Minnie Lou Bradley - Early Years, Family, Education

Early Years, Family, Education

Bradley was born in Hinton, in Caddo County in western Oklahoma, to Ralph Thomas Ottinger (1904–1970), who was employed in road construction, and the former Zulema Young (1903–1987), a teacher. Bradley had three siblings: Helen, born March 20, 1930, Ted Calvin, born August 27, 1938, and Linda Sue born November 24, 1943. Bradley later lived on a wheat farm near Hydro on the line between Caddo and Blaine counties. Even as a nine-year-old, Bradley participated in the 4-H Club, having shown lambs and pigs. At the time, girls were not permitted in Future Farmers of America, but, spurred by her uncle, Ted Ottinger, she became focused with a career in livestock and ranching, She graduated with distinction from Hydro High School, where she was a member of the state championship girls’ basketball team in 1948.

From 1949-1953, Bradley attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where she was the first female student to major in animal husbandry and where she met her future husband, Billy Jack Bradley (also born 1931). The couple married in 1955 and had two children, Monte Jack Bradley (1958–1984), who died in an automobile accident, and Mary Lou Bradley-Henderson, an accountant by profession who came to work with her mother at the ranch on her brother’s death. Billy Jack Bradley left the ranch in the middle 1990s for personal reasons and resides in Vernon, the seat of Wilbarger County west of Fort Worth.

The Bradley 3 Ranch began in 1955 during a time of drought with 3,000 acres (12 km2) purchased by Minnie and Billy Bradley, and his parents, Raymond Jack “Rusty” Bradley and the former Lois Chaney, originally from Electra in Wichita County, Texas. The family maintains that Rusty Bradley’s father, Rufus Jack Bradley, had in the 1870s been a wagon boss on the famed XIT Ranch west of Amarillo, although that ranch did not actually exist until 1885. The Bradley 3 (originally three ranches) began raising Angus cattle some two years after its founding. The ranch uses Angus bulls to increase the production of the Hereford heifers.

In the center of the ranch is a slightly elevated area on which one can see the lights of Childress, the seat of Childress County, eleven miles (18 km) to the south and Memphis, the seat of Hall County, some nineteen miles (30 km) to the west. On that same spot during the day, one sees only endless ranchland covered in short grass, mesquite, juniper, and the black Angus. Not even a water tower dots the horizon from the Bradley 3. The Panhandle has been described as one place on earth where one can see the fartherest and still see the least.