Riding Skills Took Young Woman on a Rare Journey

By Eugene Scheel

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Like many other Loudoun County youngsters of the baby-boom generation, Libussa Brabner-Smith Huge learned to ride a horse at Montresor, a farm north of Leesburg. Unlike most of the others, she parlayed her skill into an invitation to teach riding to the son of the shah of Iran.

Her stay in Tehran didn't go quite as planned, but it was a worthwhile adventure, she said.

I spoke recently with Huge and her mother, Daniela Brabner-Smith, both old friends, about her childhood hobby and how it eventually took her to Iran.

Huge began riding lessons at Montresor at age 7, under the tutelage of John and Nancy Stanford. Her first pony was Mike — "13 years old and blind in one eye," she told me — and her first competitive horse, Frankie, entered the picture when she was 15.

"Frankie was a track reject," Huge said. "He wasn't much to look at, but he could jump the moon. He had an innate capacity to know exactly where to take off."

He was such an obedient horse that when Huge enrolled at the Madeira School in McLean, Madeira riding instructor Mildred Gaines told her, "If you allow us to stable him and let us use him as a school horse, we will not charge you." That led Huge's father to quip, "Frankie got a scholarship to Madeira, but Libussa did not."

Gaines and Madge Barclay, Madeira's two equestriennes, both lived on Dry Mill Road, west of Leesburg. In the 1940s and '50s, they were looked upon as the grande dames of riding etiquette in Loudoun and upper Fauquier counties. They took Huge to area competitions, and she achieved an A pony club rating. Her instruction included courses in teaching riding.

While Huge was attending American University and majoring in international relations, Gaines received a letter from Louise Farouz, who lived near Madeira and was married to an Iranian.

Gaines showed Huge the letter, and Huge remembers it well. Farouz said it was a travesty that the shah's youngest son, then 5, did not know how to ride a horse — Iran was noted for its horsemen — and she wanted Gaines to send over an instructor.

Gaines told Huge she was ideally suited for the job. Huge and Barbara Goshorn, a fellow pony clubber and Madeira graduate, then met with Farouz, who told them they would be boarding at an estate of the shah. The two young women told Farouz they would accept the offer to teach for a year. "It sounded like a great adventure," Huge said.

"Remember, no short skirts and sleeveless blouses or tank tops," she recalled Farouz saying.

Iran in the early 1970s was not the Iran of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, its current president. It was a country trying to modernize, and although it harbored great wealth and abject poverty, a middle class was emerging and religious freedom was growing.

Narci Farouz, Louise's husband, who worked for the Iranian government and would soon be returning to Iran with his wife, reassured Huge on the subject of religious tolerance. "I have three-day weekends," he told her, Friday being the Muslim holy day, Saturday the Jewish sabbath and Sunday the Christian sabbath.

Huge and Goshorn flew to Iran in June 1972, and got their first surprise when Louise Farouz met them at the airport.

"A slight snag: You're going to be living with us," Farouz said. That change, the girls soon learned, would be permanent. The spartan quarters were fine "but surrounding the farm were dirt and wild dogs," Huge recalled.

Later, at a competition at the shah's stables, the stable head told Huge that he had dismissed the idea of a female instructor for the shah's son when Farouz had broached the subject. "This is just not going to happen," he told Farouz. In Iran, only men taught males to ride.

"Why didn't this occur to Louise?" Huge recalled thinking.

But the change of plans didn't discourage her. "I loved training horses," Huge said, and she learned that this would be one of her main jobs at the Farouz farm. She recalls riding into the mountains north of Tehran with Louise Farouz and her head groom on trips to bring back untrained ponies. They would train the ponies and then teach 7- to 10-year-old Iranian girls to ride.

"They'd come to us wearing patent leather shoes. They did wear slacks," Huge said. None wore burkhas.

She also began teaching riding to children of the diplomatic corps and U.S. military members.

She also organized what she thinks were the first eventing meets held in Iran, first at the shah's stables, then at the Farouz farm.

"They had show jumping in Iran, but they didn't know anything about eventing," Huge said. Eventing, she explained, is a three-day competition and Olympic sport in which riders are judged in dressage, endurance riding and show jumping.

I asked her about Petski, one of her favorite horses in Iran.

"I was told he used to be addicted to opium, and that's why he was so mean. When you came to him, he would flatten his ears back and shake his head from side to side. You didn't want to stick out an attentive hand." She always approached Petski from the side, she said, stroking his shoulders.

At an endurance event in Isfahan, Petski finished the course and won a ribbon. "That was not always the case," she added.

Huge told me that she and Louise Farouz were "the only women riders we saw in the country." Goshorn had returned to the United States after a few months.

I asked Huge whether she was ever homesick.

"I remember really having it out with God. 'Why did you put me here?' I looked up into the sky and I could identify Orion. And I knew my parents could see the same thing."

In August 1973, Huge returned to Loudoun after 14 months in Iran. The headmistress at Madeira soon asked her to be the new riding instructor, but added that she would need to complete her degree at American University.

"I replied — and the words just came out of my mouth — 'I can't do that because in six months, I am going to be married and have three children.' She looked dumbfounded."

Huge had been teaching riding to the three children of Cal Huge, a widower. They had dated once and he had not proposed, but she already knew where things were headed. Sure enough, they were married in June 1974. I attended the wedding on a hill at Catoctin Mill farm, now the home of one of their five children and in its 55th year in the family.

For a decade, the Huges were part of the equestrian world. Then, an abrupt break occurred. Cal Huge became head of an office of Youth With a Mission in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Libussa worked at the office.

After returning from Europe, she received a degree in French and became a French teacher.

In 2006, she traveled with her husband to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he helped run an airline. She taught English to women, some of whom had returned after fleeing the country because of the Taliban.

"I found riding wonderful, but a little self-serving," she said. She has been on a horse once since 1985.

Eugene Scheel is a historian and mapmaker who lives in Waterford.

Tagged: history, horses, Leesburg, opinions

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