After a tremendous day of roping at an event he’d helped produce for the past six years, Randal “Randy” Crump of Clarendon, Texas, died suddenly in the company of some of his favorite people at the age of 56.

Though the community around Randy is still navigating the incredible loss, accounts of his passing suggest he left in the same manner he lived: without fanfare and with joy in his heart.

“I’m at one of my favorite places doing my favorite thing with some of my favorite people,” Randy reportedly told his dear friend, Tricia O’Gorman Stroope, in their final conversation that day. “This is the best day ever.”

On Sept. 1, Randy was in Erick, Oklahoma, producing the annual Dalton O’Gorman Memorial Roping with fellow roper and lifelong friend Ike Hanes. Though Hanes had to work this year and left the onsite duties to Randy, the two men had been partnering on the production since the untimely death of Michael Dalton O’Gorman, who passed away at the age of 20 in 2019.

“Randy was with him when he passed away,” Hanes said of O’Gorman. “We’ve given away about $90,000 so far in scholarships since we’ve been doing it.”

Randy had a few years on Hanes, but the two began roping together pretty much as soon as Hanes was able to join the ranks. 

“He grew up cowboy and pretty rough and poor, to be honest with you,” Hanes said of the man he also describes with humor as a hillbilly. “When you say someone would give you the shirt off their back, he was that kind of guy. But he did it his own way. I mean, he would come to an Open and he would put on his T-shirt, and he’d have on his weird boots and his Wranglers that were too tight. You’d see him over there and, if you didn’t know him, you’re like, I’m not roping with that guy. I mean, he just looked like a hillbilly. He’d have on a hat that looked like he’d been in a dryer—a flat cowboy hat that he’s had for 15 years—and just whip your butt.”

Ironically, in numerous Facebook tributes to Randy, ropers far and wide remember him as the guy who partnered with them first when no one else would, making sure to introduce them to more ropers to add to their partner pool, too. It seems that no matter what Randy was dealt, he was often able to do the greatest amount of good with it.

“One year at the Coors Finals, I was in college, but I was roping with him,” Hanes said of entering up with Randy some 17 years ago. “I remember him making it to the Coors Finals in a two-horse trailer, and he had an old Ford gasoline pickup. He was by himself and, when he showed up there, he had jugs of water in the back of that truck because that pickup was overheating. So, he’d had to pull over. He’d drive 50, 60 miles and it was hot—the Coors Finals was in July—and he would have to fill his radio up with the water and then that pickup would get hot and he’d have to fill his radiator up with the water. 

“He made it all the way to the Coors Finals like that, and then he won a bunch of money,” Hanes continued. “And that’s just kind of how he rolled forever. He didn’t care what you thought or how he was dressed. It’s just one of those deals; you just have to tell the truth. You don’t have to lie about guys like him.”

From the outside looking in, it’d be fair to question if any of the stories were made up, especially listening to his wife of 10 years, Buckie, describe the unicorn of a man she married. Not only was Randy an avid and talented team roper and a seven-time WRCA World Champion Ranch Rodeo qualifier, he was also an incredibly caring husband.

“I absolutely loved watching him rope,” Buckie offered. “I loved going with him, and he took such good care of me. We would get to roping early and especially if it was outdoors so he could get me a good place to sit so I could sit in the pickup. In fact, it’s been about three months now, and we went to Levelland and he roped. And anyway, we rode with a gentleman and the man parked way out in the parking lot and, in his defense, there were quite a few team ropers that day, but Randy, he went and got me something to eat for breakfast. 

“I looked at him and I said, ‘Baby, if all these men in here took care of their wives like you do me, these stands would be full.’ He said, ‘Well, if all these women took care of men like you do me.’ And he just was larger than life.”

In short, the two were good for each other. 

“When he met Buckie, things changed for him,” Hanes explained. “She brought him a different kind of peace.”

Another place Randy found his peace was in the roping arena. 

“I’m a nervous Nelly,” Buckie admitted. “He would back in the box, and I would just be up in the stand rocking, saying, ‘Father God, Father God, Father God;’ just a nervous Nelly. It never bothered him. He’d be laughing backing in the box; no biggie.”

“I mean, no situation was too big for him,” Hanes added. “And it didn’t matter if he was up for $10 or $10,000, he didn’t get nervous and he would just do anything for anyone.”

Randy did win plenty of checks over the years. He also won a truck just in time to have a good backup when his favorite ’06 Ford began showing signs of wear. And yet, he didn’t have many buckles.

“I said, ‘You don’t have any buckles,’” Buckie recalled. “He said, ‘Why do I need buckles?’ I said, ‘Well we go to so-and-so’s, and they’ve got all these buckles.’ He said, ‘I can only wear one at a time. Some kid at a roping worked hard running the chutes and pushing the cattle. If he hadn’t been doing what he was doing, then I couldn’t have won,’ and he’d just give him the buckle.”

One buckle that had eluded Randy, though, was from the Dalton O’Gorman Memorial Roping he and Hanes put on. 

“He called me the night before and asked me, ‘Do you think I should rope?’” Hanes recalled. “I said, ‘Yea, rope. Screw it. It’s a roping. If you win, you win. Who cares?’ He didn’t want to torch everybody in our own roping, but he’s had troubles at that roping. Me too. Me and him were high call one time and I slipped a leg, and we just had terrible troubles at that roping.” 

Buckie was shopping for a mother-of-the-bride dress for her daughter’s wedding, so she couldn’t make the event either, but she and Randy were in close contact throughout the day.

“I said, ‘If you can rope, you need to enter up and you need to rope, because since when do you not rope?’” Buckie told Randy. “Then he called back, and he said, ‘I won second and fourth and I won the fast time. I got you a buckle.’”

When Randy called Buckie next, he was getting ready to go swimming, proud to have fit into a borrowed pair of shorts belonging to Brice Bennett.

“I don’t know if you know Brice, but he’s a tall, skinny thing,” Buckie revealed, painting a humorous picture of a stout Randy modeling a perhaps not-quite-his-size pair of trunks to the pool. “They had sent me some videos and he had just been doing cannonballs off the diving board, trying to splash [the kids] and he was just cutting up. And they said he went off the last time, and that was it.”

The passing of Randy Crump is a loss the roping community will feel for a long time. He was employed by honest and unglamorous work at the feedyards and for TXDOT and he’d not had much success in his marriages before meeting Buckie, but Randy never burdened anyone around him with anything other than the good.

“He was always happy,” Hanes said. “He always had a smile on his face. And every time you saw him, he was never in a bad mood at a roping. I don’t think I ever met hardly anyone that truly loved to rope more than him.”

Loved to rope and loved his people, according to Buckie.

“I never heard him complain about getting up and going to work,” Buckie said. “Ever. He got up, he went to work, and he came in, ‘I’ve got to do so-and-so and so-and-so. You want to go? You want to get? Let’s go and do.’

“It was about us being together, about being with his family, his grandkids and his kids. That’s what life was about. And he said, ‘It’s about the person.’ I struggle with that because I like new shoes and I like purses. But stuff just wasn’t important to him. It was about being together with the ones you love and being happy.

—TRJ—