Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Show goes on for Lebanon's Meade
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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It all started with billy goat.
Roger Meade was 14 when father Cecil laid down the law.
"I was about to get run off from home," the younger Meade said. "My daddy didn't like goats. He said the goat couldn't stay."
To say the goat was a nuisance was accurate but that doesn't present a complete picture. A series of objectionable behaviors culminated with one final goat felony.
"He climbed on top of my neighbor's house," Meade said.
Thus, the goat had go. Young Roger traded him for a calf. That turned out to be an inspired piece of agribusiness. Meade brought the calf home, fattened it up, and sold it for the handsome price of $500.
Meade took that money and bought a saddlebred horse. The horse wasn't all that well-behaved and would often bust loose running when that wasn't in the rider's plans.
Roger's father and mother, Frances, never knew. He told them the horse rode smooth as hand-churned ice cream.
Eventually it did, which said more about the owner than it did the horse. Roger Meade had the touch with ornery equines.
By age 20 he was training saddlebreds professionally. He never stopped.
This week, he's got another string of saddlebreds at the Roanoke Valley Horse Show -- his 37th year at the Salem Civic Center, which means his barn has been represented at every show since the inception.
Now 67, Meade, red-headed and soft-spoken, looks like he rarely has a bad day.
"I've been blessed, I really have," he said.
The blessings really rained down last year when for the first time, he rode a horse to the $5,000 Five Gaited title.
"We've been close before," he said. "We've won a lot of classes here but never that one until last year."
That was aboard Champagne's Property, a 14-year-old which will try to defend his title Saturday. He'll also show in an open class earlier in the week.
"[Defending is] really going to be tough," he said. "There are so many good horses these days."
But not so many shows. Meade said in years past, they'd have their pick of several good shows to attend on any given weekend, none far from home. Now, this show is one of the last that's relatively close by.
"Saddlebreds really used to be popular where we're from," he said. "There used to be all kind of trainers working nearby. Now I'm the only one."
No competition means business is booming, though. Work at it as long as he has from the same location -- "I'm still working no more than a couple of miles from where I was born," he said -- and you eventually make a name for yourself.
"He's the most wonderful man on the planet," said Candy Bennett, a customer since 1970. "He's a wonderful trainer and a good Christian man."
Bennett and her sisters Cindy Jackson and Sandy Whittington and families have been buying horses from and training with Meade all these years. They travel to shows together and share in all the work. Meade employs no grooms.
"We're like one big traveling family at shows," Bennett said. "He's one hard worker, too. He'll do anything. He does things a lot of trainers would never do."
Meade depends on members of his own family to make it all work. Daughter Darlene Rose does the books and bits and pieces of everything else. Wife Gladys is also involved.
"My wife knows more about horses than I do," Meade said. "I could have never done it without her and my daughter."
Another daughter, Laura McComas, didn't catch the horse bug, but her daughter Martha did. She had an adoring grandfather ready to help.
All still live close by, even his parents. Cecil and Frances are 92 now.
Roger Meade said he's had a number of chances to move on and work for somebody else. He was tempted a couple of times, but decided against it.
"I've never been famous," he said. "Never wanted to be famous. But I can't express how thankful I am for the life I've had."
