Richard Allen Gray

Richard Allen Gray passed away May 23 at St. Patrick Hospital. He was 68 years old.

Born at St. Ignatius Mission, Richard spent his early childhood at the Dixon Agency, at that time headquarters for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

During his school years he lived on a ranch in the Garden Creek draw near Hot Springs. There Richard was introduced to Thoroughbred racehorses and cattle, which his father, Nathan Gray, raised at the ranch.

Richard’s life was thereafter marked by accomplishments in both horseracing and bullriding.

Richard’s first bullriding win was the Loretta Lynn Rodeo in 1963, contracted by the Bud Hendrickson family. Richard continued to compete in bullriding events through the mid-South; at the same time he also rode racehorses in Kentucky. “I always looked up to him,” says Rusty Hendrickson, Bud’s son.

Returning to Montana the following summer, Richard won leading jockey at the Kalispell fair; the following year, he won the bullriding.

At age 20 Richard was drafted into the US Army and trained at Fort Bragg as a scout with the long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) of the 82nd Airborne Division (now the US Army Rangers). He won a National Medal of Service in 1968.

Upon his return from the service, Richard met Bennie Reynolds, Montana’s World Champion All-Around Cowboy, who encouraged Richard to join him on the rodeo circuit. Richard became a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association from 1970–1974, traveling to every major rodeo from Madison Square Garden to the Calgary Stampede.

Richard’s contemporaries and friends at this time included Pro Rodeo Hall of Famers Freckles Brown, John Quintana, Paul Mayo, Gary Leffew, and Larry Mahan. Hot Springs was a rest stop for many of these cowboys when they traveled between rodeos in the Lower 48 and Canada.

When Richard retired from bullriding in the late 1970s, he turned his attention to racehorses. He rose through the backside ranks at Santa Anita Park racetrack in Arcadia, California, to become an exclusive rider for Calumet Farms (1984) and eventually first house rider for the track stewards, with a reputation for turning around troubled Thoroughbreds.

“I’m not just a horseman,” he once said. “I’m a racehorseman.”

In 2002, Rusty Hendrickson enlisted Richard to help on the set of the movie Seabiscuit. Richard worked with the six horses impersonating Seabiscuit at Santa Anita Park. The movie was nominated Best Picture of the Year.

Since the Seabiscuit movie, Richard has lived on a ranch in the Garden Creek draw, developing it as a Thoroughbred training and boarding facility.

A skilled artist, Richard enjoyed drawing quick sketches of friends and Spanish bullfights. He earned the nickname “El Gallo” after his favorite matador portrayed in Ernest Hemigway’s Death in the Afternoon. Always fun and highly entertaining, Richard could sing most Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley songs, by heart.

“He was quite a hand,” says a local saddlemaker who has known Richard most of his life. “He will be dearly missed.”