In search of ponies: Nancy Taylor never stopped giving

For years to come, when Nancy Taylor's name is mentioned people will remember her for all the lives she touched as she worked tirelessly to fill the shelves at the Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico.

But as busy as she stayed trying to make sure not one child had to go to bed hungry and that no one in the community was without sustenance, somehow there was still room in Nancy's heart for more.

Several months ago, she showed me around the food bank and I was struck by her passion and determination, pleasantly surprised when our talk quickly turned to animals and her eyes began to sparkle.

"Let's go for a walk," she said, ushering me out to the field behind the food bank. "I want you to meet my horse."

Named "Oso" because he looked like a bear when his winter coat came in, she spent several minutes telling me about the brown gelding as he grazed. She was building trust with him, trying to overcome the rough experiences that made him shy and withdrawn.

She talked of some of the animals she had taken in over the years and I was fascinated that a woman who worked herself so hard to feed the masses still found it in herself to do more.

I'd always intended to go back and spend more time with Nancy and she'd even agreed to do be the subject of a column highlighting her love of animals. Schedules got busy, time passed, and then suddenly one day Nancy was gone and now, it is instead her friends that must speak for her.

But they remember well the woman who didn't just devote her life to saving humans, as if that weren't enough. Nancy couldn't stand to see any living creature in hardship, couldn't tolerate suffering and never turned her back, always ready to do whatever was needed, big or small, to make a life better.

Animals found their way to her, whether they were dropped off at the Animal Shelter next door and wandered into the the food bank parking lot, or straggled in from the nearby landfill so she put out water and, "always kept cat or dog food around," said La Dean Jameson, a friend and coworker of eight years. Nancy didn't just feed them and send them on their way though, Jameson said.

"She would try to find someone to take them. We had a lot of animals here," she recalled.

And though they often wandered her way, Nancy managed to find them too.

There was the time she jumped out of the car and stopped eight lanes of traffic at the busy intersection of 21st and Norris streets to save a dachshund that was weaving across the road.

Jumper got tangled up when the broken rope he was dragging got caught in a stack of pallets and even though she unwrapped him and set him free, from that point on, he was forever tied to Nancy.

It took hours for Nancy and her staff to cut out the mats and sand spurs, but Heidi would never be the same and the beautiful long haired cat became a permanent resident of the food bank, where she enjoyed a full life as the office cat.

During their 32-year friendship, Jatonna Hankins spent a lot of time on horseback beside Nancy.

"She was a very classy woman on a horse and she taught many of us to be classy on a horse," Hankins said. "She really kept us all in line, let me tell you."

Most of Hankins memories of Taylor are tied to animals — her rescue dogs, her absolute love for palomino horses, and all the hours they spent practicing and riding in parades with the local Cowbelles riding group, which Taylor started 38 years ago in Clovis.

In the days before her death on Aug. 2, Hankins remembers Nancy finally had a breakthrough with her horse. "Oso had finally come up to her and she was just so excited that he would come up and eat out of her hand."

"She loved animals, she rescued anything," Hankins said. "She helped everybody. Feed the cats, feed the dogs, feed the people."

She had a choice of causes she could have given her life to, or she could have done nothing at all, but, just as with Oso, Nancy somehow knew that by feeding the body she could help heal the soul.

Thank you, Nancy.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:[email protected] or on the web at: www.insearchofponies.blogspot.com