Bismarck Tribune

By VIRGINIABy VIRGINIAGRANTIER

There will be some big-name cowboys at Aug. 6's Champions Ride who won't ride.

Not the rodeo cowboys signed up to ride the saddle broncs, they'll ride alright - and they will certainly have big names. The rodeo typically attracts some of the sport's top saddle bronc riders for the event that is held at and benefits Home on the Range, a Sentinel Butte residential treatment facility for troubled kids.

The non-riding celebs will be sitting celebs, sitting on lawn chairs - their saddle bronc days more than a couple bucks back.

The rodeo's first champ, Alvin Nelson, 72, who still lives on his Grassy Butte ranch that he bought in 1956, plans to be there Aug. 6 for that big day - the 50th Champions Ride.

He remembers that first rodeo. He remembers the horse he was on was "really rough." Nelson said he thinks it was sorrel in color. It's name was "Darn Tooten." The chaps Nelson wore that day are now on display at the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora.

He was age 23, 5 foot 6, and 140 pounds and he didn't just win that ride. He would be the 1957 world champion saddle bronc rider that year, based on winnings. But he didn't keep his winnings from the Sentinel Butte win.

The winning purse went back to Home on the Range.

"They didn't expect us to …But we wanted to,"he said.

Other rodeo cowboys who have competed there over the years will be there Aug. 6, invited to a 10:30 a.m. cowboy reunion brunch.

At 11:30 a.m., there will be pre-rodeo entertainment and the match starts at 1 p.m.

On the arena's west side Sunday, in their favorite spots, will be two people who remember the first rodeo - and the second, third, fourth, fifth and, and, must we go on?

Suffice it to say, they've always been there. This will be their 50th. Arvid Scott, 73, of Williston and Loretta Tescher, 76, are rain-or-shine fans. And sometimes cold fans.

Tescher, wife of Jim Tescher who was one of the rodeo's founders, remembers that first rodeo, which was held on a frigid spring day.

"It was nasty cold,"Loretta Tescher said. Too cold to get out of the car.

Loretta Tescher watched her husband compete in it for years, during his rodeoing career that included qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo in 1959 and walking away the saddle-bronc-riding average winner - an honor he'd repeat in 1963. He also would earn the title of runner-up in the world in 1964 and competed in the big ones - Cheyenne, Denver, Madison Square Garden.

Jim Tescher, who died in 2003 after a four-wheeler accident at their Sentinel Butte ranch, continued to be devoted to the Champions Ride after he retired from bronc riding, and was instrumental in kick-starting it to life again, several years ago when sponsor numbers and crowds were down.

Even when he was in the intensive care unit after the accident, he was able to do some Champions Ride business on the telephone, says Vicki Pennington, a Champions Ride organizer who received one of his calls.

And his wife continues his devotion. "It's important. Jim was one of the organizers,"said Tescher, who herself knows first-hand about bronc riding.

It was when she was a young woman at a rodeo with Jim Tescher prior to their marriage that she decided to try to ride one.

"I like to do something different,"said Tescher, who also has taken on raising bees and other interests over the years.

The rodeo organizers let her, but it was called an exhibition ride because women weren't allowed to compete officially. Jim Tescher let her borrow his chaps, was supportive of her attempt, and she rode the bucking horse to the buzzer.

'I never miss that'

On Aug. 6, also on the west side of the arena, will be Arvid Scott, another never-miss Champions Ride attendee.

"I miss a lot of things,"he said. "I never miss that."

Scott, who now lives in Williston, once ranched in the area.

"The guys I was raised with, this is the only time Isee them, the older cowboys," he said.

First for director

Then there's that big name who has never seen a rodeo.

Rodeo is all new to Jay Johnson, the new executive director of 56-year-old Home on the Range, which serves ages 10-18.

"The kids tease me about never being to a rodeo,"said Johnson, who's been in his new post for about three months, replacing Pat Petermann, who left to become director of the Boys and Girls Club of Minnesota.

Johnson, a former horse owner, said he's looking forward to the Champions Ride and he said he wants the long-time event to continue for a number of reasons, mainly because it "has become a 50-year tradition,"has become a part of Golden Valley, and it gives people an opportunity to see the facility.

Johnson, whose last position was chief treatment officer of Ramey-Estep Homes, a child care facility in Ashland, Ky., has a master's degree in social work, is a diplomate in the American Psychotherapy Association and has worked in residential treatment of youth for 28 years.

He said the majority of kids who live there, 60 currently, "have had things happen to them that no child should have happen to them. "

"They've been abused, neglected, mistreated in a variety of ways,"he said. "Almost every girl in the program has been sexually abused at some point."

He said it's a tough challenge for the facility, in the about nine months that the child is there, to convince them to let go of their dysfunctional behaviors and learn more appropriate coping skills when the coping skills they have have been survival skills for them. But he said all of the kids "are better off for having been here."

Equestrian therapy

A typical day now for the kids starts at 8 a.m., being assigned to a work crew for about four hours. "This is a working ranch. They bring hay in, feed cattle, work with horses …,"he said.

The day also includes therapy groups, including equestrian therapy. Johnson said the ranch has two certified equestrian therapists who recently put on an exercise for kids to teach them more about relationships.

In the arena, stalls were built in the corners. "It looked like a giant pool table,"Johnson said. The kids were told to pick a loose horse in the arena and without using a rope, or halter or food had to convince it to go into one of the corner stalls. They had to figure out how to form a relationship with the horse and get it to go where they wanted. They were all successful except for the one kid who wouldn't participate. Johnson said the kid's refusal was a chance for a teaching moment, showing him that the only way to succeed is to participate.

He said there are components of the program the state won't pay for, anything associated with livestock and spirituality, at the facility founded by the Rev. Elwood E. Cassedy. Cassedy and three boys in 1950 moved into a converted granary on a 960-acre farm that farmers Ed and Emma Lievens donated for the cause.

Johnson said he wants two things for sure to happen at Home on the Range: One is to continue having the kids be able to work with animals. He said at previous places he has worked, he had tried to convince boards, and failed, to bring animals into the program. Here at Home on the Range, Johnson, a former 4-H advisor, sees what he always knew would happen.

"I don't know if Ican adequately describe the impact,"he said.

He gave an example from this March. Some of the kids who put on a mean, tough front found a calf nearly frozen in a snowbank. They spent the day with it in a ranch building rubbing it, warming it with hair dryers while it lay in a sleeping bag. "You see a tender side you never see,"he said. Johnson said it was an opportunity to point out what would have happened to that calf if they hadn't been there. The calf survived and the kids, bonded to it, checked on it daily.

He said since the Sentinel Butte facility is located near Theodore Roosevelt National Park and there is tourism traffic in the area, he'd like to give the kids the opportunity to run a business, maybe a gift shop. "A lot of these kids move around, don't have much opportunity to do what other kids do, (like)part-time jobs,"he said. "This would give them something on their resume."

Getting ready

Meanwhile, the kids have been getting their ranch ready for the Champions Ride.

"They're getting the rodeo ring ready, painting, pulling weeds, making things look nice,"he said.

And on the day of, some kids will help at the gate, selling the program book, helping with parking, caring for animals.

Leon Lorz, 53, owner of Professional Printing, in Dickinson, suffered some abuse during his childhood, got into some trouble and ended up at the ranch for two years.

"I got on track,"he said about the experience.

He said troubled kids at Home on the Range "come from situations where they don't have the opportunity to get better… and they keep spiraling down."

Home on the Range gave him the new experience of having people behind him, encouraging him, taking an interest in him, he said.

Lorz said the support and care he received from Father William Fahnlander, who took over after Cassedy's death in 1959, is almost indescribable.

"I don't know if I can put it in words."

Home on the Range is located off of Interstate 94, Exit 7.

For more information, call 701-872-3745.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@;bismarcktribune.com.)