Billy Cook
Billy Cook opened his first saddle shop in Greenville, TX in 1953. He built 75 saddles in his first year. As his business grew over the next few years he partnered with Potts-Longhorn and production was scaled to 1,200 saddles a year by the end of the 50s and it became known as Billy Cook Saddlery/Potts Longhorn. Billy Cook’s saddles were meticulously hand tooled on sturdy saddle trees and were some of the best production saddles of that time period, gaining international recognition. Billy was the manager of this operation for many years, designing all the saddles, making patterns and then having a complete set of dies made for every new design. He later opened another shop in downtown Greenville making harnesses, called Billy Cook Harness. Eventually he started making saddles there as well. He would work at Longhorn in the morning and go to the harness shop in the afternoon.
In the 1980s, the company started having financial trouble, was foreclosed on by the bank and went up for auction. It was bought by Don Motsenbocker who was the founder and owner of the Action company and also owned several other companies including Simco, Easy Rider Saddle Co. and Saddlesmith. With the sale, Billy lost the exclusive rights to his name and the original dies and patterns he had created. A few years later, Billy Cook moved his saddlemaking operation to Sulphur, Oklahoma where it remains today, and they gained the rights to the Makers Mark. In recent years, if you purchased a saddle labeled “Billy Cook Saddlery,” it was made in Greenville. A saddle labeled “Genuine Billy Cook Saddle” then it was made in Sulphur, OK, where Billy Cook lived and worked in his later years until he died on Oct. 1, 2019.
Jeana Yeager
Jeana Yeager was born in Ft. Worth on May 18, 1952. In 1986, Jeana Yeager became the first woman to fly an airplane nonstop around the world without refueling. While growing up in White Rock, TX, Jeana became interested in flying helicopters. She graduated from Commerce High School in 1970 and after moving to California, Yeager received her pilot’s license in 1977 and became involved in experimental aerospace design.
While attending an air show in Chino, California, in 1980, Yeager met fellow pilot Dick Rutan along with Rutan’s brother, Burt Rutan, an aircraft designer. Dick Rutan, who had flown combat missions in the Vietnam war and was 14 years older than Yeager, was a featured acrobatic flyer at the show. At the time he held the title of chief test pilot for Burt Rutan’s aircraft company, based in California’s Mojave Desert. Yeager and Dick Rutan fell in love, and in the early 1980s Yeager moved to the desert to work as a pilot for Burt Rutan’s company, Flying Rutan aircraft. There she set new speed records for a woman pilot.
She and fellow pilot Dick Rutan made history when their specially built aircraft, Voyager, became the first airplane to completely circle the globe on one load of fuel. The journey took nine days, 3 minutes, and 44 seconds.. In recognition of this achievement, Jeana received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Reagan, the Harmon Trophy and was the first woman to receive the Collier Trophy.
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