“Cowboy” Jim Whiteman died in February in his hometown of Clarksville, Texas where he was born in 1914. He had lived with lung cancer two years longer than his doctors had predicted. Jim claimed he took up rodeo after hearing all those big tales his older brother Hub, who rodeoed before him came home to tell.
Jim made his first rodeo at Bonham, Texas in 1933 riding bulls. The next year he hired out to Joe Greer’s Wild West Show and worked for Greer for three years. He considered Number 20 of Colonel W. T. Johnson’s string, whom he rode at Dallas in 1936, the best bull he ever rode. Lonnie Rooney saw promise in the young cowboy and helped him in his early career.
Jim was a tough bull rider for 15 years, but he always liked to bulldog best and he was no slouch in that event. In 1942 he won the bull dogging at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show, and in 1943 he won the bull dogging at Houston. In 1948 at Little Rock, Arkansas he threw a steer in 2.8 seconds, when Fog Horn Clancey’s records showed very few steers ever having been thrown under three. He was also one of the original members of the Turtles Association signing a petition at Boston in 1936.
Jim rodeoed mostly in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana and made the trek back east to New York and Boston for many years. In 1958 he went to Brussels, Belgium with the Wild West Show held there in conjunction with the World’s Fair.
He traveled a lot with Dale Adams, Charlie Colbert and Andy Curtis and made just about every rodeo that Homer Todd and Burr Andrews ever put on.
Jim judged a lot of big rodeos. Before his health failed, he had been in law enforcement at Clarksville for about 15 years.
Jim is survived by his wife, Nell Whiteman, three daughters, Barbara Meredith, Janet Ussery, and Charlotte Kornell of Clarksville: his son, James B. “Jimbo” Whiteman of Sulphur Springs: nine grandsons, one granddaughter, and one great grandson.
