Benson lost its cowboy hero this month. Willis McLamb, a rodeo owner and co-founder of Mule Days, died at 90 on June 10. For generations of Benson folk, he was a legend or a friend, and often both.

“He was a rodeo man,” said Don Stroud, owner of Double Deuce Arena in Seven Springs. “If you ever met him, you never forgot him.”

McLamb had a stubborn fighting spirit; he said what he thought and grabbed the bull by its horns, his family said.

“Up until he got age on him, he was always the pick-up man on the rodeo,” said his nephew, John Michael Lee.

“He would run in the bulls, pen the bulls.”

But rough-and-tumble gruffness was rarely an impression that he left for long. He was a cowboy in a white hat, adored by children and respected mostly everywhere.

“Every boy was Uncle Willis’s old buddy, and every girl was his honey,” Lee said.

And if they wanted to be just like him, he even gave them the opportunity. McLamb gave young Benson boys the chance to be a cowboy, Lee said.

“He taught me to ride on his horse, Old Bunk, before I could barely walk,” said Lee. “He would always say ‘Sit up, son,’ or ‘Get back up there,’ when I fell off, and if Uncle Willis said it, that’s the way it was.”

For years, Lee traveled with his uncle up and down the East Coast with McLamb Rodeo Co. When Stroud, 65, met McLamb they were a child and a man, but they grew to be great friends; eventually, McLamb helped Stroud start his own rodeo.

“Everybody that knew Mr. Willis wanted to be a cowboy,” Stroud said. “He was a cowboy from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.”

McLamb had more in life than his wide-brim hats, though.

“People always think about Daddy with rodeos and Mule Days, and that was the biggest part of his life, but he was also really proud of his military service,” said Teresa Blackmon, one of his two daughters.

McLamb was stationed in the Philippines during World War II; his personal hero was Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

“He pumped gas for him one time,” Blackmon said. “He talked about General MacArthur like he had known him.”

When McLamb returned to Benson from the war, he became a farmer and took up some livestock.

Sometimes, he and Nowell Smith would head to Tennessee and judge mules at shows. In Columbia, Tenn., they were introduced to the town’s Mule Day celebration.

In 1949, they brought the idea back to Benson’s chamber of commerce.

There was a parade, mule pullings and the makings of a rodeo. Daughter Teresa’s birthday now falls during the festival, though the dates were different when she was born.

Over the decades, Mule Days became ingrained in Benson. Now, the festival on the fourth weekend of September brings more than 60,000 people to Benson, a town of about 3,500.

“Uncle Willis always to me was the legend of the Mule Days, the legend of the cowboy,” said Lee.

After his wife, Ruth, died in 2000, McLamb could be seen cruising Benson in his golf cart with MacArthur, a boxer bulldog he took on after her death.

McLamb passed away quickly and peacefully, his daughter said. He fell ill on May 1 and spent a month at a nursing home. The family brought him home on June 10 at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Stroud rushed to the side of his old friend and mentor that afternoon.

“I went up there and set down side of his bed Wednesday afternoon,” said Stroud, who also ran a weekly mule show for McLamb for 12 years. “We left 10 minutes after 8; he died before I got home.”

That Friday, Stroud pulled McLamb’s casket in a white carriage, just as the older man had insisted earlier in the week.

“I hauled him in a great big white carriage,” Stroud said. “I’ve got a beautiful pair of horses, hooked them up.”

Blackmon said her father’s life wasn’t perfect, but it was as good as he could have asked. “He had no plans to die until the last three or four days of his life,” she said. “There are gonna be a lot of sad faces come this Mule Days.”