Board of Directors
In 2003, Jerry and his wife Gloria, a retired elementary school principal, moved to the Brevard area, anticipating a relaxed life style in the outdoors, hiking, fly fishing, traveling and playing golf. Within a short time he decided it was time to contribute to the community and ultimately served on several non-profit boards. Jerry was raised around Standardbred race horses a good part of his life and with his background in health becoming involved with Free Rein was a perfect fit.
Jerry and his wife live in the Cedar Mountain area, along with their Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, Murphy.

After graduating from Florida State University, he taught 9 th grade physical science for 4 years at McClay high school in Tallahassee, Florida. In 1988 he was recruited to be the program director at Camp Carolina for boys in Brevard. After that first summer, Andy, his wife, and newborn daughter chose to make Brevard their home. Their son was born the next year in Brevard. Four years later, Andy became the assistant director at Camp Illahee for girls.
After seven years in the summer camp business, Andy took the Resource Coordinator position with the statewide therapeutic foster care placement agency, Omni Visions, Inc., based out of Raleigh. Andy trained, licensed, and placed long term foster children in foster homes located in Western North Carolina.
In 2005, Andy took the science teacher position at Davidson River High School, the local alternative high school in Brevard. While working at DRS, Andy first learned about Free Rein. The middle school students there took lessons at Free Rein and since Andy had his bus driver’s license, he often drove them out to the barn for their lessons. After reading a newspaper article describing Free Rein and the upcoming volunteer orientation and training, Andy became involved. For many years while still teaching school, Andy volunteered as the horse leader for a single student every Wednesday afternoon during the spring and fall sessions. This experience helped Andy realize just how beneficial the Free Rein horses & lessons were to not only each student, but also for giving the family a quiet one-hour break during the lesson time. Andy retired from teaching after eleven years and found he had some free time. Being a morning person, Andy has volunteered to feed the horses Monday thru Friday mornings for several years now. During this time, Brittany, caught him fixing small things around the barn; hose holders, door hinges or latches, motion flood lights. Now Andy enjoys working with Brittany as a handy man for many of the special projects she comes up with. Andy continues to be a substitute horse leader when needed, continues to feed horses and do morning barn chores, and always love hearing Brittany’s chuckle when she says she has another project in mind.


Debi’s family has owned a house in Connestee since 1976 is she had been coming to the Brevard area for many years. She had always been curious about Free Rein every time she drove by. (She did ride horses and took lessons earlier in her life) She started volunteering last year as a side walker and just loved her experience with her students. Since COVID shut the programs down, she has been coming to the barn once or twice a week to help with barn chores, grooming, bathing, etc. She and her husband are heroes to Ayla.

She has been happily married to Brian for over thirty years and they have two wonderful young adult children, Eric and Sarabeth.

Donna spent her 27-year career at SunTrust Banks as Vice President/IT Project Management Office, executing multi-million dollar projects through life-cycles that included mergers, software and hardware development and implementation, and systems maintenance and upgrades. Donna also developed and delivered PM training and support to the PMO.
Donna lives in Connestee Falls with her husband Dave and their two cats, Murphy and Louie.

Linda’s retired professional background consists of Compliance Analyst for an E-Rate Program, Office Manager of The Free Clinic of Transylvania County and Business Officer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Nephrology. Linda also enjoys woodworking with her husband, Kevin and hiking with their daughter, granddaughter and dogs.



In addition, she was a Board Member of the Lake County United Way
serving on a special committee which advised appropriate allocations to social services in the County.
She is certified by Hazelton Addiction Center as a drug/alcohol assessment counselor and served as an assessment counselor and developed recovery family sessions for the Lake County Juvenile Court.
Under the auspices of the Governor of Ohio, she also participated in the Lake County Family and Children First Council serving as member of Council and as chair of the Children’s Committee which was tasked with resolving therapeutic and placement issues for multi-need children. This entailed chairing public discussions which included parents, service providers and school personnel to plan and resolve conflictual concerns
Susan and her husband Doug, moved full time to Brevard 15 years ago. Prior to that, we owned a condo in Cashiers which we used for family vacations since 1980 until moving full time here.
Both Doug and Susan owned horses during high school. He stopped riding when he went to college. Susan gave up her own horse but her college had an equestrian program so even though she didn’t participate in it, my friends had horses so she got to ride.
Our daughter, Cait, started riding when she was 7; we leased a horse when she was 9 and we bought Levi, her horse, when she was 11. She evented with him for many years so she was an official “show horse mom”. He was here at Shoal Creek farms for the last 6 years of his life – he passed after 22 years with our family.
Susan decided to start riding again 11 years ago and bought her horse, Copper, 9 years ago. In addition, we bought a mare, Darby, 5 years ago.
Free Rein seems to be a great fit with her interests and experience. Susan has been impressed with and supported this facility for years.
