I want to talk about my great grandmother, Fayette Peel. She was born in a small town in Texas called Gauze in the 1800’s. Gauze is situated on the Brazos River. Her father owned a large ranch and had a meat packing company. She grew up watching her father work very hard to be successful at ranching and running a business. This would serve her well, when she married my great grandfather, Jennings Bryan Peel.

JB or “Papa” as he was known to me, started his own ranch and went on to merge his land with “Granny’s” fathers’ land and PaPa had to ride the cattle trails- Chisolm and Goodnight- Loving – to get his cattle to market. When he would leave the ranch, he would be gone for long periods of time, sometimes 3 to 4 months and had to face many obstacles. While he was gone, my great grandmother ran the ranch from sun up to sun down. She was Papa’s “right hand man” so to speak.

I was very lucky to get to know my great grandmother. This photo of the 4 of us was taken the year before she died (she is bottom left). We were on our way to Washington DC, she wanted me to learn that the world was a big wonderful place and I was a member of it! I remember so many details of our trip but more than that I remember so many details of Granny.

Granny always wore bright red lipstick and diamond earrings. She wore this when she rode horses, worked fences, or made Texas chili for the cowboys that worked the ranch. She was smart, hardworking, a little sassy, a lot of fun, and always stylish. She taught me that beauty was confidence and you earned confidence by working hard and learning about life. She taught me to always have time for fun and she taught me that red lipstick really does go with everything! Because bright, bold lipstick is about confidence. She was truly an original and as I start an additional chapter at BoxBar Vascular- BoxBar Beauty– She is the inspiration.

Stay tuned, more to come….