By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian

Sally A. Hopper. Photo contributed by the Hopper family.

Sally Hopper never got too far away from the Pendleton Round-Up — she even had a condo that overlooked the Round-Up grounds.

The veteran Round-Up office manager left work a week ago Wednesday and failed to show up on schedule on Friday morning. A co-worker and a police officer found her on the floor in the aftermath of a stroke. Hopper, 62, was flown to a Portland hospital, but died Wednesday morning. The death leaves a huge void for the Round-Up and Happy Canyon, which have shared her for 30-plus years.

“She was really the heartbeat of the Pendleton Round-Up,” said Randy Severe, president of the Round-Up Association. The personable Hopper attended her first Round-Up as a babe in arms, watching from her family’s box in the south grandstand. “She never missed a Round-Up,” said her mother, Pat Hopper.

Sally started working in the Round-Up office as a high school student. After earning her teaching degree at Oregon State University, she tested the waters with other jobs, working for the telephone company, Banner Bank and a Washington feed lot. Eventually, she wended her way back to the Round-Up.

A painting that hangs in Pat Hopper’s home depicts Sally Hopper and her brother, Mike, a past Round-Up president, as children. Mike died at age 50. Photo by Kathy Aney

Her mother said Sally learned to organize and manage people during her 4-H years. “She collected friends — most of them were boys,” Pat said. “She had a way of getting those boys to clean pens and wash her animals.” Sally experienced success showing steers, going as far afield as Phoenix, Ariz., where she took grand champion with one of her 4-H steers. A Phoenix newspaper featured a photo of Sally and her Hereford steer riding in a convertible after the competition. The sale of the steer financed a chunk of her college education. Sally, who grew up on a ranch near Adams, got used to hard work, said her mom. During the weeks of harvest, the teenager made lunches for two 50-man crews of workers.
“She’d make her lunches at 2 a.m. and gave them out at five,” Pat said. “Then she’d get up and do the same thing at two in the afternoon.”

Sally put similar effort into her Round-Up job, say those who knew her. Friday morning, her colleagues still seemed a bit shell-shocked by news of her death, expecting to see Sally pop out of her tiny office at the Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame. She rarely stayed put at her desk for long, often drifting out into the retail area while talking into her hands-free phone or speaking to visitors.

Laura Davis, a buyer at the Hall of Fame, teared up as she remembered her last vision of a laughing and smiling Sally as Davis left at quitting time a week ago Wednesday. “The last time I saw her she was smiling,” said Davis, who credited Sally with a heart of gold and an unwaivering love of Round-Up.

Past Round-Up President Butch Thurman called Sally’s passing “a deep loss.” “She’s the one who kept everyone together,” he said.  Rookie directors leaned on her heavily since “she knew our job descriptions like the back of her hand.” Severe said Sally stayed cool under pressure. If a VIP came to town during Round-Up with no ticket or lodging, she worked the phones. “She’d make a phone call and she’d have them a room,” he said. “Anyone else would have been tearing their hair out, but she took it in stride.”

Hopper was something of a Round-Up historian. “She was a walking archive,” Severe said. “Any time you needed to know a detail, Sally knew it — if she didn’t know it, it wasn’t important.”

Pat said her daughter never married or had children. The Round-Up was her immediate family. “She was closer to the rodeo than she was to anyone,” Pat said. “She was where she wanted to be.”

Sally’s sister Patsy Taylor said her big sister also had a soft spot for her nephews and nieces, attending myriad football, baseball and soccer games. She also loved reading and the Oregon State Beavers. She was habitually late.
“It got to be a joke,” Taylor said, laughing. “If dinner was at 6 o’clock, we’d tell her 5.”  Taylor paused, growing serious, and said she already misses knowing her big sister “is just a phone call away.”

Plenty of other people feel that way, too, and say Round-Up simply won’t be the same without her. “When I think of Round-Up,” Davis said, “I think of Sally.”