Page 48 - December 2020

PASSION, ABILITY, EXPERIENCE & DESIRE
The ladder of J.E. Jumonville Jr.’s living legacy
by Diane Rice
Many rungs comprise the ladder to success, “J.E. Jumonville and I share the same FROM RANCHING TO RACING
yet each person’s ladder is unique. The passion and desire to win,” O’Brien adds. J.E. grew up riding on the family ranch
rungs for some may be similar but set in varied order. Some ladders are tall with many rungs, and some shorter — yet stout. But regardless of their particular ladder’s stature and the names of the rungs it contains, every successful person must scale their ladder.
The foundational rung on Louisiana breeder John Enoul “J.E.” Jumonville Jr.’s ladder is an intense passion for what he does. And what he does is breed great racehorses.
“I met Mr. Jumonville in the late 1990s
at the Ruidoso Yearling Quarter Horse Sale,” says Ken O’Brien, whose stallion Power Jam TB is the only outside stud that has stood at Jumonville Farms in Ventress, Louisiana, in its 55-year history. “I was new to the business and he took the time to share knowledge with me that not everybody would have, and he was helpful to me when he didn’t need to be.
“He is super-smart, and I think he would’ve been successful at anything, but when you combine his passion and his will to win, you just can’t beat it.
“And then you add experience,” O’Brien continues of J.E., who has nurtured his passion for horses since his youth. “He’s not a good horseman, he’s a great horseman. The more time I spend with him, the more I learn — about conformation, about breeding — about everything someone would want to learn. He’s got a great eye and he’s willing to share what he knows.”
Another of J.E.’s rungs was desire. “Finishing second is not part of his mindset,” O’Brien says.
Those qualities and more made up
the rungs on the ladder that J.E. climbed throughout his life to bring Jumonville Farms to the upper echelon of Quarter Horse racing.
and farming operation. “Cutting horses were part of the operation,” he says, “but I was not one that had my parents take me around [to shows]. It had to be self-sustaining or I couldn’t do it and I was successful enough to make my entry fees.”
J.E. met his wife-to-be, Beverly “Bunny” Callais, at a teenage dance when he was 15 and she just 13. “Her mom wouldn’t let her date until she was 15, and I wouldn’t leave her porch until she was 15,” J.E. jokes.
In 1964 at age 21, J.E. married Bunny, who’s now been his wife for 56 years. They had their first son, J.E. III, whom they
call Tres, in 1967, followed by Dutch in 1969 and Clayton in 1971. “When we got married, we moved to the country because J.E. was running his father’s place,” Bunny says. “When we got into the horse business, we were raising our kids plus my brother, who was 13 years younger than I, because my mother had died.”
“About the time I graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1967,” J.E. says, “a friend of mine had
a cow horse he thought was fast and raced the horse at bush tracks. That’s when I got interested in racing.”
46 SPEEDHORSE December 2020