Longtime Stock Contractor Roy Honeycutt Passes Away
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Longtime award-winning stock contractor Roy Honeycutt passed away March 25. He was 82.
In October, a lifetime of commitment to the rodeo industry earned Roy and his late wife, Virginia, the 2019 PRCA Donita Barnes Contract Personnel Lifetime Achievement Award.
Virginia, the longtime matriarch of the rodeo-oriented Honeycutt family, passed away Dec. 1, 2018. She was 76.
Roy and Virginia started the Honeycutt Rodeo Company in 1976 in Alamosa, Colo. They traveled across the country and the world producing rodeos – every performance held on a Sunday included cowboy church. Their son, Jerry, now heads the Honeycutt Rodeo Company.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Roy, when notified he was receiving the award last year. “This is emotional. It is great to receive this honor. I’m very excited. This is a big deal.”
The Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Roy at the PRCA Awards Banquet at the South Point Hotel & Casino on Dec. 4.
In 1886, Honeycutt’s great-grandparents homesteaded to Alamosa from New York. Virginia was the daughter of Walt and Alice Alsbaugh. Walt Alsbaugh was a legendary PRCA stock contractor who was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1990. Virginia’s brother, Art Alsbaugh, and his wife, Linda, were the recipients of the 2012 Donita Barnes Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I was involved with my father-in-law, and I appreciated that so much,” Roy said.
Virginia and Roy met in 1963 and were married 55 years.
As a former rodeo contestant and producer, Roy took the things he liked and incorporated them into his own outfit.
Honeycutt Rodeo Stock Contractors have been one of the few rodeo stock contractors to have been a part of every National Finals Rodeo since 1976.
The bloodline on some of Honeycutt Rodeo Company’s colts go back to Alsbaugh’s Spark Plug, the Bareback Horse of the NFR in 1974. In 2000, Honeycutt Rodeo Company started its own bull breeding program with “Candy Man.”
In 2010, Honeycutt Rodeo received the Family Heritage Award from the WPRA.
Courtesy of PRCA