By KRISTI MAYFIELD
kmayfield@oakdaleleader.com
On a breezy spring afternoon, Rodeo Royalty was present to celebrate their heritage and future as the 2024 Oakdale Rodeo Queen Lillian Crummey crowned her successor, Gigi Forgnone, as Miss Rodeo Oakdale 2025.
Among the crowd of fellow citizens and rodeo lovers, there was a group of former rodeo queens that came out to the Oakdale Cowboy Museum on Thursday, April 10 to show their support for the new queen while also sharing pieces of their personal history including their artistically adorned chaps with the crowd.
Crummey, through tears and smiles, shared how grateful she was to have held this honor for the past year.
“Oakdale has treated me just like I was born here, they’ve been so kind to me and to serve as the Rodeo Queen has been the honor of a lifetime,” said Crummey while addressing the crowd. Though her time as Oakdale’s Rodeo Queen has come to an end, Crummey has her eyes on the prize and is looking at possibly pursuing national titles in the near future.
On hand to thank Crummey for her service and her dedication and to welcome the new Queen, Forgnone, were Joseph and Suzanne Butler, whose daughter Lilly Butler, a former Amador County Rodeo Queen, died tragically in a car accident in 2023. The Butlers have continued to honor their daughter Lilly by presenting scholarships to those students that exemplify many of the things that Lilly herself stood for: community service, scholastic excellence and a love of the cowboy way of life.
As Forgnone received her accolades and her crown and sash, she shared that she asked John Gentry of Gentry’s Cowboy Shop to customize her chaps to honor Lilly Butler because she wanted her chaps to tell an amazing story. An emotional Forgnone went on to tell the crowd how this was a particularly special moment for her as she did not know if she would ever be able to ride horses again after sustaining a traumatic brain injury. The incident, just a couple of years ago, resulted in the injury after her horse kicked her in the head and she hit a metal pipe while attending the Oakdale Rodeo. Throughout her recovery process, Forgnone fought hard to learn how to ride horses again and kept her focus on building her strength while her resolve to become Rodeo Queen grew stronger every day.
“I feel so grateful to everyone. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get here after my traumatic brain injury,” admitted Forgnone, who lives in Stevinson and works in home health care. She added that she is looking forward to spending the next year representing the community as Miss Rodeo Oakdale.
Also on hand to receive awards and accolades on Thursday at the Cowboy Museum event was the 2025 Rodeo Poster Design contest winner Khristina Garcia Santana, an Oakdale High School student with a talent for design and color. As Santana greeted the crowd, she said, “I am thrilled to be here to receive this award and I want to send a special thank you to Mr. Whittier at OHS for teaching us how to design things on the computer.”
The festivities also included a chance for tours of the museum and networking, along with a chance for attendees to greet the 2025 Oakdale Rodeo Grand Marshal, Lt. Col. Rett Burroughs, an OHS alum.
