I remember my sister Kandra as a tough tomboy. People who know her today would be confused by that, as she is now a sweet Christian school teacher with a wonderful family and has adopted some gentle southern ways. She lives in Tennessee, teaches English and music lessons, sews clothing for herself and her children, and is a fabulous cook, wife, and mother. But it was not always so....

Kandra was a horse crazy girl, first and foremost. When she was nine, our neighbor Francis Wescott gave her a foal, a brown and white paint. Dad purchased the mare it was born to, named Patches, and she mothered two more foals in subsequent years, Kokomo and Peppy. Kandra named her foal Apache.

Kandra began training Apache when he turned two and she was eleven. I know she got thrown off him and broke her arm when she was training him, but if I remember her story, "it wasn't the horse's fault." She was tough. She did a really nice job of breaking him in and went on to train him for barrel racing. She soaked up every bit of horse knowledge she could gain from books, neighbors, and trainers. She even went to a Ray Hunt clinic and came home and tried all his tricks on our ranch horses. Dad was starting to breed horses about then, and she started training all of the colts.

Kandra wore Wranglers and spurs and loved Country music...she was a real cowgirl. She even spoke with kind of a tough drawl when she was talking about horses and such. When she was a senior in high school, a crazy mare threw her off and broke both of her ankles, and it really changed Kandra's direction and plans as far as being a horse trainer the rest of her life. She quit wearing Wranglers and threw away her Country music cassette tapes. She ended up going to Bible College the next year, and eventually graduating with a teaching degree and getting married.

I remember Kandra as the leader of Kellie and I. We wanted to be old enough to do the things she got to do. She was left to babysit us four younger kids sometimes, and we would often get into fights and minor spats. She would usually read a book, yell at us, and try to ignore the things we did to get her attention. Sometimes she would play games with us, like our favorite one she made up called "Fall Down!" We would beg her to come out in the yard and chase us around...if she caught us, she would give us a push and yell, "Fall Down!" and we would go rolling on the ground, convulsed in giggles and getting itchy from the grass. We loved it!

We also liked to go for walks down the road or out through the pastures with Kandra. The "little boys", Kevin and Kris, would often follow us on their bikes and they would be goofing around and not paying attention, so we would quickly veer off the road and hide from them and see how long it took them to notice we weren't up ahead of them walking along. It was so much fun to listen to them wondering aloud, "Where did they go?" We would hide in the standing corn fields or woods, or take another route back home without them knowing. Kandra was good at leading us in orneriness.

Kandra was really good at cooking and sewing and reading, and we all followed in her footsteps, but probably never quite reached her level of expertise in each. She has won baking contests, sewed her own wedding dress and many other dresses, and is a Literature teacher today. She also started us off in learning music, and we younger girls started taking piano lessons because she was taking lessons and it made sense for us to take them as well.

I think I owe quite a bit to who I am because of the big sister in our family. I think in some ways we younger ones are still emulating her examples. She was the first to go to the college that most of us attended, the first of the siblings to marry and have kids, and many of her decisions have shaped our own lives. Kandra may have lost that tough cowboy drawl she used to use as a teenager, but I think she's still a tomboy horse trainer at heart.