Having an active daughter, you most likely would want her involved in some sort of activity to develop social skills along with having something she enjoys. Ginger Brown’s mother decided to put her through dance at age three and Ginger has had a love for it ever since.

Looking back at her life, she realizes that it wasn’t just dance that she loves - it is teaching. Dance was just the beginning of it. Dance was something that brought her joy as a child, but at age 12 she found herself teaching in her parents’ home.

“I did a little competition twirling - there really wasn’t much more to offer back then. My teacher moved to Florida so I took over her students.”

Eventually, Ginger moved to the East Lake Community Center. “I taught baton for 50 cents a day. When I went to college at MTSU, I worked at a dance school there.” In her young adult years, Ginger admits, “I wanted to save the world.” She focused on helping people and worked at CADAS for a while and then at the Children’s Advocacy Center. “I was so busy trying to do something meaningful to help others, while teaching dance on the side and I thought, ‘why am I trying to find all these jobs when I had a mission right here in my dance school?' Teaching dance is a mission in itself.”

Ginger has been teaching for 50 years. “I started out with Ginger’s Twirling School and, as it grew and we were able to offer more, it became Ginger Brown’s Academy for Performing Arts.” The academy was located in East Ridge on Ringgold Road for many years and is now in the Fort Oglethorpe/Ringgold area.  

Ginger’s passion for dance was uncontainable. “I started traveling and studying. I studied under Luigi, a famous jazz dancer from the Chicago area. He was paralyzed from the neck down and he is still able to teach dance. People like him have inspired me.”

 Nowadays, Ginger is the artistic director at her academy. She wants her teachers to teach independently, but Ginger still teaches and is very involved. “These kids spend as much of their time under the direction of their instructors as they do their parents. They want to be like them. It is very important to me that the kids have a healthy atmosphere and can learn under these role models.  You don’t have to have drugs or alcohol to get high - dance is a natural high. You learn discipline, to care for your body and take care of yourself.  We are always going to have problems in life and these students learn how to work through it. Dance helps to provide the release for them.”

Ginger’s passion to teach and to help others trickled over in her later years as well. Living on a ranch with over 400 acres on the side of Lookout Mountain, she could not see enjoying the blessings in her life without sharing them. When she and her husband, Burton, discussed their love for horses; they had dabbled a bit with racing and breeding and Ginger took riding lessons. “I always had a love for horses but never the opportunity to be around them much. I remember the first place that I went the instructor was ready to just put me on the horse immediately,” Ginger chuckles, “and I said, ‘wait a minute - shouldn’t I bond with the horse first?’ it was a little intimidating. Fortunately, I went somewhere else to learn how to ride and they did teach that bonding with the horse is very important.”

The Browns did a lot of leisure riding and some of the neighborhood kids wanted to learn to ride. With Ginger’s governess nature, she wanted to teach others how to ride as she remembered her initial fears and wanted to make sure that they didn’t have those same fears.  “We did recreational riding and some camps. We had a few autistic children to come to ride and I saw a child say their first words here. The child reached over and said, “Love horsey” and the mother was just bawling, and I knew in my heart that I would love to have something therapeutic here.”

She and her husband looked into horse therapy for children with disabilities.

The term therapeutic riding was originally used in Germany to address orthopedic dysfunctions such as scoliosis. The physician would engage a physical therapist and a specially trained horse and instructor to help build strength. This later became known as hippotherapy in the United States.

Ginger did her research and found Charles Fletcher, founder of Spirithorse who was an executive at Rockwell for years and now resides in Corinth, Tex., changing lives through equine-assisted activities and therapies. Ginger and Burton formed Spirithorse Eagle Rest Ranch under Mr. Fletcher’s program. Ginger insists, “Charles Fletcher is a very generous man. We are under the umbrella of his Spirithorse - he charged us one dollar for the license.”  

SERR serves children with mental and physical disabilities, youth at risk, as well as those with social disorders. Children with autism is their main area of expertise. They have found that one in every 100 children has autism. SERR has a full-sized riding arena as well as miles of mountainside trails. “Our motto is ‘First Words, First Steps’. We work on the core. The children have no motivation to work otherwise, but they will work for a horse. The horses somehow understand that this is a special job. We get horses that are over 12 years old and very gentle.” 

The horses, staff and volunteers at the Flintstone ranch have all received specialized training to skillfully work with children of numerous degrees of abilities and disabilities. The horses are trained to temper their reactions to unpredictable behaviors that come with the territory of working with emotionally and physically-challenged children. “Parents will apologize and we tell them they don’t have to apologize - this is what we are here for. If their child comes in pitching a fit and screaming we want them to know that this is a safe place they can feel comfortable in bringing their child. This is for them - the child comes first.”

Giving special needs children an avenue to be around the horses is not about horsemanship, “You aren’t teaching horse-riding lessons; you are teaching for the therapeutic aspects.  The movement of the horse releases endorphins that feed the hormones in the brain.  With an autistic child it causes a connection with the neuron-pathways.  Their socialization improves with therapy.” Ginger proclaims.

She says, "We started something new with a therapeutic vest - it’s a pressure vest for autistic children and, when children cannot regulate and focus, we put a vest on them. They are light as a feather but it gives the child a sense of being held. Autistic children rarely make eye contact and they can be in their own little world. When a child comes here in that mode and we put the vest on them and they focus on the horse, then when that horse starts going around the ring, it is like someone just waves a magic wand.”

The Browns hold fundraisers on the ranch to support scholarships at Spirithorse. They had a sorting competition and at one of the events, one of their autistic students sang the National Anthem.  “The doctors told her parents that she would never talk - and here she sang the National Anthem - there was not a dry eye in the arena.”

Ginger has incorporated her passion for children with special needs into her academy of performing arts as well. Something she plans on undertaking this spring is a veterans’ program helping them to make the transition back into the community, “I think if they can get involved in our other program with Spirithorse - in giving their time and help - it’s healing; that’s so good for people… it is so good for the soul to give.”

To volunteer, donate or learn more about Spirithorse in Flintstone, contact Ginger Brown SpiritHorse Eagles Rest Ranch 423 421-3205 ginger@eaglesrestranch.com

Jen Jeffrey

jen@jenjeffrey.com