Rodeo Performer. He was an award-winning rodeo performer of the first half of the 20th century. He was the fifth of Essie Burden and William Truran's eleven children. He was born in Seeley, California, and as a teenager, his family moved to Los Angeles. Despite not being a rancher's child by birth, he found work breaking and training horses all around southern California. Early in the 1930s, he began his rodeo career as a source of income to help support his mother. He began competing in local rodeos as a bulldogger and saddle bronc rider, and by 1934, he was on the western rodeo circuit in states like California, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. By 1935, he was competing in Indiana, Texas, and Okahoma, and won his first Madison Square Garden rodeo for bronc riding. When the "Cowboy Turtles Association" was established in 1936, he joined. He was given the turtle pin as the 49th member. The goal of the group was to protect rodeo cowboys' rights and stop rodeo organizers from enforcing their own rules. They demanded that the cowboy prize money be increased, that all entry fees be included in the prizes, that information be disclosed in advance, and that only CTA members and regional competitors be allowed to compete in a rodeo event. He started winning more rodeos once the new rules went into effect, and by 1939, he was making an average of $400 per week (equivalent to around $8,100 today). He won the all-around "Bronc Riding Championship" at Madison Square Garden in both 1939 and 1940. In 1941, at the Ellensburg Rodeo in Washington, he won both the "Saddle Bronc Championship" and the "All-Around Championship" and went on to win the coveted "Sam Jackson Trophy" and $5,000 at the 1941 Pendleton, Oregon Round-up. Throughout his career, he appeared in a number of Gene Autry, Charles Starret, and Dick Foran's films as their doubles. He was also the double for Bing Crosby in "Rhythm on the Range." On December 7, 1942, only a week after marrying rodeo cowgirl Norma Holmes, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. After basic training, he was shipped out to the islands in the South Pacific and, in 1943, was wounded on the Tarawa Atoll. He was on a month's leave in Hawaii, where he met a lot of Hawaiian cowboys and organized an all-service rodeo to benefit wounded soldiers. He won the 1944 "Bronc Riding Championship" and went on to rodeos with his wife in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Boulder, Colorado. On February 28, 1945, he died in the battle of Iwo Jima, Japan. That battle started on February 19 and ran through March 26, 1945. The Marine Corps awarded him the "Victory Medal" and the "Purple Heart." After his death in February, the Marine cowboys on July 7, 1945, at the opening of the Hawaiian Rodeo, honored him with a silent tribute. The stallion, which he rode when he won the championship, stood with an empty saddle spotlighted in the dark stadium while a marine played taps. That same day, the Hawaiian Rodeo and the Honolulu Junior Chamber of Commerce announced the creation of the "Fritz Truran" memorial trophy, to be awarded each year to the winner of the saddle bronc riding contest. In 1956, the Kaneohe Marine Corps base built a new rodeo arena and named it in his honor. During his rodeo career, he was friends with actors John Wayne, Harry Carrey Jr., Ben Johnson, and Yakima Canutt, according to Gene Pruett, a rodeo cowboy, in a letter to Joe Koller of the Golden West Magazine on February 16, 1965. He noted that John Wayne's film, "The Sands of Iwo Jima" (1950), was based on Truan's final years. In 1961, he was inducted into the "Rodeo Hall of Fame," "The Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame" (1995), and the "Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame" (2021).