The Last Of The Cowboys Geech Partin And The Partin Clan Are Kissimmee's Answer To The Ewings Of 'Dallas.' They Were Born And Bred On The Range. And Doubtless They'll Die There, Too -- With Their Boots On, Of Course.
November 23, 1986|By Rowland Stiteler

     In the early 1930s, Henry O. Partin built a big two-story ranch house near Fish Lake, just south of Kissimmee. It had its own electric generator, making it one of the first houses in rural Osceola County to have electricity in a time when only towns and cities had electric power. Later the Partin family would have its own private phone system connecting the Partin households so Henry O. could call his sons each morning and direct them where to assemble for work that day.

     From the time Slim, Geech, Doc and Earl were old enough to climb on a horse until long after their father had died, all the Partin brothers worked side by side, virtually every day of the year

''We've been working together so long that we know what each other is thinking,'' says Earl, who is 64 and the last of his generation healthy enough to ride a horse daily. ''We know what each other is going to say before he says it.''The unity of the Partin family, forged on countless cattle drives, has doubtless been the secret of its success. In the heyday of the Heart Bar Ranch, in the '30s, '40s and '50s, the entire extended Partin family had a single checking account on which each son could sign checks, with the balance being tallied by Henry O. Partin.In 1956, the Saturday Evening Post published a feature story about the Partin family, declaring the clan to be ''the hardest working millionaires in America'' and noting that the Partin patriarch had built his empire without hiring a single cowboy. He didn't have to. He had raised all the cowboys he needed.

     The Partins became somewhat famous within the ranching industry, as well -- as breeders of Brahman cattle. In the early 1930s, Henry O. Partin went to Texas and came back with 150 head of the Brahmans, which had been imported from India because they were better suited to hot climates than most domestic breeds.Soon the Partin ranch became the headquarters for Brahman cattle in Florida, if not the entire Southeastern United States. Henry O. Partin and his sons shipped registered Brahmans to Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia and half a dozen other countries where the art of raising purebred cattle was becoming popular with cattle barons.Geech and Slim Partin were beginning to have an affinity for fine horses, too.

     In the early '30s, Geech went to Alice, Texas, and purchased what would be the first registered quarterhorse in Florida. Always known for flaunting his style, he didn't want to let the arrival of Florida's first quarterhorse go unnoticed. After all, he'd paid $150, a fortune at the time, for his blue- blooded new mount.So Geech made sure there was an audience at the train station in Kissimmee when his quarterhorse was unloaded from the cattle car in which it had been shipped.What had been intended as a moment of personal triumph, however, proved to be Geech's biggest embarrassment. The horse had been crowded into the cattle car with a load of cows, which had managed to eat all the hair off the horse's mane and tail.What emerged from the car at the loading docks was a forlorn creature that looked more like it should be shot than saluted.But Geech Partin got the last laugh. The horse's hair grew back, and the experience had done nothing to diminish the animal's speed. Quarterhorses are so named because they are extremely fast at running the quarter mile. They are also extremely agile at herding cattle. Racing a normal cow pony against a quarterhorse over a quarter-mile course is like racing a Chevy Nova against a Ferrari..

     And when you happen to own the first quarterhorse in the state, racing is a particularly rewarding experience. ''I'd work cattle with that horse five days a week and then Slim, who only weighed about 135 or 140 at the time, would ride her in races on Saturdays and Sundays,'' Geech recalls. ''I remember seeing a feller put up a whole fistful of money against our horse and hearing my daddy say we'd match every dime. Our little pony took it going away.''

     Geech still periodically goes to the big-money quarterhorse races at Ruidoso, N.M. And he dreams of taking one of his own horses there someday. ''He might not be any faster than a fat wash woman,'' Geech says of the fastest quarterhorse he currently owns, ''but I sure would like to give it a run.''

For the most part, though, the Partins eschew competitive cowboy sports like bull riding on the grounds that it simply takes up valuable time and effort needed to run a ranch.

That endeavor has been something of an uphill battle for the Partins in recent years. For one thing, the entire ranching industry has been in trouble for the past decade or so because of declining beef prices and increasing costs for feed and fertilizer and all the other components of a rancher's overhead. It is getting more and more difficult for a rancher to sell his cattle at a profit.