March 2004     

A Tribute to Dick Manning...

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

By Welda McKinley Grider

I have to admit that I know more cowboys than I do other men. When you are raised on a ranch, most of the adults you come into contact with are cowboys. Then, if you continue in the ranching business, your neighbors and friends are the people you come into contact with the most - Cowboys.

Cowboys are a strange breed; I'll give you that. A cowboy, either born and bred, or someone who has gravitated to being a cowboy, either by marriage or by that strange call that the desert, cows, and horses, gives a person, comes ingrained with a peculiar sense of right and wrong. They may spend a lifetime arguing with a neighbor over a fence, but they won't cheat his widow if they buy the cows.

I am reminded of the Waylon Jennings song, "Smokey old bar rooms and clear mountain mornings..." There is something about daybreak and a new calf that no one but a cowboy understands.

We have lost one of our own. We have lost one of our warriors. Dick Manning died - and absolutely lived until he died - not wanting those SOB's to take away our property rights. Dick started fighting government regulations before it was popular, and continued it until everyone else understood what he stood for. I never heard of him apologizing for taking a stand, or caring if you didn't agree with him. He'd just sigh and patiently, or not so patiently, explain where your thinking needed to be, and why. He could always back his ideas up with facts.

This past year, I was at a meeting in Socorro with the BLM about their new regulations. Dick arrived late. As we saw him walk past the windows, one BLM man said, "Well, here comes God, and we'll have to listen to him." We laughed and they laughed. They knew that unimposing man was going to play havoc on their new ideas, and he did.

He took in the room at a glance, sat next to Bob Jones and said, "Catch me up." Bob said about two sentences, he didn't have to go farther; they are old friends, and Dick immediately knew how the land laid. Dick leaned across the table and said, "No one cares what I think but..." and told us what he thought. No one dared to interrupt him. The ranchers didn't want to, because Dick knows it all, and could speak for all of us, and the BLM guys didn't dare.

At Cattle Growers Annual meeting for the last several years, Dick and Bob held a corner of honor in the hospitality room. They were seated right next to the Delk band that was having an impromptu jam session.

Dick would request songs that haven't been played in 30-some odd years, and they would play them. If he couldn't remember the name of the song, he'd hum a few lines. Sometimes he'd say, "That was a good song, but not the one I had in mind," and try again. Lots of laughter, and lots of stories.

This year, neither Dick nor Bob could attend, so the other door in the hospitality room was closed. All you had to do was look at the closed door and remember that a vital part of who Cattle Growers is - wasn't there.

The meetings weren't the same. We just didn't have Dick rise, hitch up his britches, look at Bob, and give us his thoughts.

Dick Manning got the Cattle Growers' "Man of the Year" in 2003. He couldn't attend. Cowboys not given to tears in public, searched their pockets for hankies. Lots of fine men have been awarded this award. Good, fine men, but few fought the good fight for as long as Dick Manning did, or with the dogged tenacity that he had.

We lost a good man. We lost a cowboy. We lost a warrior. Dick snuck off to fight in a war when he was a teenager. Dick has been sneaking off to war his whole life.

Someone who knew him better than I, needs to record those many thoughts that he gave us, this can be done, and I hope it will be done. But, who will record his spirit?

Those of you, who knew him well, need to instill in your soul that tenacity that made him attend meeting after meeting, and argue point after point, keeping in mind that right is right, and two wrongs just make two wrongs.

Those of us who didn't know him well, but admired him, need to instill in our minds that a man without the formal education that we may think we need to argue with "the big boys," argued well. Argued long, and argued loud. The fact that he didn't always use proper English didn't stop him from making his point in language we could all understand.

We need that spirit. It is that spirit that brought us freedom a couple of centuries ago, and is that spirit that if we remain free, that we need. We lost a warrior. Can we fill those shoes? No. But we can step in the footsteps and carry on. We can do this and God help us if we don't.