Fight Continues To Preserve The Horse Guard
As state budget cuts threaten to eliminate funding for the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard, efforts to preserve the more than 200-year-old militia unit continue.
State Representative Mitch Bolinsky (R-106), said May 4 that the horse guard was either cut from one of several state budget options — a state budget has not yet been finalized — or included as a “zero budget” item. But as in past years when funding was restored at the last minute, he said, “Never say never. Things can change quickly in Hartford.”
Mr Bolinsky’s current goal? “To stop the madness where we are scrambling to avoid extinction every two years,” and saying that the prospect of possibly losing state funding is “frightening.”
He said, “We’re a state all about history; we’ll take the oldest mounted militia unit and extinct them?” The horse guard is “beauty, majesty, history.”
He intends to find a way to protect the horse guard unit(s) and the state’s Colonial past, he said, by “making them self-sufficient.”
As he and others plan ways to raise revenue, they must also find a way to funnel those resources back to the horse guard.
“This was not a cut that accomplishes anything,” Mr Bolinsky said.
In March when he and others learned that the 2GHG funding could be cut, he had said that resources to feed and care for the horses and maintain the facility may have to come from private efforts. He and supporters were “just beginning” to consider possibilities, he had said.
He made clear this week that he wants the horse guard money “refunded,” or returned to the budget, and that he is still at work trying to preserve the militia unit.
Conversations regarding possibly consolidating the state’s two units also exists. Mr Bolinsky said the Frist Company unit, which is now in Avon, could come to Newtown, but funding from the state even in this scenario still remains a question, but he sees this as a way to “ensure ongoing presence.”
Mr Bolinsky has been speaking with one member of the state military department who has the “overreaching responsibility” to protect the state, but is also responsible for units including the 2GHG, which is ceremonial. He believes his contact will “do what he can to allow the ceremonial unit to remain.”
The Cut
The two units each receive roughly $35,000 from the state to support operations and additional funding for one agricultural employee’s salary, Connecticut National Guard State Public Affairs Officer Captain Michael Petersen explained in March. The military line item in the state budget is less than $100,000 for the horse guards.
“We are reviewing all of our options to come up with a way ahead, but we are still reviewing,” he said, how to help the horse guards, which are part of the state’s military department.
Seeking People ‘Who Can Get Things Done’
Through the group known as The Friends of The 2GHG, which is a 501(c)(3) organization, Mr Bolinsky hopes “to generate revenue that sustains this entity.”
The “exciting part” of this idea, which would collect funds through stall rentals, events, traio rides, demonstrations, and other ideas, is that since the guard “consumes so little, they’ll generate more than they consume and can become a revenue source for the military department.” He mentioned plans that he believes “will run in the black.”
But as much as the horse guard needs funds, Mr Bolinsky said, “We need an active and vital organization of friends, we need membership and we need people in town who can get things done.”
Mr Bolinsky is “not looking to make [the unit] survive this year, I want them to survive forever.”
In March The Friends of the 2GHG launched a fundraising campaign. An a past e-mail from Friends of 2GHG Chairman Cheryl Peatfield, she had announced a GoFundMe.com fundraising page: gofundme.com/pblvg4. In her e-mail she also wrote that they will “gratefully accept direct donations” via check to Friends of 2GHG — Attn Karen deFreissa, PO Box 402, Newtown CT 06470. Credit card donations are also accepted through friendsof2ghg.org, and thehorseguard.org.
According to friendsof2ghg.org, “The Friends of 2GHG was organized by former members of the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard (2GHG) for charitable and educational purposes.”
In Ms Peatfield’s e-mail in March, she wrote, “In order to keep 2GHG operating, the troop has embarked on a fundraising campaign for the care and feeding of the horses.” Along with the Internet fundraising efforts are other “expense reductions and fundraising efforts we are pursuing.” Those ideas include: potential leasing of excess capacity horse stalls to horse trainers and other interested parties, arranging to obtain hay from local farmers using nearby state-owned fields instead of paying for hay from outside vendors, conducting horsemanship clinics such as internationally recognized Double Dan Horsemanship, sponsoring events such as the annual pleasure ride, which is open to the public and has proven successful, sponsoring a compost drive that recycles manure to various individuals and gardening groups.”
According to TheHorseGuard.org, the unit was chartered in 1808 “to attend and escort the Governor in times of peace and war,” and the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard continues to serve Connecticut as willingly today as it did during Colonial times. 2GHG is part of the organized militia of the State of Connecticut, under the direction of the governor and the National Guard.
A Former Member’s Story
Describing her past involvement with Newtown’s Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard unit, Weston resident Rebecca Ward said, “Wow, it saved my life.”
Prior to joining she had not ridden a horse in 12 years, had given up her horse TCB, raised children, and “gained an enourmous amount of weight,” she said. But joining the 2GHG “gave me an opportunity to ride again, get physical.”
Ms Ward was a recruit with the Class of 2004, a 12-person recruit class that all reached trooper status. When Ms Ward retired at 65, she became part of the Friends of the 2GHG, which helps generate funding for the unit.
In 1992, 12 years prior to joining at the age of 57, Ms Ward had donated her horse to the unit, a thoroughbread gelding “that I needed a home for,” she said. “I walked out in the field and all the horses came to greet me and I thought, this is a good place.” She knew the horse guard “was as a good place for him — when horses come to you, you know they’re being well treated.”
For several years, she and TCB were both members. She retired several years ago; TCB “had been gone” a few years by that point.
Her participation gave her “an enourmous appreciation for commeraderie,” she said. Her involvement also generated “a huge appreciation for the military.”
She had graduated from college in 1969, during the Vietnam years.
“We were as antimilitary as you could be. I did not have a positive view.” But after becoming a horse guard member, she said, “I got a real appreciation for the chain of command — decisions come up and come down, and it makes things work really well.” Although not a “super military” organization, she said, the 2GHG “is a military structure and things get done differently than in civilian life.”
Ms Ward bragged that they are “great at working: setting up and breaking down [events]; incredibly well organized.”
The 2GHG is “opportunity,” she said. “Each person has a job and if you’re doing yours, you don’t have to do someone else’s.” As a member, she said, “I knew my job; each person does a job well and it all comes together.”
Ms Ward also enjoyed the sense of “being a part of a team.” The 2GHG “is really a team, and when marching on foot, if you’ve never marched, it teaches you teamwork and teaches you to be part of something and if done correctly you move as one organism.” Impressed with the synchronized movement, she said, “Your left foot goes forward with everyone else’s, it’s impressive.”
The organized activity also gets them through parades, which are both crowded and often noisy. “The horses are part of a herd and they look to each other for comfort and their riders for comfort. We are really well trained and horses are really well trained and the horses support each other just like the riders do. It’s very cool.”
Over a 26-week time period, she and other recruits learned drills, how to march, salute, do an about face, and other military details. They also learned to groom and tack. “Then you get to ride,” said Ms Ward. “We come from all walks of life; we are old and young and thin and fat, but in common? We really love horses and like serving in the horse guard.”
Some members may have been riding since age 3, while others “never touched a horse before,” she said. “One of our best riders and troopers came to us but had never touched a horse.”
Becoming a members of the 2GHG is “a huge time commitment — those of us who devote ourselves like it. We do parades, trail rides, weekly drills.”
Members are involved in roughly 14 parades a year, the Big E, “but the horses don’t like the elephants and roller coaster and crowds,” she laughed.
Southbury Training School people “come to us for rides,” she said. “They are led on rides, it’s outreach.”
The 2GHG also does trail rides, an open house, which is for families and children, a clinic for troopers and another events open to the public with ground training and mounted training. They hold weekly drills, and more.
The organizations, which is more than 200 years old, offers a “tremendous sense of history…some saddles are cavalry saddles over a 100 years old,” she said.
Describing her sense of the 2GHG’s role, Ms Ward said, “We are civilian, its civilians coming together in a military setting and this is something you just don’t see.” Without the horse guard, she said, “You would be losing the tradition of a civilian militia…” Its loss “would make us all weep … and Newtown would lose our presence.”