Burks back in the show ring
Local horsewoman Sarah Burks brings home 20 blue ribbons in 2018.
Sarah Burks was driving her husband’s customized Chevrolet Corvette shortly after his death in 2017 when she felt the call to return to the horse show world after three decades away.
Albert Burks passed away in May of that year shortly after his lung cancer diagnosis.
“When I heard that big block engine roar, I heard my late husband’s voice: ‘Honey, you’ve done everything that you need to do. Now, it’s time to do something you love,’” she recalls. “That’s when I decided to celebrate his life rather than mourn his death.”
Three months after Albert’s death, she attended the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration in Shelbyville, Tennessee, to watch a friend’s show. It was there that she met Alan and Nick Price, a father/son horse training team based in Gordon County.
She remembers Alan encouraging her to get back into the sport she had loved since she was a young girl.
“The first words he said to me were, ‘I want to be the one to put you back in the show ring,’” she says.
Her response: “That’s never going to happen.”
Life circumstances, including a divorce years earlier had led her away from the horse world, and she was hesitant about jumping back in. But she trusted the Prices, and by the end of 2018, she was
HORSE,