WHA members were well represented among the honorees for the 2005 Western Heritage Awards given by the National Cowboy Museum and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City.  The black-tie gala was held April 16 with William Devane, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Carradine among the celebrity presenters.  David Dary won his second “Wrangler” bronze statue for his book The Oregon Trail, published by Knopf, and Simon Ortiz won the “Outstanding Juvenile Book” for The Good Rainbow Road published by the University of Arizona Press.  A new award category, “Outstanding Photography Book,” went to Debra Bloomfield for Four Corners published by the University of New Mexico Press. Luther Wilson accepted for the press.  Randy Lee Eickhoff won “Outstanding Western Novel” for And Not to Yield published by Tom Doherty Associates while Don Hedgpeth won “Outstanding Art Book” for Joe Beeler: Life of a Cowboy Artist.  Paul Andrew Hutton received the award for the “Outstanding Magazine Article” for his February 2004 Wild West essay “‘It was but a Small Affair’: The Battle of the Alamo.”  Hutton has won three previous Wrangler Awards for his work in both print and in documentary filmmaking.

Photo: Western Heritage Award Literary winners Randy Lee Eickhoff, Paul Hutton, and David Dary.