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Swiftsure Ranch to Showcase New Digs in and Open House, Monday Page 4
Friday’s Summerfest in Hailey was the perfect end of school party!
Play the Numbers Game this Friday Page 8
A Dessert That ‘Takes the Cake’ for Dad’s Day
PG 16
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J u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 2 • V o l . 5 • N o . 2 4 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Feel Good This Summer BY MEAGAN STASZ, THE HUNGER COALITION
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ummer brings those long hot days and refreshingly cool mountain nights. It’s all about kids biking to the playground or down to the river. There are fish to catch, lawns to mow and barbecues to fire up. Gardeners may lament the crazy weather, but they know crisp peas and crunchy carrots are not far off. Summer is one of the wonderful things to be grateful for living in the Wood River Valley. It’s a feel good time of year and a time of year to feel good. With the help of volunteers from around the community, The Hunger Coalition hopes to make sure summer 2012 can be a good time of year for everyone, especially the 3,000 or so children and adults living in food insecurity in Blaine County. It sounds alarming, as it should. We do actually have this many in our midst unable to make ends meet and uncertain where their next meal is coming from. This is one of the reasons why The Hunger Coalition and Blaine County School District are excited to start another summer of The Lunch Connection, so local kids can have nourishing, wholesome free hot meals during the week. And, it’s why the Environmental Resource Center, Sawtooth Botanical Garden and Bellevue Public Library are pitching in to share fun outdoor activities with all the kids coming to Woodside Elementary for free lunch this summer! Fresh, nutritious foods support a healthy lifestyle and make summer all the more enjoyable. For children dealing with malnutrition and hunger, summer is not a time of laughter and sunshine. These children have less energy and cannot focus. They suffer the physical, mental and emotional issues that come from insufficient nutrition and crisis. To ensure these children have the chance to experience childhood instead of hunger, there is The Lunch Connection. For their families, there is The Hope Garden and Mobile Food Bank, programs offering access to improved nutrition and healthier ways to prepare foods. The Hope Garden in downtown Hailey welcomes one and all during these bountiful months to learn how to plant, nurture, and harvest vital fresh vegetables and fruits. Workshops share valuable tips on growing and eating fresh from the garden. The best part: All the produce goes to local children and adults in need of wholesome, fresh food. With the help of Atkinsons’ Markets, Albertsons in Hailey and Idaho’s Bounty, crisp peas and crunchy carrots won’t be reserved for home gardeners or the Farmers’ Markets. Kids and their families can feel a little better about the stressful challenges they face because they are enjoying juicy fruits and tasty vegetables from the Mobile Food Bank. And maybe everyone in Blaine County can have a chance to feel good about summer 2012. On behalf of the 560 local families and individuals who will have healthier foods to eat and the staff who appreciate your generosity as a community, thank you for doing your part to create a whole and healthy Blaine County! The Hunger Coalition strives to end hunger in our community by providing wholesome food to those in need and by promoting solutions to the underlying causes of hunger through collaboration, education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.thehungercoalition.org. tws
For Love of the Horse STORY & PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
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ary Ann Knight has driven the Blaine County Heritage Court carriage in Valley parades since the court made its debut in 2008. This year she’ll get a reprieve from the reins—this longtime dental assistant who likes to say she “retired three dentists” has been named to the Heritage Court herself. Knight was nominated for this year’s court by The Papoose Club for her work with 4-H and the Sawtooth Rangers Riding Club, where she organizes the tea for rodeo royalty each summer. The court was established to pay homage to women who have made the Valley what it is today, said Mike Healy, one of the organizers. Knight was born in Buhl but her parents bought a farm on 318 acres at the southern end of what is now Buttercup Road when she was two. Her father’s skin pores had been destroyed by the heat of working in vegetable canning factories, Knight says, and he could no longer tolerate the heat in the Magic Valley. Mary Ann’s family — the Drexlers— kept the town supplied with fresh eggs and milk, feeding the hogs with leftover milk. “If I did something wrong, my punishment was to sort the potatoes we grew into 10- and 100-pound bags,” Knight recalled. Knight was just two when she started riding the family’s part-draft horse bareback into the canyon above the old Cutter’s Ranch to check on the family cattle. When she was five, her father bought her a pony, handing over her piggy bank to Santa for a saddle. “I rode that horse all over town. But Dixie was ornery. We’d get to where I was going and she’d dump me off—buck me—and go home,” Knight recalled. Knight remembers a fun childhood filled with baseball, kick-the-can, hideand-seek, nine-cent “Tarzan” and “Roy Roger” movies at The Star Theatre and 12-cent movies at The Liberty Theatre. No one in Hailey skied then, even though Sun Valley was just up the road, because no one knew how to ski, Knight said. Instead, kids sledded down Silver and Galena streets. “It was a peaceful, beautiful, simple life,” she said. “You’d tell them what you wanted at the hardware store and they’d find it for you—you didn’t look for it yourself. The Legion Auxiliary put on a talent show each year with two-act plays and a dance group—everyone looked forward to it. And you rarely went to Ketchum, although the high school band would occasionally play for the VIPs as they got off the train.” At 18 Knight left the farm the day after
Mary Ann Knight laments that she doesn’t do as much trail riding as she used to. “I don’t have time. I’m just barely keeping the horses in shape. The computer world has changed the horse world a lot. A lot of time that people would spend with horses, they’re now on computers. I hate it, but my kids said I have to have one if I’m going to keep up with things.”
she graduated from high school. “Nobody wants to be on the farm because you can’t make money,” she said. “My dad would be up a four in the morning, keeping the machinery and everything going. I can’t begin to count the hours he worked.” Knight got a job in accounting at Sun Valley, given room and board in a dorm where the Sun Valley Post Office now sits. “It was the only time in my life that someone made my bed, my meals,” she fondly recalls. Her bags were packed to take a job with the traveling accountant for Union Pacific Railroad, which owned Sun Valley Resort, when she met Don Knight, who would become her husband, while having drinks with friends in Ketchum. “One look and I knew he was going to be my match for life. I went home and unpacked and told them I wouldn’t be going to Omaha,” Knight recalled. “I had actually met him when I was in second grade because my sister, who was 10 years older than me, married his brother. Don was just home from the service when we met again. He had bought a used car and was looking for a job in Ketchum.” The two were married in 1961, had three children—David, Diana and Joe —and spent 21 years together before Don died in 1982. Don ran a garage and repair shop for several years before taking law enforcement jobs in Ketchum and Bellevue.
“Don made a good marshal because he could solve a lot of problems talking with people,” Knight said. “My older brother Orville, who was Blaine County sheriff, was that way, too—he had a way of speaking with people that made them comfortable.” Today Knight lives in a log home her son built six years ago on the family’s 40acre ranch off Highway 75 just north of Glendale Road. A cowboy hat hangs on the wall. Two horseshoes serve as a napkin holder. And Knight sports a big rodeo belt buckle her granddaughter won for All-Around Champion at the 2007 Wood River Valley Junior Rodeo. Knight herself has ridden with the Sawtooth Rangers since 1965 and still organizes teas for the rodeo queens. She also is involved with the Upper Big Wood River Grange, ensuring that the facility remains available for public gatherings and dance classes. Come Fourth of July, Knight will dress the horses for the parade in Hailey as her companion Bill Sherbine hooks the draft horses up to one of three vis-à-vis carriages he found in Kuna and Oregon. But instead of climbing into the driver’s seat, Knight will climb into the plush seats with fellow court honorees Ann Christensen, Marsha Riemann and Mary Peterson. “It’ll be interesting seeing everything from a different perspective,” Knight said. tws
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