spent a while here, and he got to rope with Jay Parrs in a practice thing. He was, at the time, like 12 years old, and he got to rope with seven-time world champion Jay Parrs. And Rusty Sewall, and all of them. He was with them all the time, out there with them contestants. When we’d go to the other rodeos, he’d find the ones that he knew or didn’t know. He knew the contestants. It was real, real hard on February 16 of ‘02, when he died. That was the hardest thing in my life. Spanish Fork City named the old arena after him that summer. He was the youngest in the family. LR: I’m sorry… So was he your only child that wanted to be involved in the rodeo, or were your other kids involved? SM: My girls did for a while. They barrel raced a little bit, but it kind of got old, and he seemed like he was the only one. I remember one thing he said was, just out of the blue, “Dad, when I make it to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, are you going to come see me?” And I said, “You’re dang right, I am.” But he was the only one that really stayed with it, loved the horses as much as he did. He was always out riding the horses and that. So I don’t know where he would have ended up. 11 LR: Right. Kind of moving on a little bit, how did you become involved with the PRCA? SM: Well, I think when you get more and more used to it, I remember going to the convention down there, and they didn’t even know you. But I think as years go on, you meet a guy, you meet a guy, and then you get more and more. One year, I was running for committee person of the year for the committees of the 5000. They have different committees represent different rodeos based on the purse, and I was running for one, and then I got running for another one that somebody took in, and I did not know who even put me in. Somebody in the whole PRCA, out of 700 rodeos, put my name in, and you have to have five votes and then you're on the ballot. Somebody did twice, and then they put me on the PRCA board on a lot of different committees. They put me on the advisory board; I’m still on it. We had a call once a month and talked about different things, and that was quite an honor. Then I just got to know the other people. Before, you’d see them and they’d just walk by you in the hallways, but now you stopped and get to talk to everybody. I think I do have one degree; my supervisor at work, he announced at my retirement party that I got a B.S. degree [laughing]. What college gave it to me, but I do B.S. quite a bit, and I just started talking to a lot of people and got really involved with the people in the PRCA to where I know everybody on a first-name basis, and to this day still talk to them all the time. I’ve had the director come and the manager and everybody else came for our rodeo, watched it, and I just kind of got to know them all, talked to them all, changed the format of our rodeo, and 12 we became a Silver Tour, a Gold Tour, you know. So I think that really helps. Then we had the Wrangler Champion Challenge that we hosted. But the biggest thing, I think, was when I got asked to be on the PRCA advisory board. That’s when you really got to know the people within the PRCA. LR: Okay. You talked about the silver tour and the gold tour. What does that mean? SM: The Silver Tour, we joined that in 2010. What that is, is the rodeo that you had to add at least $10,000 in your prize money. If you get that, then you can belong to the Silver Tour, if you want, and if you had that, you had the top cowboys coming to your rodeo and competing. It was another incentive. They used to have the Winston Tour long ago, and so it was a lot to do with the name, but the cowboys got points if they kept at this, and then they got to be in a shootout up in Ogden; I can’t remember the rodeo. One of the rodeos up there had a shootout—the adjusted shootout, is what it was. But that’s if you had $10,000 or more. The Gold Tour, if you wanted to be a Gold Tour, you had to add $20,000. What I told them: there was only five rodeos in the nation that were a Gold Tour, and I says, “We got to go to that one, that would be nice to be the number six.” So we had to up our money, and we kept upping it, but we put in $20,000 dollars per event and became a Gold Tour in 2017. LR: Wow, that’s impressive. So I’m looking over your nominee packet, and it's rather impressive how many awards and honors you’ve received over the years. SM: I know this sounds corny, and I don’t know if you’ll put it in there—somebody’s always watching over me, and I always think my son up there in Heaven has helped me get them awards. I always say that, but I don’t know, I’ve just been 13 real blessed. You know, I thought I was all through; just back in February, our State Legislator asked me to come up to the State Legislature, and the Utah State Legislature honored me and gave me a citation up there for all the work I did in Utah. I turn around and I received a letter that I’m going to be inducted in the Utah Hall of Fame. I’m just very, very blessed. I really, really work hard, but it sure paid off for all the awards that I have received. I’m plum full of them. LR: Do you have any fun stories throughout the years that you’d like to share? SM: Yeah, [I’ll] think about that for a while. I don’t know. I can’t think of any. LR: Okay. Is there a story that stands out to you as memorable as you were putting together the rodeo? SM: The greatest thing that was pretty neat was when we brung John Drowning here. We got to have the invitation with Red Rock and Lane Frost, and at the time, John had picked six rodeos, and I told John that we wanted to be one. We talked to him, because we became real, real good friends in a short time, and to this day; I mean, he called me yesterday and we just talked. Lane Frost and Red Rock. Red Rock had been unridden in 310 tries, and Lane Frost, he had won the world the year before. So he set up a match at certain rodeos—it was like after your rodeo, a competition thing—and we had to pay so much money to have it in there. But Lane Frost tried to ride Red Rock, and he got bucked off at two of them, the first two. Then he figured out the thing, and he rode him two, and then he got bucked off, and then he rode him. When he come to Spanish Fork— because John has set another rodeo in—the score was 3 to 3. That was probably the biggest thing that Spanish Fork… There was no room in our whole arena to 14 even stand. Every walkway, every seat, every corner; you had people even on the arena floor. It was just packed in that arena. Lane Frost and Red Rock, that was the last thing at the end. It was one of the greatest rides that you’ve ever seen in your life, and Lane rode him. It was unbelievable. And the yell; I can still picture that right now, of Lane having both hands up in the air, waving, and the crowd just going crazy, and Red Rock went to the other end, and he stood there, and he looked at Lane. Lane looked at him, and they just kind of like, “You won,” and then he just walked out of the arena. They didn’t herd him out or nothin’. Red Rock just stood there, looked at him, nodded his head, and walked out of the arena. That was just the biggest, most famous thing in our rodeo. That was just super fantastic. LR: That's awesome. Thank you, that is a great story. I’ve pretty much asked all my questions, so I’d like to just end with my final question, and that is: what do you hope your legacy is? SM: I haven’t really thought of that. I just hope people know to work hard. I was taught that when you went to work, you earned your wages. I want to be remembered as a guy that when he went to work, he earned his wages. I just want to be remembered that I wanted to put on the best rodeo, that fans themselves would say, “Wow, what a rodeo,” and take the sunset. LR: That is fantastic. Thank you so much, Steven. I really appreciate your time and your candor. 15