Early day cutting horse show official Burleson Arch “B.A.” Hopkins, 89, passed away peacefully on April 13, 2012.

Born in Richland Springs, Texas, Hopkins served in the U.S. Navy during WWII. He attended SMU and lacked only six class hours for graduation when he went to work for B.F. Phillips, Jr. in 1948 at the Phillips Ranch in Frisco, Texas. B.A. worked for the Phillips Ranch until 2002 as an accountant and later a personal business manager.

Phillips was an NCHA Non-Pro World Champion, as well as a cornerstone of the Quarter Horse racing industry. Hopkins once said he was with Phillips when he bought his first horse, a Royal King gelding named Cadillac Dave for $1,000, and he was still with Phillips Ranch when the last horses were dispersed in a sale more than 40 years later.

Hopkins was elected secretary of the North Texas Cutting Horse Association at their organizational meeting the day after the Texas State Fair in 1953. He served in that capacity for the next quarter century, missing only one show in that time. In its early days, the North Texas Cutting Horse Association had a larger membership than the National Cutting Horse Association.

“The only thing we had was a portable PA system, a stop watch and a whistle,” Hopkins once said. “And the judge was many times selected from one of the contestants. If anyone complained too much, they’d have to judge the next class.”
In those days, Hopkins took entries, announced the show and blew the whistle.

“Sometimes you’d get distracted and forget to blow the whistle,” he recalled. “One time a visitor came by the announcer’s stand and the stop watch ran about five minutes and the contestant worked ten calves before I remembered to blow the whistle.”

Hopkins was a 60-year Mason, a 50-year member of the Scottish Rite and a 50-year Shriner, as well as a member of the Royal Order of Jesters. He was also a member of the Racing Horse Association, an announcer for the Texas State Fair for over thirty years and in the Black Horse Patrol.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Betty June (Vance) Hopkins, his parents and six brothers and sisters. Survived by his son, Lawrence Hopkins, daughter-in-law, Sheri, grandchildren, Zach, Lindley and Mary Kate, his brother, Davis and wife, Mary Lou, and his special friend, Zella Nixon.