Staying Fit
Once a telecom exec, he has created a global network of therapeutic riding centers serving children with disabilities – free of charge.
Two tumultuous decades in the telecommunications industry took a toll on Charles Fletcher’s income and his spirit. When he retired in the 1990s at the age of 58, he found some peace of mind through volunteering at a Dallas-area equine therapy center for children with disabilities. The special connection he witnessed between the children and horses was both restorative and intimately familiar, as he had been around horses since he was 5. But Fletcher thought the program was falling short. It could do more than offer feel-good pony rides. It had the potential to heal.
And then there were the kids who never had a chance to climb into the saddle at all. Fletcher saw many cash-strapped families turned away. That feeling, too, he remembered from his childhood growing up poor in Tennessee, spending years working in cotton fields and factories before he saved enough to buy his first horse.
After several years of volunteering, Fletcher one day overheard an instructor raise his voice at a 7-year-old girl with autism, demanding that she look him in the eye. She wouldn’t. Like a lot of kids with autism, she couldn’t. After the lesson, Fletcher led the little girl away on her pony. Within a few quiet moments, she raised her head, looked him directly in the eye, and smiled.
That moment inspired Fletcher to figure out new ways to provide therapy. The children deserved a program based on science, and Fletcher felt a deep passion to provide that to them. “I knew I wanted to help these children in a big way,” Fletcher says.
He spent countless hours searching the internet for innovative, game-changing equine therapy methods. He reached out to medical specialists, learned about brain development and began building a network of experts.
Cash-strapped but committed, he plowed his Social Security checks into launching SpiritHorse. In 2001, though money was tight, Fletcher, then 63, opened the gates of his ranch in Corinth, Texas, with just three riders and two ponies, Fudge and Snowflake.
Word quickly spread, mostly through referrals from parents and doctors, and Fletcher launched an encore career that has since changed more than 5,000 lives worldwide.
Today, his nonprofit employs 20 salaried instructors and provides hour-long therapy sessions to roughly 400 riders every week at his Texas ranch alone. It serves children with disabilities, at-risk youth, battered women and wounded veterans.