Through a lifetime of mountain-top success and abyss-deep losses, Joyce Loomis-Kernek learned not only how to find her peaceful place, but how to help others find theirs
Joyce Loomis-Kernek knows very well that looks can be deceiving. “I’ve shared my story with many through the years and it never ceases to amaze me how people would say, ‘I had no idea you were ever depressed! You have so much!’” she says.
The second of three children born to cattle rancher/sheriff Lawrence Shelley and his wife, Rosemary, Joyce grew up on the family’s 916 Ranch in the Mogollan Mountains near Cliff, New Mexico, established in 1884 by her great-grandfather, Peter Shelley. Her older brother, Lawrence Hollis Shelley, aka Buster, and her younger brother, Terrell—who still minds the ranch with his son, Jerrell—were typical ranch kids: fixing water gaps and fences, and taking care of the dogs, cattle, milk cows and horses. “We learned to work hard and get our homework done as well as all the chores,” says Joyce.
But within her seemingly idyllic life, darkness hovered. Her mother, who in her public life organized the food for the county fair, taught women how to can and sew, and whose seamstress skills won Best Dressed Cowgirl honors for Joyce every year she competed at the NFR, also battled alcohol addiction. “Sometimes, she’d disappear for months at a time,” Joyce says. “We learned to overcome and take care of ourselves and each other. We drove ourselves to the highway to catch the school bus — 18 miles of dirt road — when we could barely see over the dash. I smile when I think of how sometimes we’d leave the road and chase antelope.”
From early on, Joyce loved everything equine, especially barrel racing. As a child, she pored over back issues of Western Horseman that a neighbor gave her. Her dad got her some barrels, and she ran every equine she could find around them, including the mules her dad used to work cattle in the mountains, pack salt, and hunt mountain lions and bears. A family friend gave her a palomino she called Pal, and at age 14, she won her first barrel racing buckle at a local fair.
She attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where she competed on the rodeo team in roping, goat tying and, of course, barrel racing. Then, she saw a flyer advertising the Miss Rodeo New Mexico pageant. With encouragement from a friend, Joyce decided to enter. “The prize,” she says, “was a set of luggage, and I wanted to win it!” She did win, which advanced her to the Miss Rodeo America competition in Las Vegas. Her goal was to win the horsemanship, which she did — along with the 1963 Miss Rodeo America title. Her demons, however, remained.
“Becoming Miss Rodeo America was the beginning of a blessed rodeo career that led to my heart’s desire to live my life training horses,” she says. “That part of my life helped me through the losses that life brought my way. Little did I know that every win, and the highs that followed, were temporary.”
Her title led to…
