Alumna Discovers Passion for Horses By Darren White
T
o get to Paradise, head west until the roads drop down from six lanes to four, to two, until finally, if two sizeable trucks approach from each direction, one must wait for the other to pass before moving along the road. Sadie Warren Garrett ’50 has lived in Paradise — halfway between Bridgeport and Highway 51 — for four decades. The nearly 40 acres that unfold behind her house are dry and brown, like a lot of the state in the summer of 2011, but not even the drought can stifle their grandness. Garrett, 81, knows the land well. She does not sit inside much, except for summer days when the heat is unbearable. Much of the time she is outside working with her horses. She rides them to prepare for the timed events she competes in regularly, and she helps friends who would like to ride. “If anybody would have told me 40 years ago,” Garrett said, “that I would be riding a horse now, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind.’” Garrett participates actively in two riding associations, the National Association of Riding Clubs & Sheriff Posses and the American Association of Sheriff Posses and Riding Clubs. She competes in “playdays,” which are horse shows with timed events like barrel racing, flag races, and pole bending, where a horse runs through a pattern of poles. She says she stays competitive and loves what she does. Oftentimes people who ride horses are born into it. Their grandfather worked a ranch; their father grew up riding; they learned to ride a horse not long after they began walking. “I never rode horses as a kid,” Garrett said. “That’s what is so silly about this thing.” In fact, she was more than 40 years old when she started riding. Sadie and her husband, Paul, retired to Paradise in 1979. They both got what they wanted there: Paul got a workshop, Sadie got an arena. Paul died in 1990. She wears her wedding rings around her neck.
12
She met Paul when she was working in the education/finance field in Oklahoma City and the two married in their 30s. The couple moved back to North Texas and raised two children: Kevin, 50, and Sara, 44, and it was her children’s interest in horses that first sparked Sadie’s interest. It was her first experience with riding clubs. Garrett grew up in the country in Meridian, Texas, but she didn’t grow up riding horses. Her father was a bricklayer — her family was, for generations, in construction. She went to a small school with the same classmates for many years. Garrett’s years at Wesleyan were different than what the school is like today. The faculty lived on campus. All the classes were in one building. Residence halls had a house mother. Her old residence hall — Ann Waggoner — is long gone. “I can just see it all,” she said. “It was so fun.” After she graduated from Wesleyan, she began teaching in Smithville, and later in Grapevine. In Smithville, she had a row of fourth graders and a row of fifth graders. She was an active teacher — starting basketball teams, playing with the kids during recess. Now, her calendar is filled, nearly every weekend, with things to do — many of them horse-related, and she says she’s as happy as she’s always been. “I guess I’ve always just seen that glass as half full.”