The roping world is shocked and deeply saddened by the sudden, unexpected passing of Colorado cowboy Chris Glover yesterday, August 7, at home in Keenesburg. Chris, who was less than a month away from his 65th birthday coming up on September 6, leaves behind his wife, Christine, and grown children, Jessica and Cole.
Chris team roped all his life, and qualified for three National Finals Steer Ropings in 2016, ’18 and ’19—his first at age 56. Glover also was a five-time National Circuit Finals Steer Roping contestant in 2010-11, 2015-17 from the Mountain States Circuit. He won that last NCFSR in Torrington, Wyoming in 2017.
Glover was a man of many friends. I talked to two of them today.
JoJo LeMond is best known as a four-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo header (2008, ’09, ’10 and ’15). But did you know he’s also a four-time NFSR qualifier (2013, ’15, ’16 and ’17), and that Chris Glover had a huge hand in JoJo’s success in that second event?
“I met Chris at the rodeo in Laramie, Wyoming in 2009,” JoJo remembered today, on his way to see Christine in Keenesburg. “I’d seen him around, but we visited and really got to know each other that day. I’d just started steer roping, and was asking him about it. Chris loaded up and came to Andrews in 2010 or 2011, and went to teaching me how to trip steers. He stayed with me for about a month. We rodeoed off and on together from 2011 through 2017, when I quit going hard.”
Glover, who won the steer roping at the 2018 Pendleton Round-Up, was a renowned horseman. His horse Champ shared Steer Roping Horse of the Year honors with Cody Lee’s Punchy in 2016, and Cooper was voted the 2018 Steer Roping Horse of the Year by Glover’s cowboy peers.
JoJo and other close cowboy friends say Chris has battled complications from knee replacement surgery for over a year now. Due to infection, it had to be removed and replaced twice. A pulmonary embolism is what Glover’s family has been given as the cause of death, according to LeMond.
“They’d just put it back in a week or two ago, and Chris was moving around pretty good again,” JoJo said. “When I talked to him, he was cheerful and looking forward to roping again. I had some of Chris’s horses down in Andrews (Texas), but they’re back in Colorado now, because it looked like Chris was going to get to get back at it.
“Cameron Ritchey had been riding Chris’s horses since they got back home. Chris went and watched Cameron rope on them yesterday. When he got home from that, he told our friend Robert (Humphreys, retired Marine Corps, who roped with Chris and JoJo at home, and loved to jump in and go rodeoing with them) he was a little tired and was going to take a nap.”
Though we all hope to make such a peaceful exit when our time here is done, there are so many people who loved him who are now left behind to miss him.
“Chris loved his family, and he never met a stranger,” JoJo said. “He had great morals, and respect for people and the land. He was just damn right a good man. He also loved to have fun, and we had a lot of it. I don’t know that I ever saw him in a bad mood. A couple minutes after a bad run, it was washed away. Chris was about 20 years older than me, but we got along perfect.
“Chris was the kind of guy you felt like you’d known your whole life. He was an open book about his life, and wanted to know all about yours. He was the real deal. Chris loved the Lord, his family, rodeo and good horses. And he was cowboy to the core.”
JoJo says Chris took great interest in young cowboys, and was genuine in doing everything he could think of to help them. After seeing my son Taylor finally getting back to some steer roping after a year and a half of sitting out for three surgeries, it made my mom heart happy to hear that my son was one of the lucky ones Chris was so special to.
“Chris thought the world of Taylor,” JoJo told me today. “He was always talking about him and bragging about how great he roped steers. They were good buddies, and Chris would always tell me about their visits.”
Tom Hirsig serves as CEO of Cheyenne Frontier Days now, but owns a Pendleton steer roping buckle of his own to match Chris’s, and has seen what JoJo’s talking about when it comes to helping young people firsthand.
“Chris and I go back to high school rodeo days, and started amateur rodeoing in Colorado and Wyoming at the same time,” Hirsig said. “Chris and I both roped calves and team roped back then, and I started heading for Chris at the amateur and pro rodeos about the time I was a junior in college.
“When Justene (Tom and Debbie’s daughter) started roping, Chris would do anything to help her. He sent her horses, and helped her a lot with her roping. He was just a very unselfish person. Chris is the guy that if you called him at 2 in the morning and needed something, he’d be there. He was always helping kids, including the up-and-comers who were trying to beat him. Chris would help anyone with anything anytime.”
Like JoJo, it’s was Tom’s understanding that Chris had turned the corner with his knee and was feeling better than he had in quite a while before the unthinkable happened.
“Chris was as tough as they come,” Hirsig said. “This is quite a shock to us all. Chris was all cowboy in the arena and out on the ranch. I’ve gathered wild cattle with him, Harold Bumgardner and Terry Lewis (NFR calf roper Brent’s dad) in Utah, and Chris was a top cowboy. He was a great horseman, and worked at it. Chris rode some great horses in his life, and he made them all.”
All cowboy all the time. That was Chris Glover.
“Chris was one of the best rope handlers I’ve ever seen, and that goes for heading, heeling, steer roping and I’m sure calf roping back when he did that, too,” JoJo said. “He was so talented with a rope and a horse. Chris was just a hand. His horsemanship skills—his patience and ability to train one—were unreal. When it came to being a cowboy, Chris could do it all.”
