ProRodeo Sports News - May 18, 2018

TIME CAPSULE

PRCA ProRodeo file photos

T hree-time world champion Fritz Truan left his successful rodeo career to join the Marines in 1942. Just like in rodeo, Fritz climbed the ranks, making sergeant while deployed in the South Pacific. During the five-week Battle of Iwo Jima, Truan led his men on an uphill charge where he was killed by machine-gun fire – one of 7,000 Americans and an estimated 20,000 Japanese killed during the battle. Truan’s story inspired the 1949 film “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” starring John Wayne. Now, 73 years after his death, Truan is remembered for his success in the arena and selfless sacrifice in serving his country. Born in Seeley, Calif., Nov. 12, 1915, Fritz and his brother, Bill, were the only support for their mother and 10 sisters when their father died. Truan started competing in rodeo in the early 1930s and joined the Cowboys’ Turtle Association in 1936. He went on to win the saddle bronc riding at Madison Square Garden and won his first world title in 1939. The following year, he won the saddle bronc riding world championship again and claimed the all-around. During his rodeo career, Hell’s Angel was considered by many to be the greatest bucking horse in the history of rodeo and nearly impossible to ride. Truan covered him five out of the seven times their paths crossed. Truan went on to win the coveted Sam Jackson Trophy at the 1941 Pendleton (Ore.) Round-up. Truan’s winnings averaged about $400 per week ($7,209 in 2018 dollars), but he traded it all in when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Heeding the Call Three-time world champ died at Iwo Jima

Truan enlisted on Dec. 7, 1942 – one week after marrying Norma Holmes, a trick rider with Gene Autry’s Flying A Rodeo Company. While on active duty in Hawaii, Truan organized an all-service rodeo to benefit wounded soldiers. In 1943, he was wounded on Tarawa Atoll but bounced back to win the Hawaiian bronc riding championship. Not much set Truan aside from his fellow soldiers, except for a gold button-shaped pin about the size of a nickel with the initials “CTA” engraved with an image of a turtle. Truan took a month of leave in 1944 to reunite with his wife and compete at Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days and in Boulder, Colo. On Feb. 28, 1945, Truan led a charge up Hill 382 in a battlespace known as the Meatgrinder, where he was killed in action, about six months before the war ended. Truan was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1995.

ProRodeo Sports News 5/18/2018

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