Obituary Of Jimmy Schumacher

By Gail hughbanks Woerner
Posted Monday, February 1, 2010

Jimmy Schumacher died at a Las Vegas hospital January 24, 2010, at the age of 89. He was born June 21, 1920, in Prescott, AZ, and began his rodeo career as a roughstock competitor. By the time he was sixteen he joined the Clyde S. Miller Wild West Show, of Waterloo, Iowa. He won the bull riding at the Calgary Stampede in 1945 and also won the bareback riding event there twice. After fifteen years of competition he gave it up to replace the ‘original barrelman’ Jasbo Fulkerson who was killed in a truck accident. Jimmy took the bottom out of the barrel as a means of escape and originated the first ‘walking barrel’. He even has a patent on it, and it is on display at the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs. He was injured badly by a bull named ‘Buster’ at the 1969 National Finals when he picked up the barrel, with Jimmy in it and tossed it over his head. He broke all the ribs on one side and one was stuck in his lung. The doctor told him he’d have to do surgery to remove the rib unless Jimmy could cough hard enough to dislodge the rib. Jimmy did what the doctor suggested and he left the hospital the next week without surgery. “You had to be able to bruise easy, but heal quick,” joked the fearless barrelman. He began his barrelman career in 1948 and didn’t retire until 1972. He was hired by many of the top rodeos such as , Madison Square Garden, Phoenix, , Belle Fourche, Denver, Ft Worth and Houston, and was selected as the National Finals barrelman nine times from 1960 through 1969. He is an honoree in the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and the Rodeo Historical Society Hall of Fame. After retirement Jimmy did many things, but was known for working for various casinos beginning at Binion’s running the Big Six Wheel of Fortune. When he retired from the casino world he and his wife, Alice, moved to Prescott, but said, “There were too many old people there. I was startin’ to walk like them.”, so the consummate funnyman returned to Las Vegas. He and Alice were married fifty six years at the time of her death in February of 2009. He is survived by two sons; Sid and Rodney and wife, Robin, and two grandsons, Adam and Sean, all of Las Vegas. Jimmy was cremated and his ashes will be scattered on a favorite butte of his in Prescott, AZ. Memorials should be made to the Justin Crisis Fund in his name.