EVENTS
Rodeo Publisher
Ethel A. “Ma” Hopkins was born October 5, 1884 on a farm in Missouri. Graduating from the University of Missouri in 1908, she taught school in Oklahoma and worked for the University of Arizona as personal secretary to the Dean of the College of Agriculture for six years. In 1930, she married J. W. Hopkins, who acquired the ailing Hoofs and Horns magazine and gave it to Ethel to nurse back to health.
The magazine focused on rodeo sport and it ultimately became the official voice of the Rodeo Cowboys Association. It was said that at the time Hopkins took over the magazine, she didn’t know a piggin’ string from a latigo, but she was soon to be known as the nations’s outstanding authority on rodeo. There were few in the rodeo community she did not know, and many referred to her as the “first lady of rodeo.”
During World War II, Hoofs and Horns went to every part of the world where American troops fought or were stationed. Hopkins was a legend in her time and the magazine would have gone by the wayside without her imagination, knowledge of rodeo and ranching, and her dedication. Ethel “Ma” Hopkins passed from her special rodeo arena in Tucson, Arizona, in 1964.
