Oral History Program Jay Hadley Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 19 June 2018 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jay Hadley Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 19 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: Hadley, Jay, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 19 June 2018, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Lynnette Sanders (Right) & J.C. Sanders (Left) 19 June 2018 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lynette Sanders, conducted on June 19, 2018 in West Haven, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Lynette discusses her father, Jay Hadley, and his involvement in the rodeo community. Michael Ballif, the video technician, is present during this interview as well as J.C. Sanders, grandson of Jay Hadley. LR: Today is June 19, 2018. We are in J.C. Sander’s home in West Haven, doing an interview about his grandfather, Jay Hadley, for the Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Hall of Fame. Jay’s daughter, Lynette Sanders, is here with us. I’m Lorrie Rands conducting the interview, and Michael Ballif is with me as well. So, I just want to say thank you again for your willingness to sit down and talk with us about Jay, and I’m just going to start with when and where he was born? LS: He was born here in Taylor just down the street a couple of miles. A matter of fact, where you interviewed the other, Kay, probably. He grew up on a farm. So, he used to have to walk to school. LR: He didn’t ride his horse? LS: No. Surprising. It used to take him forever to get to school, and I was reading his background on the Hadley book the other day, and his dad was gone a lot, and the two older brothers always had jobs, so Dad used to climb up on the tractor, and he would run the farm, because his other brother was too young to do it. So he worked hard, really hard. LR: So how many siblings did he have? 1 LS: He had, let’s see, there was Dean, Harold, Aunt Gloria, Monte, Dad, and Blaine. There was six of them—six boys, and one daughter. And they had one brother who passed away when he was a baby. LR: So Monte was Jay’s brother? LS: He would be the youngest brother. LR: Now I understand the connection, thank you. So he grew up on the farm. Did, so, listening to Monte’s life story, he seemed to ride his horse to school, then he’d come home in the middle of the day and take care of things and ride back to school on his horse. Did Jay do that? LS: He never said anything about riding his horse, he said he used to walk to school. And it was at the old Weber High, which was on Washington and 12th Street, used to be right there, where Stop and Shop used to be, or ShopCo now used to be, old Weber High there. And that was quite a ways for him to go. And he said he was so bashful that he was afraid to go into the school, but he did graduate. He played basketball. He was on the basketball team. He was very good at that. LR: So he went to elementary school around here? LS: Yes. LR: And that’s where he met his wife. LS: Right. They went to school together because my mom was from West Weber. They were kind of sweethearts I guess all the way through school, and she was what got him through school maybe, I don’t know. LR: So you said he was bashful 2 LS: He said he was bashful, but older years he was the friendliest guy. He made friends with everybody, it was amazing. Everybody liked my Dad. Yeah he was just a good person. LR: Did he ever talk about what his duties were on the farm growing up? LS: Driving the tractor, and I know they raised a lot of peas, and, you know, tomatoes and things like that. And then he started rodeoing, and he tells those stories of when he and Uncle Blaine, Monte was probably still too little, when my grandpa was gone, then him and Blaine would go out and ride the cows, and then grandpa would come home and find out they’d been riding them, and they’d get in trouble. But they loved their horses and their cows. My grandpa had a lot of cows. LR: So, where do you think his love of horses came from? LS: From a very small age. I don’t know how many horses he had. My Grandpa used to have a team of horses that they used on the farm, but he just started liking horses and stuff. I don’t know, it’s just like the rest of us, growing up around the animals and stuff. That’s what we did all day long. That’s what you did, ride your horses down the road and stuff, that’s what they did. LR: Did he ever help corral the cattle? LS: Yep. LR: And do that too? LS: Yep. And they had an old arena down there, him and Blaine and Uncle Monte, they built an arena down there. So I remember when I was little, he used to go down there and they’d practice calf roping, and not as much bulldogging at that 3 time, but they would rope a lot of cows. And then my Dad, we lived on the corner down here in a little one bedroom home, me and my younger brother Lonnie. He passed away in 98. But we lived down there. And Dad had an arena running right against the road—this used to be a dirt road—and he’d practice all day long. As a matter of fact, my husband’s dad and my Uncle Monte, everybody all around the block, my Dad would have bulldogging and calf roping jackpots and they’d go all day long. They never knew when to quit. So when he built this house and sold that one down there, the arena’s been set so many places, because it was back here, then they moved it down there, so he’s always had an arena, and he’s always had, even when I was in high school rodeoing, college, he always had the college boys coming out practicing bulldogging and calf roping and stuff. He was just that kind of guy. Then he ran the old coliseum for many years, he was the manager over that, so it seems like that’s all they did, practice practice practice! LR: So when did he start rodeoing? LS: I know he was in the amateur associations for just a short while, because I remember I was pretty small, I was probably eight or nine years old when he started going to the PRCA Rodeos, so that would probably be 60 years ago. So he started going to the PRCA rodeos about that time frame. And, he would go all over. He’s been to California, he’s been to like Colorado, we went to Montana, and all of Idaho and Nevada, he just kind of went all over a little bit. Mostly in the summer months when we were little, and he always took his family. Always. There was a couple of times I remember he went to Sacramento California and Red Bluff a couple of times, and my Mom would go with them, and they took my 4 other little brother with them and stuff, but we stayed home at that time because we were in school. But he was always a family person. LR: So, I read that he raced a lot of horses, and just had a love for racing and doing the chariot races. LS: He did. I think they pretty much started the chariot races around here, him and Uncle Blaine, and then my other uncles and stuff. And they used to run on sleighs because there was always snow around, and when there was no snow, they actually had—they raced up in the Ogden Valley, and they had a couple of places up there where they’d race. And they used to race their rodeo horses. I mean, they…like Dad had a couple of horses always, like Soapy Joe and Joe Buck, and my old mare Diamond, they run them in the wintertime on the chariots. So they would do that, and it seemed like on the sleighs for quite a while, and then it got to where the snows were kind of sparse, so they would start running on, they built the wheels with the chariots with the wheels on it. And actually my Dad and Uncle Blaine built a lot of those chariots back then. So, he was a good welder. LR: So he had built his own chariots? LS: Yes. Matter of fact, him and my uncle Blaine built horse trailers there for a little while. LR: That’s crazy. How did he, I read in there your parents married almost immediately, right after they graduated from high school. How did she feel about his rodeoing and…? 5 LS: My Mom was so easy going. She just went along with everything, and they just loved doing everything together and stuff. She would ride a lot. She would go hunting with us once in a while, and my dad had a certain horse that she could ride, and I remember them talking about riding down the road when they were younger, before they were married, and I guess a horse bucked her off and she went in the ditch. And, you gotta know my Dad, if he knew you were alright he’d laugh. He’d laugh at everything. Quite a character, he’d make it fun. So, but she was good. She was a good person. MB: Talking about the chariot racing a little bit earlier, it says here that he ran in numerous state and world racing competitions. So I kind of understand the state thing, but the world, was that like the World Series or was it another name for the national? Did he travel internationally? LS: So the world races, how it works is that they run all winter, and then in February, they take your wins and your losses, so whoever has the less losses or wins most of the time, they go in the first division. In state, they used to go from first down to tenth place, and then they used to take the top four chariot racers to the world races, which used to be in Pocatello, Idaho. And it would just consider, Colorado, I think there was some California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, all of Utah, it was big in Utah. I don’t know, did I miss a state? So, yeah, and they would take the top four, and all the top four from those associations would come and run at the world races. He always had a team that seemed like up there in Pocatello. So, and then they changed it to Pocatello, no, I think they run in Elko, Nevada for a little while, and then Dad was running for first and second place with my uncle 6 Blaine, and my Dad had a horse break down, so. He ended up not winning first, but he did pretty good. But they would run chariots in the wintertime, and then they’d start rodeoing on their rodeo horses, that same horse during the season, and then we’d take them deer hunting in the fall. MB: Good horses. Also on here as well, I see that he played saxophone in a band. That’s not something I would really associate with a rodeo cowboy. LS: No, just when he was in school he started playing saxophone. He had a brother that played drums really good. Dad had a saxophone for years. I think my brother, when my Dad passed away, took the saxophone home. The case was kind of getting kind of shaggy, but yeah, I remember him playing the guitar. He could play the guitar and just play a song and not even know how to read music, he just did it. But his mom was really musical, played organ, and then he had a sister also that played the organ and stuff, so. Kind of a musical family there for a while. LR: Yeah. Speaking of his parents, what were his parent’s names? LS: Well, his dad’s real name was, let’s see, Lorenzo Alfred Hadley, but we called him Lonnie, everybody called him Lon. And then my grandma was Aletha Manning Hadley. LR: Did they just settle here in Taylor? LS: Yeah, they did. I think my grandpa grew up just down the street here, and my grandma, she was born in Hooper. So they were close around. LR: I didn’t realize Hooper and Taylor had been around for so long. LS: A long time. West Weber, Taylor. 7 LR: Not being from the area, it’s still fascinating to me. Okay. So. When he was playing saxophone, reading, did you ever go watch him? Or was he still playing when you were little? LS: I was so little. I just remember him picking it up here at home and listening to it. But I was pretty small. LR: So it was something that he did before his family came along? LS: Yeah. LR: Okay. LS: Yeah, it was quite a bit younger. LR: I love the fact that he played at the White City ballroom, and had a standing gig there. That was just pretty cool. LS: Kind of cool, yeah. LR: So how many brothers and sisters did you have? LS: I have one sister, the youngest daughter, and then I had Lonnie was two years younger than me. He’s the one that passed away in 98. And then my other brother, Lex, there’s 12 years difference between me and Lex, so there’s 10 years between the two sets. LR: So are you the oldest? LS: Yes. LR: Alright. And, reading on the paper, at the end it talks about the accomplishments of his family, not just his own. And it’s a lot. You guys were just busy on the circuit. Was he there with you, would he encourage you? 8 LS: He was actually rodeoing. I can’t remember when he actually quit. His legs got so bad, his knees and stuff. I remember his last ride in the mountains, because it was up, on his dad-in-law’s property, and we rode down the hill, and his knees got so bad that he had to get the truck to come and get him. And that was the last time he got on a horse, but he wanted to get on a horse so bad. But he was always still there. He would go watch the kids, even these little grandkids when they would go to the rodeos, and he and his mom would just watch them. They went a lot, and he was always there to encourage you, come pick you up. If you get bucked off or something you better get back up, because he was tough. MB: Now was his event bareback and bull riding, or the timed events, or…? LS: You know, when he was younger he rode bareback a little bit, and he rode some bulls, but most of the time he was a bulldogger and a calf roper. I remember at Manti, years ago when we were young, we went down there and they didn’t have enough cowboys in the rodeo, and he got on a bull and a bareback and then he bulldogged and he calf roped. I think I was running barrels and stuff. It was crazy. Yeah. He would do anything. He was quite daring. LR: Did Jay ever train horses for other cowboys or was that Monte? LS: He trained a lot of horses. He traded a lot of horses around and stuff, but yeah, he trained his own. Soapy Joe, there’s a big article on him. LR: Yeah, we have that in the packet. LS: Yeah, he trained him at a young age, three. And he had a stud, Joe Buck, that was the dad to Soapy. That horse was an awesome horse, and he trained him. I used to ride him down the road with the kids and everything because he was 9 such a nice horse. But he would train them, and then the ones, he’d turn over some, he kept the ones that he really liked. So when Soapy Joe kind of quit when he broke his leg, Dad had a few other calf roping horses, but that was my Dad’s heart there that kind of slowed him down a little bit. LR: So did Soapy Joe break his leg or your Dad? LS: Soapy Joe did. As a matter of fact, it was right before me and my brother and my future husband were going to the National High School finals in San Antonio, Texas, and they had a jackpot rodeo down at West Warren, and I believe it was my, it was either Lonnie or my husband that was on Soapy Joe, that was hazing, and come out of the box and broke his leg. So that was really a hard thing. That was hard for Dad, but he would take these horses and he would mount guys actually going to the finals and stuff, and he’d mount guys at the rodeo bulldogging, and even calf roping and stuff. LR: So when you say he would mount, I don’t understand that lingo. LS: Okay, so like with Soapy, he was mainly a rope horse, but Dad hazed on him for steer wrestling. So he’d haze for a lot of other guys. And then there was a guy that loved Soapy so, he asked if he could bulldog on him once, and Dad hazed on the other horse, and this guy jumped off of Soapy and won the rodeo of course. JS: Basically just borrowed him, let other people use him. LS: Yeah, just letting them use him and stuff. As long as my Dad was there, he would let them use him. And then like, my old bay mare, my Dad and them would bulldog, he would let four or five guys ride her bulldogging, and I’d be waiting 10 down at the other end of the arena for him to bring her down to me so I could run barrels on her. Was just the way my Dad was. LR: Is that a typical thing at a rodeo or is that something that your Dad did? LS: That was just something that… well Monte, he had some nice horses, too, and he would let people use them once in a while too, so he.. JS: It’s more common in the steer wrestling than anything else. LR: You said a word that I don’t understand. Hazing? LS: Hazing; that’s like the steer wrestler is on one side, and your hazers on the other side that keeps the steer in the middle, so they don’t jump either under this way or that way, they keep them in line. MB: So, did your father produce rodeos as well? LS: He didn’t. He ran the Golden Spike Livestock Show for quite a few years over there. He has a few plaques on that one, and he did really good, because that, I mean that had horse shows and then he had cattle there, and sheep and pigs, just like the one they have over here now. JS: Think if it reads in there about producers, that’s talking about the stockyards probably. LS: Oh, the livestock producers, yeah. LR: There was one he helped create, what was the name of it? JS: H and H cattle. LR: H and H, yeah. Was that a stockyard thing, or…? JS: Just a cattle business. 11 LS: Just a cattle business, yeah. If you go over the 24th divide, down there was the old Coliseum, and then there was the big stockyards. And they had, I think the exchange building’s still there, I think they were gonna refurbish that, and Dad, and even my Grandpa, they would, they would go down there and sort cattle and put them on trains. I remember Dad going to Colorado, buying and selling cattle and stuff. But that was a big operation down there. It was pretty cool. Me and my brother, Lonnie, would go sit up on the walkways above them all day long and watch them sort their cattle and sheep and pigs and stuff out, and then they’d sell them through the auction and stuff. So it was pretty cool. LR: So your Dad, he had the stock business, did he do anything else for a day job? I know a lot of the cowboys would have a day job and then on the weekend would cowboy or do rodeoing. LS: Yeah, he worked for Weber County for quite a while. Actually the road department at first. And then he got manager over the Golden Spike Coliseum, and he was there for years. He used to take him, my other brother, J.C., and Dusty to work with him. JS: Where we grew up in the summer. LS: Yeah, it’s where they grew up in the summertime. Besides working them, he would take these kids over there, go fishing with them. He was always doing something with them. LR: So what is your first recollection, your first memory of your grandfather? JS: Probably right here at this place. I spent a lot of time with my Grandpa. But as far as one thing that pokes out that I remember right off the get go I don’t. 12 LR: Okay. So while you were here with him, what would you do? JS: Go outside, mess around in the barn, we didn’t spend any time in the house, it was outside doing stuff while we’re here with Grandpa. Mom said it was either taking us to work or going to Middle Fork fishing, we were always doing something. LS: Yeah, they would practice out here in the arena, him and Dusty. My brother would rope and my Dad would be sitting down here supervising. But I remember, these kids would go untie those calves and everything for my brother and my cousin, and I know they would have sweat dripping down them and dirt, but it was an all day thing. We lived up the street in a trailer park, Carol’s Trailer Park up there, and we lived up there for 13 years, but we spent every day down here, every day riding and working in the yard, and like he said we were never in the house, ever. LR: So did you start doing rodeo because of your Grandfather? JS: Probably between that and my Dad. I didn’t know any different. From the first time I remember I was traveling to the rodeo with my folks, and I grew up in the arena, so I didn’t know. LR: Okay. Just a thing to do. JS: I guess. LS: It was, and we were really fortunate that my Dad was still rodeoing when we were doing it, so we went to a lot of rodeos every weekend, and we’d stay, and Dad had his motor homes or whatever he took. I remember growing up, I was thinking the other day, because him and his brother and my uncle, they built 13 those bands that go on the back of big trucks to put the horses in, and we pulled a big trailer behind, and I remember traveling like that. And I remember we went to, it was a station wagon, and we pulled a little trailer on the back of the trailer, it had a curtain that went around the back, and we slept in the station wagon or outside. Never went out to eat, ever. My Mom always cooked on a Coleman stove or something. And I remember he got a sleeper, and we went up to travel in that for quite a while. And we’d sleep out a lot, and then he finally ended up getting a motor home. I was telling these kids the other day that they’re really spoiled, they had no idea of how much fun, what we used to travel in. No bathrooms, no showers. Jump in the canal, and… LR: Mention that to my kids as well. You guys have it made. LS: That’s right, huh. LR: That’s really funny. Are there any other stories you can think of about your Dad or your Grandfather that jump out at you that you’d like to share? That you’ve thought of as we’ve been talking? JS: No, nothing in particular. Like my Mom said, Grandpa was a good guy to all his grandkids and kids. I’m just thinking stories in particular. LS: He’d do anything for anybody. Like I said, he made friends with people a lot of people probably wouldn’t want to be friends with. He was just good, taught us all to be tough. JS: There was some people around here that probably had no friends, and Grandpa took them into his house and made them a friend. LS: Yeah, he was really good about that. He had lots of friends. 14 LR: So, what would you consider to be his greatest accomplishment? LS: Yeah, nothing really stands out, because to me he’s accomplished a lot. You know, as far as his rodeo abilities and his family, and he just put forth a lot of effort in everything he did. It was hard work, and he always put that effort into it. LR: So what do you think he would consider to be his greatest accomplishment? LS: Just having his family, I mean that’s, to me, I don’t know what else I could say. LR: What do you hope his legacy is? LS: Gosh, I don’t know. What would you say? It is a tough one to answer, you know, his legacy of, his training with his horses and his abilities to do everything, I don’t know. It’s kind of hard. LR: What do you think? JS: Probably being a good person. A good person and a fair person. LS: Yeah. I think so, too. LR: I’ve really appreciate your time and your willingness to talk about him. I swear I learn something new every time. 15