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Local family receives Montana rodeo award

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“It’s just been our way of life for many, many years,” Penny O’Hearn said of her family’s relationship with rodeo.

O’Hearn’s family has been recognized as the 2019 “Great Montana Rodeo Family” by the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame. The honor highlights Bud Smith, O’Hearn’s late father, who ignited the family’s love for rodeo. The family was honored at a banquet in Billings on January 26. Bud Smith passed away in 1998. His family accepted the award.

Smith was born in McRae, Montana in 1917. He left home at 15, moved to Whitehall and began working on ranches and breaking horses. He met his wife, Gussie Ballard, while working there. In his younger years Smith owned an outfitting business in Drummond. The family moved to Ronan in 1965. Smith continued ranching and began taking hunters and fisherman into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. He also ran the horse concessions at Holland Lake Lodge.

“He loved this way of life because he could work with horses, mules and meet new people that came into his life,” the Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame’s biography of Smith reads. When he retired Smith started a saddle and tack shop where he did leatherworking for other cowboys.

Smith raised bucking bulls and leased them out. He was particularly proud of his bull, “Mission Mountain,” who was named “Bucking Bull of the Year” in the Northern Rodeo Association multiple times. Though Smith never competed in the arena himself, his rodeo legacy lives on through his children and grandchildren who are still involved in rodeo.

“He was a cowboy his entire life and it carried on through the generations,” O’Hearn said. She said her children started to rodeo at age 5. The family has grown: today Smith has 14 grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great grandchild.

O’Hearn said the family has been involved in nearly every aspect of rodeo and that the award is a big honor for her mother, who is 93 and lives in Round Butte. The award is also a tribute to her father’s memory. “He would have been so proud,” O’Hearn said. “Not so much for himself but because of his children. The family meant the world to him.”

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