Ms. Kathryn Gruhn (Kathy)

Kathy had her first ride when her uncle plopped her on a pony on his Minnesota farm. From then on Kathy was certifiably horse crazy. She asked her parents for a pony for her birthday and received a Breyer’s horse. “Your entirely too young,” her father told her. “You have to be responsible to have a pony.” Kathy may have been young, perhaps even irresponsible, but she had a secret weapon. The girl had gumption! She would sneak out of the house at night, hurry through the dark to her neighbor’s home about a mile away. They had a Shetland pony. Kathy decided it could be her pony too. So she pulled herself up on his bare back, held onto the mane and rode him. Even after the pony dumped her, Kathy kept up her night time shenanigans. Every birthday she asked for a pony and every time she received the newest Breyer horse. She needed a plan. She started asking if she could do chores and get an allowance. She started babysitting. And finally she needed to think like her father. He was a successful attorney so Kathy wrote up a contract: if he would buy her a pony she would pay for his tack and feed. She presented it to him on her 11th birthday. He laughed at his clever daughter and agreed to get her a pony. Kathy told him to sign and date it so it would be a legal binding contract.

Late that afternoon he told Kathy to get in the car. His friend agreed to sell him a pony he owned. Kathy flew out of the house and had already turned the car on when her father finally got there. When they arrived there was indeed a pony out in a pasture. Kathy rushed out to see him while her father disappeared into the barn. Kathy wasn’t sure if she was having a nightmare or what. She stared at the pony. Something was not right. She walked around him and realized the pony only had three legs! She looked wide eyed at her father and his friend standing in front of the barn door. “Is this my pony?” Her dad replied, “Your contract stated a pony. I believe that qualifies as a pony.” Kathy’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her dad’s friend said, “Don’t listen to him Kathy.  She lost her leg to my plow. She can still get around but she's not for sell.” Her father stepped aside and led out a handsome brown and white pony. “Happy birthday Kathy.” She ran to the pony, counted 4 strong legs,  hugged the pony, then hugged her dad and then his friend. As the men went to close the transaction, Kathy jumped on her new pony and rode him 8 miles home in the dark along a two lane highway just in case her father changed his mind.

As Kathy grew more adept at riding she started breaking horses for other people and showing Hunters on an Appaloosa she bought along the way. She married Dr. William Gruhn (Bill) who also rode horses. They moved to Charleston and both began foxhunting with Middleton Place Hounds taking turns on riding their one horse. Rodney Swanson, the Huntsman, noticed their one horse situation and also Kathy's riding abilities. He started to go to a Sale Barn, buy a horse and have Kathy hunt on it. Then he’d sell it and bring Kathy another horse to break-in. It was a win-win for all. Later she and Bill moved to Charlotte where they intended to hunt with the Mecklenburg Hounds. Sally Cooper and Edward Cato were the Masters. Edward Cato disbanded the hunt and took the hounds with him. There were only 17 members left and they started talking about turning their group into a trail riding club --- that is until Kathy arrived on the scene. “My husband and I moved here specifically to hunt with the Mecklenburg Hounds, “cried Kathy. Another member explained that they didn’t have a Master. “Sure you do! I’ll be your Master,” Kathy stated. “My husband, Bill, he’ll be my Whipper-In. What about your Huntsman?” Someone told her it had been Bill Russell but he had retired. Kathy said, “I know Bill. I heard he’s been sick. Don’t worry, I know his son Doug. I’ll offer him the job!"

With Kathy’s guidance and undying energy and ingenuity made it all work. Three years later they had grown to 110 members. “It wasn’t easy going, “she admits. "We had to get July hounds from other hunts and they usually wanted to hunt deer. We had a 500 acre parcel of land that we turned into fox pens to teach them to only hunt fox." She started fundraising ideas including trailer backing competitions and the Calcutta drag hunt where everyone bet on a hound to win. The one thing Kathy wanted most `was to get some other clubs to have a Joint Meet. “I was new to the area; people were loyal to Sally Cooper or Edward Cato. I finally called Louise Houghston with the Tryon Hounds. I confessed that nobody seemed to want to hunt with an unknown Hunt Master. Louise paused and then she said, “We’ll have a joint hunt with you. And you will all be our guests for our Hunt Ball.”  Kathy almost cried. "I'll never forget that sweet Louise."

The Mecklenburg Hounds started losing territory to developers from of Charlotte. Their once hunting lands are now known as Piper Glen and Ballantyn high end golf communities. All her friends in Weddington starting moving away as they were no longer in the country. One of her neighbors and good friend was Ivey Sumrell who had moved to Tryon. Kathy started thinking about doing the same. She started looking online at real estate in the area. She found a farm in the equestrian neighborhood named Greenfield. It was perfect and near Ivey’s farm but she wasn’t sure it was still for sale. Ivey told her to call Bonnie Lingerfelt who was a top horse farm agent and Master of the Tryon Hounds. Bonnie checked and said there was a couple from NY who were flying here in two days to sign the contract. Kathy grabbed Bill and told Bonnie they would meet her there in two hours.  Kathy loved everything about the property.  All Bill cared about was the basement. An avid woodworker he had all he needed was in the home’s downstairs. They bought the farm that afternoon.

The first week they were there Bill was setting up his basement man cave and shop while Kathy was unpacking and setting up the rest, including the barn. She looked out of a window and saw her horses were loose. She yelled down to Bill that she had to go rescue their horses and she raced out of the house after them. The sun was going down when she got that last horse back to their new digs, fed them and made sure all the gates were locked. Exhausted, she went upstairs to take a long hot shower. In the meantime Bill came up from the basement and looked around for Kathy. He vaguely remembered hearing her call out something about the horses being loose. He called out for Kathy. When she didn’t answer he surmised she must still be looking for them in the dark. He dashed out to his truck and started driving around the neighborhood. He saw a riding ring with the gate open and thought the horses may have gone in there. He drove the truck into the ring. There had been a lot of rain the night before and Bill’s truck got stuck.

He got out of the truck and inadvertently cut his hand. Being on blood thinners he was bleeding profusely. He got a shovel out of the truck bed  and tried to dig the truck out but his hands were slick with blood even after rubbing them on his shirt. He dropped the shovel and walked back to the house to bandage up his hand. When Bill walked back he saw a sheriff’s car parked by ring. The sheriff was peering into Bill’s truck where he noticed blood on the seat. The sheriff looked at him warily, noting the blood on his shirt. “This your truck?” “Yes. I got it stuck.” “Why did you drive into the ring on somebody else’s property?” “I was looking for my wife. She’s missing.” The sheriff saw the blood all over Bill’s clothing, and then saw the bloody shovel. Then backup deputies arrived with sirens and lights blazing. “You’re under arrest.” “What? You don’t understand,” Bill protested as they sheriff put him in hand cuffs and read him his rights to the sound of an ambulance and firetruck appeared. “You can tell us all about it when we get to the station.”

The next morning the police called the Gruhns’ kids who were living in Asheville to let them know their mother was missing and they were holding their father in jail for suspicion of murder. Frantic, the kids called Ivey and told her what the police sid. Ivey rushed over to the Gruhns' house and started ringing the doorbell. Nothing. She started banging on the front door with her fists yelling Kathy’s name. Suddenly the door swung open and there stood Kathy in her pajamas looking groggy. Ivey screamed, “You’re alive! You’re alive!"

And that friends and neighbors is how Kathy and Bill Gruhn met their neighbors for the first week time. While Bill has passed away several years ago, Kathy has made her peace. She has returned to being the life of the party and has an annual Hunt Breakfast with a Mardi Gras theme complete with a band, costume parade and gumbo and has also become the de facto auctioneer for our annual Holiday Party.

Ms. Wendy Wipperman

Wendy first fell in love with horses and riding at a summer camp in Western New York at the age of 12. When camp was over, she was determined to continue riding. She asked her parents for a horse for her birthday but knowing that it wasn’t likely her parents would agree, asked for riding lessons as a backup plan. Wendy’s parents agreed, and weekly riding lessons soon grew to include a pony for Christmas. The pony was boarded at a small backyard barn owned by a retired man who Wendy’s father knew. Mr. Fred Rinker had high standards for his young boarders, who were expected to care for their own horses including cleaning their stalls daily. “We girls were a little afraid of Mr. Rinker, who inspected our stalls. I still remember him demonstrating how to properly sweep the barn aisle!” recalled Wendy. When the pony Rusty was outgrown, Wendy was given her first horse Bonnie, followed by Sundance, a Morgan Pinto cross. “We girls rode unsupervised, and in the summer had sleep over parties in the barn hay loft,” Wendy recalled. “Those were the days!”

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Wendy was able to continue riding again, taking lessons at Switch Willo Stables in Austin, a hunter jumper barn. She acquired her horse Jonathan, an off the track thoroughbred while at Switch Willo. “Back in the 1980’s, most hunter jumpers were thoroughbreds,” Wendy recalled. When Wendy relocated to upstate New York, Jonathan went with her. While living in the Hudson Valley, she and Jonathan spent hours hacking out, even in the snow. “It was magical!” she recalls.

After moving to the Fort Worth/Dallas area in the late 90’s for a job opportunity she started showing hunters. She bought “Jackie”, a Hungarian Warmblood who was known to be a bit difficult. She showed in the hunter divisions for a while but noticed that Jackie was starting to get sour in the ring. She and her husband, Tom Kaufman, had a small farm in Texas that had riding trails within the subdivision. Jackie loved to hack out. It was then Wendy realized that Jackie preferred trails to the show ring. A good friend of Wendy’s and long-time fox hunter Scot Litke suggested they should try fox hunting. Wendy was concerned: neither she nor her mare had ever fox hunted before. What could possibly go wrong?

At her friend’s urging they decided to give it a try. They arrived at their first hunt with the Hickory Creek Hounds. It wasn’t five minutes off the trailer and into the saddle when the cry of “Tally Ho!” was shouted out and they were off at a full run chasing a coyote! Wendy and Jackie loved the thrill of the wide open spaces. Wendy noticed how Jackie watched the hounds, studying their movements. Oftentimes while just the two of them were hacking out in a neighbors’ hayfield they would spot a coyote crossing the field. Wendy would lean in and whisper in Jackie’s ear, “Go get ‘em!” and Jackie would take off after the coyote like she was a fox hound in a warmblood’s body! They had found their sport.

The territory in Texas was open with little cover. Game was mostly coyote and wild pigs were a danger as they would attack the foxhounds. One time Wendy and Jackie were hacking back to their trailer after a hunt when Wendy noticed a puppy nestled near some scrub brush. She stopped Jackie to get a closer look. “It was absolutely the ugliest puppy I had ever seen,” Wendy said, screwing up her face. “I took a second look and realized it was a piglet. Where there is a piglet there is a wild mother about to charge! I kicked Jackie and we high-tailed it to the trailer.”

As the Dallas/Fort Worth area exploded with development the hunt was losing more and more territory. It took Wendy nearly an hour to get to their hunt fixtures. “It just wasn’t the same any more. Tom and I realized we didn’t want to retire here. I wanted to move somewhere where there was more of a hunt culture.” They knew Tom and Jolene Eizember who were living in Texas but were building a house in Tryon where they were going retire. Wendy had heard of Tryon but didn’t really know much about it. Wendy had an upcoming finance conference in Charlotte and decided to stay for another few days and explore Tryon, which was only 90 minutes away.

When she reached Landrum she saw Stone Soup Restaurant which looked cute and decided to try it out. When she walked into the restaurant, the owner, Suzanne Strickland, threw her arms around Wendy and said, “When did you move here?” Wendy said you must be mistaking me for someone else to which Suzanne replied, “You look like you belong here.” A warm feeling came over Wendy as she looked around and saw all the photographs of people riding horses who now called Tryon home. “And then she said to me that people were “called” to come here,” Wendy said. “I felt tingle run down my neck. I don’t believe in coincidence, but I do at times feel that I see a “sign”."

While rambling around the area, Wendy found herself in Columbus at one of the round-abouts. The beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains were shining beneath a startling blue sky when she saw a book mobile coming towards her on the round-about. “My mother was a book mobile librarian in Erie County “, Wendy said in a whispery voice. “It’s so rare to even see a book mobile these days. The whole area was reminiscent of where I grew up in upstate NY and the Hudson Valley area. I called Tom and said I’m buying property here. To his credit, he didn’t question my sanity!”

They looked for a couple of years looking for the right property. During one visit Wendy went to the 2018 Field Hunter Trials at the Tryon International Equestrian Center. There was a lady from Southern Pines, Shelly Talk, who was riding a horse that Wendy instantly fell in love with. She asked Shelly if she would sell her Welsh Quarter horse cross. “She said I will never sell Clementine. We whip for the Moore County Hounds.” Hmmm – a horse that was a whipper in…no wonder Ms. Wipperman couldn’t get that mare out of her mind. It took 3 years before Shelly agreed to sell Wendy the mare. She is still hunting 23 year old Clemmie with the Tryon Hounds. They finally found a farm which they bought. It was a very telling sign that a Tryon Hounds hunt fixture was adjacent to it. Wendy moved to the farm during the Covid Pandemic since her work could be done remotely. Tom didn’t move until 2023. While Tom had enjoyed trail riding he wasn’t at all sure he
wanted to hunt. Wendy found Tom a horse in Aiken that had hunted 3 seasons named Ivan, a Gypsy Vanner cross “who is wide as he is tall.” After some lessons, Tom is now hunting with Wendy.

Wendy said her favorite memory of the Tryon Hounds was when they first came and joined as a social member before they moved here. “I was having a conversation with Louise Houston and I told her that Tryon Hounds made me feel so welcome. I’ll never forget what she said: ‘Well, we just love each other.’.”