April 7, 2023
I want to say first that in my lifetime, funerals have gone from sad farewells to celebrations of life, and I’m glad they have. Someone once said, “Don’t cry because I died, smile because I lived!” And that’s what we’re here to do today – smile because Jeff lived. I’m going to talk about some of the early years I had with Jeff on the ranch and then Ted Allen is going to cover when things started going downhill.
I am always honored when I’m asked to speak on behalf of the family and I am especially glad to do so today. I hope you will forgive me if I read this, I’ve had a few health challenges of my own lately that have reduced my cognitive abilities and I’m not sure I could memorize it.
To put things in a little bit of context for those of you who didn’t grow up with us, there were two Pronger families that lived about 50 yards apart at the ranch. In one family the children were Jana, Fred, Jeff, Dave, and Jill. In the other family were Ann, Martha, and me. It has been common for people to get a little confused and think that Jeff was my brother and, to be honest, he might as well have been. All of us worked together, played together, fought together, rode the bus together, and generally lived like one big family with four parents.
If you want to really know someone, you should work beside them for an extended period of time. You learn all sorts of things that would probably never come out in a social setting. Besides working with Jeff, we also lived together for a time in the north house at ranch headquarters. And I think I’m safe in saying that I knew Jeff a little bit differently than most people. I would go so far as to say that Jeff acted differently around me than he did around most other people. I think we all do that to some degree, and if you’ve ever raised teenagers you will be well aware of the different personalities people are capable of exhibiting. I always liked Jeff and one of the reasons is probably that he showed me a kind of respect that he might not have had for everyone. Why this was, I don’t know, but I always appreciated it.
I remember when we were living in that north house together we decided to plant a garden. There is a little field that comes right up the north edge of that yard and we were working it with a tractor and plow so I told Jeff to pull the tractor in and plow up the garden so we could plant something. Neither of us were very interested in vegetables so we decided to plant watermelons and cantaloupe. We got the seeds in and pretty quickly forgot about the garden and, as far as I remember, we didn’t water or hoe it one time all summer. In late summer I was looking out the north window one day and I said, “Jeff, man, we forgot about our garden.” We walked out in it with weeds higher that our heads not expecting to find anything but, low and behold, it was absolutely full of watermelons and cantaloupes hidden by the weeds. I’m not sure how instructive this story is and there isn’t any moral, except to say that we were aligned in our thinking to accept our good fortune without questions.
Another time Jeff and I were doing something or other in the horse pasture south of ranch headquarters and – well, first let me set the stage for this a little bit. I want you to think of African big game hunters and iconic photos of people like Ernest Hemingway with a Cape Buffalo laid out in front of him, one foot propped up on the buffalo, his rifle in hand and his hat cocked to one side. So keep that in mind while I tell you that Jeff had killed a mouse, or some little rodent, and he immediately struck the pose with his foot on the mouse, his rifle in hand, his hat cocked to one side and looking off into the sunset. Did Jeff ever read Hemingway? I don’t know, but he had the intelligence and humor sophistication to know that his pose was going to be funny. And it was. Jeff possessed a sophisticated sense of humor that he didn’t show everyone, but it was there and I was one who got to appreciate it.
As we got a little older the cast of characters that could be found at the ranch expanded, with all of them treated like family. Jeff and Dave slept in the basement and on any given Sunday morning, if you went down in the basement there was no telling who you might find down there. Might even be a future Sheriff of Sherman County. The Pronger homes were open to all with no regard to race, color, creed, or national origin. With one possible exception – there were no University of Texas supporters on the Pronger ranch, that was just a bridge too far. One of the people who joined the family around this time was Danny Edmond and that was when Jeff got interested in rodeo, which he really loved. He rodeo-ed the rest of his life as long as he was able. Unfortunately, some of his rodeo injuries plagued him in later years and his health habits didn’t improve matters any.
I didn’t stay as close to Jeff after I “graduated” from the ranch and went on to do other things, but I saw him at family occasions. He and I were visiting about his physical condition a few years ago and his intellect showed up again. Instead of saying, “I just drank and smoked too much”, while indicating his body he said, “Peej, these are the wages of a misspent youth.” Whether he heard that somewhere or made it up, I don’t know. But I thought it was pretty eloquent.
I will miss Jeff and his sense of humor and his cantankerousness and his brotherhood. I hope he is in rodeo heaven.
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