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is her go-to person to sing the anthem at Menlo ev- ery year. Well, except for that year that John French sang it. Nonetheless “that’s my payback,” says Bet- sy with a laugh. “Ellen sings opera, and none of us in the family ever liked opera.” Her two older sons, Bob and John, cleaned up
manure in the backyard as children, but that was as close to horses as they got. Betsy’s own connec-
tion to horses still is, and has always been, purely recre- ational - somewhat ironic for a woman at the helm of one of California’s most intensely competitive environments. But “back when the Woodside Horse Park was
just Guernsey Field, and there was no freeway to cross,” Betsy says she would ride her horse straight from Atherton into the hills of Woodside and go trail riding for hours.She only stopped riding five years ago, when her last horse retired and she de- cided not to look for another. Betsy admits that Menlo is enough of a horse
fix for her now, as is serving on the board of the National Center for Equine Facilitated Therapy (NCEFT) and The Horse Park at Woodside. But that doesn’t fully satiate her charity fix – she also sits on the board of two non-equine organizations; The Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Im- paired, and Family and Children Services. “I’m a career volunteer,” she says. “My strongest
trait is the organizational structure that I can run. At Menlo, my job is pulling everything together, and it keeps me so occupied that I rarely watch a class.” But she doesn’t miss much either. As Menlo’s
most recognizable face, Betsy has had plenty of practice in fundraising, cheerleading, deciding whom should be seated next to whom in the spon- sor tent, and turning a conversation the direction she wants it to go. And forty years in, she’s only improving with age like a fine wine.
Above Left: Menlo Above Right: Introducing her granddaughter Elizabeth to Billy the horse, who “never did a mean thing.” Left: Betsy with her husband Tom at Menlo in 2007.
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