About The Melvins
Mark and
Diana Melvin feel they have been blessed - with their family,
friends and the opportunity to have had and be raising good
horses. The Melvin’s of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, have been in
the horse business all their lives. They have three children:
Jessica 25, Jennifer 23, and Jace age 13. All three children
have an impressive list of horse and rodeo accomplishments.
Jessica
is the 2004 Miss Rodeo South Dakota. She is a May 2004 graduate
of Texas Tech School of Allied Health Sciences with a Mater’s
Degree in Physical Therapy. Jessica attended Texas Tech on an
Honors and Rodeo Scholarship.
Jennifer
has attended Si Tanka Huron College where she majored in Equine
Management. She was a member of the Rodeo team there. Jenny
competed in the Barrel Racing, Breakaway Roping, and Team Roping
at the College Rodeos. At the Dickenson State University College
Rodeo held May 2004, Jenny won the Breakaway Roping Event.
Jace, the
youngest member of the Melvin household is 10+ years younger
than his sisters. Like his sisters, he lives and breathes horses
and rodeo. He has qualified for state 4-H finals and the
National Little Britches Finals numerous times. In 2003, he
placed fifth at
National Little Britches in Breakaway Roping.
Jenny has set the pace for him at Nationals her last year there
winning the world and setting an arena record of 1.928 in the
Breakaway event. Jace works all the timed events well, and he is
waiting for the rodeo season when Mom and Dad decide he has
enough strength to try his hand at a rough stock event. Jace has
had a lot of fun owning a bucking bull, Twister, that has
successfully bucked off many fine high school and SDRA cowboys.
One year Twister was selected to have an out at the ProRodeo at the
Black Hills Stock Show. The bull was one of several that his
older sisters had used for team roping practice and he happened
to decide he enjoyed bucking. He typically either bucks the
cowboy off or they win money on him. Jace has definitely been
bitten by the bucking bull contracting fever!
Both Jenny
and Jessica trained their own barrel racing and arena horses as
4-H projects. They would take race horses that their dad had
trained at the track and enter the barrel futurities. Jessica’s
first futurity horse was Speed Nails. At age 12 she had one of
the fastest times at the Fizz Bomb Barrel Futurity in Gillette,
Wyoming. Both girls are all around hands working all the women’s
events at 4-H, High School, and College Rodeos. At the 2004
Black Hills Stock Show, Jessica was the Reserve Champion in the
Ladies Ranch Horse Competition. Both of her entries qualified
for the finals.
Mark and
Diana both competed in the rodeo and horse events participating
at all levels of rodeo. Mark rodeoed professionally competing in
the bronc riding event. During the early years of their marriage
the Melvin’s trained race horses in the Midwest running at
tracks in Fort Pierre, Aberdeen, Rapid City, Gillette, and
Casper, Wyoming, Shakopee, Minnesota, Des Moines, Iowa, Denver,
Colorado, and at tracks in North Dakota and Canada.
During the
fourteen years the Melvin’s were at the race track they trained
multiple high point, high money won and year end award winning
quarter horses and thoroughbreds. A high light of the race track
years was earning the "Quarter Horse Breeder Award" for the state
of South Dakota. Many friends were made and the mares that they
campaigned are now the Foundation of their Brood mare band. (The
original brood mare band of about a dozen mares were all
multiple race winners, stakes placed horses and track record
holders.) A few of these mares are still producing babies.
Diana served
as the Secretary of the South Dakota Quarter Horse Racing
association and handled much of the publicity for the
association for 14 years as well. Starting a family that wanted
to go to the playdays and rodeos on the weekends caused Mark to
rethink his horse commitments, and he began to breed the mares
and plan for arena and youth horses becoming the livelihood so
the family could stay at home and travel to rodeos on the
weekend.
Mark’s keen
eye for a good horse and all the years of training the
racehorses as well as his own rodeo experience established him
as a person with a knack for finding, training, and then
matching the right horse with the right competitor. Many of
those matches resulted in local, state, and national champions.
Mark enjoys seeing others achieve success in the arena.
Sometimes his girls would lament that he had sold the wrong
horse to a fellow competitor and they were having to outrun the
horse their dad had sold to someone else! Jessica and Jennifer
spent long hours riding, grooming, cleaning stalls, and fine
tuning the horses that came in and out of the place. There is no
doubt that all those years of riding, training, and prepping
sale horses made horsewomen out of the Melvin girls!
After
having some unfortunate luck with a couple different studs
getting hurt the Melvins searched for and found their current
sire King Clip Bar. King Clip Bar is an eight year old
palomino stud. Mark and Diana looking long and hard to find the
color, conformation, and bloodlines they felt would cross well
on their race bred mares. On King Clip Bar’s papers are the
legendary horses King 234, Three Cars, and Otoe. “Chip” as they
call him with limited hauling is proving himself in the arena.
Rope Horse Trainer, Paul Grimesman, started the young stud in
the roping events and showed him for the Melvin’s. He placed
third in the Bold Heart Roping Futurity as a five year old, and
also won the heeling in the Belle Classic Roping Futurity. He
won the 2003 Belle Classic Roping Maturity and won the Heading
and Heeling, placing in the calf roping at 2004 Super Stud event
at the Black Hills Stock Show. Jenny has started him on barrels
where he is working very well, and she hauled him to the college
rodeos as her heading horse. King Clip Bar is producing babies
that have a lot of color, bone, and are good minded. The oldest
babies are three, and they are showing a lot of promise as they
are being ridden. The Melvin's young horses are all eligible for
the Bold Heart Roping and Barrel Futurities and other
performance events.
Mark grew up
in the Pierre area. His parents and grandparents had rodeo and
ranching interests. Mark’s mother, Delores, and her family, the Mahers, produced many rodeo in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa
during the 40’s and 50’s. Delores and her sister, Donna (Maher)
Melvin, would trick ride at their dad’s rodeos as well as help
trail the horses from one rodeo to the next. Mark’s dad, Willie,
who just passed away in May 2004 after a long batter with lung
cancer, was a bull rider in his youth. Mark and his cousins, the
Mahers, Melvins, and the Etzkorns were a formidable group of
competitors at the rodeos. The family matriarch Reva Maher is 94 years old and going strong. She is very proud to say she
doesn’t remember missing the Fourth of July Rodeo. All the grandkids of this great lady received a lot of encouragement and
attention for their rodeo careers. Mark credits his parents and
family with instilling in him a love of rodeo and good horses.
As young as 14, he owned a race horse and worked for Pat Cowan
at the race track - even jockeying for a short time.
Diana’s
family farmed and ranched where she grew up in the Parmelee
area. One of the seven children of Al and Susan Kary, she also
benefited from the experience of generations of horsemen and
woman. Al and Susan also produced many rodeos in the Belvidere,
Murdo, Soldier Creed, Rosebud, and Mission area. Diana remembers
trailing the bucking horses to Soldier Creek, assisting with
arena repairs, hauling an injured rider to the Rosebud Hospital
in the family station wagon, and after overpaying an impatient
cowboy the purse money, having to replenish the purse money with
the proceeds of the lemonade stand she had sweated over all day.
(She often wonders where all her siblings were. You can bet any
purses she may be helping with are not paid until the results
are official!) The Kary family members could get a job done
horseback and you learned horsemanship by spending hours in the
saddle checking pastures and working cattle. Diana won the
Ribbon Roping the first time the event was offered at the State
4-H finals and she points that out to her kids each year as they
prepare for state finals.
Both Mark and
Diana are proud to be associated with the great sport of rodeo
and the Western Way of Life. They hope to pass on to future
generations a love of and appreciation of good horseflesh, an
honest days work, and the importance of a person word.
Watch for the
offspring of their breeding program in the rodeo arena and keep
an eye on Jessica, Jennifer, and Jace; we’re pretty sure you’ll
hear their name announced for a while longer in the rodeo arena.
