'She sure loved the Tucson Rodeo': Reflecting on mom's joy experiencing Southern Arizona mainstay event

Gary Williams looked at me square in the eyes, like only Gary Williams could, and he threw his arm around my mom’s shoulder. They weren’t too different in height, so this was no tall task.

The longtime Tucson Rodeo general manager gripped her warmly.

“Jon, I’ll take care of her like she was my own mother.”

He nodded his head a little, just to confirm. His hat tilted. A little wink.

My mom, Judith Gold, passed away early Friday morning, six weeks shy of her 77th birthday. Gary was one of the first people who came to mind.

That she died the day before the 99th “La Fiesta de Los Vaqueros” kicked off is a bit poetic.

She sure loved the Tucson Rodeo.

It reminded her of Madison Square Garden and the rodeos of her youth. Not exactly the Southwest setting you’d imagine. Traveling in from nearby New Jersey, it was like another world was transported to the big city, if only for an afternoon. And she was transported, too.

She was accustomed to seeing cowboys on television — “Have Gun — Will Travel’s” Paladin, the “Knight Without Armor,” and “Gunsmoke’s” Marshal Matt Dillon and her favorite, “Bonanza’s” Little Joe Cartwright, played by the dreamy Michael Landon — but this was the West in real, living color. The mud and the dirt, the horses and the bulls, the bright lights and the big city.

Thanks to Gary Williams, she was transported once more.

Six decades after her first rodeo, I took her to her last.

• • •

We are not supposed to accept gifts from those we cover, but this was a very particular offer.

I’d covered the Tucson Rodeo for the first time in 2014, but, as they say, it was not my first rodeo.

That would have been in 2007, my first assignment for the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming. I was a cocky 23-year-old at the time, fresh off my senior year at San Diego State, wide-eyed and over-eager to start my first full-time gig. They sent me to cover the College National Finals Rodeo, and I showed up to sign-in day in shorts and flip-flops. I was used to covering volleyball on San Diego’s Pacific Beach. I guess some habits die hard.

While my feet were caked in mud, along with that which smelled far worse — I threw out those flip-flops, by the way — so began a love affair with a sport of which I knew nothing. I guess I got it from my mom, along with these calves.

I loved the pageantry and the pomp and the circumstance. I loved the ecstasy and agony packed into eight seconds. I loved the people, most of all, relics of a different time and a different place.

My first year covering the Tucson Rodeo, 2014, I’d told Gary about my passion for the sport and that of hers, as well.

The next year, when I told him that my mom had moved to Tucson, he insisted that I bring her out to the rodeo. She’d only been in Tucson for a few months, but she’d grown an instant liking for the city. There wasn’t a taxi driver in the city who didn’t know what her son did for a living. Nothing made her prouder than seeing my name and picture in print, and she loved the stories that Tucson let me tell.

Joining me on the job would be a true gift, but with her ill health, she couldn’t be too far from me, and I didn’t want her sitting alone in an unfamiliar crowd. So Gary whipped up a guest pass and gave her her own chair up in the press box, looking straight down at the chutes.

She felt like a queen for a day. She talked about it for years.

When Gary passed away in Oct. 2022 after suffering a sudden stroke, she was devastated. He was so kind to her.

To be clear, I broke every professional ethic on that February 2015 morning. But Gary would not take no for an answer. The chance to introduce the Tucson Rodeo to someone new was his greatest joy in life.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

And my mom was his perfect audience.

• • •

She was born Judith Harriet Abel on March 30, 1947, to Michael “Mickey” Abel and Beatrice Berzon in Jersey City, New Jersey. Hers was not an easy life, filled with tremendous tragedy and lasting bouts with mental illness.

Growing up in America’s heyday, she was blessed with Elvis and the Beatles, sockhops and soda jerks. Other jerks, too, which soured her opinion of men, though she would marry twice.

Her first marriage ended rather quickly, but she had two beautiful little girls, and she’d take care of those girls as a single mother while putting herself through Hastings Law School after she matriculated at Cal Berkeley. She was always smart. Sometimes too smart for her own good.

She married my dad in 1980, and I came along four years later, 12 years after my sister Lauren and nine after my sister Amy.

I was the baby by a country mile, and Lauren was the eldest who could do no wrong, but Amy was the apple of my mom’s eye. It’s always the difficult ones, isn’t it?

In addition to her eyes, my sister inherited my mother’s mental health issues. Theirs was a strained relationship, filled with some ups and many downs. Neither of them was really…OK.

My mom was all but out of my sister’s life in 1992 when tragedy changed all of our lives.

Amy was living with her father, Dennis, in San Francisco and had finally gotten some stability in her life when she was involved in a car accident along with two of her high school friends returning from a Junior Statesmen of America conference. There was a car parked in the fast lane of the 101 Freeway near Menlo Park in Northern California. No lights, no warning. My sister’s friend saw the car too late, veered to the right and was clipped by another driver. The car rolled across the freeway, crashing onto its hood. Amy was in the backseat. The two girls in the front seat walked away mostly unscathed.

They needed the Jaws of Life to take Amy out of the car. Her T-1 vertebra was crushed. She was paralyzed from the waist down. She was 16 years old.

• • •

My mom died on Friday morning at a nursing facility in Oxnard, California, after a sustained bout with COPD and emphysema and recent cases of pneumonia and respiratory failure. Even though she’d been sick for a while, her passing was unexpected. She is survived by her daughter Lauren Altbaier and son-in-law, Chad, and her grandchildren, Paige and Chase, along with her son Jonathan Gold and daughter-in-law, Natasha. She was preceded in death by her parents and her cherished dog, Shadow.

And by Amy Wishnie, her beloved daughter.

Mom took her last breath on Friday, but truthfully, she died a dozen years ago, when Amy passed away at the age of 36 in 2012.

For two decades, through countless hospital stays and constant pain, and a life in complete disarray, my mom cared for Amy. It was the single greatest feat I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve seen them all. No touchdown or home run — nor even a 95 scored on the back of an ornery bull named Blue Bayou — can top a mother’s love for a sick child.

Losing Amy was worse than losing a limb for my mother, even if they had their battles. It was worse than losing her own life. Caring for Amy was her purpose. When Amy died, my mom’s light extinguished. Her soul died.

The last dozen years have been almost a linear descent into madness and sadness. In some ways, I’m glad her struggle is over. In others, I wished she’d lived to 150. Ours, too, was not the easiest of relationships, but I’ll love and miss her forever.

Now, I’m not one who typically believes in such things, but I hope the two of them are at peace somewhere, together. I hope the pain is gone, both physical and otherwise. I hope they are smiling, listening to Barbra Streisand.

And I hope Gary Williams is there, his arm draped over my mom’s shoulder.

Tucson Rodeo legend Gary Williams' legacy endures through the lives he touched

The late Gary Williams put a stamp on the Tucson Rodeo that will last forever; his friends miss him, remember him and revere him.

'A special place in my heart': Vendors play big role in Tucson Rodeo's ongoing success

“I don’t do rodeos anymore,” admitted Alan Sanchez, owner of Alan's Lids, who is back at Tucson Rodeo in 2024 as an out-of-town vendor visiting Southern Arizona for the nine-day event. “But Tucson has a special plate in my heart. Last year ... I come, and I make the most money I’ve ever made in my life in one day. At this rodeo."