Rodeo Grandmas Spurred to Action by TV Ad : Sports: Quartet debuted in a bank commercial and now say they’ll be riding and roping steers to the end.

It began as a television commercial for a bank, but the Rodeo Grandmas say no one’s going to lasso them anytime soon.

The four women, ranging in age from 52 to 82, still ride and rope. They say they’ll be buckaroos until they die.

The women--Lorraine Plass, 82; Peggy Hunt, 66; Janis Anderson, 57, and Judy Golladay, 52--love the attention they’ve gotten since filming the commercial for Washington Mutual bank’s “That’s Different” ad campaign in December. The spots airing in Washington state and Oregon since the middle of January show the women doing what they do best--riding and roping steer.

Now wherever they go, people recognize them.

“When they recognize us, they just start grinning and grinning and grinning,” Golladay said. “Pretty soon they’re chuckling. They just really enjoyed watching us on that commercial.”

Golladay doesn’t just rope and ride in the rodeo ring. She rides for one of the oldest cattle ranches in the state, the Bar Balloon, and is a member of the Sage Scrappers, women who spend several weeks a year rounding up cattle in the eastern Washington mountains. Rounding up cattle isn’t a man’s job, Golladay said.

“There are places where men are stronger and you need them,” she said. “But when (ranchers) have had us, they’d rather have us do a lot of the work, whether it’s that we’re women and we’re more worried about the baby calf, more worried about the mama cow, or that we’re not out there trying to rope the heel or do the macho stuff.”

Plass, the eldest of the Rodeo Grandmas, still rides cattle each summer with her daughter and son-in-law. Although she can’t saddle her own horse anymore, there’s little else that she can’t do.

“It’s like what they say when you ride a bicycle, you never forget. Well I never could ride a bicycle, but I’ll ride any darn horse you bring up here,” she said.

But Plass misses the days when she was more active on the ranch.

“I feel kind of left out, because I’ve done all this and I’m just coasting along. Now these gals gotta do all of it, and I just sit and watch,” she said.

When the other women immediately chimed in about how valuable her experience and advice is to them, Plass got embarrassed.

“I’m going to need a new hat, my head is getting so big,” she said.

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The women got into the advertising business when Washington Mutual went looking for the next installment in a series of off-beat commercials.

“We were looking for a group activity, and somebody at the agency said ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to see some grandmothers doing something?’ I think someone had in the back in their minds that there might be those folks over at Ellensburg,” said Deanna Oppenheimer, executive vice president of corporate relations.

Ellensburg in central Washington is famous for its annual four-day rodeo over Labor Day weekend.

Golladay said a friend gave her name to the advertising agency, and about 20 women auditioned.

“They wanted us to look like grandmas,” she said. “They didn’t say they had to have gray hair, but gray hair, glasses, the typical grandma image there.”

The gray hair requirement wasn’t a problem for Golladay, who has salt-and-pepper locks, nor for Plass, whose hair is white. But Hunt and Anderson, both of whom have medium-brown gray, had to have their hair dyed gray for the commercial.

“I told them you don’t have to be gray to be a grandma, but they (the advertising people) wouldn’t listen,” Hunt said.

Both the women and the bank are pleased with the commercial’s popularity. The women have been featured on several television newscasts, and been invited to parades and events.

“We think it’s great,” Oppenheimer said. “I think it’s one of those examples of a great win-win situation. It seems like they’re having a fun time, and the concept worked for us in the commercials.”

“We’re having a ball,” Golladay said. “We’re really having a blast with this.”

The women will be special guests at the Cattlemen’s Assn. convention in Pasco next Sunday and are booked for the Coulee City Rodeo Assn. parade and rodeo on Memorial Day weekend.