At 75 years old, J.C. Trujillo can still feel the moment he became a rodeo cowboy.
He was 6.
He remembers his first calf-riding competition for kids “as clear as day,” he said. “I was scared as you could be, to have to get on one of those calves.”
But he did and was able to stay on by clutching onto the calf’s side. Trujillo won himself the second-place prize: $10.80.
“And by golly, I thought I'd never see a poor day,” Trujillo said.
Almost 70 years later, the former national bareback champion likes to say that just about everything he’s achieved in his life “is basically because of the sport of rodeo.”
That includes his ranch, his collection of shiny belt buckles won in competition — including one presented to him by President Ronald Reagan — and on Nov. 11, the highest honor a cowboy like him can imagine: being recognized by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, colloquially known as the Cowboy Hall of Fame.
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