Day of the Cowboy

 Early History of the Day of the Cowboy

Sponsored in the U.S. Senate in 2005, 2006, and 2007, by Wyoming’s late U.S. Senator, Craig Thomas, the National Day of the Cowboy is a day set aside to celebrate the contribution of the Cowboy and Cowgirl to America’s culture and heritage. In 2008, the National Day of the Cowboy resolution was sponsored simultaneously in the U.S. House of Representatives (for the first time) by Arizona’s U.S. Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and in the U.S. Senate by Senator Mike Enzi, WY. It passed in the Senate and the House concurrently, naming Saturday, July 26, 2008, as the 4th Annual National Day of the Cowboy.

On Friday, June 20, 2008, the National Day of the Cowboy resolution also passed in the Arizona State Legislature, making Arizona the first state to pass the resolution. We asked Arizona Representative, Jennifer Burns, to sponsor the resolution, which she readily agreed to do. In thinking it over though, Ms. Burns felt it would be more meaningful if it was sponsored by Senators Jake Flake and Jack Brown, the two remaining Cowboys in the Arizona legislature. Senators Flake and Brown both accepted that honor, but sadly, Jake Flake passed away before he was able to introduce the resolution. However, it was subsequently introduced in his honor, by Jack Brown, and passed easily and concurrently in both the Arizona House and the Senate. In 2009, the resolution passed in New York, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arizona. It was also proclaimed by a number of governors, mayors and town councils.

In the words of the former President Bush, “We celebrate the Cowboy as a symbol of the grand history of the American West. The Cowboy’s love of the land and love of the country are examples for all Americans.”

Early in November, 2004, I (Bethany Braley) began working for Bill Bales, at the magazine he owned at the time. Soon after starting there, Bales asked me if I could make his “Vote for a Cowboy Day” project “happen.” At that time, I took charge of the project and with the guidance of several of my friends and former colleagues in Washington D.C., changed it to the National Day of the Cowboy project and enlisted Senator Thomas as a sponsor for a resolution. I worked with Thomas’s staff and helped craft the resolution itself. I put together a radio campaign to promote The Day and pursuaded the Bales to create a Hatch poster for the project.

Senator Thomas subsequently introduced the resolution in March 2005, but while it was in mark-up, the text defining the Cowboy Day was changed from the “Fourth Saturday in July” (permanent) to simply July 23, 2005 (once only) at which time Bill Bales informed me and Editor Paige Mckenzie, he was finished with the project and someone else needed to carry the ball while they went back to selling advertising. I resigned from the magazine in June 2005, expressing in my resignation letter my intention to form an organization to work to make the Day of the Cowboy permanent. Later, Bales sold the magazine to its current owner, media conglomerate Active Interest Media, Inc. and its operations were moved from Wyoming to Boulder, Colorado.

Cynthia Reed, Senator Thomas’s Legislative Aide, my contact as manager of this project for Bales, notified me in an email in May 2005 that the resolution would not actually be signed by the President. She also explained to me in a phone conversation that the highest acknowledgment the resolution could receive from a President was a Letter of Support.