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It's Not Easy Being Green | Alumni Interview | Memory Lane

ALUMNI INTERVIEW — November/December 2006

Rancher wrangles couplets as well as cattle

By Peter T. Tomaras

Like characters from a Western movie, two cowboy types ride across the front page of USA Today. The photo caption identifies them as the Cochise County (Ariz.) sheriff and rancher Bud Strom '54 AHS. The article, "On Immigration's Front Lines," addresses a topic on which members of the national news media frequently interview Strom, whose spread stretches along the porous Arizona border with Mexico.

In a previous life, this mustachioed, 6-foot-1-inch rancher was saluted as Army Brig. Gen. Roy M. Strom. Today, the 74-year-old runs cattle on his 1,500-acre Single Star Ranch south of Sierra Vista, Ariz., 16 miles from historic Tombstone. You don't think cowboys still brand, pull calves and ride fence? Or that endless days in the saddle still weave the tough fabric of cowboy life?

Tell that to Strom, and you'll get a throaty chuckle and an education in the reality and – oh, yes – the romance of today's West. Smile nicely, and you might get stanzas like the following, taken from his 1994 poem, "Dry Lightning":

The cowmen sellin' off their herds,
The drought is very real.
This Arizona heat intense –
No rain – the land can't heal.

Strom Photo courtesy of Roy M. Strom

Strom first fiddled with poetry during combat lulls in Vietnam, never imagining he'd one day publish two chapbooks and a compact disc of his own, celebrating a uniquely American art form. Now he's acclaimed as a cowboy poet, not least by thousands of schoolchildren he teaches about America's West. "I talk about cattle, railheads and mining ... about honesty, loyalty and work ethic," he explained. "I enjoy sharing our cowboy culture and how it's enriched by Indian and Mexican influences."

It was while riding with Montana's 1989 Centennial Cattle Drive that Strom first heard cowboy poetry. "I'd never been a literary guy," he said, "and I thought cowboy poetry would be silly.

"At night, we circled wagons and listened to storytellers, singers and ... Baxter Black," a well-known cowboy poet, Strom recalled. "Baxter magically expressed the rigors and rewards of cowboy life, made us feel part of a venerable tradition, with cowboys around the campfire telling stories, maybe singing to a jew's-harp."

Strom carries on that tradition via the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering, where he first performed before just 300 people in 1993. "For 11 years, he [and co-chair John Shaver] channeled, coerced and developed the Gathering into a world-class event," said current co-chair Steve Conroy, "promoting an art form that captures Western history ‚ the life and legend of the cowboy."

Today the Gathering is a three-day extravaganza in Cochise County, Ariz., which draws 60 artists and 7,000 people. The National Cowboy Symposium at Lubbock, Texas, honored the Gathering with its 2003 "Oscar" ‚ the American Cowboy Culture Event Award. And last year, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared the Gathering the first official Arizona Treasure. No surprise that Sierra Vista has named Strom both citizen and artist of the year.

Orphaned at age 15
But long before Strom became an Army general or a prominent Western artist, he was a lonely, 15-year-old orphan from Oak Park, sent off to Shattuck School, a Minnesota military academy. Vacation breaks were tough.

"I had no home or family, no one in whom to confide," Strom recalled. His older sister was married to a Chicago police officer who had no interest in housing a teenager. "At times I didn't know where I'd bed down, let alone where I'd end up," Strom said. Notwithstanding a motherly dean's wife at Shattuck, he never felt the affection of even a surrogate parent.

"I think the down times steeled me," Strom reflected. "At Shattuck, you either got with it or got lost. The military discipline provided structure, and I had fast-burner roommates as role models."

Strom lettered in three sports and made the school's elite drill team; his upbeat, gregarious personality won him friends. After his 1950 graduation, he hitchhiked to Montana and spent the summer as a ranch hand for a Shattuck classmate's dad. "The chores ran dawn to dusk," he recalled, "but I really liked the life."

On advice of the Shattuck chaplain, Strom matriculated at Grinnell College, where he made the freshman football team. But the next year, urged by friends to join them and their fraternity in Champaign, Strom transferred to the University of Illinois. Ensconced at Phi Kappa Psi (which 55 years later named him to its Hall of Honors at Homecoming 2006), he stuck with the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, worked meal jobs and studied health and kinesiology, vaguely envisioning a coaching career. Summers found him back at the Montana ranch.

"Shattuck forged my character and the ranch my work ethic," he said, "but I'm also proud of Illinois. I've always wrapped myself in a faded cloak of orange and blue."

30 years in uniform
Upon graduating from the U of I, Strom struck out on a three-decade career in the U.S. Army, where he thrived on the military's rich mixture of pressures. "Maybe I was lieutenant-cocky," he said, "but I liked and sought challenges."

Those challenges included getting airborne, glider and single-engine qualified; moving from artillery to military intelligence; becoming a U.S. National Ski Patrol leader during a tour in Germany; studying Spanish and Japanese; and earning a master's degree in education. His career also included a stint in the Vietnam War, where, as a lieutenant colonel, he commanded two MI battalions and earned a Bronze Star.

"In my commands, I always placed mission first," said Strom, who also has a Distinguished Service Medal, "but leaders succeed only through their troops, so I also focused on the welfare of my soldiers. I saw holding families together as part of my duty.

"I also think being a good listener and making decisions at a young age without parental counsel helped me achieve good outcomes," he said.