OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha authorities have identified the body of a man found floating down the Missouri River.
Boaters spotted the body around 2:15 p.m. Sunday. An Omaha Fire Department river rescue team recovered it near Eppley Airfield on the northeast corner of the city.
Omaha police say investigators have identified the man but declined to release his name.
Police say no foul play is suspected in the death.
Randy Corley, a 2017 inductee into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, is the announcer at the Buffalo Bill Rodeo in North Platte. The Wyoming native lived in North Platte for twenty years and was the son-in-law of the famed rodeo announcer Hadley Barrett.
North Platte, Neb. – June 5, 2017 – A North Platte man will be recognized in August for his contributions to the rodeo world.
Randy Corley, who lived in North Platte for two decades, is an inductee into the 2017 Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
Corley never thought he’d make a living as a rodeo announcer, and there was a teacher at Niobrara County High School in Lusk, Wyo., who concurred.
He was a high school kid, taking a speech class because it was an easy credit, and when he was asked to give a speech, it was always rodeo-related, about world champions like Larry Mahan or Jim Shoulders. The teacher did not approve. “She had threatened me a couple of times that I needed to talk about something different,” Corley recalled. “I’d always come back to rodeo.” One time, she couldn’t take it anymore. When he started yet another speech on rodeo, she “came running up and ripped the speech off the podium, and said, ‘you’ve got to think about your future. You’re not going to talk rodeo your whole life.’” Little did she know, Corley would make his living “talking rodeo.”
He was born in 1951 in Miles City, Mont., spending his school years mostly in Lusk and Lance Creek Wyo., and his summers with his granddad, Waldo Parsons, a cowboy who he idolized. “I spent every summer at his ranch, and when I got older, I’d go out in the winters and help feed cattle. He was everything to me.”
In 1977-78, he attended the Ron Bailey School of Broadcast in Seattle, then worked as a dj in Broken Bow before moving to North Platte, where he was on air at KODY AM and KX 104.
In 1979, world champion saddle bronc rider Bill Smith started a nightly rodeo series in North Platte and hired Corley to announce it. He was acquaintances with Michelle and Trent Barrett, the children of the legendary North Platte native Hadley Barrett, also a rodeo announcer. Michelle, who ran barrels, and Trent, who roped at the rodeo, insisted their dad, a rancher north of town, come to the rodeo to hear this young announcer. He did, and Corley was nervous; he knew who Hadley was, and his accomplishments in the music world and the rodeo world.
Hadley was impressed but wanted to hear Corley announce when he wasn’t aware of Hadley being in the audience. So the next week, Hadley made a trip to town for tractor parts, and again visited the rodeo, this time unannounced. He liked what he heard. A few weeks later, he asked Corley if he’d be interested in getting his PRCA card. Corley was, and Hadley assisted him in becoming a PRCA member.
That was in 1980, and four years later, Corley won the PRCA’s Announcer of the Year award, an honor he would win eleven more times throughout his career, the most of any other announcer, in 1990-1996, 1998, 2003, 2011 and 2015.
Throughout Corley’s career, he has announced rodeos across the nation: the big ones, and the little ones alike: North Platte; Puyallup, Wash.; Caldwell, Ida.; the RAM National Circuit Finals; Tucson, Ariz.; San Antonio, Texas; Phillipsburg and Pretty Prairie, Kan., and dozens more. He was selected to announce the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo sixteen times.
He worked alongside his father-in-law at five rodeos: North Platte, San Antonio and Waco, Texas, Caldwell, Idaho, and Puyallup, Wash., till Barrett passed away on March 2 of this year.
Corley vividly remembers what Barrett said after the final performance in San Antonio on Feb. 26, four days before he passed. “He laid his mike down, and said, that is the best rodeo I have announced in my life.”
Corley and Barrett were good friends as much as they were son-in-law and father-in-law, and Corley relates a funny story Barrett told years ago. When he first started, Barrett asked him to live in on the ranch, to help take care of things when Barrett was on the road. By that point, Corley and Michelle were dating; they married in 1984. “I thought it would be nice to have somebody to help out when I wasn’t around,” Barrett said. “I made Randy a deal, and I thought he had good values. What I didn’t realize was, his values were my valuables: my clothes, the food in my refrigerator, my rodeos, and my daughter.”
Barrett was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1999, and now eighteen years later, Corley follows him. The ceremony is the first weekend of August. It was a team effort, he insists, throughout his career. “I need about 500 or 600 people to come up to the podium with me,” he joked. “There are a lot of people to thank, more than I can pinpoint. It’s stock contractors, great committees, really good entertainers and rodeo clowns and bullfighters and sound people that I’ve gotten to work with. It’s all the people that make those rodeos happen, and have given me a place to shine. All of them exemplify what the announcer does.”
Corley knows the North Platte rodeo fans will miss Hadley; this will be the first time since 1964 that Hadley has not been behind the mike at the rodeo. He’s been preparing himself. “It’s something I’ve talked to God about every day,” he said. “I have to go into that rodeo, and make it good.” A special tribute will be done for Hadley; it won’t be sad, Corley said, but “we’ll pay tribute in a special way. We’ll hear Hadley.”
Corley and his wife Michelle moved to Silverdale, Washington in 2001. Corley has two daughters, Kassi and Amanda, and together the couple has a son, Cole, and a daughter, Brittany.
He is honored to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and thankful for his life. “I realize more and more every day, how we don’t have the control we think we do. You can place it all in God’s hands, and it’s how God planned it.”
The other inductees into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame are the late Buck Rutherford (all-around champion, 1954), Enoch Walker (saddle bronc riding champion, 1960), Tommy Puryear (steer wrestling champion, 1974), Mike Beers (team roping champion, 1984), Cody Custer (bull riding champion, 1992), Bob Ragsdale (22-time National Finals Rodeo qualifier), Christensen Bros.’ Smith & Velvet, (four-time bareback horse of the year), and the committee for the Ogden (Utah) Pioneer Days.
The Buffalo Bill Rodeo takes place June 14-17 at the Wild West Arena in North Platte. It begins at 8 pm nightly. Tickets range in price from $7 to $20 and can be purchased online at www.NebraskalandDays.com, at the gate, or at the office at 2801 Charlie Evans Drive (at the Wild West Arena in North Platte.) For more information, visit the website or call 308.532.7939.
A 46-year-old North Platte woman has died after the vehicle she was riding in struck several horses that had wandered onto the highway.
According to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, on June 4 at around 3:53 a.m., deputies were advised that five horses were loose on U.S. Highway 83 near Echo School Road.
Upon arrival, the deputy found approximately 30 horses running all over the highway.
As the deputy was attempting to remove the horses from the roadway, a 2006 Chevrolet Aveo, driven by 49-year-old Shawn Tallmon, was traveling northbound, crested a hill and struck three of the animals near mile marker 65.
Also in the vehicle were Shawn’s wife, Dawn Tallmon, 19-year-old Randy Tallmon and 18-year-old Emily Pellegrin, all of North Platte.
Dawn was transported to Great Plains Health where she was pronounced dead.
The other passengers were also transported to GPH, but their injuries are believed to non-life threatening.
Chief Deputy Roland Kramer says it does not appear that drugs or alcohol were involved.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Officials say the April Rural Mail Carrier Survey number came in higher than last year for pheasant, cottontail rabbits and wild turkeys in Nebraska.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission says that if spring and early summer weather proves out moderate, production of young should be good this year.
The increase in pheasant numbers was highest in the Southwest region. The increase in wild turkey numbers was highest in Panhandle and Southeast regions. The Central and Southeast regions saw the greatest increase in cottontail numbers.
The survey was conducted April 3-6 as 424 rural mail carriers observed species while traveling nearly 177,000 miles of rural roads in 87 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
Go online at outdoornebraska.gov/upland to view the entire survey report.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is accepting Recreational Trail Program grant applications.
The grant program is made available through the Federal Highway Administration that reimburses political subdivisions — such as communities, counties and natural resources districts — up to 80 percent of project costs for trail acquisition, development, renovation and support facilities. Applicants must have the financial means to undertake and maintain the project, and all funding should be on hand.
The program funds are divided among three categories: motorized trails, non-motorized trails and diversified or shared-use trails.
Application materials can be downloaded at https://outdoornebraska.gov/grants/. Applications must be submitted to Game and Parks and postmarked by Sept. 1, 2017.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — When Nebraska lawmakers sought to ease prison crowding two years ago, they expanded probation services in hopes that more supervision and treatment would reduce the number of low-level felons behind bars.
But now, in the wake of this year’s budget crisis, some lawmakers fear cuts to probation services could undermine the work they’ve done so far.
Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete says the cuts are concerning, and she worries that judges will send low-level offenders to prison if they don’t believe probation services are adequate to handle the caseloads.
The cuts came as lawmakers and Gov. Pete Ricketts sought to fill a projected $900 million revenue shortfall in the upcoming two-year budget.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Police say a 3-year-old Colorado boy has accidentally shot and seriously wounded his 2-year-old brother, and a 30-year-old woman has been arrested.
Colorado Springs Police Department spokesman Howard Black says the older boy found a weapon and was playing with it when the gun discharged on Saturday.
The younger child’s condition was first listed as critical and later upgraded to serious. Neither boy’s name was released.
Police said Sunday that Monica Abeyta of Colorado Springs was arrested on suspicion of felony child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury. Authorities haven’t described her relationship to the young brothers.
No phone listing could be found for Abeyta, and it wasn’t clear if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf. She was not immediately listed in online jail records.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Farm groups and some members of Congress from farm states are decrying proposed cuts to crop insurance and other safety net programs for farmers included in President Donald Trump’s budget.
The proposed cuts come as farmers are facing their fourth straight year of falling income. They could particularly affect farm states such as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska that helped Trump win the November election.
One proposal would cut the federal crop insurance program by $28 billion over 10 years. Programs that provide crop subsidies would lose $9 billion.
But Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa farmer, says the crop insurance cuts won’t make it through Congress.
The Trump administration says the proposed cuts help fulfill a campaign promise to balance the federal budget.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert has selected the attorney who oversaw city labor relations as Omaha’s new human resources director.
Tim Young will replace Mikki Frost, who retired Friday.
Frost had led human resources through Stothert’s first term after also working as personnel director when Hal Daub was Omaha mayor, from 1995 until 2001.
Stothert cited Young’s ‘legal, investigative and negotiating experience” in announcing the hire Friday.
Young has been the city’s labor relations director since August 2015.
Before that, he worked for the Nebraska Department of Administrative Services, as assistant general counsel for the Nebraska State Patrol, as an assistant state’s attorney in McHenry, Illinois, and as a police investigator in Illinois.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police say a man died while in custody and after being shocked by a stun gun.
