It’s quite a rare occurrence for someone born in Ohio to be honored for “keeping Texas Texan,” but trick-roper Kevin Fitzpatrick had an advantage over most Ohioans. His parents were from Texas, and his dad, a former employee of the Dixie Dude Ranch in Bandera, was a horse-shoer by trade who just happened to be working at a race track in Ohio when Kevin was born. “When I was a kid,” he recalls, “my favorite toy was an old, worn-out rope.” It was a sign of good things to come.

The family moved to Arizona (“I grew up in Arizona,” Fitzpatrick says.) and later to California, where Kevin began working as a groom at a Sacramento race track when he was just 16. After graduating from high school, he took jobs shoeing horses in southern California. His parents moved back to Bandera.

History was made in 1980, when Kevin came to Bandera to visit his folks and decided to stay. He got a job at the same Dixie Dude Ranch where his father had worked, and took up trick-roping to entertain the guests. And although he worked at construction and other jobs through the next several years, he kept on practicing his roping. By 1988, he was good enough to be invited to go to Kuwait with Lance Livingston Productions, a Houston company which has produced hundreds of Wild West programs throughout the United States, Canada, South America and the Middle East.

The group performed one day for American workers (employees of companies such as Apple Computers, 7-Up and Honda) and two days for guests of the Kuwait Regency Palace Hotel. One of Fitzpatrick’s fellow-performers was trick-shooter Joe Bowman of Houston, also an intended honoree at the “Keeping Texas Texan” event this coming July 25.

Fitzpatrick decided to “go professional” in 1990, His partner in crime was a twelve-year-old horse named “Wet,” who would allow his master to stand on the saddle and perform roping tricks without doing anything to disrupt the process. “I� ...

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