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Wyoming State Fair, the Texas State Fair and the Fort Worth Stock Show for two decades,” notes Cathey. “He also served as publicity director for the National High School Rodeo Association, and was a significant contributor to the National Cutting Horse Association and AQHA, college rodeo.”


Cathey contributed to nearly all of the prominent western lifestyle publications of the time.


“He loved what he did,” say Cathey, noting that his mother managed his dad’s books and all his communications.


Cathey was meticulous in his record taking, saving all of his negatives with detailed descriptions of both the human and equine, or bovine, athletes depicted along with dates and places. The entire collection is now housed with the Dickinson Research Center of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, of which Cathey was posthumously inducted in 2018. He passed away in 1978.


His sons recently published the book Powder Puffs and Spurs, the story


of James Cathey and the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA), the result of their desire to honor and showcase their father’s work. “We started out thinking we would do a picture book but we realized we needed to decide on which part of his collection to focus. He had all the early RCA champions and he shot every AQHA Champion alive when he was,” explains Cathey. In the end, they chose to focus on his time with the GRA and the resulting 3000 negatives. “He was the only guy shooting the girls at the time.”


Cathey notes that he grew up with the photos of the legendary cowgirls of the GRA but mostly had no idea who they were.


“I fell in love with them,” he says of researching the stories to put with the photos for the book, a project that began with a plan to feature seven or eight ladies and ended with 13 and a guilt that they didn’t have space for more. “What I found most fascinating was that they did it all for the love of the competition and for the camaraderie to it. There was no money in it back then.” “Especially for me,” says Cathey, “it’s been great. I’ve gotten to know more about my dad and what he was doing but also I got to learn about the girls. I hope people get a sense of who they were [from the book]. They were all different but had the same independence and spirit.” By the late 1960’s, other photographers were shooting rodeo and making


a name for themselves, among them Ferrell Butler and Al Long. Long became associated with the ladies of the sport with a unique connection: his daughter Missy was a GRA World Champion Barrel Racer. But by the 1970’s, the GRA was building a new friendship with a man behind a camera, a man who, like Cathey, simply loved the ladies and their animals. Kenneth Springer was raised on a farm in Midlothian, Texas, not far from Fort Worth, and developed a love of horses early on in life. He was introduced to rodeo through his father, who rode in the grand entry at the local rodeo every week. “We had one horse and we’d go to the rodeo and Daddy would ride in the grand entry,” he says. “I would sit in the stands and I decided that I liked the bull riding and the barrel racing.” Springer remembers crawling to the top of the grandstands to watch the barrel racers pour into the parking lot, coming from the indoor rodeo held the same night in Mansfield because they could make both events. “I had an interest in barrel racing long before I had a camera,” he admits. In fact, while a student at University of Texas-Arlington, he secured a job at the Fort Worth Stock Show, setting barrels. “We always had semester break during the Stock Show,” he explains, noting that the best perk of the job was the front row seat for the barrel race. “I did that all through college.” He also earned money feeding horses and cleaning stalls at the stock show, affording him another chance to meet the ladies involved in the sport like Lydia Moore, a former director as well as secretary/treasurer for the GRA.


Springer jokes that he got into photography “like everything I do, I fell 44 WPRA NEWS DECEMBER 2018


Probably one of the most famous images that Kenneth Springer has captured while taking photos of the barrel race as the year that Scamper’s bridle broke coming into the arena at the NFR and then spitting the bit out as they came around the third barrel. This run home shows that Scamper is running without a bridle as the duo won the round despite the equipment malfunction. Photo by Kenneth Springer


into it through the back door, never the front.”


Springer struck up a friendship with Nelda Patton after taking a mare to breed to her stallion. Patton invited him to go with her to some rodeos and barrel races, an opportunity he jumped on as a big fan of the sport. He also took film of Patton’s runs.


“Nelda was a great entrepreneur and she was the one who suggested that I should take photos to sell at the events,” says Springer. “She really planted the seed. She thought everything you did should bring in revenue.” He bought a camera from his first paycheck after college, spending what seemed like a fortune at the time. Initially just working on the weekends while keeping a regular 9-to-5 job, Springer began shooting amateur rodeos and events hosted by the Texas Barrel Racing Association (TBRA), the largest barrel racing organization outside of the GRA. While attending TBRA events, Springer became friends with an up-and-


coming star of the industry, Jimmie Munroe. Within a few years, Munroe would be leading the Association as President. Meanwhile, Moore began inviting him to GRA events, eventually including the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in 1978. While it was his first time shooting the NFR, it was far from his first time to see the sport’s Super Bowl. In 1959 Springer’s father packed the family up to make a trip to Dallas


for the very first NFR. Though quite young, Springer remembers the event. “The tickets cost like $4, which was a lot to my family especially, and I remember thinking it was a waste of time because there was no barrel race,” he laughs, noting the barrel racers held their finals in Clayton, New Mexico that year. When the NFR moved West, the GRA brought their Finals first to Dallas, and then to Fort Worth, before moving on with the rest of the events in Oklahoma City and eventually Las Vegas. Springer was there for every Finals after the move to Texas, first as a fascinated youngster and later to document the events with his camera. “I actually took movies at Fort Worth and then in Oklahoma City, too. I can put my hands on every run still,” says Springer, who is notorious for his preference to be documenting the story and never the focus of it. Moore put together a breakfast at the NFR where Springer would show


his films the following year, a huge event for the ladies: in the days before portable video cameras and smart phones, most had never seen one of their runs. Though he enjoyed shooting movie film, it didn’t hold the financial value as a commodity that still photos did. “Movie film had no benefit except the personal enjoyment of watching it over and over on a projector and videoing as we call it today does not put


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