Centenarian cowgirl

HUNT, Texas -- In 1901, while the Wright brothers were trying to fly and Guglielmo Marconi was trying to get his radio to work, Constance Douglas was born in a tiny Texas border town, the only child of a district judge and his genteel wife.

It would never occur to Connie, as she swam in the Rio Grande and rode horses with cowboys, that other little girls in other places lived vastly different lives. She was a spirited, willful child and the world was hers. That it began in Texas and ended in Texas was just fine with her, and with everyone she knew.

After she grew up and went to college, she became the first woman to enter the University of Texas Law School. She met Eleanor Roosevelt. She taught school and horseback riding. She didn't marry until age 42, becoming a rancher as well as a wife.

It never crossed her mind that she would outlive every person she ever loved, including Jack, her husband of 40 years. Or that along the way she would become famous simply by being herself.

Connie Douglas Reeves, at age 100, helped open the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame this summer, sharing the spotlight with a new inductee, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

She was honored because she has taught more than 30,000 girls to ride Western and English. Because she embodies the independent cowgirl spirit. And because on most days, though she is "hard of hearing and can't see a thing," she still gets on her horse and rides.

For the past 66 summers, a significant portion of her life and heart has been claimed by Camp Waldemar for Girls, an exclusive oasis straddling the cool, green Guadalupe River in the Texas hill country. Riding, canoeing, swimming, and archery are taught during monthlong sessions intended to supply 7- to 16-year-olds with something Reeves never seemed to lack -- self-possession.

At first, she didn't think she belonged in the cowgirl hall of fame. "I didn't see that I had made much of a contribution," she says, sitting on the roofed porch of Camp Waldemar's horse stables, taking refuge from a merciless Texas sun.

"But they said I taught all those girls, and when you add the fact that I did all that ranching, I guess I've done enough to contribute to the Western heritage of life," she says.