Page 5 - Milk Creek Reds Annual Red Angus Bull Sale – March 18, 2023

Mary Ketchum – 1941-2022
Mar y Ketc hum – 1941-2022
One important person will be missing at the sale this year, she always sat at the back and
recorded the price of each bull, along with baking pies for everyone to enjoy. Montana
Cowboy
Mary Ketchum lived the majority of her adult life on this ranch that we call home. She was mar- Hall of
ried to Stanley Ketchum shortly after graduating from high school and moved to the ranch on Fame
the south fork of Milk Creek. At a young age she developed a strong work ethic and competitive Inductee
spirit that she instilled in her two boys as well as many students that she worked with in the
sport of rodeo. Most of her life she was faced with difficult challenges which she met head on.
Her husband passed away unexpectedly when she was 36 years old leaving her the ranch with a
huge debt and two young boys to raise. Many women would have not even attempted to accept
this challenge but she didn’t understand the concept of giving up. She was financially forced
to sell all the cows but was able to keep a handful of bred heifers and heifer calves. She was
able to take some cattle in on shares to help pay some bills as well. With only a high school
education and living 30 miles from town, getting a town job didn’t seem feasible to her so she
began training barrel horses and students as a business. She also competed in barrel racing as
a business to make money to keep food on the table and to keep from having to sell the ranch.
She would usually have 2-3 outside horses along with 3-4 of her own raised horses in training
at any given time. Throughout the summer months there would be a continuing rotation of girls
and ladies that would travel to the ranch for 2 days to a week at a time to get lessons at the bar-
rel patch but many walked away with lessons about horse care, pedigrees, and life in general.
Mary with Ketchum’s Ote, Ketchum’s Jay and
In 1998 she was faced with another challenge when she was evaluating a couple of horses McCues Grant – three of the studs that she
stood for breeding and also competed on.
for one of her students. Through a chain of events she was knocked off balance by one horse
bumping her while she was looking at the other horse and when she was falling the horse
kicked her in the back of the head causing a major brain injury. She spent 17 days in a coma
and a month and a half in the hospital and rehab before being able to come home. The doctors
and hospital staff didn’t have an explanation for her recovery other than it was a miracle. A year
later she was competing in the rodeo arena in the sport she loved, barrel racing.

Her last challenge was a battle with cancer that began two years ago with a small outpatient
surgery and some therapy administered by a pill. In August of this past year she began having
some abnormal back pain which ended up her seeing a few different doctors and a hospital
stay for what was originally diagnosed as a heart attack but ended up being discovered that the
cancer had come back and metastasized to the vertebrae, ribs and hip. When she was nearing
the end of life, she was asked if she was able to walk out of the hospital on a beautiful fall day
what would be the one thing that she would want to do. Her response was that she was just Cele, Mary and Jaclyn
fine where she was. She had found peace in a place that she wouldn’t have wanted to be in if
she didn’t have to be.

Mary’s blessings came in the form of over 70 buckles, five saddles, numerous plaques, articles
written about her, Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame Induction, Lifetime Quarter Horse member-
ship, family, her sons, her grandchildren and great grandson.

Of the many life lessons learned from Mom, perseverance, determination and finding peace in
the middle of life’s most challenging times were the most important. The Mary Ketchum Family

Mary still doing at 80 years Loyd and Mary at the Milk Creek Reds Sale Mary at the Bull Sale
Catalog and video online at www.milkcreekreds.com Milk Creek Reds Bull Sale – 3