Roger Dale Brakefield Sept. 18, 1948 – Dec. 11,2019
Roger Dale Brakefield, aka Dallas McCord, died Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. He was born in St. Louis, MO to Delores (Doris) LaVern & Jesse Lawrence Brakefield on Sept. 18, 1948.
He is survived by his two sons and a daughter, one brother (of five) and three sisters; nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
He sang The National Anthem for many high school games and twice for the Eugene Ems.
In the ’70s he became Dallas McCord as a member of the Emerald City Outlaws in skits and ”shootouts” for businesses and The Applegate Trail Days.
While in boot camp in San Diego, he sang with The Blue Jackets Choir. He trained as a radioman in New London, Conn., and spent the next five years on the submarine SSBN Sam Houston out of Pearl Harbor and Guam. He organized the boat’s football team. He later worked as an inventory technician for LTD, retiring after 26 years.
A lover of sports, he officiated high school footbal for 30 years, which occasionally gave this Duck fan the honor of running chains for home Duck games. He also umpired softball games for company teams.
In the mid ’90s, he became Dallas McCord and loved to entertain folks in The Saragossa Gunslingers and Stage Co. He won a years supply of PB&J sandwiches with his ”Ode to Peanut Butter” in a radio contest, which led him to cowboy poetry.
He spent the rest of his life singing, telling stories, and poems all over the western states, including three summers at Yellowstone National Park. He performed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, and in Canada.
He produced four albums of music and poetry. For four years, he was MC at his own stage for the Annual Western Music Festival at Gene Autry’s Ranch in Santa Clarita, CA. He entertained and MC’d at the Emerald Valley Opry, hosted a Sunday radio show on KKND called ”Cowboy Culture Corner” which won him the award of Disc Jockey of the Year in 2007.
He loved history and wrote a post-civil War book, ”The Heist”. Dotted through the years, he often played Santa, started in 1990 at Valley River Center then off and on again until two years ago in the Creswell Christmas Parade.
He loved Disneyland and visited many times, taking as many people with him as he could.
A Celebration of Life will be held on March 21, 2020, at 11 a.m. at Garden Way Church, 231 S. Garden Way in Eugene, Ore.
