I acknowledge upfront that I am way too citifiedperhaps too sissified — to comprehend anyone putting a kid on a bull.
Yet, tell me that if I strapped a 12-year-old onto, say, a lawn chair, put a helmet and even a parachute on him, tied 10 dozen huge helium balloons to the chair and sent him on his way, wouldn’t you call the cops?
So tell me how that is any different from the way 12-year-old Richard Wayde Hamar of Yuma got killed in Longmont on Sunday.
Acknowledgment must be made here that I feel terrible for the boy’s parents, Mitch and Angie. My condolences honestly go out to them.
Still, what were they thinking?
He was participating in the Longmont Elks Little Britches Rodeo at the Boulder County Fairgrounds, a sort of rodeo little league for kids ages 8-18.
The boy, outfitted with a helmet and safety vest, climbed atop a 900-pound bull. The gate swung open, and he was bucked.
As he lay in the dirt, the bull’s hoof came down on his chest, killing him.
Angie Hamar was courageous and gracious enough to speak with a Daily Camera reporter Monday. She said her son died doing what he loved and that no one was to blame for his death.
“You can’t keep your kids locked up in a closet,” she said. “There are some kids who take motocross racing, and we take our kids rodeo riding.”
Now I get that. I have been to a rodeo or two, and I quite like calf roping, barrel racing and saddle-bronc riding. I would maybe encourage a kid of mine who wanted to indulge in such things.
But bull riding?
At 18, he would be on his own. At age 12 or — heaven forbid — 8, I’d sooner give him the keys to the family sedan.
Cord McCoy, 28, a professional bull rider who raises the animals on his family’s Oklahoma farm, explained the boy’s death by saying a kid getting strapped to a bull is really the only way to learn.
“Like baseball, you can tell someone how to hit a 90-mph fastball, but you have no idea what it’s like until you face it.”
Hang on.
For a long time, I harbored fantasies my son would play in the major leagues. One of the first toys I ever handed him was a plastic bat.
I later put him in T-ball, coached a bit of his Little League games. Yet even if I could have afforded the session, the last thing I would have ever done when he was 12 was have him take his chances with a 99-mph heater.
Figuring he would have long ago had me handcuffed and jailed had I done the lawn-chair stunt, I called Boulder County DA Stanley Garnett to see whether charges were so much as being contemplated in the boy’s death.
No, he said, being very deliberate with his words. Nothing, he said, has been brought to him. He laughed at my lawn-chair analogy but did say he could see how such a comparison could be made.
The boy’s death “could be analogous to a situation where there are injuries between players in professional sports,” he said. “It is a risk that is undertaken.”
I get that accidents happen. This is the tack the Little Britches folks are taking, which is something I also understand. If I were putting 12-year-olds behind the wheel of Indy cars, and one of the kids hit the wall, it would be the first thing out of my mouth too.
The Little Britches Rodeo has been around since 1952, when it held its first one in Littleton. About 2,000 kids in 24 states now participate, and Richard Wayde Hamar’s death, the rodeo notes, is the first anyone can remember.
The grace of God, if you ask me, is a wonderful thing.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
