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Page: of 8
CS Meet seeaiinas tee cancun iaahebusesoneraftcens xe ners io AEA TOIT OL TA ALOT
: The Nevada. County Nugget, Wednesday, july 7, 1971 5
int of Nevada county families
Snatches of personal letters reveal Mrs. Johnston's busy
life and personality: ;
"You would never imagine where the open doors have
led mé — an appointment to the Special Wild Horse Advisory
Committee authorized by the Secretary of the Interior, which
took me to Billings and to Washington D.C. — I have flown
on everything but a goose and haven't chickened out yet —
Tramped miles and miles in soil and erosion tests — Read
volumes on animal biology, ecological factors and multiple
use concepts — Faced up to the awesomeness of the Director
of Bureau of Land Management in Washington D.C. — Slaved
over a paper until I was blue in the face, :
Reliable sources reveal that as a young girl, Mrs, Johnston entered her secretarial career in an era when ladie's
bloomers were in vogue, When her fingers tangled with her
typewriter on a new job, fearful her mistakes would be discovered in the waste paper basket, she tore the evidence into
small pieces and tucked them up her bloomer leg,
If she has any fears today it is believed she literally rips
them into pieces and tucks them up an imaginary bloomer leg.
In recent years she wrote his wife, ‘Al hadn't the vaguestidea where it all would lead when he opened that Pandora's box.
on a news story So long ago,"'
The Reader's Digest was one of the first national magazines to give the wild horse project a boost after Trivelpiece
fired the first news shot, Other newspapers and magazines
took up the issue and Wild Horse Annie recently was featured
in National Geographic magazine,
The Wild Horse Annie story. will live forever as a permanent part of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western
Heritage Center in Oklahoma City, She was present when the
honor was accorded, i
Marguerite Henry, a well known author of children's books,
has immortalized her in "Mustang Wild Spirit of the West,”
Mrs, Johnston is a high ranking official in the International
Society for Preservation of Mustangs and Burros, She isa
past president of the Executive Secretaries Inc., which has
named her one of its "Women of the Year.” She is an executive
director of the Animal Welfare League of Nevada, —
A brief resume of her legislative achievements includes:
— In 1955 she was responsible for a Nevada law which
VELMA JOHNSTON and her late husband Charles, and a nephew are shown at the couple's
Double Lazy Heart Ranch on the Truckee River, east of Reno, Because the Johnstons never
had children of their own but loved them, they often "borrowed" youngsters who rode horses,
romped with the dogs and learned to love ranch life like the owners of the Double Lazy Heart,
bans the use of airplanes and mechanized venicies tor hunting
wild horses on public domain lands,
— In 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the
Wild Horse Annie Bill, which prohibited use of aircraft or motor
vehicles to hunt for the purpose of capturing or killing any
wild unbranded horse, colt or burro at large on public lands,
The president sent the pen which signed the bill to Mrs, Johnston, and it has a place in her hilltop home overlooking her
native Reno,
When she appeared before Congress in 1959 a Washington
D.C, reporter described her as a "frail Nevada ranch woman .
in her flowered Sunday best and demure with white cotton
gloves," He claimed she held a house committee "in thrall"
as she described brutal scenes in which men in airplanes
stampeded bands of mustangs in Nevada hills, When the long
ordeal was over a subcommitteeman said:
"IT have been told this is the first time our witness has
ever testified, If this is her first time, I for one never want
to sit in judgment when she returns as an expert."
Perhaps she had gained more expertise when she returned this April to Washington D.C, to complain that “the
slaughter of wild horses continues,"
"It might just make “up a little bit to those who come after
us, for the destruction and waste of much of their heritage
that never can be repaired. A\ gift to the future generations
of which our generation might well be proud,” was the conclusion of 38 pages of testimony presented in April.
Mrs, Johnson describes herself as a "skinny gal with a
horse by the tail and refusing to let go." ’
Her friends say she was a warm compassion for animals
and children and all living things.
As a girl Mrs. Johnston broke a date to comfort a friend
with a heart broken by a blighted teen-age romance,
As Wild Horse Annie she caught a little girl in the agonies
of embarassment to her bosom and spoke words of comfort.
She was barely ahead of the little girl's father, the director
of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Little J e Krakel forgot words ~
of an acceptance speech on behalf of the Co boy Hall of Fame
when Wild Horse Annie was being honored, The child had no
way of knowing that sometimes all of us forget what we are
to say at important occasions, but Wild Horse Annie understood.
v
Mrs, Johnston sometimes referred to as the "Madonna of the Mustangs", rather than the
better known "Wild Horse Annie”, now lives in Reno and continues a spirited fight to save
wild horses.
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