‘He’s still with us in spirit’: Tributes flow for rodeo great Roy Cooper

They called him the “Super Looper” — partly because it rhymed with his surname, but mostly because when it came to tying down calves in dusty rodeo arenas, that’s exactly what Roy Cooper was.

One of the greatest to ever twirl a lariat at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, Cooper died in a house fire in Decatur, Texas, on April 29. He was 69 years old.

On Tuesday, his son Tuf was making the rounds at the South Point, where he and his dad had spent so much time together during the 10 days of the Finals.

“He’s still with us in spirit,” said Tuf Cooper, 35, a four-time world champion himself, who narrowly missed qualifying for his 17th NFR this year, under trying circumstances.

Seven months into the grieving process, the void of living without his father, friend and confidant hasn’t really diminished.

“I had the Super Looper as a dad,” the 2017 all-around world champion said of the nickname bestowed upon the Cooper family patriarch by a Sports Illustrated reporter. “As amazing as it could be, it was as challenging as it could be at times, to have a rock star as your dad.”

But Tuf Cooper said he doesn’t regret having to share his father with the sport that made him an icon.

“He loved his lifestyle more than anything,” he said. “He loved the stories, the memories, the championships, the other competitors, their grit and determination. He was a big fan of all of it, and he loved Las Vegas.”

Strait talkin’ man

Roy Cooper was eulogized by friends, family, fellow competitors and not one but two country singing legends, during a memorial service at the Fort Worth Stockyards on Memorial Day weekend.

“Roy was one of my very best friends,” said George Strait, who was joined on stage at the Cowtown Coliseum by fellow Country Music Hall of Famer Tanya Tucker.

“We shared a lot of good times and bad times,” said Strait, who met Cooper shortly before the latter attained the elusive Triple Crown — championships in three different rodeo disciplines — in 1983. “He didn’t hang out with me. I hung out with him.”

And one night after the Kentucky Derby, Strait said they both sort of hung out with Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks.

“We went to the Kentucky Derby together one year, and we were at a party after the Derby. I looked around and Roy’s trying to (rope) Stevie Nicks,” Strait said as he and the audience broke into laughter.

“Years later, I ran into her somewhere and she said, “Hey, where’s that crazy cowboy friend of yours who tried to rope me at the Derby that night?’ He always made a big impression, ol’ Roy.”

The legends’ legend

Roy Dale Cooper was born in Hobbs, N.M., in 1955 and raised on a ranch, where he suffered from asthma and horse hair allergies — maladies not exactly conducive to a long career in the sport that would define his legacy.

He won the world all-around championship in 1983 and six tie-down roping titles. Cooper was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class in 1979, and he qualified for the NFR 19 times.

In 2000, he became the first cowboy to top $2 million in career earnings, prompting seven-time all-around world champion Ty Murray to call him “the legends’ legend” during Cooper’s memorial service.

“This guy didn’t just inspire calf ropers. He was a real sports hero,” Murray said. “He brought a coolness and a gift factor that affected all of us who wanted to do this and be great at it.”

That would include Trevor Brazile, who surpassed Murray by claiming 14 all-around championships among his 26 world titles. Brazile married Cooper’s stepdaughter, Shada, in 2001.

“There was nothing he did that wasn’t perfection when it came to a rope and a piggin’ string,” Brazile said. “They broke the mold with Roy Cooper.”

Joe Beaver won three all-around cowboy titles and five in tie-down roping, during a career that reached its zenith just after Cooper’s had peaked.

Beaver said Cooper — who stood 6 feet tall and weighed 175 pounds, with a jaw line that appeared to be carved from granite — will always be one of the “Mount Rushmore heads of calf roping.”

Chips off the block

Although most of his reputation was acquired before the NFR moved to Las Vegas in 1985, Roy Cooper enjoyed two shining moments in a city renowned for them.

At an age where most top cowboys are content to ride off into the sunset, the 40-year-old Cooper instead basked in the Thomas & Mack Center’s bright lights in 1995, when he tied his calf in the final round in 9 seconds flat to clinch his fourth NFR average title.

But as special as that was, it paled in comparison to watching his three sons — Tuf, Clint and Clif — qualify for the 2010 NFR in the same event that made their father a legend.

It was the first time three siblings had competed in the same NFR. Just two months before his death, Cooper spoke of the thrill of watching his offspring compete against one another in Las Vegas.

“That was the Triple Crown for me,” the boys’ proud papa said on the Let’s Freakin’ Rodeo podcast. “Rodeo is fun, it’s more fun when you’re winning, and it’s more fun (than that) when you’re with your family.”

As he began to display the same type of skill and athleticism that made his dad so hard to beat, Tuf Cooper showed he was more than a chip off the old block.

The last question he was asked Tuesday as the South Point was morphing into Cowboy Central was how he would want rodeo outsiders to remember the great Super Looper.

There was a pregnant pause as he searched for the right words.

“He was a cowboy,” Tuf Cooper finally said, which just might be the best thing anybody could ever say about a guy like Roy Cooper.