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BISBEE — In an effort to promote the National Day of the Cowboy, Bisbee celebrated all things Western on Saturday.
A series of country musicians, line dancing, cowboy poetry and other activities entertained visitors at City Park in hopes that raising awareness of the day will make it an annually recognized day.
The resolution for the officially recognized day, which was designated for July 26 this year, was created with the help of Bethany Braley, who first came across the idea while working for American Cowboy Magazine.
“What I really wanted to do is help us preserve something that’s unique and real special about America,” Braley said, “and that’s our Western heritage.”
  
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Braley is the chairman and executive director for the National Day of the Cowboy, which is based out of Willcox. The resolution was passed in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time this year with the help of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. The resolution is for this year only, but Braley hopes events like the one in Bisbee will show Congress there is a strong desire to make it permanent.
“The judiciary says we have to demonstrate that there is a high enough level of national interest before they will let us make it permanent,” she said.
Earlier resolutions for the National Day of the Cowboy were championed by the late Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, who managed to get it passed in the Senate in 2005 through 2007, Braley said.
Bud Strom, a local rancher and prominent cowboy poet, was the master of ceremonies for the event, taking time between band performances to recite some of his work.
“I think it’s great,” Strom said of the idea for a National Day of the Cowboy.
Strom brushes off the idea that cowboys are a fading reality.
“The cowboy is alive and well,” he said. “People ask me, is the cowboy dead? No, he’s just hard to see from the interstate,” he said, quoting a favorite saying of his. “There are a lot of individual cowboys and workers out there that tend to their animals and their land, and that’s what a cowboys life is.”
Many of the poems that Strom recited Saturday reflected that life, a life he knows well from working on his Single Star Ranch in Hereford, where he and his wife raise black Angus cattle.
“I’ve lived this life since I was a kid in Montana,” he said.
Strom attributes the infatuation with cowboys and the American West to what he calls the “romance” of the life of a cowboy.
“But then again, I’m an insufferable romantic who happens to be a cowboy and a rancher,” he said.
Braley agrees, and points out the international interest of the Old West in particular.
“I think a lot of it is the cowboy code of ethics,” she said. “They hold the cowboy in high regard. They believe the cowboy stands for something good.”
As for the impact credited to the cowboy lifestyle, Braley said it is in a class of its own.
“When you think about American history, try to think of any other element that has its own genre of music, its own genre of art, its own genre of poetry, its own genre of movies,” she said. “Not only is it unique, but it was a real significant contribution to our country.”
Braley was invited to come to the event at the request of Dan and Connie Finck, owners of the Copper Queen Hotel. Finck and his wife organized the event.
“There are national days for everything else, why not our heritage, you know?” Finck said.
He hopes events like Saturday’s and next Saturday’s blues festival will help establish Bisbee as a lively and entertaining town.
“There are not many places like Bisbee,” he said. “It’s never boring.”
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Derek Jordan can be reached at 515-4680 or by e-mail at derek.jordan@svherald.com.
