The National Day of the Cowboy organization this year gave eight awards to people or groups that preserve and honor cowboy culture. One of them went to the Westernaires, a mounted precision drill team from Jefferson County.
Calling the Westernaires a mounted precision drill team is technically correct. It’s correct in the same way that a Ferrari is a car or, sticking with the genre, that Gene Autry sang, and Bill Pickett wrestled a few steer to the ground. That is to say, it’s only part of the story.
“Nobody understands this place,” says Glen Keller, the Westernaires director known to all here as Mr. Keller. Mr. Keller is 72, and was a federal bankruptcy judge and a longtime attorney before retiring, which he hasn’t really done.
He greets me at the Westernaires complex, just up the hill from the Jefferson County fairgrounds in Golden. Mr. Keller wears boots and a cowboy hat and possesses a smooth, deep announcer’s voice. “It’s crazy,” he continues, “and it’s been going since 1949. It started with 26 riders. Now, we have a thousand kids. . . . I’m the second director after Elmer Wyland, who started it. I took over in 1983 after he died, and I’ve been running it since. I haven’t figured out how to get somebody to take it.” He laughs. “I might have to die too. But I’m not pushing that button too hard.”
Still laughing, he leads me to the ring.
I had only passing familiarity with the Westernaires, which is a polite way to say I didn’t know anything. That’s my ignorance. The Westernaires, while located in Jefferson County and limited to its residents and property owners, are a Colorado institution. The riders are all between the ages of 9 and 19, and generations of them have performed for audiences great and small. The trick riders, hanging off their saddles every which way, are elite athletes. The drill teams — and there are dozens with dozens of riders — flow through maneuvers at a full gallop. It’s breathtaking. I mean that literally.
My first glimpse is of young women wearing white pants and white blouses embroidered with a red “W.” Red bandannas keep their hair out of their faces. There’s a story to the handkerchief. Most of the Westernaires are girls, and when one joins, she becomes a Tenderfoot. She’ll learn to ride. She’ll learn to care for and saddle a horse. If she doesn’t have a horse, Westernaires has a large stable.
“But she’ll also get a tan bandanna as part of her uniform,” says Gregg Kraxberger, whose daughters, Casey and Marisa, are Westernaires. “They’re expected to be in that uniform and after the first couple of months, if they forget their bandanna, they don’t get to ride. And they’re told, ‘It’s not up to your mom or your dad. They’re not riding. You are.’ It’s not that much, but it instills upon them that it’s not up to someone else to look out for you. It’s up to you.
“I heard Glen say something once and I’m not going to get it exactly right, but it was, ‘We don’t just teach kids how to ride. We grow them up. The horse is just the hook.’ “
Here, then, lies the heart of the Westernaires, the part of the story that can only suggest itself to audiences. To be as good as they are takes tremendous commitment and self-discipline. No drugs, no alcohol, no more than five absences. Any one of these things makes a rider a danger to herself and others. It’s the constant reinforcement of responsibility, to the horses carrying you and the team riding alongside you.
“This is my life and I love it,” says 16-year-old Casey Kraxberger. “You’re in or you’re not. There’s no doing it halfway.”
“It’s also a volunteer cadre that may be without peer. The Westernaires is a nonprofit with only one paid staffer — the caretaker who lives onsite. Volunteers, many of them parents and past Westernaires, manage the horses, work on the engines of the tractor-trailers, instruct the riders, drive the teams to performances, make the uniforms, cook, clean, everything. Imagine that effort sustained over 62 years.
There is only one way to understand this crazy place. “It’s a family,” says Westernaire Jaime Mencke, who is 16 and has been riding seven years. Her mother, Leisha, volunteers as head wrangler, managing the horses.
At Friday’s award presentation, National Day of the Cowboy executive director Bethany Braley spoke about the country’s pioneer heritage and cowboy culture. Young Casey had her own way of putting it: “I’m not just a part of history. I’m making history.”
After the presentation, Mr. Keller took the mike. “There’s only one way to start a show of the Westernaires,” he said, his voice rising. “It’s to open the gate.”
And in, the riders came.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
