Riding buckin' horses the Wright way

MILFORD, Utah (AP) — Here are your directions to the first family of rodeo: head north through town, past the train depot, the old Hotel Milford, the Phillips 66 station/Subway shop, turn left at the hospital, then turn right when you see the bucking horses. And yes, those last two are occasionally related.

The arena for the bucking horses, the house next to it and the surrounding five acres belong to Bill and Evelyn Wright, whose sons, the Wright brothers, have made quite a name for themselves by not going airborne.

In saddle bronc riding — often called rodeo's purest event, featuring horses with names like Lunatic Fringe and 5 Minutes to Midnight that naturally like to buck and cowboys who attempt to unnaturally stay in the saddle for eight full seconds — no family in history has dominated like the Wrights. They've claimed four world championships in the past seven years and two runners-up. Last December, when four Wright boys made it to the 15-man field at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas — rodeo's Super Bowl — and wound up first, fifth, eighth and ninth in the world, the NFR arena announcer shouted, "Utah, you're second to none!"

When they married back in 1975, Bill informed Evelyn he wanted a large family and further told her that since he'd grown up near a home for disadvantaged boys, he had half a mind to adopt some of them to give them a chance in life. Evelyn, thinking otherwise, said, "No you're not, I'll have 'em for ya."

So they got started, and as Evelyn understates it, "kinda got on a roll."

Over the next 23 years they had 13 children of their own, six girls and seven boys.

The girls all got into careers and homemaking and making something of themselves. The boys, well, they got into rodeo.

It was Bill's fault. He'd rodeoed when he was younger, in high school at Hurricane High and in college at Dixie in St. George. He went to a couple of saddle bronc clinics taught by the legendary Casey Tibbs, got his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association card and thought he'd like to give the professional circuit a try. But he was married, they already had Selinda, and Evelyn came down with appendicitis that ate up half of their savings.

Instead of moving to Cody, Wyoming, where a rodeo runs all summer long and Bill could hone his craft, they had their first boy, who they named Cody, and stayed put in Hurricane as Bill took over his dad's ranch.

"You know how in life you come to a fork in the road and the one you take makes all the difference?" says Evelyn. "That was our fork."

The Wrights' ranch on Smith Mesa overlooks Zion National Park. It's been in the family since their Mormon pioneer ancestors homesteaded there in the 1850s. Bill's father, Cal, was a horseman, as was his father and his father's father. Cowboyin' runs in the family. Besides herding the cattle and raising hay on his own land, Bill took jobs breaking other people's horses, pouring concrete and anything else he could find to do. Because as the kids kept coming, so did the bills.

Every two years the family grew. After Selinda and Cody came Laurelee, Calvin, Michaela, Monica, Alex, twins Jake and Jesse, Spencer, Kathryn, Rebecca and Stuart.

With 13 kids, there was no more rhyme or reason to practicing rodeo than there was to anything else. There was always a plethora of chores that came first. "I was the queen of work charts," says Evelyn, "I told them, 'There's one of me and a whole lot of you.'"

It wasn't until Cody got old enough to paw through Bill's old gear in the barn that rodeoin' re-entered the picture. One thing led to another, and soon the Wright boys, who had grown up hoping horses wouldn't try to throw them, now hoped they would.

Lured by a smaller town and what they saw as better schools, the Wrights moved the hundred miles from Hurricane to Milford in 1993. Selinda was married by then, Cody was 16, and his brothers were all 12 and younger. The boys — lean, not too tall, and possessing good balance — seemed to inherit their father's gift for staying in the saddle. Cody was a high school rodeo champion, and when the College of Southern Idaho offered him a scholarship to be on its rodeo team, he was off to Twin Falls to train under coach Shawn Davis, a three-time world saddle bronc champion.

"Old Shawn fine-tuned him," says Bill, "and then he passed it on."

"One thing about the (Wright) family, the kids' work ethic is impeccable," said Davis, who recently retired as rodeo coach at CSI. "Whatever you ask them to do they do it double."

So far, rodeo has paid for every Wright brother's education. Calvin followed Cody to CSI, as did Alex and Jesse. Jake went to Western Texas College and Spencer to both Oklahoma Panhandle State University and CSI.

This past season, the second generation took over when Cody's son Rusty attended CSI on a rodeo scholarship. "I can't say enough good about those kids," said Steve Birnie, the coach who succeeded Davis. "We're lucky to have them come through CSI. There's lots more coming, so hopefully we can get some more."

Stuart, Bill and Evelyn's youngest boy (and Rusty's uncle despite being a year younger), is a senior this year at Milford High School and could be next in line, although his parents say he's likely to put college, and rodeo, on hold for a two-year LDS mission. Then there are Rusty's younger brothers Ryder, Stetson and Statler, who are already making bronc-riding names for themselves.

You could wear out a ballpoint pen detailing everything a Wright cowboy has won in rodeo — if it were possible at all.

At Bill and Evelyn's place, the "braggin' wall" is in a narrow hallway in the basement and there are no trophies or lists of accomplishments — just a dozen or so pictures of the boys on bucking horses.

Suffice to say that every Wright has his name on a first-place trophy in numerous high school and college rodeos — Jake, Jesse and Rusty were national high school champions, and Jake and Spencer won national college championships — and that between them they have competed in thousands of rodeos.

In the PRCA big leagues, they have been a surname to be reckoned with ever since Cody turned pro in 1998. He first qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in 2003 and almost won it all that year, finishing second with $179,000 in winnings. That started a string of 12 straight trips to the NFR. He won the world championship in 2008 and again in 2010. The $2.3 million he's collected in his career ranks as the 17th most money a rodeo cowboy has made in history.

The twins, Jesse and Jake, 12 years younger than Cody, were the next to make it to the NFR. Jesse won the world championship in 2012 after finishing second the year before. Jake was sixth in 2012 and second in 2013, just $10,000 from a world title.

Last year, Cody, Jesse and Jake returned as NFR qualifiers along with first-timer Spencer, who is two years younger than the twins. Spencer was in 12th position coming in, and then set a record by leapfrogging 11 cowboys to claim his world champion gold belt buckle and saddle with $205,388 in earnings. Jake finished fifth with $155,420, Jesse eighth with $134,502 and Cody, who dislocated his shoulder and limped through the last couple of rounds, ninth at $130,394. After 10 lucrative days in Las Vegas, the Wrights — who made history as the first family to have four brothers at the NFR in any event — raised their year's earnings to a collective $625,704.

This year, due to limited appearances because of shoulder rehab, Cody failed to qualify for the NFR for the first time since 2003. Only the top 15 make the cut for Vegas, and he finished 20th in the regular-season standings. Jesse at 19 and Alex at 50 also missed the cut. But there will still be three Wrights at the NFR — Rusty is ranked second, Jake eighth and Spencer 10th — and a fourth when you count CoBurn Bradshaw, who is married to Rebecca, the Wrights' youngest daughter.

The success has brought its share of attention and spoils — sponsorship deals with Wrangler, the M Hotel in Vegas and other companies. A film titled "Born to Ride" was made in 2009, documenting Cody's first world championship. This past March, the New York Times dispatched John Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, to spend time with the Wrights. He wrote a 6,000-word piece, "The Ride of Their Lives," and was so intrigued that he's considering doing a book on the Wright way of life.

"The Wrights were, and continue to be, unfailingly generous and patient," said Branch. "I told them I was interested in doing a story about their lives, and their livelihoods, and they never flinched. From a distance, ranching and rodeo can be seen as anachronisms. People can argue that they are fading vestiges of an idealized West. But the Wrights see those things not as the past, but as the future. They serve as an incredible example of how families and Western ideals continue to fit into a world quickly changing around them."

And just this past winter, a TV network asked if the Wrights might be interested in doing a reality show. They could be the Kardashians of rodeo.

It did not take Bill eight seconds to say no.

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It may be mere coincidence that the county built Milford Valley Memorial Hospital a half-mile down the road from Bill and Evelyn Wrights' front door. Then again, maybe not.

The Wrights go to the hospital like it's a 7-Eleven. Name it, they've broken it — ribs, shoulders, arms, legs, knees, ankles, heads. "We could make a list," says Evelyn, "but it would take a while." The all-time worst may have been when Spencer fell backward practicing in the family arena and had a brain bleed. He had to be flown by air ambulance to LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.

Then there was the time at the NFR when Jesse broke his foot early in the competition. "I asked him if he was going to keep riding," says Evelyn. "He said, 'Is a duck's butt watertight?' I told him, 'You could have just answered yes.'" Every night thereafter, Jesse got in the chute, held onto the reins and made his ride before limping out of the arena so he could grab his crutches.

Jesse's twin, Jake, broke his foot this year, for the third time, and had surgery in September. Does that mean he's still going to the NFR in December? His mother didn't even ask.

"The only reason the insurance company doesn't drop us is because they can't," deadpans Evelyn, who no matter if she's talking about a broken foot, a dislocated shoulder or a perfect ride has a knack for painting an honest, entertaining picture with her words and cowboy logic.

Her take, for example, on spending 10 nights in Las Vegas every December at the NFR:

"It's torture!" she says. "It goes from exuberance to crying just like that. And you stay up so late. Every night after it's over, you doctor the ones who are hurting, then celebrate with the ones who won."

Bill smiles when his wife talks, obviously entertained and enthralled after more than 40 years of marriage. As much as he's the one who got it started, he'll tell anyone who'll listen that it's her who's made it all go, that "having a good mom is the key." It was Evelyn who kept the Wright kids grounded, who had them up reading scriptures in the morning, who made sure they said their prayers and went to church on Sunday.

And not only did she have them and raise them, she also went to college at Southern Utah University in Cedar City — alongside five of her kids — so she could graduate with an education degree and get a job teaching third grade at Milford Elementary and qualify for insurance.

"Behind every successful rancher," Evelyn says, "there's a wife who works in town."

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So what's the draw? What compels a person to get bucked off and get right back on an ornery horse, ride after ride, rodeo after rodeo, year after year?

It can't be the money. A few rodeo cowboys drive fancy cars and have Goldman Sachs on speed dial, but most get to the next arena in high-mileage pickups or motor homes (Cody had a Dodge truck with 560,000 miles). A successful professional cowboy will win on average about $100,000 a year, against at least $60,000 in expenses. And unlike other sports, where you sign a contract and get paid if you're hurt or have an off night, in rodeo there are no guarantees. In John Branch's New York Times article, he chronicled a three-day, three-rodeo trip that stretched from Milford to Fresno, California, to Corpus Christi, Texas, to San Diego and back to Milford during which Cody — two-time world champion and one of the greatest saddle bronc riders of all time — won a grand total of $93.

But if the road can be a grind, it can also be a lure. Cody's wife, ShaRee, who has seen her husband and his brothers, and now her own boys, off on more road trips than she can count, observes that the Wrights don't exactly venture out begrudgingly. "They like traveling with each other," she says. "They like being together. They're always there for one another. And they love doing what they do."

Says Bill: "They don't make a lot of money, they just enjoy it. And there's a good sense of accomplishment in it. It's like poetry in motion if it's done right. If it's not, it's like a car wreck, I guess.

"Really, the bottom line is they're adrenaline junkies. It's quite a thrill. That's the biggest addiction of anything else."

Looking back on the truckloads of gold belt buckles and championship saddles that have made their way to Milford over the years, the 61-year-old Bill, who only recently recovered from shoulder surgery himself after — yep — being bucked off a riding horse, tips back his hat, squints and shrugs.

"We don't think it's anything special. It's just part of our lifestyle," he says as he makes preparations to go to Las Vegas for the NFR for the 13th year in a row. He knows it isn't the Wrights' first rodeo, and it sure won't be their last.

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Information from: Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com

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