NCHA News

Brenda Binion Michael, 1941 - 2022

A well-known figure in the cutting community, Brenda Binion Michael, 81, of Amarillo, Texas, passed away July 27, 2022.

Rosary/Vigil will be said at 6:00 p.m., Monday, August 1, 2022, at Schooler Funeral Home in Amarillo. Funeral mass will be celebrated at 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, August 2, 2022, at St. Ann's Catholic Church in Canyon. Interment will follow in Dreamland Cemetery in Canyon. 

Brenda was the third of Benny and Teddy Jane Binion’s five children. Born in Dallas and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, she spent many summers at the Binion ranch in Jordan, Montana. As a child, she got her first taste of cutting on a retired NCHA World Champion owned by her father who’d three-peated the title in 1946 - 47- 48. Like so many others, she was hooked.

Brenda attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth to be near the heart of the cutting horse industry. She helped her family full-time in Montana before buying a ranch near Santa Rosa, New Mexico. She moved to Amarillo in 1969 and continued her ranching interests.

When she was 17, her father assigned her the job of registering all the eligible horses on his Montana ranch with the American Quarter Horse Association. The job was more challenging than it might sound. “Daddy always ran at least 200 mares, so we had 10 to 15 stallions all the time,” she told John L. Moore for an article in America’s Horse magazine.

The Binion ranch stretched over 95,000 deeded acres in the badlands of eastern Montana, plus, at various times, 100,000+ acres of federal and state leases. The mare bands ran in pastures bigger than most people’s entire ranch. They were untouched until they came in with their foals each year to be sorted while Brenda tried to read mares’ ID brands and draw markings. Not all were destined to be registered; it wasn’t unusual for a few each year to be sold for rodeo bucking horses. The registration ritual remained her responsibility until after Benny’s death in 1989, well after she’d established a respected breeding program of her own in Texas.

At the 2020 American Quarter Horse Association convention, she received an 80-year Breeders Certificate for her father’s and her affiliation since the association began.

In 2015, she was recognized with rodeo’s Ken Stemler Pioneer Award “for her commitment to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame with her continued support of the Benny Binion World Famous Bucking Horse and Bull Sale, which benefits the Hall of Fame and youth educational scholarships.”       

Throughout her life, she generously shared her time, connections and resources with innumerable cutters, ranch cowboys and rodeo hands, past and present. And her barn in Amarillo was always available to cutters or rodeo contestants traveling through with horses.

Her best years as a non-pro were hauling Lena Leo War Lady in the 1990s, with the help of Brady Bowen. Afterward, she turned her attention to breeding cutting horses, and watching the rest of her family compete.

“In our family, cutting is the topic of most of our conversations because we're always in the process of breeding cutting horses and training them,” Brenda told journalist Brett Hoffman after her grandson, Ben Johnson, won the cutting at the Texas High School Rodeo Association Finals.

Brenda was selected Tri-State Fair Cowgirl of the Year in 1998. Also in 1998, she acquired the Lighthouse Ranch on the rim of Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

A long-time member of the fair board, she was on the fundraising committee for the Amarillo National Center which opened in 2000. A boon to the local economy, it’s been the site of the fair’s PRCA rodeo, plus cuttings, other horse events and concerts.

Brenda is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Mindy and Clint Johnson; grandson Ben Johnson, his wife, Kaitlin, and their children Porter, Emery, Hudson and Henley, all of Canyon; granddaughter Janie Johnson and fiancé Jake Finlay of Weatherford, Texas; her sister Becky Behnen and brother Jack Binion, both of Las Vegas.

She was preceded in death by her husband Bert France; her parents; her sister Barbara and her brother Ted Binion.

The family suggests memorials be made to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame or the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund. Shared memories and messages submitted to the Schooler Funeral Home website are appreciated (www.schoolerfuneralhome.com).