Kendra Santos knows the power in a name. Whether it belongs to your horse, your mother, or your newborn child, it will leave her lips or fingertips with the respect and compassion it deserves.
Rodeo is built on relationships. Partnerships with horses and livestock, traveling partners and trainers–everyone needs someone to walk alongside them on the rodeo road. With bigger money and more opportunities on the pro level, there is often less time face-to-face and more time catching up over phone calls, stories, and social media.
Santos is a voice who echoes across the states, uniting the romance of rodeo with the familial bonds of its competitors and ensuring nobody is left truly alone no matter what the map or road sign says.
Her gifts to the industry are invaluable, both personally (two fine sons raised with integrity and countless friendships) and professionally (just Google it—her accomplishments are extensive).
Yet I believe we owe her a greater debt for her willingness to say the names we all long to keep alive and help us navigate the triumphs and heartaches that are around every turn. When these moments float by, they risk settling into the dust of the town they fall in, but Santos grabs them and gives voice to the story we all need to hear.
As a culture, we do a crummy job of talking about tragedy. Despite all our advances and amazing technology, we cannot control the ultimate fate of ourselves or the people and animals we love.
Whether it is manifested in an abandoned pickup truck or a dust-covered saddle, an auctioned trailer, a gaping hole amongst the shoulders on the church pew, a new person dumping feed in the horse’s bucket, once a person or animal is gone from this earth, life is inevitably altered forever.
From the young men who never arrived at their destination during the night drive, to the horses lost in a trailer fire, or the memories of a saint who graced chute gates with a smile and a nod; these are the stories she etches in stone, asking us to pause and inviting us into prayer for these lives and the lives of those who love them.
Santos gathers the snippets of each life and their unique quirks and characteristics and shares them with the world long enough for us to learn their name and follow her lead in saying “Your life mattered.”
Thank you, Kendra Santos, for your devotion to lives you’ve never met and your love for those you have.
