Admirers Laud Rodeo’s ‘Grand Lady’ No One Bucked Chance To Offer Fond Memories Of Cowgirl Alice Orr, 93

The “grand lady” of rodeo was remembered Wednesday as a a generous woman who’d give away the saddle off her horse if a fellow cowgirl or cowboy needed one.

Alice Greenough Orr, a Montana native who was the first woman voted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame and was named to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, died Sunday in Tucson at the age of 93. About 60 people gathered to remember her Wednesday.

Cowgirl hats decorated the mortuary, along with flowers and Orr’s prized saddle. A white horse, amid a background of purple clouds, was painted on her casket, and country-western music filled the air.

“I remember the first saddle I ever won. It got stolen at a bar I went to,” recalled her friend Billy Wilcoxson, 55. “I didn’t have another saddle, but Alice came by our house and left the saddle she won in a New York rodeo with me. I rode that saddle all summer.”

Orr was born into a family of rodeo performers on a ranch near Red Lodge, Mont.

She was riding horses before she could walk and by the time she was in grade school, she was skipping classes so she could ride relay and flat races. By 1919, she had begun her professional rodeo career and had become a saddle bronc rider.

While it was unusual for women to participate in rodeos at the time, for Orr, it was in her blood. Of seven siblings, four - including sister Margie and brothers Turk, Frank and Bill - eventually got into the rodeo business with the encouragement of their father, Ben Greenough.

Orr’s years on the circuit took her across the country, as well as to other continents, said friend Coy Huffman.

“Alice won titles in America, Australia and was invited to Europe to ride steers there - she thought. But when she arrived in Spain she found the word toro meant bull. But Alice kept her contract … and rode the bull,” Huffman recalled.

While in England, Orr had tea with the queen, Huffman said. She also rubbed elbows with Will Rogers and Ernest Hemingway.

Despite being in a profession where getting dirty is routine, Huffman said, Orr “always remained a lady.”

“Called by many of her contemporaries a classy lady, she maintained a clean lifestyle and seemed to treat every cowboy that approached her as a gentleman,” Huffman said.

Orr also cared deeply for people, family and friends said. Harry McCrorey, 62, recalled Orr’s attention after his mother died.

“Every time I saw Alice, she’d ask how I was doing,” McCrorey said. “She’d always see to it that I was taken care of and had something to eat.”

And when McCrorey set out to become a cowboy, he said, she encouraged him to keep riding, despite the fact he had little money to enter rodeos.

“She’d always make sure I got entered,” he said. “She kept me going and I finally got to the point where I won some (titles). She was the first one at the gate to congratulate me.”

Survivors include a son, Jay Cahill, of Grandview, Mo.; a sister, Margie Henson, of Tucson; 11 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.