Six-year-old Reese Lory found his hero during Sunday's worship service at the National Western Stock Show.

A few days before, Reese was just another kid eating with his family in a Country Buffet. Then he looked up and saw Grant Adkisson, big, broad-shouldered, wearing his cowboy hat. Hailing from more than a century of Colorado ranchers, Adkisson had that long, steady look that seems to be burned into a cowboy's DNA.

Reese, a city kid from Aurora, had never seen anything like it.

"Mom," he asked, "Can I go up and talk to him?"

Maria Lory, who is divorced and glad when her boy can meet honorable men as mentors, said yes. Shyly, Reese walked up and said hello. Immediately, Maria Lory marveled, the cowboy-stranger crouched down to Reese's level and started to chat.

And that's how, on Sunday, Reese Lory and his family ended up in the last place they ever expected — in a crowd of several hundred worshipers led by Adkisson, who is director of of the national Fellowship of Christian Cowboys. The fellowship was conducting the Founders' Memorial Service, which honors stock show legends, like businessman Nick Petry, who died in 1999.

In the dusty arena a few feet beyond the worshipers, cowboys loped by on horses, cattle roamed, and Adkisson said, "I'd rather preach with horses running behind me than any other way."

Reese heard Adkisson tell the crowd how he, Reese, came to be at his first stock show. Adkisson said that even self-sufficient cowboys aren't too proud to put God in their lives: "All I've ever done," Adkisson said, "is brag on Jesus."

The little boy heard Clair Orr, holder of another legendary Colorado ranching name, tell a funny story about a once-famous stock show scandal, when a steer was dunked in printer's ink to try to nab a ribbon as a black Angus. Orr also praised those who practice the cowboy ethics of actions, not words: "Men and women with backbone to do what is right."

Speaking of backbone: High in the stands sat the fellowship's co-founder, Mark Schricker and his wife Lynne. In the '60s, he was a struttin' rodeo rider and religion scoffer. Then he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Friends prayed. Schricker, against the odds, was cured.

"I'm a real quiet, bashful guy," Schricker said Sunday, "but after that, I couldn't shut up about the Lord with nobody."

Today, the national fellowship Schricker co-founded has about 2,000 families. Or make that 2001. As Adkisson finished his sermon, Reese whispered to his mother, "Can I go sit with him?"

Seconds later, Reese bounded into Adkisson's lap. In his immediate future — his first-ever cowboy hat.

"I want to be a cowboy!" he crowed.

torkelsonj@rockymountainnews.com or 303-954-5055