Puncher Cooper
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
In late January of this year Puncher Cooper, one of the old-time Flint Hills cowboys, himself a son and grandson of old-time Flint Hills cowboys, died. He was 74 years old and going strong, but an accident with a tractor and a big round bale cut short his work with the quarter horses he raised and loved on his ranch near Saffordville.
My first memory of Puncher was watching him ride saddle broncs at the annual Flint Hills Rodeo in Strong City, and ride them he did. He also was one of the first Kansans, if not the first, to compete in the National High School Rodeo finals. Puncher undoubtedly inherited his riding ability and his love of horses from his grandfather and father. Isaiah "Ide" Cooper, was one of the early settlers in Chase County and rode for, among others, the famous Crocker Brothers ranch.
I interviewed Puncher's dad a couple of decades ago, and I vividly remember Elmer telling me that he was only 11 or 12 years old when Ide took him along on a horse-buying venture into northeast Oklahoma. After acquiring a dozen or so horses, the elder Cooper headed on down to Tulsa for some other business and sent young Elmer back to Kansas with the horses. Elmer said if he got a little uncertain about where he was, he'd just go to a nearby farm house and ask them where Chase County was. "They'd point," he told me, "and I'd head that way." He got home just fine.
Puncher himself had his share of adventures. He told me once when he was young and single, he took a job on a big New Mexico ranch. When winter came, he was put in charge of a bunch of cows, living in a line-camp shack scores of miles from the nearest town. No electricity, no running water, no telephone, no automobile. Every few weeks a truck would come by and the driver would throw out a sack full of groceries, but he never stopped or even slowed down. The reason was if the driver had infected Puncher with a cold or flu, there was no way for him to call for help or get to a doctor.
It was the loneliest four months of his life, Puncher told me, and when spring came he drew his pay and headed back to the Flint Hills where he spent the rest of his life raising good horses. Sometime in the early 1980s he combined with some other area horse raisers (Pat Finnerty, Raymond Prewitt, and Frank Gaddie) to have the first of what became an annual autumn production sale.
In 1953, he married Jeannine North and they had a son and four daughters. One daughter, Janet Cannon, lives across the road from us south of Emporia. Larry bales my hay every summer, and we couldn't ask for better neighbors.
Although I never heard anyone ever call him that, Puncher's given name was Edgar. I learned at his funeral he got his nickname early. Elmer often took his young son with him to help various ranchers ship cattle, including the Nortons, four brothers who ran cattle on the Southfork east of Bazaar. When they would call to see if Elmer could help, they always would say, "Bring that little puncher with you." It was a name he certainly lived up to.
Puncher's funeral was held in the gymnasium of the former Saffordville High School building. The full-sized basketball court was filled with chairs, and every chair was occupied. The three hallways leading into the gym also were packed. As Puncher's friends filed past the coffin after the service, Dan Nurnberg, one of the honorary pallbearers, leaned over to me and said, "You know, Puncher never had a whole lot in the way of material possessions, but when you see all these people here it makes you realize what real wealth is." I couldn't agree more.
