El and her sister had little in common, but there was never animosity. “We weren’t close. Carolyn had her dolls and indoor things and tennis. She liked cats, and I would grow to love big dogs. Carolyn was always neat and down-to-earth. I was the black sheep. Someone was always reminding me to pick up after myself. I had more important things to do. Carolyn wasn’t a nutjob like I was, not in any way. I was always a nutjob for horses.”

  In Freedom, though, the two sisters had moments of togetherness. Carolyn recalled that “even though we weren’t all that close, I always enjoyed being her younger sister. She was a great gal, always coming up with games.” They gathered acorns to make animals and people, using match sticks for legs. They also played a game using one finger and the thumb to throw jackknives at targets. “That was fun, and,” remembering her older sister’s practicality, Carolyn added, “it helped El eventually learn to handle a knife for wood carving.”

  According to El, “Carolyn always thought it a bit unfair that I got a horse. She did have little Inky, but Inky was more or less the family dog. Also, even though I hated my middle name, Harmon, and was always complaining about it, I did have a middle name. For some reason, Carolyn wasn’t given one. But,” El emphasized, “she got to be famous at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and I didn’t. And I guess that was really nice.” El was fourteen, and television had just been invented. At the Fair, El remembered that there was, at one exhibit, a huge revolving stage. As it went around, a group of people appeared on the stage, the group growing larger with each revolution. Somehow Carolyn, only nine years old, had managed to get on the stage and was being interviewed on a large television screen, one of the first. El was delighted that she suddenly had a famous sister. That might have been as good as having a horse, she figured.

  Both sisters remembered with fondness that their grandfather maintained a garden in Freedom. There was always something new to plant, and always something for him and El to compete over. One summer he tried broccoli, which grew into a huge bush which El could nearly sit under. Her grandmother, piqued with curiosity, as tended to be the norm in the Fracker households, cooked the leaves, which were later determined to be poisonous, in a large pot. The pot turned black, and the family unanimously decided that no harvested broccoli would be eaten. “But what an adventure that was,” said El, and her grandfather agreed. He redeemed his loss with his apple cider. It was made from his own cider mill late in the summer, from the fruit of the many apple trees on his property, and, El contended, “It was so good! And it was good that he made gallons.”

  Carolyn remembered waking up in the summer mornings to the sound of her grandfather hoeing. “I could hear the click of the hoe on the rocks. That way, we always knew where he was, and we always wanted to know where he was, we loved him that much.” Freedom spelled freedom, but it was also the place where stability, trust, and the love of family, nature, and discovery were a way of life.

  Freedom was a resort area, attracting people from all the neighboring states, including New York. El remembered that “there was a thing between the summer people and the regulars. Nothing mean, of course, but the regulars were grateful when all the summer people left.” The Fracker Jr. family saw themselves as both regulars and summer people. Surely a horse lent permanency to the situation. Every time the family drove into Freedom for summer or spring break, Sammy traveled behind in his trailer on the bumpy and muddy road, the pretty town square and the well-kept houses coming into view. Every time the family left to return to Melrose, the young El watched the retreating town view, somewhat blocked by Sammy’s trailer, and wondered if the small resort town might someday be a forever home, for her and a horse.

  Assuring More Than One Horse

  Chapter 3

  THE YEAR WAS 1944, AND ELEANOR WOULD SOON GRADUATE WITH HER class at Melrose High School. Any thoughts of summer fun were obscured by the difficult decision she had to make. Accepted at Boston University, she knew she needed a bachelor’s degree if she wanted to eventually hold her own in the world of business. She was set on working with horses; her life would be horses. Beyond that, she wasn’t yet sure, but she was determined to grab every affordable opportunity to make herself credible and her dream real. In the mid-1940s, a young woman with a college degree was saleable and respected. At least that was the belief of the citizens of Boston, the seed of academia since colonial times and the hub of universities, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. Wellesley, founded in 1870, was internationally recognized as the first all-female college in the state. Smith College in Northampton, Radcliffe in Cambridge, and Simmons College in Boston would follow the trend established by Wellesley.

  The sad truth was that El knew that she could not attend Boston University fulltime, make and save money, and devote time and attention to the care of her horse. As hard as it was, she sold Sammy and made the decision to attend BU and work part-time. “My reason for going to college was this: If I went to college, I could eventually have more than one horse. If I didn’t go to college, I wouldn’t make enough money to have even one horse.” She added, “That was probably not the best way to think of higher education, but it was my way.”

  El could not have parted with Sammy had her father not been part of the sale process. He arranged for all the interviews, ensuring that with each contact, he and El could weed out those who were not deserving of her loyal equine friend. Eventually, a little girl as crazy about horses as El was came forward. El was able to meet the girl and her family and was pleased. There were no 4-H programs at that time, but the girl shared El’s attitude that “having a horse, even with no riding programs available, was everything.” El was relieved that “this sweet little girl was going to work with Sammy and would appreciate all the tricks I had taught him, such as shaking hands.” When she learned that the family lived on a farm, El was reassured that Sammy would receive excellent care. “That little girl and I were both happy.”

  Eleanor’s grandmother was one of El’s first employers. Mrs. Walter S. Fracker Sr., genteel and society minded, owned a tearoom in Freedom. Not in a million years would the girl who got muddy riding horses have chosen this type of employment had it not been for her love and respect for Gammy. Gammy, part Scottish and bestowed with the honor of Daughter of the American Revolution through every fight from King Phillips’ War to the Civil War, had flair, which attracted the young El. “Gammy owned a Ford car with a back that sloped. She loved that car because of its get-up-and-go. She loved that thing, one minute stationary and the next, boom, and away it went.”

  Gammy’s flair extended into her philanthropic work, both before and during her marriage. A member of the choir of the People’s Church in Boston, she also mounted theatrical productions and musical events for community building, fundraising, and awareness of partisan issues. Even at women’s club meetings, orchestral and chorale music was on the agenda. Pops concerts were used to raise money for tuberculosis research, children’s homes, and veterans’ needs. In nearly every production, Angie Harmon Fracker showed her talents as singer, pianist, and organist, and, for a short stint, director and playwright.12 “When Gammy’s voice began to fail,” El said, “she was very frustrated. People loved to hear her sing, and she loved to sing. She had been in the public eye quite a bit, and she was a hard act to follow.”

  El inherited Gammy’s talents in the fine arts. She could sing and play the piano, but she much preferred developing and utilizing her abilities in drawing and painting. The tearoom provided no obvious artistic outlet for the young El. Nevertheless, El worked diligently at her grandmother’s business, waiting and bussing tables “and everything else, including sweeping floors.” She worked in the afternoons, her mornings set aside for riding Sammy during their final days together. She had little time for her friends, who were always going out to Loon Lake for fun. “Sometimes I felt stuck, but I held to my dream of lots of horses.”

  Soon, an idea insinuated itself, one that would draw on the entrepreneurial instincts El had unwittingly inherited from her grandmother and her finance-savvy mother. It would draw as well on El’s artistic skills and her love of horses. She started to design notecards, the covers of which included her paintings of, not surprisingly, horses. Her grandmother’s customers bought them up. El received 50 cents for every card she sold.

  El enjoyed the customers as much as she enjoyed her work at the tearoom. One woman in particular piqued El’s growing interest in business. The woman, a frequent customer, never gave tips until one day, when she told El to go into her barn and take out anything that El would like. That would be her tip. Why, thought El, impressed with the woman’s innovative business acumen, would anyone not want to work for such a motivating tip? The question, and the business model it represented, would remain with El throughout her professional life. As if prescient regarding the long and fierce Wyoming winters that would someday be a part of her story, El chose a pair of snowshoes hanging on pegs in the old barn.

  The tearoom was a family affair. El remembered that her father made a wonderful Welsh Rarebit, and her mother’s specialties were cakes and pies. These foods were featured weekend staples for the loyal customers. El described her grandmother “as a wonderful cook, but she made a terrible mess in the kitchen, which my mother usually had to clean up and wasn’t too happy about.” Fond of The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, Angie Fracker could boast of such specialties as muffins and spice cakes on Saturday mornings, but her signature recipe was chocolate cake with mocha icing. According to El, “That cake was totally delicious.”

  However, it was the mocha icing alone that would eventually claim fame, as revealed in a yellowed newspaper clipping. The Paducah Sun newspaper, of Paducah, Kentucky, ran an article on March 18, 1981, that told of the 1976 bicentennial horseback ride across the United States by Colonel James D. Langstaff. Colonel Langstaff decided that rather than keep a journal, he would record favorite recipes of the households of hospitable folks who had befriended him and bid him stay with them during his journey. One recipe that made its way into his recipe collection, supposedly published in 1981 and titled Host to Host Coast to Coast, was supplied by Eleanor Fracker Prince, of Sodergreen Ranch, Laramie County, Wyoming. The recipe for mocha icing, over 100 years old, was indeed El’s grandmother’s.13 As a grown woman, Eleanor shared the cake and icing recipe with her many friends, “but,” she said, “everyone had to make adjustments to the cake ingredients because we all lived at high altitude.”

  Sadly, the recipe for the chocolate cake itself was lost. Eleanor explained that “it was on a piece of paper that I stuck in my Fanny Farmer book, along with other recipes I sometimes cut out if they sounded good, even though I didn’t have time to cook. I may have loaned that cookbook to a friend, but if I clean out the kitchen sink cupboard and find it, I’ll let everyone know.”

  Enrolled at Boston University, El found a job working in sales at a nearby store that sold high-end dresses and other women’s apparel. El worked part time, late afternoons, for three to five hours. Jobs were hard to come by for young people enrolled in school, and the jobs didn’t pay much. El appreciated what she could get. Her customers “did no browsing. They were waited on, sitting comfortably as the salesperson brought out clothes based on the customer’s voiced needs and desires. The volumes of trips we had to make were of no concern; the customer’s satisfaction was everything.” The job reminded El of the many times her mother urged her and her sister into dress shops, so that El might eventually dress, fix her hair, and wear makeup in the styles appreciated by her mother. “I dearly loved my mother, but I wasn’t having any of it,” El said, but she held to the job, for money meant education and savings, and education and savings meant horses. Despite their differences, Maxine Fracker enthusiastically supported her oldest daughter as a college student. From her salary came money for El’s tuition and books, and both parents welcomed El to live at home all four years, rent-free.

  When the fussiness of tearooms and dress shops got to El, she happily retreated to her grandfather’s world. He was pivotal in her life. When El owned Sammy and even after he was sold, she saw her early mornings as a cherished time to be with her grandfather. They had breakfast together. No one else was up; he was all El’s. She recalled that they each had a window to sit by while eating and that he had “his own wonderful rocking chair,” which she later wished she had been able to take west with her. “I loved this time because I loved my grandfather. I loved having him all to myself. He had a whimsical side. Our breakfasts were always apple pie and ice cream. He sang the menu with his wonderful voice.” The banker with the wonderful voice had once been the manager of the Chelsea Academy of Music and was known to have appeared in his wife’s theatrical productions as a frequent soloist.

  It was probably this frequent soloist who offered El a more immediate path to lots of horses. About five years before Eleanor made the decision to attend Boston University, her doting grandfather encouraged his son and daughter-in-law to send El off to summer camp, as was the vogue in the ‘30s and ‘40s. In 1939, 1940, and 1941, Eleanor left the care of Sammy to her grandfather and father and spent eight weeks of each summer at Camp Winnemont, described in a camp brochure simply titled Winnemont 1940 as “A Summer Camp for Girls on Lake Ossipee.” The opening sentences of the brochure revealed that “the genuinely happy spirit of Winnemont girls is the first thing to impress most visitors. It is the very essence of the camp.” El, the young camper, was indeed happy.

  Close to Mt. Whittier, in New Hampshire, the camp, with rustic wood-framed and tent-topped cabins, was surrounded by vast lawns, huge trees, and a wide lake. El wasn’t too keen on the dancing lessons, but she reveled in time set aside for reading and for crafts that included carving and wood working, crafts which had been her grandfather’s hobbies. What made her heart soar was revealed in several sentences under “Equipment”: “Adjoining the athletic field is the riding ring, and back along the main road is the large stable accommodating fourteen horses. Riding is so popular with girls these days that Winnemont makes provision that all campers shall have riding without extra charge.” The camp in fact housed 25 horses. El quickly convinced the staff that she was an experienced rider and spent much of her time chaperoning riders on afternoon trail rides and on supper and overnight trips. She also helped riders prepare for the August horse show. “I was so happy,” she said, “around all those horses.”

  It should be noted that El took away two consequential aspects of the Winnemont riding program, long before she developed the notion of becoming a riding instructor. First, even though trail riding was a feature of the program, all instruction appropriately took place in a riding ring. Second, one of the instructors was Lieutenant Stanley W. Dziuban, from the Schofield Barracks of the United States Military Academy, who most assuredly instilled in young El the importance of cavalry—dressage—training for both horse and rider.

  In the summers of 1944 to 1947, El again attended camp, but these summer sessions found her at Merrymeeting Camp for Girls, established in 1916 in Bath, Maine. Instead of being a camper, she was hired as a camp counselor. Her job was to tutor the young girls in English and Latin. “I didn’t teach poetry or contribute to the Merrymeeting journal, which was mostly poetry. I’ve never bought a book of poetry.” Poetry wasn’t practical, and to El, the value of anything was in its practicality. As far as she was concerned, the most practical and therefore the most valuable of skills was learning how to ride a horse.

  El was ecstatic when she was chosen to be a riding instructor at Merrymeeting. The camp covered fifty acres. Surrounded on three sides by the Kennebec River and Merrymeeting Bay, the camp boasted virgin forests and the White Mountains. According to El, the junior and senior girls’ cabins were equipped with electrical lighting and were fully screened and solidly constructed. Each counselor and her ten assigned girls lived in their own cabin.

  According to its 1947 brochure, Merrymeeting: A Camp for Girls, the camp, “through its counselor staff, wish[es] to help girls … learn to meet the problem of leisure time in a cultural way, develop and maintain physical health, nourish social adjustment through true friendship, [and] attain high ideals and balanced perspectives of life.” At the camp, El displayed and continued to develop what she had learned from her family: a vigorous respect for culture, nature, health, friendship, high ideals, and varied perspectives. As the camp did not stress competitiveness in activities, El began to nurture a firm belief in cooperation over competition.

  For El, Merrymeeting’s jewel in the crown was the camp’s robust horsemanship program. Pictures of young campers exhibiting relaxed, correct posture in the saddle and low hands on the reins were featured in the brochure in an enticing section titled “Horseback Riding.” “Our camp,” it reads, “is particularly well adapted for this ever-popular sport, with innumerable trails through the pine forests and deserted country roads. … In the course of a season our girls develop into excellent riders.” The section explained that the girls, divided into groups according to age and experience, were “always accompanied by an experienced riding master.”

  On a separate page of the same brochure, titled “Counselors and Representatives,” Miss Eleanor Fracker’s high school picture is displayed. She wears a white blouse and a touch of color on her lips. Her face, as would be the case for the entirety of her life, is just seconds away from a wide and genuine smile. Her long, wavy hair is pulled back with what would become, for as long as she taught horsemanship, her signature barrettes. She is listed as a student at Boston University, living at 76 Norman Road, Melrose, Massachusetts. She had become an “experienced riding master,” and was thus given leeway by the staff. “They left me alone to teach whatever, and as a result, they taught me how to teach.”