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September 22, 2002
HUNT, Texas -- In 1901, while the Wright brothers were trying to fly and Guglielmo Marconi was trying to get his radio to work, Constance Douglas was born in a tiny Texas border town, the only child of a district judge and his genteel wife.
It would never occur to Connie, as she swam in the Rio Grande and rode horses with cowboys, that other little girls in other places lived vastly different lives. She was a spirited, willful child and the world was hers. That it began in Texas and ended in Texas was just fine with her, and with everyone she knew.
After she grew up and went to college, she became the first woman to enter the University of Texas Law School. She met Eleanor Roosevelt. She taught school and horseback riding. She didn't marry until age 42, becoming a rancher as well as a wife.
It never crossed her mind that she would outlive every person she ever loved, including Jack, her husband of 40 years. Or that along the way she would become famous simply by being herself.
Connie Douglas Reeves, at age 100, helped open the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame this summer, sharing the spotlight with a new inductee, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
She was honored because she has taught more than 30,000 girls to ride Western and English. Because she embodies the independent cowgirl spirit. And because on most days, though she is "hard of hearing and can't see a thing," she still gets on her horse and rides.
For the past 66 summers, a significant portion of her life and heart has been claimed by Camp Waldemar for Girls, an exclusive oasis straddling the cool, green Guadalupe River in the Texas hill country. Riding, canoeing, swimming, and archery are taught during monthlong sessions intended to supply 7- to 16-year-olds with something Reeves never seemed to lack: self-possession.
"Always saddle your own horse" has become her life motto and is repeated almost every time her name is mentioned. They read it during her Hall of Fame induction. And somehow, it ended up in Liz Smith's tabloid gossip column, just before a juicy item about Tom Cruise.
"I don't remember saying that, but they keep saying I did," she chuckles. "I meant really saddle your own horse. You want to know that your horse is saddled properly. It establishes a good relationship with the horse."
Now it is part of her folklore, and that's fine with her, too.
At first, she didn't think she belonged in the cowgirl hall of fame. "I didn't see that I had made much of a contribution," she says, sitting on the roofed porch of Camp Waldemar's horse stables, taking refuge from a merciless Texas sun.
She is wearing a blue oxford-cloth shirt and form-fitting navy slacks with stitched creases. A black belt, with a silver buckle the size of a passport, rides her flat stomach. On her tiny feet are cowboy boots of ancient leather, crinkled like the surface of an old oil painting.
Her white hair is tightly curled, her lips painted crimson, her fingernails manicured and lacquered red.
"But they said I taught all those girls, and when you add the fact that I did all that ranching, I guess I've done enough to contribute to the Western heritage of life," she says, thoughtfulness creeping into a voice cracked and high-pitched with age.
"Boy, that makes me feel important," she says, smiling, hooking her thumbs into imaginary suspenders.
Reeves is teaching her third generation of campers. At Waldemar, mothers often sign up daughters at birth, who grow up to enroll their daughters -- until Reeves recently found herself teaching the granddaughter of a girl she taught to ride in the 1930s. The cost is about $2,800 for four weeks.
She has a hitch in her get-along courtesy of her horse, Dr. Pepper, who got piqued about 16 years ago after having new shoes nailed into his hooves and hauled off and kicked her, shattering her thigh bone.
It is only one of several injuries she's sustained in old age. In 1994, an Arabian gelding named Macho threw her after stumbling into a hornet's nest, leaving her with a punctured lung, fractured ribs, a broken arm and too many hornet stings to count. That earned her another spot in local history: She is the oldest Texan to apply for worker's compensation.
She has suffered macular degeneration for years now, leaving her unable to see much of anything except vague shapes and foggy colors. This does not keep her from racing all over camp in an electric golf cart, sometimes veering off the asphalt path, scattering giggling teenagers like a grenade in a trout pond.
"Hi, honey, how are you?" she croons, waving as she tools by. "Coming through!"
"Hi, Miss Connie," the girls reply from a safe distance.
"Sure wish I knew who I was talking to," she mutters under her breath.
She turns 101 on Thursday. She hasn't decided yet how to celebrate.
Always, she is asked these questions: To what does she attributes her long life? ("I'm just fortunate.") What is the most significant historic event she has witnessed? ("Men landing on the moon.") And what, after all these years, means the most to her? ("Nature.")
"I am not a church-going individual," she says. "My church is in nature. I can go sit on the banks of the river and watch the water and feel the wind, and I am closer to God -- or whoever runs the universe."
Which is why she stays in Texas. "I never wanted to live anywhere else," she says.
When she was 16, her family moved to San Antonio. Her mother, Ada, who wouldn't go to the grocer's without gloves and hat, wanted her to study speech. Her father, William Constant, wanted her to study law, as he had.
She studied both.
When the Depression came, money for lawyers went. Her father had no work. Reeves took a teaching job. For years, it was her family's sole income.
When she took a job as counselor for horseback riding at Camp Waldemar, she met Jack Reeves, former rodeo star, trick rider and keeper of the camp's horses.
Six years later, they were hitched. On their 10,000-acre ranch, her wifely duties included herding cattle, branding cattle, vaccinating sheep, castrating sheep, birthing sheep and, always, caring for the horses.
Forty years after their wedding, Jack died from Alzheimer's disease. It was just plain hard watching a proud and strong man disappear piece by piece. In his place was a sometimes frightened, sometimes angry stranger.
She never remarried. She never had children and doesn't regret it. "And I'm sure glad I don't have grandchildren. The world today, it's disturbed."
Long ago, she made peace with solitude. She has known it as an only child, as a middle-aged wife riding the fences of her ranch, and now, as an old woman.
Sometimes, it seems each week brings a new report of dying friends. "I do get despondent sometimes," she says shyly. "But I get over it. Old age is not fun.
"My husband's sister lives in a one-room apartment. She watches TV all day. When she does her washing, she's tired. When she finishes eating, she's tired."
Sometimes, Connie Reeves would like to take the woman -- who is more than a decade younger -- and shake her.
"What kind of living is that? You have to get out in the world and look at all the wonderful things."