When Haley BeeBout married Brandon McHenry on Aug. 15, 2008, she wore her grandmother's wedding dress and pearls. She chose the date a year ago, because it was to be the 55th wedding anniversary of her grandparents, Ox and Sally Zellner.

But the big man with the big laugh was not at the wedding, or the party afterwards.

"We all did really well, but that laugh was just missing," said Peggy Zellner, one of Ox and Sally's three children.

Ox Zellner, who taught, coached, refereed and sold sporting goods to school-age athletes, their administrators and coaches for decades throughout Wyoming, died July 7, 2008, at Central Wyoming Hospice after battling cancer for five years. He was 78.

Peggy says the family was most worried about Sally getting through the wedding.

"You just feel like something's missing," Sally said, "but there are a lot of happy, happy memories, and he'd want me to go on with my life. That's what I wanted for him if things had been reversed."

Not only were Ox and Sally married for just shy of 55 years, they had known each other since kindergarten - "our whole lives really," Sally says - in Two Rivers, Wis., where folks take care of each other, put family first and love to fish.

Ox Zellner came to Wyoming to play football on scholarship for the University of Wyoming from 1950 to 1954.

He and Sally didn't begin their long-distance romance until his sophomore year at UW, but she'd already been to Wyoming - and she was sure she wasn't coming back.

"I had dated a boy who was working on a ranch in Jackson Hole in the summer, and I came out to visit him, and there I was, in what people think is the most beautiful part of our state, and I just couldn't imagine myself living here," she said.

They married on Aug. 15, 1953, just before Ox began his senior year at UW, where he was also in the ROTC. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and they lived for two years in Germany.

When they returned to the States, they spent Christmas in Two Rivers, where he applied for teaching jobs and she assumed they'd settle down.

"Ray Letterman, who had played with him at UW, was teaching in Greybull, and was called into the service, so there was a position open in Greybull mid-year, and they called Ox," Sally said. "So that's how we got back to Wyoming."

After time in Greybull, the family moved to Casper, where he sold outdoor advertising, worked for Bush Wells Sporting Goods and in 1974, started Ox Sporting Goods, which he ran for decades before retiring in 1993.

"He was such an outgoing man, so genuine," Peggy said. "My dad just cracked me up. He didn't have a filter, it just all came out."

When Peggy and her husband adopted a baby, Ally, from China 10 years ago, "Papa" would cart her around, asking friends and strangers alike, "Doesn't she look just like me?"

Now Ally, like everyone else in the family, sleeps literally surrounded by the work of big Ox's hands as woodworking was one of his many passions in retirement.

"She sleeps in a bed he refinished, he made her dresser," Peggy said. "He is everywhere."

Other passions included fishing with grandson, Ryan BeeBout, 16, and having coffee with a group of friends, including but not limited to Dick Sedar, Bill Hileman, Gary Schicketanz and Art Hill.

Peggy says her dad "had soft places too," and as his disease lingered, Sally said, "He could hardly handle Christmas anymore, knowing there probably wouldn't be many left."

Even so, he was never a complainer, Sally said, vowing to take one day at a time.

"Up until January, he had a really good life," Sally said.

She said there wasn't a town they'd visit where someone didn't know her husband.

"He either taught them or coached them or officiated their games or sold equipment to them," she said.

He officiated high school football for 20 years, including seven state championship games and three Shrine Bowls. He refereed basketball for 22 years, was a track official for 26 years and a baseball umpire for 10 years.

One of his students and players in Greybull was Mike Schutte, president of the Wyoming Chapter of the National Football Foundation.

"Mike just loved Ox," Sally said.

In March 2009, the foundation will present "Ox Zellner's Football Official Career Achievement Award," which will carry his name each year thereafter.

Big Ox Zellner was a man for whom life was pretty simple, daughter Peggy said.

"You make a decision, you go with it, you never look back, you deal with it, you move forward," she said.

And whether it was in the classroom, on the practice field, or selling athletic equipment to rural schools with tiny budgets and even less access to necessities, plenty of Wyoming folks through the years knew that about Ox Zellner, the big man with the big laugh.

Reach community news editor Sally Ann Shurmur at (307) 266-0520 or sallyann.shurmur@trib.com.