EVENTS
All-Around Champion Cowboy, 1934
Saddle Bronc Rider, Champion, 1934
Bareback Bronc Rider, Champion, 1934
In 20 years of rodeo Leonard Ward consistently won in each of rodeo’s main events. Born in 1903 in Washington, he learned the cowboy trade on ranches and first rodeoed at Ogalalla, Nebraska, in 1920.
An outstanding rough-stock rider, roper, and bulldogger, Leonard Ward won titles in all of those events at the nation’s most important venues from 1920 to 1938. His manifest abilities brought him the all-around title in 1934. Injured in 1938 while steer decorating at Salinas, California, he later rodeoed only occasionally. He supplemented his income by working in construction.
In 1941, just before the United States entered World War II, Ward went to the South Pacific as a construction worker. After the Pearl Harbor debacle, he was captured by the Japanese and interned as a prisoner of war for almost four years. Upon returning the America, he bought a cattle ranch in California and continued in the construction business. Leonard Ward died in 1985.
