{"id":17365,"date":"2020-02-12T12:36:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T17:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=17365"},"modified":"2020-12-30T20:40:55","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T01:40:55","slug":"lee-garner-1944-to-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=17365","title":{"rendered":"Lee Garner, 1944 – 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Lee Garner and Baldy Freckles. Sally Harrison photo. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ernest Levi \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Garner Jr., 75, an NCHA Members Hall of\nFame honoree, as well as the 1990 NCHA Non-Pro World Champion, the 1996 NCHA\nNon-Pro Futurity Champion, and a member of the NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame,\npassed away on February 11, in his hometown of Batesville, Miss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Garner who put Batesville, population 7,500, on the map for weekend cutters, when he began hosting events at his covered arena there in the late 1980s. Although he was born 20 miles east, in Oxford, Garner spent most of his life in Batesville, where he established a home health care business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teenager, Garner kept a horse and competed in rodeo events, but gave up rodeo and horses, when he accepted a football scholarship under legendary Ole Miss football coach John Vaught. “He told me I had to make up my mind, either rodeo or college football,” Garner recalled. “That was a real quick decision. I was going to scholl on an athletic scholarship and I wasn’t about to mess that up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a fateful day in March 1986 that connected Garner \u00c2\u00a0with the sport of cutting. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought I would go down to Jackson and buy a Quarter Horse at the (NCHA) Area Workoff,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he remembered. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I ended up buying eleven.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially interested in breeding horses, Garner had no intention of showing, but encouraged his son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interest in competition. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I guess I was an over-achiever as a father,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he admitted. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 One day I scolded Lee for cutting a cow that somebody else had just lost and he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDaddy, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean to be disrespectful, but you might need to try this yourself. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot harder than it looks.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garner took up Lee III\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s challenge and recruited help from trainers Arthur Jackson, Bobby Brown, Billy Ray Rosewell and Mike Haney. But it was Mel Shearin<\/a> who gave Garner the tip on Baldy Freckles, winner of the 1987 NCHA Futurity Non-Pro Limited under Harold Franklin, and Garner purchased the stocky, 15.2 gelding in May 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Finding the right horse is like (finding) a dance partner,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\nsaid Garner, who won the 1990 NCHA Non-Pro World Championship showing Baldy\nFreckles. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can see a girl dancing with another guy and she looks like a\nfantastic dancer. But when you dance with her, she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the right\nmoves. You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gel. Thank the Lord, Baldy and I jelled. According to Garner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\ncalculations, by the end of 1993, he and Baldy Freckles had been to the herd\ntogether 1,232 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garner, who had always preferred riding week-end horses, purchased Peponitas Acre, his 1996 NCHA Non-Pro Futurity Champion, at the 11th hour through trainer Billy Ray Rosewell<\/a>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Billy Ray only let me on him three times after I bought him, for 10 or 20 seconds each time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Garner remembered. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So when I got to the Futurity, I had to take it real easy and make sure I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mess up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garner kept his cool, but confessed he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember much\nabout his Finals performance. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do remember though, when I finally sat down on\nhim, it was one of the few times I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t on top of the saddle horn, and it\nfelt like a million dollars. I wanted to get off and kiss him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altogether, between 1990 and 2014, Lee Garner won or placed\nin the NCHA World standings 23 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I built an arena before I even showed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Garner. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They say build a baseball field and people will come. Well build an arena and people will come, especially if you have fresh cows. I enjoy cutters so much because most of them are independent business people who have made it on their own, and most of them like athletics and love horses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A celebration of Lee’s life will be 11:00 A.M. Friday morning, February 14, 2020, at the First United Methodist Church in Batesville, MS, with the family receiving friends Thursday evening, February 13, 2020 from 5:00 – 8:00 P.M. at Wells Funeral Home<\/a>. The interment will follow the service at Magnolia Cemetery in Batesville, MS. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest Levi \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Garner Jr., 75, an NCHA Members Hall of Fame honoree, as well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cutting","category-milestones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17365"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17375,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17365\/revisions\/17375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}