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Trail of Hope
Death of a dreamer inflicted fierce pain, but her therapeutic-riding center is coming to life
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Published: April 24, 2005
Glade Valley, N.C. -
AUDIO SLIDESHOWS
Carrying On the Dream
"My heart ain't really in this, but my soul is." (2 min)
The Seed That Started It All
"Antonio's just special to me." (2 min)
(Journal graphic by Nicholas Weir)
Several times a day, Tommy Billings visits with his wife, Susan.
Usually, he's quiet, as is his nature.
Once in a while, he fills her in on his day's work at DearHaven Therapeutic Riding Center, the project that they started together.
Just before he falls into bed, exhausted, he visits again, covering the distance between his door and her resting place in about 80 steps. Some nights he crunches across frozen grass. Others, he crosses ground soggy with rain. He stands in the dark, then kneels and runs his fingers over bouquets of flowers that stand up to the weather.
When he's ready to leave, he rises from the ground where a blanket of dead sod outlines his wife's grave. He wipes the tears from his face and sighs.
Susan Billings, 40, died on Nov. 22 when a tractor-trailer turned over on the car she was driving up U.S. 21 in Wilkes County. Her mother, Jane McCarthy, escaped through a window as flames leapt from the car's engine. Susan, conscious and trapped in the crumpled car, burned to death.
She left behind her husband, her parents, four children, two stepchildren - and DearHaven, a dream that was just starting to become a reality.
Hours after Susan died, McCarthy turned to her devastated son-in-law and said the only thing that seemed to make sense on a night filled with horror. "If you can find it in your heart, please keep this going," she said. He said "yes."
Since then, an army of people has worked feverishly to make sure that the dream wouldn't die. No one has worked harder than Billings.
On a recent day at DearHaven, he lifted Samuel Richardson's inert body atop Sand, a gentle quarter horse, and hopped on behind. Richardson is paralyzed from the chest down. He wrapped his arms around Richardson's chest. George Osbourne led Sand, and Emily Crouse, the center's secretary, kept a hand on Richardson's back.
After a few turns around an outdoor pen, Billings told Richardson, "All right, Sam. I'm going to let you hold yourself." He placed his hands lightly on Richardson's back, with his fingers ready to grab his jacket in case Richardson toppled over. Then he backed off an inch or two. Richardson stayed upright.
"You're holding yourself now," Billings told him.
Seeing his riders improve brings him something akin to joy. Nothing else does. Not now.
More than three years ago, his wife decided that she wanted to help people with disabilities improve their lives by riding horses. She identified 130 people in Alleghany County who could benefit from a therapeutic-riding center, and she figured out what it would take to start one. Then she went to work on her husband. He caved quickly.
"You would have to know Susan," he said. "She always got what she wanted."
Susan's sister, Dawn Nichols, hadn't heard of therapeutic riding, and she didn't think that her sister could pull off such a big undertaking.
"I don't know where she got the idea, but she was just brave enough to get it started," she said. "I totally underestimated her."
An uncle gave Susan 10 acres that had been in the family since the 1700s. She and Billings, 42, began to offer trail rides there to see if they could make a go of it. They sold their house and land on Glade Creek and transferred the name Billingsway Farm to the new land. They moved into a tiny, dilapidated apartment in a building that once housed an auto-parts store.
When the rides proved successful, Billings quit his job driving a truck and devoted all his time to the farm. Susan kept her job at the Family Resource Center, a child-care center for parents working toward their high-school diplomas.
They planned DearHaven together. The complex would include a barn, an indoor riding arena with offices, and a log house that they would live in. At her insistence, the barn came first.
They assembled a board of directors and started raising money. They found their first clients - Antonio Ramirez, 4; Marshall Clifton, 19; and Richardson, 32. Antonio and Clifton have cerebral palsy. Richardson was paralyzed in a wreck.
A lover of the outdoors
Susan McCarthy Billings was a military brat who moved from one school to another when the Air Force transferred her father, Tim McCarthy. She appreciated nature and beauty, her mother said, and she loved animals and the outdoors.
"Susan wouldn't help in the house," her father said. But if he asked her to get hay for the cows or build a fire, "she'd knock you down to get to the door." She never shied away from hard work.
In 1979, the McCarthys moved to Alleghany County. That Christmas, their parents bought Stockings, their first horse. Susan was 15 and Dawn was 12.
"They loved that horse," Jane McCarthy said. "It was an ornery old critter." But Susan always had a knack for handling horses.
She grew into a natural beauty who didn't wear makeup or care much about clothes. She stood 5 feet 10 and wore her shiny brown hair long and straight.
She and Billings dated at Alleghany High School, and they went to the prom together. His senior year, he asked her to marry him.
"It scared her to death," he said. They broke up, and each married someone else. But they never lost touch.
Susan's first marriage produced four children - Timothy, Candice, Alyssa and Charles Mimbs. Billings and his first wife had two, Lindsey and Morgan.
Billings divorced first; Susan followed three years later. They married in 1998.
"Me and Susan went through some rough times," Billings said. "Everybody was against us when we first started. Jane and them didn't believe in divorce, and they didn't really know me." Some time passed before their blended family meshed.
Billings described his wife as easygoing.
"She wasn't fancy; she was just plain. We done everything together. I mean everything." She accompanied him on weekends when his bluegrass band played. They trained and boarded horses.
"We always said we would have a horse farm together, and we did," he said.
When Susan mentioned starting a therapeutic-riding center, her husband had never heard of such a thing. But she sucked him in with her enthusiasm. About a year ago, they found Antonio, their first client, by accident.
His mother had checked into riding sessions for Antonio at an arena in Abingdon, Va. But she couldn't handle the long trip and the high price. When she heard about trail riding at Billingsway Farm, she called.
Susan quoted her a lower price, and they set up Antonio's first session for a Sunday.
Then she and Billings started talking. He told her, "When that lady comes with that little boy, don't you take no money."
She answered: "I'd already decided that."
"We've rode him ever since," Billings said. When Antonio arrived, they plopped him onto a pony and supported him from both sides.
When they saw the joy on Antonio's face, they both burst into tears. Later, someone asked, "Did y'all go to church this morning?"
"No," Susan answered. "We had church right here at the barn."
Horseback riding gently and rhythmically moves a rider's body in a manner similar to a human's gait, said Andrea Spridgen of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association in Denver. Riding can help people with physical disabilities by improving their flexibility, balance and muscle strength, she said. Other benefits can include improved confidence, patience and self-esteem.
Susan and Tommy Billings watched with pride as their clients began to improve. Work on the center became all encompassing.
"Me and Susan, we usually stayed anywhere from 11 to 12 hours a day over here," Billings said. "That was seven days a week."
Driving up the mountain
Then came the night of Nov. 22.
Susan and her mother had been taking a painting class in State Road at a shop owned by Susan's cousin, Judy Edenfield. When they left the shop to head home on U.S. 21, Edenfield gave them hugs and a warning: "Be careful driving up the mountain."
A light rain had begun to fall, so Susan slowed her car to let other drivers pass. Less than two miles from the Alleghany County line, she and her mother saw a tractor-trailer halfway in their lane. The truck's trailer, loaded with cotton bales, was already tilted at a sharp angle.
Susan cried out. "Oh, my God, Mama!"
She jerked the wheel to the right. If she had been five feet farther up the mountain, she could have pulled into a wide driveway at the entrance to a new housing development. But she didn't make it, and the trailer fell onto her Blazer.
Once the shock of the impact was over, McCarthy said, "we were surprised that we were both alive and talking." Flames 12 to 18 inches high shot from the engine. Neither of them knew to turn off the ignition to stop the flow of gas to the motor.
"Susan, we've got a fire. You've got to get out," her mother said. Susan urged her mother, who is slender and small-boned, to crawl through the window. McCarthy escaped with her pocketbook and her glasses.
She pleaded with her daughter to get out, but Susan was trapped. McCarthy called 911 on her cell phone.
The State Road Fire Department, the closest department at seven miles away, dispatched an engine.
Then people started appearing. They brought soft drinks and bottles of water and tried to put out the fire. They beat at the fire with blankets and clothing. A man driving a new truck with a winch tried to pull the door open so that Susan could escape. The winch didn't work.
McCarthy kneeled, praying, in the middle of the road. A stranger prayed with her.
The flames rose higher, and McCarthy heard her daughter scream.
By the time the fire department was able to put the fire out, Susan was dead. McCarthy couldn't reach her husband. She couldn't reach her son-in-law. She called her other daughter.
"My mother is so matter-of-fact," Nichols said. McCarthy told her, "This is your mother. Susan and I have been in an accident, and Susan is dead."
"I hit the floor," Nichols said, but her mother admonished her. "You get hold of yourself," she said. "You need to find your father. You need to find Tommy."
Telling her father that Susan was dead was the hardest thing she has ever done, Nichols said.
She and her husband, Kenneth, picked up her father and went to the crash site. There, they said goodbye to Susan. Tim McCarthy finally reached his son-in-law and broke the news.
Billings remembers little about the first few days after Susan's death. He fell apart.
"I have seen grief in my life," said Carole Fisher, who is on the DearHaven board. "But I have never seen grief like Tommy had."
More than 1,000 people signed the register at the funeral home the day of Susan's funeral. Friends took care of the couple's horses and did everything they could to help.
"I'm 67 years old," said Jane McCarthy. "In my life, I have never felt the kind of love and support that was poured out when she died."
Billings chimed in. "It ain't stopped," he said. Then he brought his mother-in-law a tissue to wipe her streaming eyes. She usually keeps her pockets stuffed with them because she never knows when tears will start.
Frances Huber is the head of DearHaven's board of directors.
When Susan died, Huber went to the McCarthy house and just couldn't leave, she said.
"I had to stay," she said. "I've never seen so much emotion." She watched farmers in overalls hold a sobbing Billings, showing their support for him without saying a word.
Huber gave the eulogy at Susan's funeral.
"People have dreams, but most people's dreams are selfish," Huber said. "Her dream was to help people." She, too, spoke of keeping the dream of DearHaven alive.
Susan's death, a loss for her family, was a loss for the community, too, said Melinda Isner. "Susan was the kind of person that touched people."
Isner was Susan's boss at the Family Resource Center. During a tough time in her life, Isner would come into work early, sit at her desk and pray for strength. Often, Susan would appear, pat her shoulder and cry with her.
"We spent a lot of time looking for laughter in times of hardship," Isner said.
After Susan's funeral, support for DearHaven increased. Offers of money, materials and free labor for the indoor arena poured in. Work began in January. Budgeted at $118,000, the arena should wind up costing $18,000 to $19,000. Billings expects to start using the unfinished arena Monday. Its grand opening is scheduled for June 11.
Page Richardson, Samuel's father, has worked there every day. Tim McCarthy has been there, too.
"I feel almost as deeply about making that dream come true as Tommy does, and I'm not a horse person," McCarthy said.
Once the arena is finished, DearHaven could handle as many as 75 clients a week if enough volunteers can be recruited and fundraising drives bring in enough money. Volunteers will be needed to lead horses, steady riders and muck stalls. But horse experience isn't required, said board-member Fisher.
The center will need money for office supplies, horse feed, helmets and special saddles for riders with disabilities. Clients who can will pay $20 a session, Billings said. But he won't turn anyone away who can't pay. He will continue to lead trail rides to make a living.
Fisher sent out hundreds of letters asking for donations. She e-mailed Paul Newman and Robert Redford. She asked country-music stars to give free concerts. One night, the phone rang; the caller was Willie Nelson. He told her that he couldn't do a benefit, but offered tips on ways to bring in money.
The music returns
Susan shared her husband's love for old-time bluegrass music, and she spent many weekends dancing to the tunes that he and his bandmates played. For months after her death, Billings couldn't even pick up a guitar.
In February, he forced himself to play at a friend's 40th birthday party.
Several times, his eyes and nose reddened, but he held back the tears until three women joined the band and sang "Some Day," which they had sung at Susan's funeral. Then he broke down.
Playing again felt good, he said. "It was hard, though."
The trial of Joseph Clarence Yancey, the driver of the truck that struck Susan's car, is scheduled to begin this week. That will be another hard time for Billings and the rest of Susan's family. Yancey was charged with misdemeanor death by motor vehicle and driving left of center.
While most of the family focuses on DearHaven, Nichols channels her grief over her sister's death into trying to make the mountain road safer for others.
"Almost every other mountain has a runaway-truck lane, a place to check brakes or a reduced speed," she said. "Why don't we?"
According to Trooper Lane McNeill of the N.C. Highway Patrol, at least two or three trucks wreck on the mountain each year.
Nichols has also asked General Motors why it doesn't install systems in its cars that will shut down the supply of fuel upon impact.
"She was hit by a tractor-trailer and survived the crash," Nichols said. "Because the fuel wouldn't shut off, she burned alive."
While Nichols works on those issues, Billings finds his peace in the barn. With his riders, he is tender, strong and encouraging.
One cold day, McCarthy stood in the barn and watched her son-in-law work.
"There are three kinds of people," she said. "Dreamers, realists and those who make the dream come true. Tommy is the latter."
Billings pushed Marshall Clifton, who complained of being tired, to go a while longer on his horse. Steve Walls, the friend who brought Clifton to the barn, said that the change in Clifton since he started riding is startling.
"He had a real bad summer before this," Walls said. "Things he couldn't do, he's starting to do again."
Billings rode Antonio last. As the boy stared into his eyes, his voice bubbling with laughter, Billings' gaunt face creased with a rare smile. He has lost nearly 50 pounds since his wife's death. He remains inconsolable.
"I don't know how to put into words how much I miss her. It feels like 10 years since I seen her or held her," he said.
DearHaven is the only thing that keeps him going. Day after day, he works until he drops.
"The busier I stay, the less I think," he said. He and his wife always worked long hours. Now he works even longer, and he works without her.
"She was two-thirds of my strength," he said. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this or not." But he won't let his wife's dream go. DearHaven is part of him now.
"My heart ain't really in this, but my soul is," he said. "It's the only way I can keep her alive.
"If I quit, she's really dead."
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