Page 72 - June 2015

Suzanne’s equine passion came from her father’s involvement with horses. Lt. Col. Anderson H. Norton was with the Cavalry National Guard in Santa Fe, NM, and headed up the polo program at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell.
AN EARLY START
Suzanne was born on Nov. 1, 1924, to
Lt. Col. Anderson H. and Audrey Norton in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While Suzanne was very young, the family was stationed at Fort Bliss and then in the Philippines, where Lt. Col. Norton contracted tuberculosis. Suzanne stayed with cousins in El Paso, Texas, while her father recovered at the Army hospital in Denver.
After several years of recuperation, the Army sent Norton to a post with the Cavalry National Guard in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From there, he was recruited to head up
the polo program at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, where he led his team to a college championship in New York state.
Suzanne’s equine passion came as a natural offshoot of her father’s involvement with horses. She grew up riding and attended a girls’ college with an equestrian program in Virginia. She graduated in 1946 with a degree in English from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she rode on the rodeo team and with a women’s club called the Desert Riders.
“Very few people have continued to ride through their 90th birthday!”
Suzanne competed in prestigious hunter/jumper shows such as the European Championships
in Germany, the American Royal Horse Show in Kansas City, the Chicago International, and won the Professional Horsemanship Association Stake at Madison Square Garden.
PAYING OFF A DEBT
Around that time, Suzanne’s competitive nature — and a filly called Maroon — caught the attention of young racehorse enthusiast R.C. “Punch” Jones.
“Determination, guts and try,” he says when asked what he admired about Suzanne. “While she was on the Arizona rodeo team,
I was on the New Mexico State rodeo team,” says Punch. “We were competing
one time and they had a musi-
cal chairs race. It was down to
Suzanne and one other gal, a big
woman. Suzanne wasn’t but about
110 pounds. Suzanne sat in the
last chair and that other woman
pulled the chair out from under
her and sat down on it. Suzanne
got up and whipped the heck out
of her, set the chair on her and sat
back down on it. I thought that
was something, and when I went
home and told my mom about it, she told me that Suzanne lived just down the street.”
In addition to western riding and rodeo, Suzanne honed her hunter/jumper skills on
the international show circuit, competing
in prestigious shows such as the European Championships in Aachen, Germany and,
in 1950, the American Royal Horse Show in Kansas City. In 1951, Suzanne went to Mexico City for several months to train on hunters and jumpers. She also competed at the Chicago
Punch broke Maroon and quickly realized she could outrun the other horses, so he campaigned her across West Texas where she won multiple stakes races and set or equaled multiple track records. The 1949 mare became the foundation of the Jones Ranch race line, a line that is still competing and winning on the track to this day.
International and won the Professional Horsemanship Association Stake at Madison Square Garden.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but although women rode hunters and jumpers out here in this country [New Mexico], back East women only rode hunters,” Suzanne says. “A photographer wrote me a note one time after a show and said it was good to see a woman amongst all the men!”
Meanwhile, Punch had been admiring a filly — a Quarter Horse-built Thoroughbred named Maroon — whom Suzanne’s friend Mary Pearson Smith owned, but Mary wanted more for the filly than Punch was willing to pay. When Mary moved to California, she gave the filly and her dam to Suzanne, who asked Punch if she could board them at his place. “After about a year, I didn’t get any pay on my board bill. I just married her to get the filly and
get the board bill paid off!” Punch jokes. They married in 1953. Shortly afterward,
Punch drove Suzanne to Pennsylvania, to compete in the Pan American Games tryouts. Although she was accepted onto the jumping team — the second woman ever — a revolution in Mexico prevented the U.S. team from competing there.
It was a huge disappointment. Yet fate was about to smile on them. Suzanne and Punch had no idea how huge a part Maroon would play in redirecting their lives.
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SPEEDHORSE, June 2015