Dru Myron Roberts was born in Jackson Hole, WY on June 15, 1949, to Dick and Leona Roberts. He was the oldest of six children, Dianne, Louis, Jenny, Zac, and Lisa. Tawny Jo was born on November 5, 1951, in Shelley, ID to Merlin Fransden and Mary Jean Issacs. She was the youngest of three children, Lola and Dennis. She was raised on the banks of Rawlins Creek in the Blackfoot River Mountains of Idaho. Even sick with asthma as a child, she still went with her family to work cows, fence or gather wood, any chore required on the ranch. Tawny always loved the ranch lifestyle and since a young age knew she wanted to marry a rancher and raise children doing what she loved to do.
Dru and Tawny had three children: Tracy, Justin and Deena. They have eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
Dru as a young boy was often held out of school by his dad to help doctor big-bagged cows, because he was the only one that could rope good enough to rope the head of the running cows. As a young boy he was requested to move cattle twice a year for Don Jewett and Corky Lozier for their moves over beaver hill to their summer pastures. Dru always had a rope in his hands, his dad would tell him to put the rope down and get his chores done!
Every year Dru and his siblings were contracted by Bob Miller to break four colts. At 14 he trained a favorite horse named Reb. Dru trained Reb to bulldog, calf rope, and team rope. As a three-year-old colt, they placed in the junior rodeo. Dru’s dad worked out a trade with Millers and Dru got Reb. Reb and Dru were good enough rodeo hands to attend Ricks College on a rodeo scholarship.
Tawny was raised on a ranch in Eastern Idaho and learned to ride horses and appreciate ranch life at a young age. Her family would move to the hills to the ranch every summer, then to town in the winter months. While attending college at Rick’s College in Rexburg, ID, Dru was asked to come preg test his roommate’s dad’s cattle. Dru’s roommate was Tawny’s older brother, Dennis. That was when the couple met.
She and Dru were married in 1971 and moved to the Roberts family ranch at Merna. The year they were married Dru’s dad passed away. Dru and Tawny then took over the cattle ranch with Dru’s brother Louis. The ranch was small, so they had to work for other ranchers taking care of their cattle as well as running a hunting outfitting business. Tawny and Dru trained horses together, their training ability compliments each other. Tawny was more patient with things like side passing, and Dru got them to do things faster. There was rarely a day in the spring through fall that they were not on horseback, often working on winter days as well.
Dru started roping at brandings as a young boy, he roped for Ed Todd’s branding first and was the only roper, he was about eight years old. Dru’s skill with the hoolihan is very impressive. He could catch calves over fences and on the run. Tawny has done all jobs at brandings starting as a wrestler when they were first married, then she was usually branding, but at several brandings as an older woman she has been one of the ropers. She is usually one of the top ropers at the brandings now.
Dru was a rodeo cowboy for years competing in local rodeos. After competing in bulldogging and calf roping for years, later he focused on team roping, he was successful enough to go to the USTRC finals in Oklahoma City. Tawny was a secretary for many team ropings and in her 50s decided to take up heeling, tied on hard and fast. Dru and Justin were Tawny’s coaches and the three of them traveled together using each other’s horses.
Dru and Tawny sold their cows in 1998 and went to strictly cowboying ever since then. They primarily have worked for Bill and Colin Barney, but day rode for other ranchers throughout Sublette County. They have moved cattle from south of Big Piney to north of the Hoback Rim. They pastured cattle in the summers on their own place and took care of them. Due to Tawny’s integrity and mannerism with livestock and people made her a popular choice to become a Wyoming Brand Inspector. In 2008, when a position became available Tawny became a brand inspector for Wyoming mainly serving Sublette County, a position she continues to hold to this day. As a brand inspector, she is great around the cattle and in high demand. She can get them stringing by her in a corral and checking every brand. The cattle have to be strung by so the sun is in the correct position to read the brand quickly.
The outfitting business was all done with mules and horses, they ran the outfit business to supplement the ranch for 44 years. They packed out all big game, together or with Louis and Leisa. They had strings of mules that were riding and packing mules both. They were in a hunting camp from September to November. The mules also worked in the winter to feed their cattle. They switched to using work horses to feed the cattle in 1990. When they were working mules, they drove between four and eight mules to feed their cattle, but when using the big work horses, they used between two and four horses. They both harnessed and hitched the horses but Dru usually drove the team, although Tawny would when Dru was gone. When they were in the packing competitions, Tawny would win the women’s mule packing contests, and Dru would win the team pulling contests with his feed teams.
When Dru went to hunting camp in the fall, Tawny did all the cowboying for about 25 years. She was the Roberts’ cowboy to gather all the cows off the forest with her dog, Hank. When they leased the Ed Todd place, Tawny also did all of the gathering the place with the kids while Dru was guiding hunters.
Deena and Tawny were riding for Barneys’ and Colin decided they would gather all the run back calves over the next few days, so Tawny and her youngest daughter gathered the calves by Tawny roping them and Deena dragging them in the trailer since she was riding her dad’s rope horse. When they were riding for Gildea’s, Tawny and the kids did most of the riding when moving the cows to different pastures. When they had to doctor the cattle, Dru, Tawny, Louie and Justin did the roping. Now, Tawny does all the pasture riding and day riding for other people mainly Barney Ranches with kids and grandkids helping at times. Tawny is very quiet around the cattle and horses, and she prefers to ride in the drag because she can see when there is a wreck going to happen before it happens and gets it stopped. She pays attention to the cattle at all times along with having a good cow dog along to help her. Tawny always has a quiet, calm horse that she and Dru trained from colts.
These are memories from Tawny and Dru’s granddaughter, Lainy Pape Williams: “From about the time, he was out of diapers; he began tagging along with his dad, traveling to neighbor’s ranches. He remembers traveling to a neighbor’s house for a branding, My first real memories started when I was about four, I remember Dad and I riding to help Don Jewett brand. They branded calves in the morning, ate dinner, which I am sure was pretty good as most branding dinners were. After dinner, they headed and heeled some of the cows and trimmed their feet. I had climbed to the top rail of the corral fence and was watching. Ethel Jewett and a friend came to watch, too. I persuaded my horse to come alongside the fence I jumped on and rode him around there. Ethel thought I was pretty cute, she asked me how long I had been riding horses and I answered, ‘Since I was two,’ which I assume was pretty close.”
Before Dru could remember, they had a milk cow on the ranch that he and his younger sister, Dianne and younger brother Louis, would throw a saddle on and ride her to gather the other milk cows so they didn’t have to walk. He told me, he hadn’t remembered Magpie the milk cow exactly, but remembered stories told to him about her.
Dru spent a lot of time at Albert Miller’s because his dad and Albert were outfitting partners.
“One year, Dad bought two Welsh ponies he kept out at Albert’s, Milkshake and Smokey. When I went over there, I started riding them. When Dad would go to town without us kids, we would team rope the milk cow calves. Dad always let us practice roping the calves but only after chores were done. We never told him about the times when he was gone. I would head them as Smokey was fast enough to catch them; Milkshake was only fast enough when they were already headed.”
Dru was asked to help neighbors move their cows starting at a young age, some of the neighbors being Corky Lozier, Don Jewett, Donnie Noble, Harold Thompson, Butch Bain, and Lawrence Shaul. Once when he was a freshman in high school, Lawrence Shaul came to his house in the evening and his dad told him, Dianne, Louis, and Zac to grab their saddles and go with Lawrence. Up at two in the morning to start moving cows was not something new to him or his siblings.
“We gathered a pretty big BLM allotment, pushing the cows up a steep hill, the cows would get to the top and realize that their calves weren’t with them and start to come running back down the hill. We couldn’t stop them until they got to the bottom; it took two or three tries to get all of them to the top. We went along Miller’s school section, a calf crawled through the fence and as luck would have no gates were close. Lawrence and I grabbed our ropes, got off and crawled through the fence. We got around the calf, but he broke back between us, we both threw our ropes, I missed his head but managed to snag a hind leg, we pushed him back through the fence and he went on with the cows. Lawrence turned to me and said, ‘Boy am I a glad you didn’t miss,’ I thought to myself, ‘when you throw at the head and catch by the hind foot, I would call that a miss,’ but I didn’t say anything.”
Dru could not recall a time he didn’t have a rope in his hand. When he first started roping, he would use old ropes of his dads. One day his dad brought two brand new ropes home from town, he told Dru he could have one if he promised to throw fifty loops a day. “Dad set up a block of wood next to the window by his easy chair for me to practice. I would throw fifty loops and then try different ways of throwing. I was scared that I might throw only forty-nine and he would catch me. Looking back now, I’m sure he never counting any of them.”
In the late fifties, Dru started breaking colts for Bob and Mildred Miller. “We would pick out the colts that each wanted to ride and start with theirs first. I would ride them for the first few times and then turn them over to whoever was to ride that one.”
More recently, Dru has lost fingers and toes, broken ribs, a foot, a leg and even his neck but continued to ride alongside his wife, Tawny until his death in April 2022. He spent nearly a lifetime in the saddle. He raised his children, with Tawny, in the saddle and even his grandchildren and great grandchildren, spreading the knowledge and love for the cowboy way of life as far as he could. The burn of a rope or hide of a cow are more familiar to Dru’s hands than most other things. He can be quoted, on more than one occasion saying, “the life of a cowboy isn’t a 9-5, more often it’s a 5-9 but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
When she was a young teenager, she started actively cowboying with her father and brother. Tawny went to the hills, to the ranch with her dad and brother Dennis, to work cows. She also started going to the brandings and wrestling calves, something she still has not stopped doing even in her sixties. She has often been offered other jobs at a branding but will turn them down to wrestle with one of her grandchildren.
Through her brother, Dennis, she met Dru Roberts, they worked cows together on her family ranch and then later went dancing together, he would make a good match. They were married in July of 1971 in Bondurant and from then on, made a formidable team, working side by side for more than fifty years. Tawny always put herself up there with the men, she wouldn’t be bossed, and she would make her opinions known, she was determined; all qualities needed on a ranch. Eventually, they sold their cows and started working for Barneys Cattle Company a few months later, where she still works to this day.
When their kids came alone their education began. Tawny brought all her children along with her, whatever it was she was doing which was almost always outside and in the saddle. Later, she took her grandchildren, too. I am her eldest granddaughter, and I got to go with her and Grandad nearly all summers long as a kid. My grandma has the kind of cowboy resilience, you just don’t find anymore, she has the “get it done” attitude and we always got it done, whether we had a group of cowboys or just the three of us. My grandma didn’t mind being in the lead of a herd or in the drag covered in dust. She never let age dictate her job either; I have wrestled calves in a branding corral with her when she was well into her fifties, and she ropes or brands if asked. The pair also pasture cattle on their acreage, this has always been a family affair, my grandma would call on everyone on shipping day to come help or in the spring to fix fences, and of course in the summer to sort the mixed yearlings or change pastures.
After she turned 50, Dru got a call asking if he would be interested in being a brand inspector, he respectively declined but said Tawny would be a good fit as she knew all the brands he knew and had better eyesight and patience for technology. She is still a brand inspector in Sublette County and enjoys days she can bring a horse with her best. Fall days are spent brand inspecting all around the county and most of the days throughout the year; it is not uncommon for her to do a brand inspection on the way to day ride or on the way home from day riding.
Now that Dru has passed on, Tawny continues to do what they have always done. She gets up early and saddles a horse to day ride for Barney’s, brand inspect or manage the pasture cattle. Tawny could not imagine spending her days any different.”