Stephenville Cattle Company readies for another Round-Up

Annual auction raises funds for West Texas Rehabilitation Center

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By AMANDA KIMBLE
TheFlashToday.com

STEPHENVILLE (September 28, 2016) — Cheryl and Troy Moore have made supporting West Texas Rehabilitation Center a long-time tradition. For almost four decades, the Moore family has hosted Round-Up for Rehab at Stephenville Cattle Company.

This year is no different, with the annual event set for early October, featuring an array of auction items, an appearance by Round-Up Chairman Red Steagall and beans and cornbread from the Rehab Chuckwagon.

While the Abilene-based rehabilitation center may seem like a far-off place, Cheryl Moore shared stories of local lives the organization has touched over the years, including one-time Stephenville Cattle Company employee Logan Walker, the late Lindsey Lozano and others.

She recalled a long-time Round-Up donor who baked an orange cake every year. Then the woman lost part of her foot and tried to get help from the best doctors she could find in Dallas/Fort Worth area.

“She called me one day and said she just couldn’t do anything anymore, she was in so much pain,” Cheryl recalled. “I asked her why she hadn’t gone West Texas Rehab. She had donated to the rehab auction for years.”

On Cheryl’s advice, the woman went to Abilene, where she was outfitted with a prosthesis that gave her a new lease on life. She was pain free and the prostheses (unlike the others) was a perfect fit.

“They help a lot of people,” Cheryl said, adding patients’ inability to pay for rehabilitation services doesn’t prevent them from receiving treatment and care.


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When asked how they got involved with fundraising for the rehab, Cheryl said she agreed to help a friend whose life had been touched by the center. 

“Do you know Lee Roy Parnell?” Cheryl asked, referring to the country/blues singer-songwriter who was born in Abilene and raised in Stephenville. “His little brother was treated at the rehab center. His mother, Anabelle, helped with the Round-Up. One day Anabelle and Gene Stone were feeding baby calves, getting them ready to send to Abilene and we were helping. She told us all about the center.”

Annabelle told Cheryl just like in previous years, half of the calves wouldn’t survive the trip to the Round-Up auction.

“She asked why didn’t I just sell them here and send the money to West Texas Rehab,” Cheryl recalled. “That’s when we got started. It was in the fall of 1979.”

Since then, everything from livestock and feed to art work and antiques have been put on the auction block for the annual event.

A series of Round-Up events across the region started 57 years ago as the Cattlemen’s Round-Up for Crippled Children. Cheryl said auctions were started in the Abilene area when Conda and Edna Wiley, short on money, donated cattle to sell to benefit the rehab facility and physical therapist Shelley Smith.

And so the tradition continues.

Stephenville Round-Up for Rehab will be held at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 5. Breakfast burritos will be served at 6:45 a.m. and the Rehab Chuckwagon will serve up a lunch beginning at 10:45 a.m., featuring beans, cornbread and cobbler. Steagall is expected to make his appearance around noon.

As for auction items, Cheryl said several have been collected, including an autographed guitar donated by Dublin singer-songwriter Luke Wade, a personalized guitar from Steagall and a Wrangler shirt and program from Trevor Brazile’s induction into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and two (2) four-person dove hunts.

There is also still time to donate to the Round-Up, and Cheryl welcomes all donations and encourages farmers and ranchers with calves or cattle to participate.

“That’s how it all got started,” she said.

To contribute, stop by Stephenville Cattle Company, located at 3581 North U.S. Highway 281 in Stephenville, or call the auction barn at 254-968-4844.

For more information on West Texas Rehabilitation Center, visit https://westtexasrehab.org/.


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