DECEMBER 2015 PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
Continued from page 19
so, it was his best friend who asked
her out for Texas/O.U. Weekend
festivities. She accepted.
Days later, Elaine and Terry ended
with a group of girls at a honky-tonk
in Fort Worth called The Hitching
Post. Again, one of the first people
she saw was Larry Hall.
Elaine observed as Larry danced
with just about every woman in the
place, but near closing time, he asked
her to dance.
Elaine responded: “Are you
through showing off with every sleazy
woman in this place for tonight?”
Larry didn’t miss a beat. “As a
matter of fact, I am,” he said. “And
I’d like to dance with you.”
“All I Have To Offer You Is Me,”
crooned Charley Pride as Larry swept
her onto the dance floor.
They began spending every
possible moment together. The
only thing that kept them apart was
Elaine’s job in Dallas, where she was
a bookkeeper and Larry’s work for his
family’s mechanical company.
Their courtship lasted less than a
year. Larry drove Elaine to Oklahoma
where they married in a civil
ceremony.
The Halls honeymooned
in Acapulco and then set up
housekeeping in Fort Worth with
Larry’s small son Shane.
In May 1971, Larry and Elaine
welcomed a son, Perry Jay. Two
years later a daughter was born. They
named her Leah Shereé.
Once their children were all
in school, Larry and Elaine found
that bringing them up in the city
environment of their spacious
Woodhaven home wasn’t well suited
to them. Elaine found the gated,
country club atmosphere to be
pretentious and cramped.
The family found a sanctuary in a
small ranch owned by Larry’s family’s
company for employee getaways.
Larry and Elaine bought a few saddle
horses and a horse trailer and fixed
up the property’s cabin. It wasn’t long
before they realized they preferred
spending time at the little ranch over
their Woodhaven home.
While taking a Sunday afternoon
drive Larry and Elaine discovered
66
Weatherford and Elaine fell in love
with the town. On Monday, Larry
called a realtor and their search for a
country home began.
What they found was a 105-acre
farm on Granbury Road. The property
was gorgeous, but the house was not.
Built in 1930, it wasn’t much more
than a two-story decaying gray box.
Elaine and Larry were so enthralled
by the land, especially the pristine
creek that ran along the back of the
property, that they bought it.
At first, they focused on raising
cattle on the property.
“That was just too tame for
Larry,” Elaine recalls. “Larry was
competitive. Raising cattle was just
not for him. It was just not a good fit.
He had been involved with bareback
bronc riding when he was 14, but it
isn’t necessarily what you want to do
when you’re 34.”
They had enjoyed watching a few
cutting horse competitions at Will
Rogers Coliseum while they were
still living in Fort Worth. Now, they
were living in the heart of cutting
horse country. Larry thought getting
involved in the cutting horse scene
would be fun and far less physically
demanding than bronc riding. Elaine
agreed.
Blue Boon Beginnings
Competition was Larry’s number
one thing, according to Elaine. “He’d
gone to Stephenville just to watch
[cutting horse trainer] Larry Reeder
work.”
It was at Reeder’s farm that Larry
Hall first saw Royal Blue Boon.
“He knew from watching her that
she was special,” Elaine continued.
“She was extra special, she was
talented, and she was going to be
great.”
The filly, at 3, already had an
intriguing past. It began in 1970
with Curt Donley, an Oklahoma
schoolteacher who had a passion for
cutting horses.
Supporting a young family on an
educator’s salary was challenging at
best. Realizing his dream of owning
a daughter of Royal King, the 1952
Reserve World Champion, and
making her the focal point of his
breeding program would have been
a mere fantasy for men of less moxy,
but Donley had a plan. He’d find
such a mare at Earl Albin’s fall sale.
Trouble was that his first-born son
seemed determined to scuttle plans.
He came into the world on the exact
evening Donley had planned to head
out to Comanche, Texas, and the
sale. Donley waited until his son was
born, kissed his wife and headed to
the sale, arriving at his destination
just after the sale began.
Donley bought a broodmare
named Royal Tincie. She was a small
red roan mare with an injured foot,
just over 13 hands high. But she was
a daughter of Royal King, who was
out of a daughter of Royal Texas, also
by Royal King. At $650 Donley got
a royal deal on the only ho rse in the
sale that he could afford.
Five years later Donley was
moonlighting at the National Cutting
Horse Association (NCHA) Futurity
when he discovered Boon Bar in his
stall, down with symptoms of colic.
With no one around to help him,
he got the horse up on his feet. He
then led the stallion to the nearest
pay phone and called Gary Kennell,
owner of the sick horse.
Kennell was so grateful to Donley
for saving Boon Bar’s life that he
offered Donley the opportunity to
breed his mare to Boon Bar. Donley
accepted. The result was Royal Blue
Boon. That was 1980.
When Donley sold Royal Blue
Boon and her dam Royal Tincie less
than a year later for $13,000, he was
elated. To him it was a tidy sum of
cash to receive for two horses that
cost him a total of $650.
Little did Donley know that he
had just sold the future leading dam
of the cutting horse world.
Donley also had no idea that
months later the buyer would take
Royal Blue Boon and sell her alone,
for more than $20,500 to Larry
Reeder.
Reeder took the half-grown filly
and turned her into the proverbial silk
purse, then into a legend.
“I trained the mare,” Reeder said.
“I rode her and I sold her.” Reeder
added that he recognized Royal Blue
Boon was no ordinary horse, “pretty
quick,” after he first saw her. He
purchased her the same day when he
“saw her move on a cow.”
“There was a guy at the sale,”