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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Connie Toepel
School bus driver can't remember a time when she didn’t love horses
Connie Toepel couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t love horses.
“My parents said those were the first words I said,” Toepel recalled. “I have a vivid memory of when I was 5 years old and going up to the television set. The circus was on, and the horses were going around the arena.
“”I remember getting into my dad’s tools and I got the hammer and I wanted to break that TV so I can get on those horses. Fortunately, my mother got to me in time. Not too long after that, my parents got me my first horse, and it’s been part of my life ever since.”
Connie Toepel shares some loving with Foxy, a mare she got from a long-time friend. She takes Foxy on parades. She keeps two horses, Foxy and Buster, at the Muskogee Roundup Club’s acreage on South Cherokee Street >>
As historian for the Muskogee Roundup Club, Toepel continues that love. She keeps two horses, Foxy and Buster, at the club’s acreage on South Cherokee Street.
“Foxy is quite the parade horse,” Toepel said. “We’ve been in the Azalea Parade and the Christmas Parade two years in a row. She seems to really enjoy it. Buster, the gelding, is a big boy.”
Toepel said she visits her horses often.
“I always have treats in my pocket, and all the horses here know it,” she said. “What’s so nice is that here, they stay outside in the pasture area where they can stay with their friends.”
Connie Toepel is very attached to her horses, but at one time, she and her husband, Art, lived in Alaska and had to be away from them. Her husband worked for a fertilizer company
“He had opportunity to go to Alaska for a job,” Toepel said. “The plant, located right on the ocean, made fertilizer and loaded it in ships. The opportunity came up, and the pay was incredible.”
She called her life in Alaska as an adventure.
“We lived on Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, 160 miles through mountains,” Toepel said. “As the crow flies, it was not far at all, but I’m not a crow. We could look out at mountains across the inlet and see eagles everywhere. There was wonderful salmon fishing.”
There also were dog sledders who would practice their mushing near the house.
The Kenai Peninsula is home of the Tustumena 200, a qualifying sled dog race for the famed 1,200-mile Iditarod race across Alaska. Toepel said she got involved with the mushing.
“I would stand where the mushers would start and would count down when they can go and send them out every two minutes,” she said.
As she worked with mushers, Toepel made friends with Lance Mackey, Iditarod Champion for 1983, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Mackey also battled throat cancer.
“He was inspiration when I found cancer in the same area of my throat,” Toepel said. “I was in process of moving to Oklahoma, he e-mailed me encouragement and told me not to give up. Lance really helped me through that.”
Horses came back into Toepel’s life when she moved back to Oklahoma.
“I hoped on finding a place out in the country and owning an acreage so I can have horses, but my husband found a historic home in Muskogee,” she said. “That’s why the Muskogee Roundup Club is kind of a lifesaver for me. Somebody at work told me about the Roundup Club, and one of the members showed me around and made me feel welcome. I have my horses right there.”
Toepel said she got Buster from an old Illinois friend who had a horse.
“Her father died, she moved to Claremore, so we kept in touch over the years,” Toepel said. “When I moved here three years ago I found that her son had several horses, and that’s how I got Buster. I had the opportunity to get Foxy from a gentleman who lives here, and Foxy and I just get along so well.”
Toepel said she’s fortunate to have two horses.
“My husband and I can trail ride together, and there are beautiful places to ride in Oklahoma,” she said. When I first came here I was expecting tumbleweeds and dust. But the lakes are beautiful. So are the mountains down by Talihina. They have a place down there called Horse Heaven Ranch. It’s just incredible camping and riding down there. The trails are marked, and there are different levels of trails, beautiful campsites.”
She said she also has found great riding around Robbers Cave. She said she would like to ride in closer places, such as around Camp Gruber near Zeb.
Another source of transportation plays a big part of Toepel’s life. She drives a bus for the Muskogee Public Schools’ Early Childhood Center.<
“I have the most wonderful job driving these precious 4-year-olds to school every day,” she said. “The little kids start the year scared to death to get in this big, huge yellow bus and by end of the year they know how to use computers and they’re waving at their mom.”
Toepel said the kids are “so neat to be around because they’re like little sponges. They learn everything around them.”
She said some children get on the bus as early as 6:40 a.m.
“A lot of them fall asleep when they get on the bus, but after we make our last stop we say, ‘OK, wake up were heading for school for breakfast,’ and they’re up,” she said. “By that time, it’s 5 minutes to 8 and they’re ready for breakfast.”
She said she and her bus monitor, Mignon Brooks, help make the children’s bus ride enjoyable.
“We try to get them started out learning how to use the bus properly, how to get them sitting in their seats, learn rules of why they do things,” Toepel said. “We put names on the side of the seats so they know where to sit.”
Brooks is an incredible monitor, Toepel said. “She knows what I’m thinking before I say anything, and I’m the same way.”
Of course, she has pictures of Buster and Foxy at the front of the bus for the kids to see.
“They know Buster and Foxy and they point to the pictures,” she said.