Mary Jo Murray loved horses and “trusted them to take care of her,” said her sister Paula Murray of Kansas City, Mo.
But something happened with a horse Mary Jo Murray was riding near LaSalle on July 10. The accident took her life. She was 65.
“It was horrendous,” said Dixie Walker, a friend who was riding with Murray that day and tried to resuscitate her.
Walker said they had just mounted their animals and Walker’s horse inexplicably threw her, and then cantered off. Murray began riding toward Walker’s horse and within a few minutes disappeared from everyone’s sight.
Walker got a ride in a pickup to go after Murray but within a few minutes she had disappeared over a hill and then they saw Murray’s horse without Murray on it. Murray was on the ground in the middle of an intersection of county roads.
“We’ll never know exactly what happened,” Walker said. She died of head and neck injuries, said Paula Murray.
Mary Jo Murray had other careers before buying a 40-acre piece of land about five miles southeast of Greeley, but “she blossomed” after moving to the land and getting horses, Paula Murray said.
Mary Jo Murray had ridden horses since she was a kid, with Paula Murray and their sister, Cathy Brady of Colorado Springs.
“But Mary Jo had more of a feeling for them,” said Paula Murray.
Her sister had several horses, usually Arabians, on her land and often boarded horses for other people.
She loved to go on long trail rides with groups, whether in Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska or Utah. She and friends rode mules to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Mary Jo Murray was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 14, 1942, and earned her master’s degree in social work at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. She moved to Denver in 1969, working in the child-protection division of the Denver Department of Social Services.
She left that career in the 1970s to become a CPA and got a master’s degree in taxation from the University of Denver.
But she found her niche when she bought the land, about 10 years ago.
She had the house and a “rattletrap barn” rebuilt, and stables and a loafing shed built, said a friend, Sandy Dickens of LaSalle.
“She was very committed to those things she was interested in,” said Dickens. “Friends were high on her list and so were the animals.”
Friends said she was a calm, patient, quiet person who made friends easily. “You couldn’t rile her, except about politics,” Walker said. “She was a pure Democrat.”
“She’ll be missed something fierce,” said Walker.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
