There really haven’t been many days when Eric “Rook” Rawls couldn’t be found in the roping arena—except for the four years he volunteered to be a United States Marine. In that time, Rawls, then stationed just 35 miles south of the Pentagon, witnessed both the worst assault on American soil in modern history and, then, our country’s greatest day as a united nation.

Roping roots

A native of Earlsboro, Oklahoma, Rawls grew up roping with his dad and his younger siblings.

“When I was a kid, everybody was calf roping and team roping had just kind of gotten popular,” Rawls said. “My dad thought, ‘Man, if I don’t have to get off and get dirty, I’ll be clean when we go to the bar, so I’m going to start team roping.’”

Rawls swears that’s the true story of how he became a roper. Though a header these days, as the oldest of three and the son of a longtime calf roper, he paid his penance as a heeler to start, even qualifying for the National High School Finals Rodeo. Then he joined the Marines.

“I didn’t join until I was 21, and the only reason I joined is I was doing the same thing that I was doing when I was 18, and I needed some structure and discipline,” Rawls said. “I’d won two trailers roping and thought I was going to be the next thing. And that never happened. So I decided that I needed to make a change.”

Pushed to the limit

Change was delivered in spades. Rawls left home in September of 1998 weighing in at 217 pounds. When he graduated boot camp 13 weeks later, he weighed 150. In the pre-smart-phone era when hand-written letters were still a widely accepted form of communication, Rawls’ physical appearance between his departure and his visit home was so radical his family and friends thought he was ill. In reality, though, Rawls was discovering strengths he didn’t know he possessed. 

“Things I didn’t know I could do mentally or physically,” Rawls remembered. “They teach you how to push yourself to limits that you’ve never dreamt of or wanted to think of. … It’s a lot like the slack for a bulldogging: People cheer you; they help you. They want you to succeed because all you’ve got is each other.”

Having survived harsh drill sergeants and sucking down toothpaste in the middle of the night just to put something more in his stomach, Rawls was then stationed in Quantico, Virginia. 

“I was selected to drive for the battalion commander of the largest battalion in the Marines. They based that off my age because they knew that if I needed to make a decision, if the colonel had a meeting or needed to do something, it wouldn’t bother me to interrupt or, ‘Hey, we’ve got a schedule to keep,’ and not be intimidated, because Quantico is an officer heavy duty station.”

He also had a gunnery sergeant who made sure Rawls was set up for success.

“Gunnery Sgt. Anthony. By far one of the top three greatest men I’ve ever met in my life. He taught me what it was to be a leader, to be a man, to be a Marine. And I mean, I loved it. I was actually good at being a Marine.”

That success and confidence served Rawls well when the whole world changed on Sept. 11, 2001.

“When 9/11 hits, they send me down to Armory to get an M16A2 service rifle machine gun and all my gear, and I’m standing at the battalion and when someone walks in, I point a gun at them. It’s [someone] I know and, ‘Halt. Show me your ID.’ Then, if you don’t have your ID, ‘I have orders to shoot or you have to turn around and leave.’ Because no one knew what to expect.”

Rawls describes the next three weeks the fleet spent on lockdown like a bizarre fever dream—“something you only see in the movies anymore.” But the day after 9/11 is the one he’ll never forget.

“In my lifetime, Sept. 12, 2001, was one of the most patriotic, proud to be an American type of day ever because we came together.”

“In my lifetime, Sept. 12, 2001, was one of the most patriotic, proud to be an American type of day ever because we came together.”

Father and son

With the end of his enlistment coming due, Rawls was offered opportunities most Marines only dream of, especially in the face of an imminent war: Spain, Germany or serving the President of the United States.

Employing the same gumption that allowed him to tell a colonel to hurry it up, Rawls countered with a request for something in Oklahoma, near his family. But as fate would have it, none of those decisions would need made.

“I got sick in March of ’02,” Rawls stated. “I found out I had a stomach disease and was medically retired.”

Arriving home, Rawls was showered with patriotic praise and gestures from the community. It was a stark difference from the welcome home his father Troy—also a Marine—received coming home from Vietnam. But that didn’t stand in the way of the father and son discovering a bond that still holds them close today.

“When I came home on leave from boot camp, we went to have a beer and he was asking me stuff,” Rawls remembered. “And I was like, ‘We’ve never talked about this.’ He said, ‘What were you going to know about it? You didn’t know anything about the Marine Corps.’ And I never dreamt that I could have a tighter bond with him.”

In 2006, Rawls spent a lot of the year helping his best friend Nick Sartain cover pavement throughout the rodeo season. When Sartain made his first NFR with heeler Shannon Frascht, they won rounds 5 and 7 and called Rawls to the stage at the Gold Coast that second night.

“Nick said, ‘If you don’t wear this buckle, I’m not going to give it to you. People are going to talk about us if you wear another dude’s buckle, but I wouldn’t have made it here if it wasn’t for you helping me.’ To this day, I wear that buckle.”

But it’s the 2016 jackpot buckle Rawls won with his dad that he reveres.

“I was heeling for my dad, and I think we were high back and just needed to catch,” Rawls said. “And I don’t know how far Daniel Boon tracked things, but I know I went around that arena a lot, swinging my lasso, scared to throw because I was worried I was going to hit him in the ass and miss for my dad. I think I covered him up maybe on the third corner, and then I just hang this big old floater out there and he jumps in it.

“It was damn near 20 years ago, and I still wear the Montana Silversmith 7^th Go Round NFR buckle,” Rawls continued. “And yet, the one with my dad is in a case in our house, and I won’t put it on. Our daughter wears one of my World Series buckles. My wife wears a World Series buckle. I don’t know if I’ll ever take that NFR buckle off. I know I’ll never wear the one of my dad’s.”

Done with purpose

From driving high-ranking USMC commanders to driving NFR ropers, Rawls and JR, his “red-haired, blue-eyed smoke show” wife of 22 years, continue to play integral roles in the community. He’s the stall manager at the Spicer Gripp; he chaperones the judges at some of Amarillo’s cutting events; and he’s been an all-in supporter of Charly Crawford’s American Hero Celebration since his introduction to the program in 2021. 

Rawls has twice taken second place in the AHC’s Pro-Military roping—he headed for Jake Long in 2021 and for Jonathon Torres in 2023—but he has yet to attend the clinic Crawford hosts for veterans and first responders.

“I don’t want to take a spot from a veteran when I can call you and come to your house,” Rawls told Crawford. “I would rather just come down and help. If I need to work chutes or push steers or drive the dummy around, I want to help.”

Rawls’ desire to lead a purposeful life is an inarguable holdout from his time in the Corps, and it’s the reasons the roping community cherishes him as it does—though his fun factor sure counts, too.

“I’ve gone through more jobs that people would love to have because I didn’t have a sense of purpose,” Rawls said. “So I’d just quit, go do something else just because I longed for that feeling of knowing I was making a difference. There’s order and regulation in the Marine Corps. The structure and discipline part, I know that it doesn’t appear that way, but that’s how I function. I’m very regimented. 

“Don’t get wrong: I’m the wildest and most fun-having person in this world, but when there’s something that we’ve got to do, we do,” Rawls asserted. “What I learned [in the Marine Corps], there is no money that can touch it.”

—TRJ—

Thank you to Equinety for helping us share stories of military members, veterans and first responders in the team roping community.