Eleanore Marie Killerlain

The day my mom and dad drove me out to Bob and Eleanore Killerlain’s Belle Oakes Farm, I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store. It was the summer of 1959 and I was a horse crazy twelve-year-old. To me a candy store was a field full of ponies. That day changed my life. We were introduced by a 4-H leader. My parents were not horse people. They were hoping I’d outgrow this phase, but they reluctantly agreed to let me to meet Bob and Eleanore. More than anything in the world, I wanted to learn how to train and show ponies, and here was my big break. “I’ll clean your stable for you, if you’ll let me ride sometimes,” I offered. “You won’t have to do that,” said Bob. From then on, through high school and college, I worked summer vacations and weekends, whenever my school and work schedules allowed. I was one of many lucky kids mentored by Eleanore and Bob. I moved to California in my early 20’s and did not get back to Wisconsin very often, but when I did come home to see my family, I always paid a visit to Eleanore. Eleanore had an intuitive understanding of horses combined with the practical old-time knowledge handed down from one generation of farming families to the next. People often came to her for advice. She wasn’t above taking advice from others, and she was open minded about trying something new if it seemed to make sense. My parents’ hopes that I would outgrow my love for horses didn’t happen. I still have horses, and I wish I could remember more of the lessons learned so long ago from Eleanore and Bob. Eleanore was a highly skilled horsewoman and known to have the best hands among local saddle seat exhibitors. She had a showy, high stepping Saddlebred mare named Joanie, and won a lot of trophies and ribbons with her. The summer after my last year of high school, Eleanore had a young mare she was starting to show. I had grown too tall to ride the ponies, so she let me ride and show Joanie. Riding and showing that mare was an opportunity I always felt grateful for. Eleanore’s deep love for horses often shone through her no-nonsense exterior. She always kept a horse’s welfare in mind when making any decision. After a show where I’d won a trophy with Joanie, a couple approached Eleanore. Their daughter showed, and they were looking for another horse for her. She told me later they had offered her a blank check for Joanie. She could name the price and they would pay it. “Well? Are you going to sell her?” I asked. “No,” said Eleanore. I asked her why. “Because,” she continued, and I listened. “Joanie is up there in years. When she gets some more age on her, she’ll start to go downhill, and then what’s going to happen to her? Old horses just get passed from one owner to the next.” She explained that when you sell a horse, you give up control over it, and you can’t guarantee what kind of care the new owner will give the horse. She didn’t know these people well enough to know how well they would care for Joanie, and she felt that Joanie deserved better than to end up at an auction. They kept Joanie—and all their other retired show horses to the ends of their lives. She gave a lot of herself to her horses, and they gave back. One evening before a show, we were working late getting tack and everything else ready. We went out to the barn for something. It was late, long after dark, the horses in their stalls eating their hay quietly. We listened to them for a few minutes. “The sound of horses eating is the most peaceful thing there is,” she said. I still go out to my barn at night and listen to the horses.