Page 81 - June 2018 Speedhorse

Julianna Hawn Holt is no stranger to managing massive business operations.
HORSES IN HER HEART
by Diane Rice
father and her uncle, George Hawn, into the businesses that her grandfather, Richard Hugh Hawn — a pioneer oilman from Casper, Wyoming — had founded.
In February 1982, while in Corpus Christi, Julianna met an old high school friend, Peter M. Holt. By November, they were married.
In 1988, the family moved
from Corpus Christi to San
Antonio. Julianna sold the family
ranch in Gonzales and bought
the beautiful Cross Triangle Ranch
along the Little Blanco River in the
Texas Hill Country. There, she and
Peter raised their children, Corinna [now Richter] and Peter John Holt, who now live in San Antonio with their families and have taken over operations and ownership of the HOLT CAT dealership.
Julianna is still active in all areas of her family’s interests and is a partner in American Bank, Hawn Brothers Production, Hewit & Dougherty, Prade Ranch, Hawn Holt Interests, HOLT CAT and the San Antonio Spurs, in addition to Cross Triangle Ranch.
“Our goal at the ranch is to sell all our yearlings and for them to have successful careers with their new owners,” she says. “We try our best to give each individual what it needs to be and look its best. We want their demeanor and deportment
to be impeccable, making it easier for those who receive them to carry on with their race training. Like all breeders, we aspire to produce the fastest horses possible. Each and every one receives the same quality of attention, as one never knows from where the next Champion will come.”
Julianna Hawn Holt
J
s
Neither is she a stranger to the personal isfaction that success in business brings. Yet
sa
a
at
ti
ong her many successful interests, the Hawn Holt Cross Triangle Ranch holds her heartstrings. “I love every facet of the operation,” she says
of the Blanco, Texas ranch where she breeds cattle and top-of-the-line Quarter Horses bound for the Ruidoso Select Yearling Sale. “From planning the breedings to the birth of the foals and watching those foals as yearlings grow and run through the pastures and then come into the barn to begin the fitting process for the sale.”
She admits, however, that due to recent health challenges, she’s not as involved as she’d like to be — or as she originally planned to be. “Until I’m 100 percent healthy, I’ve been working with Bennie Ray [Greathouse, her ranch manager of 34 years] on pedigrees, checking on mares and foals, and riding horseback to check the general condition of fences, grass, cattle and horses,” she says.
HER FAMILY BACKGROUND
The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John David Hawn, Julianna was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the Gulf Coast, where she graduated from W.B. Ray High School. She attended Bennett College in upstate New York, then graduated from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, midway between Amarillo and Midland/Odessa. She then moved to the family’s ranch near Gonzales, Texas, east of San Antonio, where she learned hands-on about the agriculture industry from great cattle and horse people.
Thirteen years later in 1981, Julianna returned to Corpus Christi to follow her
am
mo
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