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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Longtime rodeo cowboy Ralph Wendell "Dutch" Woolstenhulme of Oakley has died at 70 of injuries suffered in an ATV accident.
Woolstenhulme died Sunday at a Salt Lake City hospital from head injuries suffered June 13 when he was thrown from an ATV on Boulderville Road.
He operated a service station, Dutch's Sinclair, in Oakley but loved the rodeo.
"He would take off every weekend to go to (one)," said his son, Tim Woolstenhulme. "He would leave the station to my mom and us kids."
During his time with the rodeo he both competed and, as a pickup man, helped cowboys dismount from bucking broncos.
"Everyone wants to view him as a rodeo star," said friend Tenney Cannon. "But he was a peacemaker who kept our community together."
Once in the late 1970s he was a pickup man at a high school rodeo when a student fell off his bareback mount and got his hand caught in the horse's rigging.
The youth was being dragged as Woolstenhulme rode up beside him, grabbed his belt with one hand, leaned over to free the boy's snagged hand and lifted him up.
Tim Woolstenhulme said that if his father had not freed the teen, "he'd be where Dutch is today."
For 20 years, brothers Dutch and Ken Woolstenhulme participated in organizing Oakley's Fourth of July Rodeo.
Services will be Thursday at 11 a.m. at the Marion LDS Stake Center. Interment will be in Oakley Cemetery.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
