You all read or saw media reports about Kimberly Munley, who shot the Fort Hood gunman. Mighty Mouse, as fellow officers call the 100-pound cop who traded gun shots with the accused killer. She brought him down, though wounded three times herself.
I admire women who step into jobs historically held by men and come up big winners. No doubt it all started with my mother. She joined the British WAACs and went to France during the First World War. There she cooked for soldiers going up the line until frequent aerial attacks sent her home shell shocked.
As a young person, a visit to a port area brought her face-to-face with a potential rapist who grabbed her shirt front. She doubled her fists and began swinging. Within moments he fled.
Mother moved to Canada and eventually married dad, 20 years her senior. Dad became mentally ill and at times violent. I watched her disarm him when he raised a pair of scissors as though preparing to strike my brother. On another occasion I saw her wrestle dad away from the stair top when he attempted to push her down. Like officer Munley, mom stood just over five feet tall. In order to raise and protect her children, she fended off the government and poverty, winning every battle.
I admire my wife, Anna, for her ability to step into a man’s shoes when the situation demands it. When I married her, she knew little about cooking, but did well at work in a male-dominated manufacturer’s office. When she quit to help in my small business, she worked with confidence, soldering components into electronic equipment. When something broke in the house, she fixed it, depending on skills learned from her father. She drives with skill, and has allowed me to take credit for our vehicle accidents. When you marry a daddy’s girl, you have a big advantage.
Then along came Linda. We didn’t have a daughter, so we hand-picked one. Linda has worked as an equestrian for most of her life. That doesn’t mean she just teaches children to ride; she teaches proper manners to horses. Linda breaks young horses for riding: bucking, kicking, rearing creatures that want nothing to do with humans. She has been thrown, body slammed and bitten by horses.
Once, a race horse lost its footing and fell on her, breaking her leg. In another, a horse running at full gallop, tripped and fell. She landed on her head and the horse rolled over her. She has suffered broken bones, other assorted injuries and multiple concussion syndrome.
Realizing the skills required to train horses also equipped her to work with teenagers, she took a part-time position as a youth pastor. Then she enrolled in a seminary program while continuing with her equestrian and pastoral duties. Recently Linda attended a kick-boxing tournament with a youth from her Church. She said, “That was an experience. This is not a place that I might normally enter, and the music, crowds, cheers, tattoos and surging testosterone are nothing like my usual world.”
She did it as outreach to young people. The world is full of women who do things I, as a mere man, would never do.