6/2/2008 3:22:00 PM On the trail to helping veterans
E’leese Madgett-Manrique, a Plymouth resident, and her Arabian horse Chip at Willow Creek Farm in Buffalo. PHOTO: MARK TROCKMAN
How to support One Girl One Ride
• Donate money to the One Girl One Ride account at any Wells Fargo bank.
• Attend the One Girl One Ride kick off event, which is being held June 7 on the grounds of the Buffalo Rodeo. A horse show begins at 9 a.m. E'leese Madgett-Manrique will push off at noon.
• Visit www.onegirloneride.com and follow the journey online.
E'leese Madgett-Manrique wasn't sure if she qualified as patriotic.
When asked whether or not she considered herself as such, she hesitated and then said, "What do you mean?"
Her pause, it turned out, had more to do with her vocabulary than with her love of country.
Madgett-Manrique is just 12 years old. As classes wrap up this week at Wayzata East Middle School, she will be finishing sixth grade.
But back to the matter of patriotism. Once the word was explained and the question became clear, her answer flew off her tongue.
"I love America," she gushed, "and I love the military. I think it would be cool to be in the army, but I could never do what soldiers do."
What exactly couldn't she do?
"The physical stuff. And probably the mental stuff," she answered.
Madgett-Manrique is selling herself short. This summer she will put herself through an amazing test of her emotional and physical endurance.
Starting June 7, she plans to ride her horse across Minnesota raising money for military families along the way.
She hopes to raise a lot of cash. With it, she plans to purchase roughly 3,000 acres of rural land and turn then into a resort for soldiers, their spouses and their children.
Madgett-Manrique sees the resort, which she has already branded "The Ranch Minnesota," as a relaxing retreat for members of the military.
So relaxing, in fact, that to vacation on the land would be free.
"The soldiers do so much for me," said Madgett-Manrique. "What do I do for them? I wanted to do something that would show the military that people really do care."
She envisions a caretaking staff comprised of volunteers. For example, college kids could pass a summer tending to the cabins and kitchens and earning required volunteer credits along the way.
But before she can raise the money, buy a ranch and let soldiers vacation for free, she has to get organized. Luckily, she has her mother, Kerry Madgett.
Madgett has helped her daughter brand the endeavor. They are calling the horse ride across the state One Girl One Ride. A Web site of the same name is currently in development. Its hosting and construction are both being donated.
Madgett has also helped her daughter secure donated horse feed and donated insurance for the summer-long event. In addition, an extended cab truck and accompanying horse trailer have also been donated so that Madgett can trail her daughter as she rides.
Plus, Madgett enrolled the skills of a lawyer to incorporate the whole idea into a legal nonprofit organization.
While the nonprofit paper work has begun, the final stamp of approval has not yet come through. In the meantime, however, Madgett opened a Wells Fargo account in the name One Girl One Ride so that supporters would have a ready place to contribute.
While Madgett is now fully onboard with her daughter's plans to spend her summer riding her horse across the state raising money, she admits she had a hard time warming to the idea.
"It was last summer and we were on a mother-daughter driving trip to the Grand Canyon," Madgett recalled. "We were in a rural part of Colorado and we kept driving by mailboxes with American flags on them. E'leese wondered why some mailboxes had flags and others didn't. I said that the boxes with the flags were probably the parents of boys that were in the military and serving in Iraq. E'leese got real quiet for a while and then she said, 'I want to help the troops.'"
"I was thinking phone cards," said Madgett. "Something doable. But E'leese was the one who came up with the idea of riding her horse and raising money. She started with the idea of riding her horse across the whole country. At least I got it down to Minnesota."
Even though Madgett admired her daughter's idealism, she didn't think the plan would last. After all, they were in the midst of a vacation. When they returned home, school was set to begin. Madgett thought it would get dropped and lost. It didn't.
While her fellow sixth grade girls were obsessing over brand names and boys, Madgett-Manrique was spending her time online researching cabin blueprints. She was already dreaming about the bungalows that would grace her future ranch. And then she started printing the plans. In color.
"E'leese kept downloading and printing off all these blueprints," said Madgett. "She kept running through ink cartridges and they cost $64 a pop. I finally got really mad and said, 'You have to stop this. I can't afford all this ink.'"
But E'leese didn't stop. Instead, she started writing letters telling important people about her idea to ride her horse, raise money and build a ranch for military personnel.
She wrote a letter to Laura Bush, an accomplished horse-woman. She wrote a letter to Gov. Tim Pawlenty asking for permission to ride through towns. She wrote a letter to the king of Saudi Arabia, who is a fellow horse-lover. Yet she also wanted him to know that her horse, Chips 'n Salsa, is an Arabian.
And she got responses. Not from the king, but from the governor and even from Mrs. Bush's press office.
Does that mean the First Lady is supporting One Girl One Ride?
Madgett is coy in her response. She's just happy that her daughter's letter elicited a response at all. But on the other hand, she isn't all that surprised.
"All the donations and attention, they are overwhelming," said Madgett. "But I'm not amazed anymore. I think people want our military to know that we appreciate what they are doing and are grateful and that we care. But we want to do it in a nonpolitical way. E'leese is just a little girl on a horse. She is a conduit to showing the military we care and people just keep coming out of the woodwork and saying 'How can I help?'"
