Greg Hansen: For years, Joan Liess has helped sports in Tucson run smoothly

Joan Liess has worked for the Colorado Rockies, the PGA Tour, the U.S. National Senior Olympics, the Tubac Golf Resort, the National Finals Rodeo and, most notably, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros.

She was general manager of Old Tucson when Old Tucson was the heavyweight of all local attractions, a time when you could still imagine John Wayne bursting through a saloon door to punch a rustler in the kisser.

Liess made her mark in what used to be a man’s world, and much like John Wayne, if she ever is intimidated , you’d never know it.

“Joan is a godsend,” says Gary Williams, long-time general manager of the Tucson Rodeo Committee. “I wouldn’t want to do this without her.”

A few years ago, I discovered that my all-access credential to La Fiesta de los Vaqueros included a space in the chute – a platform maybe 5 feet away from world champion bull riders and 1,600-pound bulls famously named Bodacious and Tornado.

At first I thought this couldn’t be possible. Five feet from Bodacious and the great Ty Murray? There is no better seat in sports.

So I asked Joan. “Can I really stand next to the chute?”

“Follow me,” she said, grabbing her cowboy hat and clomping in her cowboy boots through the dirt at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds. Once next to the chute, you could feel the ground shake. The bull slammed against the railing as Ty Murray gathered himself for what he hoped to be eight seconds of glory.

It was almost paralyzing, a combination of fear and excitement.

“I get chills every time I go to the platform,” she said again last week. “I just love the cowboys. They’ll say ‘hi ma’am,’ tip their hats to you and then all hell breaks loose.”

Joan Liess might’ve been a sportswriter in another era, but when she grew up in St. Louis, newspapers weren’t yet hiring women to write about baseball and football. She would often accompany her father, George, to old Busch Stadium — he was a long-time usher and employee of the Bell Telephone system — and sit in the press room as sportswriters banged out their stories on the old typewriters of the day.

She met and became a fan of Hall of Famers Lou Brock and Stan Musial, and maybe that’s why she has felt at home working in marketing and media relations in many of Tucson’s most significant sporting events over the last three decades.

“I moved to Tucson in 1981 after working as a copywriter and copy chief for a advertising department in St. Louis,” Liess says. “I met Bob Shelton, who ran Old Tucson, and he hired me to be his marketing director.”

A few years later, Liess became Old Tucson’s general manager. Talk about a fast track.

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I met her in the mid ’80s. She arranged a press conference for the great Merlin Olsen, who was preparing for induction into the NFL Hall of Fame.

Olsen was working on the set of “Father Murphy” at Old Tucson. I introduced myself to Joan after the press conference, and told her that I grew up in Olsen’s hometown, and was friends with his twin sisters and brother.

“Let me get Merlin for you,” she said. “He’d probably like to meet you, too.”

And so for five minutes, I sat with “Father Murphy” at Old Tucson, thanks to Joan Liess.

And that’s the way it has been for over 30 years. Whether at the Tucson Open or the Tucson Rodeo, or wherever, Liess has put on a clinic of how to make a reporter’s job flow.

“It’s funny how it all worked out,” she says. “I grew up hanging out with my parents at the ballpark and always dreamed of being a sports reporter. I guess I found a way to stay involved.”

Liess operates her own marketing firm, and sometimes you wonder how she makes it work. For years, she represented both the Tucson Open and the Tucson Rodeo, which were held simultaneous to one another.

It’s quite a commute from Tucson National Golf Course to the Tucson Rodeo Grounds. Somehow she made it work.

“Joan works with the Conquistadores and with us, running back and forth between the two, and I’ve never seen her drop the ball,” says Williams. “Nothing falls through the cracks. She just makes it all run seamlessly.”

Maybe she learned how to juggle successfully in the 1990s while operating Joan Liess and Associates. One of her clients of the day was the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &Bailey Circus at the Tucson Convention Center.

Juggling. The circus. Get it?

That was a decade in which she represented the Colorado Rockies. It wasn’t unusual to see her talking to Rockies manager Don Baylor, arranging to have some of his ballplayers visit Tucson schools to talk with students.

These days, Liess works almost exclusively for the rodeo and for the Cologuard Classic, a PGA Champions Tour event. One requires cowboy boots and loud music, the other more a discreet decorum.

“I’ve never heard anyone say a negative word about Joan,” says Williams. “I think we all have come to appreciate how hard she works and how professional she is. I’ve known her for 36 or 37 years, and I tell her ‘Joan, you can’t retire until I do.’ I think, someday, we’ll both ride off to the sunset together.”