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Back in the saddle again

A family left homeless by Katrina restores a home, builds a barn, cares for a horse, and in doing all that, rebuilds their lives.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published August 22, 2006

	[Times photo: Edmund Fountain]
	Jane Place holds her granddaughter Isabella Morris, 2, of Lakeland while watching her son Tommy Burkin ride his recently acquired palomino quarter horse, Apollo, on their property in Istachatta on Saturday. Place and her family came to Hernando County after being displaced from Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina. Nearly a year after the storm, their life is beginning to get back to normal. They pulled together to get Tommy back in the saddle and build a barn for his horse.

ISTACHATTA - Tommy Burkin now has a horse. And, like everything else for the 15-year-old and his family, it didn't come easily.

Tommy; his mother, Jane Place; her fiance, Jake Johannessen; and her brother Gene Meyers lost their New Orleans homes and belongings to Hurricane Katrina. Tommy also lost what was becoming a new grip on life.

Afflicted with autism, Tommy had been making great strides in a therapeutic riding program in Orleans Parish. When the family found themselves rebuilding their lives in Hernando, the opportunity to ride his favorite horse and with established friends was out of reach.

Tommy took the forced move to Hernando County the hardest, his mother says. He was morose, detached and belligerent.

Although the family bought more than 2 acres last year with the aim of getting a horse, the expenses of refurbishing a mobile home for living quarters overwhelmed them.

The horse idea was put on the back burner.

While Johannessen labored to make the double-wide habitable, Place worked to keep the spark alive in Tommy, keeping up a correspondence with Caye Mitchell, Tommy's trainer in New Orleans.

The quest to get Tommy back in the saddle has pulled the family together and given each a role in accomplishing that feat. On Saturday they celebrated a barn warming and the recent arrival of Apollo, a palomino quarter horse.

Tommy had enrolled in a summer horse camp, Field of Dreams Riding School on Bowman Road in Spring Hill, that introduced him to owner Trish Wilhite and Apollo.

He learned grooming, feeding, rudimentary veterinary care and "natural horsemanship," a form of riding without a bit, the mount directed by leg pressure and gentle tugs of a nose rope, like "horse whispering," Wilhite explained.

Wilhite and Mitchell met Saturday at the family's property on Seminole Road for the barn warming and the arrival of Apollo.

At the Field of Dreams Riding School, Tommy had been given permission to ride Apollo by his owner, Louann Sundland of Pasco County, who was boarding the 4-year-old gelding at the farm.

After the camp, Tommy signed on for stable work, mucking stalls and cleaning tack in exchange for being allowed to ride at day's end.

His choice mount was always Apollo.

Wilhite told Sundland of Tommy's attachment to Apollo. After hearing of all that Tommy had lost, Sundland agreed to sell Apollo to the family for $2,000.

Mitchell is working to raise money to cover the cost from her friends in the New Orleans Posse, a mounted contingent working in rescue and law enforcement. She's collected $500 so far.

In the interim, Place borrowed the money to buy the horse for Tommy.

The night before Apollo arrived, Tommy couldn't sleep, his mother said. When the horse was delivered, Tommy said, "I didn't believe it for the first couple of days."

When he comes home from Hernando High, where he is a sophomore, Tommy spends nearly every at-home hour with the horse, gentling him, adapting him to his new surroundings, grooming and feeding. "Apollo's about the best-trained horse I've ever seen," Tommy said. "I got lucky with him." As he bent to elevate a hoof for cleaning, Tommy assured onlookers, "He doesn't kick."

Riding instructor Mitchell said: "What makes Tommy unique, he sees things other people don't see. He has a gift. He builds trust with a horse."

As for urging Tommy out of his autistic shell and helping other disabled persons, Mitchell said, "Horses make people happy. Horses change people, give them confidence, empowerment and patience. Horses teach responsibility. It gives you motivation to get up in the morning."

Since the move, Apollo has twice jumped the wire mesh fence around the new barn. Wilhite thinks the horse is suffering some separation anxiety from his former stablemates. He'll get over it, she said.

Meyers has bought a large pony, Babydoll, for Apollo's company and for Place to ride along with Tommy through nearby wooded trails.

As for the equine barn, it is a wooden structure with two stalls plus a tack and feed room and a slanted roof. A small barnyard opens onto a paddock with 1,000 feet of fence.

"Not bad for a welder," quipped Johannessen.

Johannessen's job as a boilermaker and welder in a New Orleans shipyard washed away with Katrina. Now that the barn is finished, he's planning to return to Louisiana to repair his shrimp boat, which was devastated in the hurricane.

The family's home is refurbished except for the kitchen, where Place has hung red-and-white checked fabric to cover kitchen shelves.

"Cupboards can wait," she said. "The barn came first."

Likely, the boat will come next. And for now, Place and Tommy can leave the unfinished kitchen behind, going horseback riding in the leafy groves.

Beth Gray may be reached at graybethn@earthlink.net

[Last modified August 21, 2006, 22:34:10]