By Charlie Ban-
Hanover Herald-Progress
May 5, 2005-
Most college students spend four years trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives.
Karen Dennehy spent her time at Sweet Briar College waiting to do what she wanted the most — work with her mother in the family business, training horses at the Eagle Point Farm. When she graduates this month, she will get that chance.
“I guess I was one of the lucky ones,” she said. “I never had any doubts about what I wanted to do.”
Her mother, Donna, said her focus was almost too strong.
“She didn’t think she had to go to college, she could just work on the farm her whole life,” she said. “I told her she needed to study business or something so she could handle running things here.”
“Here” is a 200-acre farm where Donna and family have trained horses since 1947. Before that, Eagle Point was a working farm owned by her grandparents. Donna has run the farm since she had to come home from the College of William and Mary to take charge of the business when her father died.
“She’s ready to take some days off, more golf days,” Karen said about her mother. “We’ll work together and she’ll hold my hand for a while,” she said.
Talk to her mother, however, and you will get a less conservative response about the handover.
“I’m ready to get out of this business,” she said, “I’m tired. This is a seven-day-a-week job. Whenever you go away, you worry that something might go wrong.”
Until Donna is ready to retire, the Dennehy women will work side-by-side at their family business and spend a lot more time together.
From early June until mid August, she will take horses to Colonial Downs to exercise, groom and prepare horses to race, as well as work with the veterinarians. She hopes to get her trainer’s license.
As Karen will readily tell anyone, her desire to work with horses has been ingrained in her since she was very young. By the time Karen was old enough to get involved in the farm, her father Stephen had started working as a pilot, after managing the farm’s business affairs for years. Her mother was the one who took Karen to horse shows, and would be involved in all of her horse-related activities.
“When foals would be born when she was in high school, she’d stay up though the night with me, even though she had school in the morning,” Donna said.
Last weekend, Karen’s family, friends and classmates conspired to surprise her with a legislative commendation for winning last year’s Affiliated National Riding Commission championship. She was led to the Sweet Briar Alumnae Club of Richmond’s luncheon under the guise of giving a speech about her grandmother, a Sweet Briar alumna. When Del. Frank Hargrove began to speak about the resolution, she was not at all suspicious when he referred to having known her for years. She was surprised, however, to hear her accomplishments listed and to find the resolution to be in her honor.
In her time at Sweet Briar, Karen has made three trips to the Affiliated National Riding Commission finals, winning the national championship in 2004.
“It’s not common for a backwoods girl to go to nationals and win,” she said.
This weekend, she will compete at the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association championships in Ohio, although the style of competition is not her favorite. She will get on a horse with which she has not had any experience and go over eight jumps. “The whole thing will take less than a minute,” she said. “It’s pretty much the luck of the draw.”
Reprinted with permission from the Hanover Herald-Progress.
