Mule Jump is Saturday

The 27th annual Pea Ridge Mule Jump is Saturday.

The event will be at a new location this year -- on the fields on the west side of Weston Street immediately south of the school west of McCulloch Street, north of Hazelton Road.

"This may be the best location yet," Nathan See, Street Department superintendent, said. Street Department employees worked all week preparing the area for parking as well as space for the arena and vendors.

Last year's event was canceled due to heavy rain and flooding. It was the first time in the history of the event it had been canceled.

The diminutive form and familiar face of Joyce Mader will not be there this year. For the past five years, Joyce Kelly Mader has judged the mule conformation during the halter classes. Mader died this past March after a three-year battle with breast cancer.

The barrel races will be held in her memory, See said.

Mader, born July 23, 1953, in Oakland, Calif., was an avid horsewoman. Her father, Jack Kelly (former Pea Ridge City Council member), taught her at a very young age to ride horses. When she was 7, she placed in a working cow horse event at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

Joyce showed horses all over the state of California, her father said, until the family moved back to Arkansas in 1968. There, she graduated from Rogers High School in 1970.

In 1970, she won the title of Rodeo of the Ozarks queen. This year, a $500 scholarship was given to the new queen in Mader's memory.

As Queen of the Rodeo of the Ozarks, Joyce Kelly represented Arkansas in Columbus, Ohio, at the Quarter Horse Congress where she and her horse Times Awast'n (aka Bimbo) placed.

"Joyce looked forward to the Pea Ridge Mule Jump every year," Kelly said. "She loved to help in any way she could, whether it was judging the halter classes, trying to locate judges or just being there to fill in wherever she was needed.

"To her, there was nothing better than spending her days with horses or mules," Kelly said.