ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LITTLEFIELD, TEXAS
SOURCE: ALLAN TURNER THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
SOO-EY! ... ONK-ONK-GREE-ONK! Wherever Roxanne Ward goes, she is beseeched to give her award-winning holler.
It's 5 a.m., and the rosy fingers of dawn are snug in the ebony glove of a country night. Here and there, a light glows from a farmhouse window. In the distance, an engine coughs to life.
The farm animals begin to stir, the roosters consider crowing. Then, out of the vast darkness cloaking rural Lamb County comes the nasal shriek: ``Soo-ey! Here hawg! Here hawg! Onk-onk-gree-onk!''
Roxanne Ward - the world's twice-crowned hog-calling champion - is awake and on the job.
``If the wind is not blowing, you can hear me for five miles,'' she boasted. ``If the wind is blowing, you can hear me for two miles - depending on where you are. But with a microphone, I'm totally awesome.''
Since February 1995, when she first won top honors in the Weatherford, Okla., world championship, the 40-year-old Littlefield secretary's life has been transformed. The daughter of an itinerant farm worker, Ward now rubs shoulders with the rich, famous and glamorous.
Barefoot, attired in overalls and straw hat, a red ribbon tied on her toe for good luck, she has appeared on ``Good Morning America'' and television talk shows.
She and her husband, Joe, an auto mechanic, have taken their first airplane trips. Their TV hosts have rolled out Hollywood's reddest carpet: limos, $600-a-night hotel rooms with maids who turn down your bed, hot tubs, photos with the stars.
Ward is the host of her own video, ``Learn to Call Hogs with Roxanne Ward,'' and has cut a not-yet-released record, ``The Night of the Cajun Hog Trot.''
Wherever she goes - from Littlefield's only Mexican restaurant to a jet airliner at 32,000 feet to a hospital gurney awaiting surgery - Ward is beseeched to cut loose with a gut-tingling hog call.
Such dizzying celebrity might overwhelm the less well-grounded.
But Ward, who has known her share of hardship, has remained hog humble.
Today, just as they have for 15 years, Ward and her family live in a tiny brown and white farmhouse just off FM 1075, the farm-to-market road between Anton and Littlefield.
The house is filled to bursting with pig art - photographs, ceramic figurines, drawings, knitted samplers, pig-shaped mirrors - and Ward herself is bedecked with pig jewelry. Her clothing often features pig designs.
``The only article of clothing I don't have pigs on is my bra,'' she said. ``I just haven't been able to find a pig bra yet.''
Outside, a yard full of dogs is dominated by the head hog - in fact, the only hog - in residence: Farnsworth Burgess Ward, a 41/2-year-old, Oreo-eating, pot-bellied pig.
Ward estimates she won 25 lesser hog-calling championships before working up the nerve to enter the big Oklahoma contest in 1995 and again in February. ``The first time, about 16 years ago, it was a little county contest. I thought, `I can do that. I can't win a beauty contest, but I can do that.' I won first place. There was so much clapping, I just loved it.''
Ward credited her world championship wins, in part, to the seriousness she brought to the art of hog calling.
``They had entries from all over, but a lot just weren't serious,'' she said. ``An entrant from New York just came on and said, `Yo, pig!' Another woman pulled a butcher knife and started calling, real sinister-like, `Here piggy! Here piggy!' I think the judges appreciated that I was a serious candidate.''
Ward has a country woman's intuitive understanding of animals.
``They are very smart and intelligent animals,'' she said of hogs. ``You can almost understand what they're thinking. They smile. You can tell when they're mad, tell when they're hungry.
``They make different sounds - they grunt, oink, snort. When they run and jump and make a certain snort sound, they're happy. When they're sad, they make a deep grunt.
``I do eat pork. But not if I know the hog.''
A Nebraska native, Ward said she first sought the company of hogs to escape her three younger sisters.
``They were afraid of hogs,'' she said. ``My parents never had to worry about where I was - they knew I was down in the hog pens. I related to the hogs very well.''
Fifteen years ago, she married Joe, her second husband, a man she calls ``the love of my life.''
But trouble followed.
On a honeymoon trip to Ruidoso, N.M., Ward lost control of her pickup, which overturned five times. ``It rolled over on me, breaking both legs and crushing my pelvis.''
Ward twice has been fitted with an artificial hip as a result of her injuries. It was while awaiting the second hip replacement that Ward began to appreciate the fame her national championship has brought her.
``I was lying there waiting for the operation to begin,'' she said, ``when the anesthesiologist insisted that I cut loose with a hog call, right there in the operating room.
``I did, and the first thing you know, nurses and doctors were running in there from all over the hospital.''
Here Ward interrupted her tale with knee-slapping, rollicking laughter.
``They must've thought,'' she sputtered, ``they must've thought they'd begun the operation without first knocking me out!''
LENGTH: Long : 101 linesby CNB