Walter A. Slater
Year Inducted: 2002
Parker Ranch | Hawai'i
SC Ranch | Hawai'i
A rancher’s son, Walter Slater started his career as a cowboy while he was still a teenager in New Mexico. World War II was on, and like every other town in the southwest all the cowboys had gone overseas to fight, leaving the young boys to work the cattle and keep the ranches in business.
Walter spent the first part of his career managing ranches in Arizona and California. He came to Parker Ranch in 1971, when the ranch changed management. Moving to Hawaii, where cowboys are Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, Caucasian or all of the above, was a culture shock for the southwest native. The paniolo dressed, joked, and worked cattle differently from the cowboys he knew back home, and of course they talked differently too.
Once an old-timer called Walter’s house and left the urgent message with his wife, Barbara, that “There are ‘pipis’ in the shopping center!” Of course, he meant pipi, or cattle, had broken loose and were wandering around town, but Barbara wasn’t familiar with the Hawaiian word. She thought he was talking about something quite different. “It kind of shocked my wife,” Walter recalls, with a knowing smile.