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Susan Hadley looks out at her ranch, "We have built this all up from nothing. A lot of hard work and a lot of dreams."
This is is the dream of Sherm and Susan Hadley, a 17-acre ranch just west of Ogden. The perfect playground to pursue their passion.
"The passion is being able to work with my husband and our boys. And working in our backyard doing something we love to do, being with the horses," said Susan.
The Hadley's are horsemen and women that love their horse racing and have gone three generations deep in training these spectacular animals.
"With race horses it's got to be 100 percent or nothing, because it is hard work," said Hadley.
They've been in the horse business for years and have experienced the highs and the lows, the risks and the rewards. They know all about beating the odds.
Susan knows "that it is such an accomplishment when they cross that finish line and you know you have done your job and you've done it to your best."
For nearly two decades, their business thrived. But on a cold winter night in January of 2008, everything changed when Sherm and his youngest son Garrett went to the barn to do a simple chore.
Susan remembers, "I heard Sherm holler at Garrett."
"After that I couldn't remember anything, I just woke up (from unconsciousness) and heard my mom screaming," recalls Garrett.
"I remember the bales of hay falling and all I could see was Sherm's boots out of the hay," Susan said.
Three bales of hay, weighing 850 pounds a piece came crashing down on Sherm as he pushed Garrett out of harms way.
Oldest son and then 17-year-old Jordan, "came running from around the barn and my mom said 'the hay fell on Dad.' We tried rolling it and got it rolled up enough that we could pull my dad out."
Susan has no doubt, "They saved his life. If they couldn't have moved it, there would have been no time."
Sherm survived the accident, but the injuries he sustained caused him to suffer a stroke. All of a sudden, one of the top trainers in the Intermountain West was bound to a wheelchair with the inability to speak more than a single word at a time.
The responsibility of keeping the ranch running fell on the shoulders of a 17-year-old boy.
Jordan knows it would be a long shot. He said, "A lot of people had doubts that me, my mom and Garrett could fill my dad's shoes and train horses as good as he could."
"He pulled his dad's boots on and took charge," said Susan, Jordan's mom.
"There was quite a bit of pressure, I had a lot of help from family," Jordan remembers, "and all of my dad's friends. I just felt like I had a lot of pressure on me to live up to the name."
There was little self-doubt. Jordan said, "It crossed my mind a few times, but whenever it did, I just tried to push on harder. Seems like the harder you work, the more you accomplish."
Jordan put all his focus on taking care of the ranch. He applied everything his father taught him about the horse business.
That's when he started training a filly named Dreaming of Kisses.
"She's pretty special. I started her from the ground up," said Jordan. "I've done everything with her. It's pretty cool when I can look back and remember her trying to buck me off a few times and riding her out in the cold and the arena when I really didn't want to, but I knew it would pay off."
And payoff it did. Just five days after earning his training license, Jordan entered the filly into the Bitterroot Futurity, the largest horse race in Idaho. The purse was $100,000.
Dreaming of Kisses was a long shot: 35-1.
"It's pretty intimidating," Jordan said. "There's a lot of good trainers and a lot of good horses. I never had any expectations to win, I was just hoping for the best."
Mom agreed, "I knew in my heart she would give her all, we did our job, it was up to her (Kisses) when the gates opened."
As Jordan remembers the race, "I felt my heart sink, that was it. From behind it looked like everyone (the other race horses) just gave her the best shot to win."
"I saw my mom clear at the edge of the finish line yelling and screaming at me, waving her arms," Jordan remembers with a big smile.
Unable to hold back the emotions, Susan said, "The tears just started running. I think people thought, 'What happened to that lady?' because the tears ... it was so emotional for us to comeback and win."
The fact that they could win it for Sherm was the true joy. Jordan said, "That's probably the thing that means the most to me, to know that he's proud of me and what I've done."
"To work that hard and to have Sherm by our side. It's amazing. We did it, we really did it," Susan said.
"I think I've proven to people that I could live up to my dad's name," said Jordan.
E-mail: jjensen@ksl.com
