PARKER — The partygoers spilled out of black vans and white shuttle buses in their cowboy hats and boots, this being the kind of bash where afterward, people didn’t want to drive. It was 7 p.m. on Saturday, breezy enough that the flashier men wore velvet jackets with their jeans, though some just wore a plain old button-down. The women flaunted a similar hybrid of glamorous and down-home, as saucy leather bustiers mixed with cute floral prairie dresses, high-heel glitter boots mixed with well-worn Justins, all of them beating a path through a wide white arch that read “Cattle Baron’s Ball.”
Long a highlight of the charity-gala social calendar, the Cattle Baron’s Ball began in 1974 as a Western-themed barbecue for 500 people on Toddie Lee Wynne’s Star Brand Ranch, a cancer fundraiser organized by Wynne’s wife Jacque and her friend Patti Hunt as a boots-and-beer alternative to black-tie. Some of Dallas’ most influential names came that year — the Landrys, the Meadows, the Murchisons — and by the ‘80s, stars from the show Dallas were showing up to inject a dose of celebrity. Add headliners like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Clint Black and Loretta Lynn over the years, and Cattle Baron’s achieved legendary status.
These days, more than 3,000 people attend the annual event on the grounds of Southfork Ranch, the one-time filming locale of Dallas now used as an events space. Although some individual tickets are sold (at a mere $1,250 a pop), most attendees are guests of the many corporate underwriters who drop between $10,500 to $150,500 for tables. Some serious cash is flying around these parts, making Cattle Baron’s the largest single-night fundraiser for the American Cancer Society in the country.
I expected one hell of a party, but Cattle Baron’s was more like a festival, with the over-the-top indulgence of a cruise ship. A casino, a Ferris wheel, cocktails and beer flowing at every turn. I was overwhelmed by the sheer breadth as I wandered the maze of a large venue hall where silent auction items like purses and clothes were on display, as if a section of NorthPark Center had been air-dropped into the center of the room.
The event is usually co-chaired by two women, in this case Marjon Zabihi Henderson and Lora Farris, who work with 100 all-female volunteers, known as baronesses. That number seemed absurd when I first heard it and reasonable when I saw the scope. All evening I felt like some type-A master planner was hustling ahead of me, anticipating my needs. Forget lipstick? There’s a glam room with makeup artists to fix your pout. Need a cowboy hat? Buy one at the marketplace. Bored of all this? Flop on a couch in the sports lounge, where half a dozen men crowded around the SMU vs. Florida State game.
And then there was the food, from portable Frito pie served in the Fritos bags to sliders and fried onion rings to a buffet with smoked filet and enchiladas with butternut squash, kale and mushroom.
“There are very few fundraising events [where] you’re not seated at the table, where you can come and move around,” said Michelle Thomas, who works in philanthropy for JPMorgan Chase. “And it’s casual,” she said, her stacked bracelets from native Dallas jeweler Ashley Pittman clinking as she ate smoked sausage.
“Casual chic,” said her friend Yvette Williams, who bought her tan cowboy hat at the Dallas Farmers Market.
Dallas has actually never been much for Western wear, which makes the Cattle Baron’s Ball a bit of kitsch and cowboy dress-up. Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd was decked out in a yoked Western shirt, one of the nattier looks, though there was also plenty of come-as-you-are.
“It’s a lot easier to get me out here when I can wear blue jeans,” said Kevin Kadesky, who was there with his wife Angie.
Shortly after 8 p.m., the crowd began to gather inside for the live auction, where high rollers sat at long tables on the dance floor while hundreds of us gawked from the perimeter. Onstage, a blonde woman in a brown leather dress and a Stevie Nicks-style shawl sounded like she’d just smoked a pack of Camels unfiltered. “They call me the auction-tainer,” Letitia Frye said.
It soon became clear why Frye’s voice was so scratchy. She worked the room like a Baptist preacher, or maybe a WrestleMania announcer, slinging numbers rat-a-tat-tat and running up bids on spa packages and bucket-list excursions. “The more you yell, the more they spend!” she kept telling the onlookers, who hooted in response. Baronesses wandered the floor, ringing cowbells to build anticipation.
I’d never seen an auction become a spectator sport, and my eyes scanned a sea of cowboy hats waiting for the next person to raise their paddle. The money ramped up fast. Eight days at Canyon Ranch — sold for $17,000! A night for 25 guests at the Perot Museum — sold for $65,000! Dallas superstar chef Dean Fearing (of Fearing’s Restaurant) took the stage with five other chefs to auction a group gourmet dinner.
“The last two years, we have done two dinners each at $125,000,” he said. “And we wanna beat that this year!” Frye started working the bidders, and the cowbells were clanging, and the paddles were rising, and the tension built until: Two dinners sold for $200,000 each, and the crowd roared.
“This is crazy,” said the woman behind me.
An uneasy mix of opulence and brutal reality sits at the heart of the charity-ball experience, where partygoers must be reminded, amid the revelry, that we are here for a cause. The auction slowed down for a moment to show a video about Kace Phillips, a St. Mark’s grad and father of two who passed away earlier this year from brain cancer. His young children and wife took the stage, and when Frye opened bidding for research in his honor, hoping for donations of $100,000, a man in a brown velvet Gucci jacket and cowboy hat stood up and flashed all five fingers, meaning a bid of $500,000. The bidder turned out to be Chris Parvin, owner of White Rhino Coffee.
(Cattle Baron’s had yet to release final numbers for the amount of money raised as of press time.)
The evening’s finale came with Carrie Underwood, who took the stage at 10:30 p.m., looking like she could have stepped from the crowd with her crystal-encrusted jean cutoffs, big sparkly buckle and sequined black top with a cropped denim jacket. “We’re glad to be at this shindig,” she said. “This is a shindig, right?”
Indeed it was. The booze had loosened up the crowd, and women hopped on chairs near the back to dance to “Church Bells” and “Cowboy Casanova.” The most inspired performance of the night, though, was a cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City,” when Underwood threw her denim jacket to the ground and whipped her long blonde hair around, hitting notes Axl Rose only wishes he could touch. “Won’t you please take me home?” she caterwauled, around the time that black vans and white shuttle buses were starting to line up near the Southfork entrance to do just that.
The concert ended at midnight on the dot, and outside on the lawn, trays of breakfast tacos, plates of fried snacks and a Raising Cane’s food truck had magically appeared, the type-A master planner once more anticipating our needs. The after-party would keep going till 2 a.m., but I was headed home. These cowboy boots were giving me a blister.
