People trying to work for industry icons Charly and Jackie Crawford usually just want to rope in return for mucking stalls. But in 2023, something different happened. A senior master sergeant and 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Shane White, dropped everything in Louisiana to work full time for the Crawfords for six months—for free.
This was no teenager looking for spins. White, then 40, had achieved the second-highest enlisted rank because of his technical and leadership experience—earned while he obtained three college degrees, culminating in a supervisory stint at the 8th Air Force. It’s part of Global Strike Command, which provides nukes and bomber forces to U.S. Strategic Command.
Through two decades, White was stationed from North Dakota to Louisiana and deployed to places like Australia and a British island in the Indian Ocean. In fact, the night before he and his wife, Larissa, were scheduled to get married (with all the guests having already flown in), he got orders to get on a plane the next morning to deploy to an undisclosed location.
Luckily, White’s cowboy roots gave him adaptability and a fierce work ethic. Raised near Maude, Texas, White had a grandfather named Bill Bradshaw who annually had 30 to 40 colts for White to break. It was when he found himself stationed back at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, that White realized he’d always wanted to learn to rope.
“I was leasing a 10-acre place and it had a 6-year-old mare grazing it that had never been ridden,” he said. “She was Doc Olena bred and fat as a tank, but I asked if the landlord minded if I rode her. So, I got her broke and went to roping.”
White won his first OTRA jackpot heeling left-handed. That hooked him. But he describes that as “a train wreck,” so he learned to swing a rope with his other hand and then bought his own horse. After being relocated to his final air base—Barksdale in Shreveport—White was pleasantly surprised to discover there are “some dadgum good ropers” in northwestern Louisiana.
He went to Friday-night practices at the cowboy church and improved to a 4 at both ends. In the meantime, White applied to Crawford’s American Hero clinic and didn’t get in. He showed up, anyway, to watch every day. The next year, he got in and won the Top Hand Award.
It’s no wonder—the guy is always looking for ways to serve. To pay Crawford back for his time, White hosted a 2022 clinic for Crawford and Buddy Hawkins in Texarkana. In the meantime, the end of White’s service was staring him in the face. He didn’t have a clue what new career to launch, but was eyeballing the Western industry.
“The Department of Defense has this program called SkillBridge, where we develop an internship working for a company for six months while getting paid by the military, after which the company could hire us,” explained White.
So, he built one for Charly. In Stephenville at the Crawford residence, White did everything from weed-eating to stall-cleaning to mowing, plus built Charly a website and structure for his clinics, complete with a syllabus and host packages. Meanwhile, the Crawfords introduced White to Billie Bray, the chief marketing officer for Equibrand.
On the last day of White’s internship, Charly gave White his old Paint head horse, Bull Durham, through the Liberty & Loyalty Foundation (on which White later placed in the 8.5 at Wrangler BFI Week). What’s more? Ken Bray offered White a job as his project manager at Equibrand.
“The first thing they had me do was manage the relocation of Martin Saddlery to a new 100,000 square-foot building in Greenville,” recalled White. “I also helped them do some shows and other projects. Then, this January, I ended up taking over management of Classic Equine’s saddle-pad production in Granbury.”
Keep in mind—this guy is supposedly retired. But with three teenagers possibly headed to college, White needed a new career.
“It’s tough starting at the bottom when you’re used to being so high up,” said White. “When you’ve got stripes on your sleeves, you walk into a room and people stand up. When I walk into Equibrand, nobody cares who I am. That’s a very humbling feeling, to have to earn your reputation all over again.”
But his transition into the Western industry was smooth, he said, because you still “get up early every day and get the job done.” And White hasn’t slowed down any since his days of managing B-52 production and pinpointing bomber locations for generals.
He still helps with Crawford’s clinics—even heeling for the students at some—and is the operations guy for Crawford’s Liberty & Loyalty Foundation. That means White plans the annual American Hero Celebration (expected at press time to draw up to 500 teams).
“Things have come full circle,” said White. “My late grandfather would have been all about that.”
—TRJ—
Thank you to Equinety for helping us share stories of military members, veterans and first responders in the team roping community.
