Guest post: Remembering Grace

September 21, 2025 / Featured, Staff Blog

Gracie. Photo: Meg Frederick.

A guest post from a special friend of Return to Freedom:

Hello, my name is Eric McCracken. I am a 77-year-old Easterner, a city slicker.

More than four years ago my wife of over 35 years, Grace, died from cancer. I wanted to memorialize her in a unique way. She often remarked how when traveling across country she would see wild horses running free. How great it felt to see their freedom.

Eric and Grace McCracken on their last cruise together in 2013.

I started looking to find a way to support wild horses. I chose Return to Freedom, a nonprofit advocacy organization that also operates a sanctuary.

RTF was founded and has been run by Neda DeMayo since 1997. I believe she loves mustangs more than life.

I sponsored Gracie, a mare RTF named after my wife. Neda sent me pictures of Gracie and her history.

RTF rescued her and her family band following a Bureau of Land Management helicopter roundup in Wyoming during which 1,969 wild horses were captured and 10 killed.

Last year, I flew out to Lompoc, Calif., to see Gracie and RTF’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary.

Neda met me with a great big hug like I was a long-lost friend. The next day, she drove me to RTF’s satellite sanctuary in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

There, different areas ensured the mustangs always had fresh grass. This is regenerative grazing, and it works.

We drove up to Indian Rock. I climbed to the top. I could see the Pacific to the west and in all the other directions all I could see were rolling hills. It is a magnificent home for rescued horses.

A group of mustangs came right up to us like we were friends or part of their family.

I had never petted a horse before. I was amazed, changed, and in awe.

We traveled around the sanctuary to where Gracie was grazing with her family band.

To my amazement, Neda had saved ashes I had sent her to spread in Grace’s memory.

As I spread her ashes, you cannot imagine how I felt.

More than 50 years after a public outcry led Congress to unanimously pass a law meant to save the last of America’s wild horses and burros, where do we stand?

The BLM and U.S. Forest Service use helicopters to chase and burros sometimes for miles over rough terrain and into trap sites, in some cases leading to injury or death.

They are sorted by age and gender, their family bands and herds destroyed.

Wranglers use freeze branding with a super-chilled iron to alter hair pigment, leaving a white, permanent mark on the left side of the captured horse or burro’s neck.

Terrified wild horses and burros are loaded onto trucks and taken from everything they’ve ever known.

Some are adopted or sold outright. They lose their federal protections, are no longer tracked by the government, and can fall into the pipeline to foreign slaughterhouses.

Most spend their lives in often-overcrowded government corrals or on leased pastures.

All of this is being done with our tax dollars.

A relatively few of the captured horses are fortunate enough to find safe forever homes at sanctuaries, like RTF’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary, or with adoptive horse lovers skilled enough to care for them.

I have fought in three wars. I have seen how humanity treats humanity.

We do not house our own homeless or provide them with food, or respect. We kill and cripple our fellow humans on the streets and in wars.

Will we let America’s wild horses and burros disappear along with our freedom, integrity, and humanity?

Please do what you can to help.

Sponsor a rescued wild horse like Gracie

Honor a loved one

Take action for wild horses and burros

Eric visiting Gracie, left, at RTF’s San Luis Obispo, Calif., satellite sanctuary in 2025.

Back at the ranch

September 21, 2025

Hi, this is Eric McCracken the City Slicker again. I just got back from my second visit to Return to Freedom’s sanctuary.

Gracie is happy and healthy. Her family band has settled in since my visit last year.

What did I do there at the sanctuary? I enjoyed it, peace and solitude. Just what the wild mustangs need and love.

I hiked all over the main ranch in Lompoc. Boy, was I glad I purchased hiking boots for my trip.

I talked to the angels who care for the mustangs. Some require special diets. Some require special medical attention. They get all they need.

Not only is Spirit (the star of DreamWorks’ “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”) there, but many other horses and burros, plus wild turkeys, deer and everything you would expect on a ranch.

The wild horses need one thing — for us to appreciate and help them.

It is the dry season on the Central Coast now. Everything is brown, so the animals all have to be fed healthy hay daily.

The hay costs $18 to $22 for a 100-pound bale.

Yes, 100 pounds! I can attest to that. I spent an afternoon breaking up bales and tossing hay for horses and burros to eat. They all came running.

So, if you can, please become a monthly hay bale sponsor. It costs about 92 cents a day — less than a cup of coffee. Be a hero!

See you down the dusty road!