Excerpted from Iowa Farmer Today, January, 1985
By Al Swegle
Solon-Some might at first be surprised to find a woman running a farming operation who had devoted her life to God and horses, but Betsy Coester says they shouldn't be.
Betsy, with a twinkle in her eye says it was the Lord's sense of humor that directed her to manage a 100-acre horse and pony farm midway between Solon and Iowa City and to open up a historic ecumenical prayer house in nearby Iowa City.
As a brochure about horses that she hands out to her guests says: "We care about people. We want them to develop good sportsmanship, self-discipline, a sense of responsibility and a feeling of belonging. We want them to have the opportunity to learn to cope with success and failure. Pony Club offers all this through equestrian involvement."
Her students and her horses have excelled beyond all expectations, and yet this devout woman-the wife of a theoretical nuclear physicist who is working on a classified project at the Argonne National laboratory near Chicago-is happiest in prayer.
Betsy speaks a lot about "surrendering to self: and "gaining inner peace," terms which mean people should be content to be who they are and to understand the differences in other people.
A native of Baltimore, MD, she attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Sorbonne in France and the University of London before graduating in 1952 from the University of Iowa with a degree in the romance languages.
Betsy met her husband, Fritz Coester, a German who had gotten his doctorate degree at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, while on a climbing expedition with the Iowa Mountaineers near Iowa City.
Fritz was a member of the University of Iowa faculty between 1946 and 1963. Since then he's worked at Argonne and visits the farm on weekends.
They bought their present farm in 1955, where they breed and train performance horses and teach riding, including dressage, cross country and arena jumping. She's worked with students from as far away as the Virgin Islands.
Seven of her students have gone on to compete in junior Olympics, and one, Linda Zang of Annapolis, MD, was a member of the 1980 dressage team for the US Olympics.
Betsy competed at the Olympics' three-day level from 1960-63. A district commissioner and national examiner with the US Pony Clubs, Inc., she lets her local Rapid Creek Pony Club use her facilities on weekends for workouts and training events.
Her family includes: Thomas, 17, a senior at Iowa City Regina and a blacksmith-farrier; Susan, 19, who is majoring in art and writing at the U of I; Michael, 25, another farrier who will receive his masters in finance from the U of I this spring; Hans, 27, a third-year medical student at the U of I; Bill, 28, who rides in national and international three-day competition and lives in Chicago; and Janet, 30, a massage therapist in Snowmass, CO, who also spent eight years in a cloistered convent.