OklahomaHorses Magazine May 2023

8 OklahomaHorses • May / June 2023 A Noble Resting Place Rodeo Animal Greats Are Interred at Museum Cemetery by Carol Mowdy Bond Photos courtesy of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum I n 1972, Jim Shoulders called the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and said Tornado had gone to that big ranch in the sky. “He wanted Tornado buried here,” said the Oklahoma City museum’s Michael Grauer, who is the McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections and Western Art. “We dug a grave and Jim brought him here, and we had a ceremony.” A cowboy, stock contractor, and rodeo icon, Shoulders won 16 world championship rodeo titles. And he owned and managed Tornado. Shoulders corralled the bull on his J Lazy S Ranch in Henryetta, where Shoulders and his daughters fed cookies to the gentle bull, and Tornado was docile in the pasture. However, the 1,850-pound Braford (Brahma-Hereford cross) Tornado, a Dale Smith on“Poker Chip Peake.”DeVere Helfrich, 1961, safety film negative. DeVere Helfrich Rodeo Photographs, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy &Western Heritage Museum. 81.023.17948-1.