Visitation is Monday evening and a Tuesday morning funeral is set in his hometown of Leesville for Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame member T. Barrett “T. Berry” Porter, Louisiana’s first professional rodeo cowboy.

Porter, 99, passed away Saturday morning. He was the first rodeo figure to enter the state sports hall, joining Peyton Manning, Les Miles, Danielle Scott and Charles Smith, among others, in the LSHOF’s Class of 2019. At the time of his induction, he was the oldest person ever enshrined, and he was the oldest surviving Hall of Famer when he died. He attended most Hall of Fame induction ceremonies since he was honored.

He was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 2015.

The funeral will be Tuesday at 11 in the East Leesville Baptist Church. Burial will follow in Pine Grove Cemetery on Porter Road under the direction of Jeane’s Funeral Service. Visitation will be held Monday evening from 5-9 at East Leesville Baptist Church.

In lieu of flowers, the family said donations may be made to the Louisiana Lions Camp, 292 L Beauford Drive, Anacoco LA 71403.

At the age of 16, Porter became a member of the first professional cowboy association in the country, the Cowboy Turtle Association, which developed into the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (he held PRCA membership card No. 325). His events were tie-down calf roping and steer wrestling.

At 22, Porter won a month-long competition at Madison Square Garden to become the 1949 World Champion Calf Roper title, presented his trophy saddle by “The Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry after becoming the first world championship “rookie” to win the title. He quickly added the calf roping title at the 1949 World Rodeo in Boston in front of 6,000.

He won numerous titles at major rodeos around North America, including the famed Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Calgary Stampede and in Fort Worth, Denver and Houston, along with Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Salinas, California.

In 1959, Porter became the first Louisiana cowboy to participate in the inaugural National Finals Rodeo. He was a member of the Wrangler Rodeo Team in the early 1950s, and his silhouette was placed on the back pocket of every pair of Wrangler jeans put on sale for years.

His career earnings were over $100,000 in 22 years.

Shreveport Journal sports editor Jimmy Bullock called him “the Pelican State’s Mr. Rodeo” and said he was “famed as one of the nation’s foremost calf ropers” in a May 1, 1963 column. In 1978, the PRCA presented him with his gold membership card and a plaque in appreciation of his promotion of the sport of rodeo at the high school, collegiate and pro levels.

As an advocate for the Louisiana high school rodeo athletes, he lobbied for funding to help them compete at the national level. He worked as a volunteer timed-event barrier judge for every high school rodeo in Louisiana from the early 1960s until 1976. During this time, he also worked as a volunteer timed-event barrier for nine National High School Rodeos —1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975. His ranch provided teaching opportunities and even temporary lodging for cowboys of all ages for decades.

A Lions Club member for over 70 years, he served on many local and state project committees and held many offices. The Lions Camp for Handicapped Children was the most dear to him. As a cattleman, he served on many committees and offices on the local, state, and national Cattleman’s Association. He has been on many Farm Bureau local and state committees. As a cattleman, he operated a 250 head cow-calf operation. He was one of the working cowboys that loaded the last load of Gray Ranch steers to leave Louisiana on railcars.

Born in Pineville March 9, 1927, Porter landed in Leesville two years later when his parents moved the family so his father could work at a Texaco gas station.

They lived in the back of the filling station. On site was a small roping pen, and it was there that T. Berry Porter would perfect his skills that would one day lead him to become a world champion.

“I don’t remember when I started roping, I just always did it,” he said in a 2019 interview with the LSWA’s Raymond Partsch III. “There are still folks at the Lion’s Club here that call me the ‘goat roper.’ ”

That’s because, at the age of three, he won the goat-roping competition at the Vernon Parish Fair —signaling the start of a career that he honed as a youngster and throughout high school.

Of his LSHOF induction as the first rodeo figure, Porter said; “It is a very humbling honor. … Not many people can be the very first anything nowadays. I always thought that somebody else was better than me or more deserving than me.”

In 1949, he claimed his sport’s highest honor: World Champion Calf Roper.

The 22-year-old rookie drove to New York City in his 1948 Pontiac, pulling his homemade horse trailer behind him for a competition that lasted nearly an entire month. Porter would take part in 42 performances in 28 days at Madison Square Garden.

“It took a lot longer in those days,” he said. “My horses stayed underneath the Garden itself and I stayed for the month at the old Capitol Hotel on Broadway across from the Garden.”

Despite getting his picture taken with a celebrity and riding his horse down Broadway to become a national figure in his sport, Porter never got away from Vernon Parish for long. In addition to working the circuit, Porter ran the family filling station, hauled garbage, drove a school bus for three decades, ran a sporting goods/western store, moved houses, and ran his own massive ranch.

Porter also made rodeo a family affair as all four of his children — daughters Judy, Cathy, Lindy, and son David — became high school and amateur rodeo champions. That was passed down to his grandchildren as well.

“I did the best I could,” Porter said. “I was just hoping that I could win. As a rodeo cowboy, you always got to feel like you are going to win.”