LITTLE ROCK — Cattle rancher Tommy Sharp had the physique and quiet grit of actor Clint Eastwood.
“My dad was kind of a masculine man’s man,” said his son, Todd Sharp. “All my cousins growing up jokingly referred to him as Uncle Clint. He kind of had that personality of Clint Eastwood in his old westerns. When [Dad] said something you never questioned what his point was.”
Tommy Sharp of Foreman died at the rehabilitation facility at St. Michael HealthSystem in Texarkana, Texas, from lung-cancer complications.
He was 69.
Growing up in Little River County, Tommy Sharp helped his father on the cattle ranch and competed in rodeo roping events.
“He learned how to rope working cattle. They had a lot of cattle in the Little River Bottoms,” his son said. “You moved your cattle place to place by horseback.”
He embraced his American Indian heritage as a member of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, often attending festivals and donating money.
“He went to one of the festivals every year to quietly observe, that was more his nature,” Todd Sharp said. “He was very proud of the Choctaw people.”
Until the early 2000s, Tommy Sharp worked at an ammunition plant in Hooks, Texas, but his heart was in his side job - cattle ranching in Foreman with his father.
“Dad was very meticulous and logged each cow when they gave birth and the weight of the cows when they sold them,” his son said. “It was in his blood.”
After Tommy Sharp’s father died in 1973, he took over the ranch with his son until the early 1980s.
Todd Sharp said his father had a dry, calm sense of humor that was evident once when they had to sell Ferdinand, a 2,300 pound bull they’d had for about 10 years.
The scene was comical, Sharp said. His father was using a bucket of grain to lead the bull out of the trailerand through a chute. The bull was wider than the chute, and contentedly chomped on the grain as he walked, oblivious to the sturdy chute posts he was breaking in the process.
“The bull wasn’t even aware he was walking through them,” Todd Sharp said. “Dad just stopped and said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to fix that.’”
While serving four years in the U.S. Air Force, Tommy Sharp was an expert marksman, which came in handy on hunting trips.
“This deer was running ... at least 240 yards [away],” said his friend Don Jones. “He shotthis deer right behind the shoulder offhanded with a rifle. ... I’ve never been around a guy who could shoot like that.”
In his early 1950s, Sharp was diagnosed with aspergillosis, a fungal infection in his lungs, that forced himto slow down.
“That’s when the genealogy kicked in,” his son said. “He researched everything about the family tree. ... We’ve got a sheriff who was a pretty hard-nosed cookie in the 1800s and had a pretty famous Indian fighter mentioned in two or three books.”
When he wasn’t researching, Sharp was searching for western memorabilia, proudly displaying about 100 pairs of spurs on his living room wall.
“One set he had that was really unique, they were from the 1870-1880 era,” his son said. “The rowels on the spurs were made out of Mexican silver dollars.”
Tommy Sharp was tough but could appreciate the beauty in nature, and ignored his son’s raised eyebrow when he began taking nature photos, particularly of wildflowers.
“That’s the most I’ve ever been concerned about him in my life,” his son laughed. “I said, ‘You’re going to destroy your reputation.’”
Don Jones said Tommy Sharp wasn’t one to “mince words,” so everyone knew where they stood with him.
“Tommy was a guy who liked you or didn’t like you, there wasn’t any in between,” Jones said. “He was a straighttalking, straight-forward guy. If you didn’t like what he said, it was too bad.”
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 12/06/2012