Above, Jack Wilkerson can still sit a horse, but in his rodeo days he could tame a wild bronc and claimed many championships at wild horse racing. Below, Wilkerson (at left) heads for the judge with a saddle he's yanked off a wild bronc during a wild horse race. The rodeo was held in Madison Square Garden in 1948. (Photos/Courtesy)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series highlighting living rodeo greats who call El Reno home. This first part profiled Bill Fedderson.

By Pat Hammert/Staff Writer

It’s not that at age 82 Jack L. Wilkerson’s memory is dim.

It’s just that he can’t remember when he first sat a horse.

“I think I was born on one,” he said. Mild or wild, the animals have just been around him all his life and “I always liked to ride.”

In the rodeo days of the 1940s, Wilkerson “worked everything but roping,” from steer wrestling to saddle broncs, riding the bucking bulls and wild horse racing. For the nearly two decades he made the rodeo circuit, Wilkerson was one of the hardest-riding and toughest.

Now at age 82, he spreads his fingers out without comment. None is needed. The fingers are gnarled and twisted. From pulling on so many ropes, his daughters said.

Wilkerson’s uncles, Eddie and Andy Curtis, longtime cowboys and renowned rodeo competitors from the area, took the youngster under their wing. (His Uncle Ed was “the toughest man I ever saw.”)

Right out of high school, he tried his hand at rodeos in 1943, as a world war raged, riding bareback at Dalhart, Texas, and Las Vegas, N.M. Then he joined the Turtles Association, the precursor to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association the next year.

His uncles taught him the ins and outs, thrills and pains of bronc riding, bulldogging and bull riding and particularly wild horse races.

“They took me down to Baton Rouge, La., in the spring of 1944 and I had the go-round bareback riding there,” he said. His RCA card number is 95, one of the first issued by the association and he cherishes his PRCA life membership card.

His professional career was interrupted for two years while he served in the Army in the South Pacific. Wounded in the face from shrapnel, he spent some time in the hospital before returning home, only to get injured breaking a wild horse.

Back to the rodeo he loved, he won many bareback riding events.

“I had a better lick on them than anything else,” he said.

He also pulled in earnings from Brahma bull riding. His last win on a bull was at the Yukon rodeo in 1959. The rides were not easy. A horse fell on him during a bulldogging event, messing up an ankle.

Another time a horse stepped on his chest, another bucked so hard Wilkerson flew over the animal’s head.

After one event, he assessed his injury and loaded himself into an ambulance that had been called for another competitor.

He was kicked in the stomach after a ride once and, instead of cussing like he really wanted to, he sat down in the dirt to sing “God Bless America,” because his daughters were watching.

His favorite saddle was a McClendon saddle but in later years, he loaned it to a friend and never got it back.

He’d customized the hardworking saddle.

“I took everything off of it and had a fork put on it and wrapped the latigo around the horn,” he said.

Saddles were expensive and so he has used over the years the world championship saddle he won in wild horse racing at Madison Square Garden.

The embossed letters of “Madison Square Garden” are worn thin.

“Rode all the writing off,” he said.

He earned his first belt buckle in 1948 at Boston in the wild horse race and during that time worked at Fort Reno breaking mules and showing horses for the famous horse trader Wiley “Babe” Jones.

He was runner-up in the wild horse race in New York from 1947 through 1951 and again in 1953 and 1954.

He had wins in Boston Gardens and Vernon, Texas, three years in a row, Pecos, Texas, three years in a row, and in Wichita, Colorado Springs and San Antonio.

He competed with and against Freckles Brown, Bud Smith, Kid Fletcher, Jim Shoulders, Casey Tibbs, Bill Linderman and Bill and Don Feddersen.

Why did he quit?

“The ground came up too quick and hit me too hard,” he said.

“I turned out of the chute for the last time in 1961. They goose-egged me out of the chutes. They just didn’t like me,” he said.

At the same time, he had a long career as a correctional officer at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution and raised a family.

He owns and operates a farm east of El Reno as well as racing stables.

He’s been training, showing and racing Appaloosas and quarter horses since 1963.

His friend, Cliff Johnson, calls Wilkerson one of the best ambassadors for the sport of rodeo — and the cowboys who make them what they are.