‘He Was a Member of the Family’

WAITSBURG - Megan Mor- rison found her prince long before she became a Princess.

The member of the 2013 Waitsburg Court who hails from a household of few means, received 'Tex' as a gift three years ago from an older family friend who no- ticed the 12-year-old was the only one who could handle the feisty old rodeo horse.

"Tex was picky," Mor- rison, now 15, said through her tears during a recent interview at an equestrian event in Walla Walla. "If he didn't like you, he'd let you know."

The Waitsburg High School sophomore had big dreams for herself and the gelding. After nearly qualify- ing for the Washington State Fair in Puyallup last year, she was poised to get into the trail challenge competition with her mount this year, not to mention ride him alongside the other three members of Waitsburg's Royalty at all the fairs from Walla Walla to Pendleton.

Getting over those shaken dreams isn't even the worst, she said. Far more difficult will be mourning the loss of what she described as a "member of the family."

Tex died Thursday in a tragic trailer accident on the Weston-Elgin Highway not far from Tollgate south of the state line. Miraculously, Morrison's mom, her young- er brother and their two dogs emerged from their wrecked pickup with minor scrapes.

But with the loss of Tex, who meant everything to Morrison while her family was going through a rough transition, the household is struggling to pick up the pieces, emotionally and fi- nancially.

"I don't know what we're going to do," Megan's mom, Sandra Morrison, said this weekend.

Young Rider

Like many girls who get into western or English pleasure riding, Morrison started young. She was only three when she first perched atop a saddle on a trail ride with family friends. Growing up in the Tri Cities, the Mor- risons would often ride on borrowed horses in West Richland or in the Badger Canyon area.

It didn't take long for Morrison to want her own horse.

"I just liked being with horses and bonding with something so much larger than me," she said.

On road trips, as the fam- ily car would pass a horse- dotted pasture, she would point to the animals and ask if her parents could buy one of them. Later, she would go through the Little Nickle and ask the same about the horses listed in the classifieds.

"I would beg them," she said.

Sandra Morrison said her family's income didn't allow for the companion Megan wanted. She was a stay-at- home mom and her husband hired out as a general laborer. The household's income would not have been enough for some basic tack, let alone the horse to put it on.

Still, Megan started bank- ing her money from chores and after a year, she had saved up $150. One day, when the girl was 10, her mother saw a horse for sale in Prescott. At first, it was priced at $1,000, but after a while the price dropped to $400 and Sandra Morrison decided she'd try to negoti- ate.

"Well, how much has she (Megan) saved," she quoted the owner as asking her at the time. When the answer was less than half the marked down price, the owner, Deb Scudder, nonetheless re- lented. Scudder, who is now Morrison's court advisor, could have had no idea the bargain would come full circle.

When the Morrisons collected the horse in the field, all they had for tack was a halter and a lead rope. They were soon on the hunt for gear on line and on the local garage-sale circuit.

"eBay became our friend for tack," Sandra Morrison said.

So, the girl cut her teeth on Daisy, a mellow two- decades-old mare who later developed such severe arthri- tis "it took her 10 minutes to walk 100 feet," the young Morrison said.

After about two years, the Morrisons had no choice but to end her misery, Morrison's mom said.

My Prince

Not half an hour after she said her goodbyes to Daisy, Megan Morrison received an offer she couldn't turn down. A family friend in the Tri Cities gave her Tex, a re- tired rodeo performer whom only her previous owner and Morrison were able to keep in line.

If Daisy was hard to get going, Tex was hard to stop. Trained for speed and agility, Tex also had a big personal- ity and he wasn't about to be retired as a "lawn ornament," Sandra Morrison laughed.

"He was a smart aleck," Megan Morrison said. "If he thought he could get away with something like stealing a bag of grain out of the horse trailer, he would."

Her mother reminded her regularly to "keep your emo- tions in check or he will walk all over you."

But the same smarts and stubbornness that made it tough to teach him patterns in the arena, would sometimes protect her against poten- tially dangerous decisions on the trail and look out for her in other ways.

"I got along with him really well," she said.

Doug Phipps, who became Megan's trainer ear- lier this summer, said being a court horse was the "coolest retirement" imaginable for an old rope horse like Tex. He was so loyal to her, she'd barely need to tie him up out- side the grocery store.

"She'd go inside to get a pop and he'd stay 'parked' outside without moving," Phipps said.

Friends nicknamed him "Texico" and her "Megico" because of her dark complexion. They didn't win an abundance of ribbons at first, but Megan was determined to compete while casting an envious eye at the glitter- ing members of the Benton Franklin Fair court and the royalty at other events where she and Tex would show.

She quickly discovered his strengths. If he was "all over the map" in the barrel races, he was very fast in trail challenges. In 2012, she showed in four events and placed first in the extreme trail challenge, which rider and mount completed four whole minutes short of their 10-minute allotment.

That same year, circum- stances in the Morrisons' personal life forced them to move away from the Tri Cit- ies and back to Waitsburg, where Sandra Morrison had grown up but where her kids knew barely anyone. An older cousin, recent WHS graduate Carolyn Brooks, took her under her wing and it didn't take long for Megan to make new friends.

Then came the opportunity to throw her hat in the ring for the Waitsburg Court and despite Tex's struggle with some of the trials, she was in and found even more acceptance to overcome the disruption in her life.

"Here I was, able to do it (become a fair court mem- ber)," Megan Morrison said. "Tex helped me live up to it."

The accident

That is until that fateful afternoon last week, when her world was turned upside down just outside Elgin. It was 2 p.m. On their way to Joseph, Ore., for a court appearance at Chief Joseph Days, Sandra, Megan and her brother T.J. were heading down Highway 204 in the pickup with Tex in tow in the old Circle J horse trailer.

On a portion of highway near Tollgate where the shoulder shrinks to a mere foot beyond the outside rum- ble strip, Sandra Morrison took her eyes off the road for an instant and the truck and trailer slid off the edge and went down a steep 15-foot embankment.

The truck kept its wheels on the dirt, but the trailer didn't. The gooseneck came off and the 36-foot box with Tex, the tack, a large BBQ and weekend provisions - altogether weighing some 9,000 pounds - assumed a trajectory of its own, rolled over and came to rest more than 10 feet ahead of where the truck had stopped in the small ravine.

By the time driver and passengers realized what happened, the side of the truck was deeply gashed, the passenger door had caved in and windows had disin- tegrated. An Oregon Police Traffic Crash Report filled out by a Union County Sher- iff's deputy describes both vehicles as "totaled."

"We just had cuts and scrapes," said Sandra Mor- rison, who described their survival as nothing short of a miracle. "We're alive today but for the grace of God."

Megan Morrison couldn't open her door, so she crawled out of the shattered window to rush to the trailer. She could only see Tex's legs and hind quarters. The rest of him was under the trailer, linked to the inside of the box by his lead rope. He had been ejected by the crash. She screamed and scrambled for a knife to cut the lead and free him, but after she did, the big rig was immovable on top of him. His body was still.

"I thought, 'he's just ly- ing there being good,'" the princess said. "I thought he'd walk out of there just fine."

Hours later when the truck was finally pulled back to the road and the trailer moved, a Sheriff's deputy gave the family the bad news.

"I didn't want to believe him," Megan Morrison said. But when the women saw the body sprawled across the driver's flatbed truck, Sandra Morrison noticed a puncture wound in Tex's chest and knew it was over.

"It was probably a quick and painless death, possibly from a broken neck, they told us," she said.

Now what?

As soon as word of the accident spread, many in the equestrian community, in- cluding the new fairgrounds center in Waitsburg, stepped forward to help.

Calls came from the Tri Cities with offers of mounts to borrow. Her junior court advisor made her horse Boomer available to Morri- son to complete the fair court season. Megan Morrison is determined to do just that despite the challenge of getting used to another horse. She's not sure if she can secure the right FFA certification to compete with Boomer in other events.

Meanwhile, the family remains without a trailer and even though most of the prin- cess' royalty attire survived, some of her tack was badly damaged.

"We don't know the extent it yet," Sandra Morrison said.

The Morrisons barely had the old trailer for a month and a half before it was totaled in the accident. They were planning to change from a four-horse straight load to a slant load and made other improvements to it, she said.

The trailer was not insured and even though the truck was, there will still be a de- ductible the family will need help with, Phipps said.

Want to Help?

A bank account has been set up in Megan Morrison's name at American West Bank. You can go into any branch in Waitsburg, Dayton or Walla Walla to make a deposit.