Widows of the Land : One Woman Vows to Stay

C. Leonard Peterson--father, husband, respected rancher, pillar of the community--talked to a tape recorder as the carbon monoxide flooded his truck.

Every day, his widow looks at that tape. Once she listened for less than a minute, hearing her husband say for the last time how much he loved her and their children. She jerked the plug.

“I can’t bear that pain yet,” said Mary Peterson. “I may never be able to. There are times I’m so frightened inside I fear my legs are going to give way.

“Some days I wake up and the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming and for one instant I’ve forgotten. Other days I wake up and I don’t think I’m going to make it.

No Warning

“There was no warning. One phone call changed our whole lives.

“What’s going to happen to me? To my children? Pete was my life. We had dreams together. The worst thing that could ever happen to me has happened--my husband killed himself. Now it’s up to me to save the ranch. God help me.”

“Pete” Peterson was a third-generation Nebraskan. He owned 20,000 acres, leased 20,000 from an aunt and was sole boss of Mule Shoe Bar Ranches Inc. For nearly a century, since his grandfather homesteaded in the barren, wind-swept Sandhills, the Mule Shoe Bar has been synonymous with cattle and gentlemen cowboys in the sparsely populated Nebraska Panhandle.

Peterson lived with his wife, son and daughter in a comfortable brick home in Alliance, the Box Butte County seat of 10,000 about 25 miles west of the ranch. But six days a week he drove out to the spread where he’d grown up as a beloved only child.

Peterson made the daily round trip with Bill Bignell, his ranch manager and best friend. Together they worried about hard times and big debts. But every day at lunchtime, they settled into matching leather recliners in their cluttered office to watch a favorite soap opera.

“That last day seemed like all the others,” said Bignell, 60, whose grief has slumped his shoulders and darkened the skin under his eyes. “I never knew how bad it was for him. Pete never let on. He was cheerful, he ate turkey sandwiches with me, and then he killed himself. I’ll never get over it.”

Peterson was on the verge of losing his heritage when he took his life last Nov. 1. His cattle were already gone, sold at auction in 1983 to settle a debt at the local bank. The Internal Revenue Service was demanding full payment of taxes on that money. A million-dollar federal loan he had taken out to restock the ranch after a 1975 spring blizzard killed 800 calves and 200 pregnant cows was due. Major investments had soured.

Not Enough Money

No matter how many times he ran the numbers on his calculator, Peterson knew that there wasn’t enough money coming in from grazing other ranchers’ cattle to cover his debts. His friends and family believe he simply could not stand what he perceived to be his failure at the age of 51.

“He was a proud man with a reputation for helping everybody else,” said Bignell, “but he wouldn’t let anybody help him.”

Until his body was found at the ranch, facing a favorite picnic spot beside a lake, Peterson’s loved ones had no idea he had been plotting his suicide for at least six months.

“I lived with a man who was planning to kill himself and I didn’t notice any signals,” Mary Peterson said. “I look back now, and I still don’t see any signs. I worried about heart attacks and car wrecks. I didn’t think about interest rates, foreclosures or bankruptcy. But that’s what killed Pete.”

Peterson was a meticulous organizer who left behind copious instructions: a three-page list of friends to notify of his death; a detailed script for his funeral; suggestions about how to deal with bankers, lawyers, bill collectors, insurance agents, competitors.

Unknown to her, Mary Peterson’s name had been entered in the new telephone book as president of Mule Shoe Bar Ranches. Her $25 annual dues at the country club had been prepaid for two years. When she flipped forward the pages of her 1986 calendar, she saw entries detailing specific chores that needed to be done at the ranch.

Four days after the funeral, Mary Peterson turned 48. Her best friend arrived with presents Peterson had wrapped and left behind. There were also Christmas gifts for her, daughter Mary Katherine, 17, and son Doug, 20.

Soon afterward, Mary Peterson took a gamble: With a huge loan payment due at the land bank, she decided to try to fulfill her husband’s last wish--try to save the ranch.

She took his life insurance and paid the six-figure note. Then she wrote another six-figure check to the IRS.

“My husband was gone, the cattle were gone, but I still had the land. I decided to fight for it,” she said.

The widow began clipping stories about the farm crisis. Her dining room cupboard overflowed with newsprint. Without knowing quite how it happened, she became a spokeswoman for ranchers trying to repeal a state prohibition against corporate farming; the law, meant to protect little farms, prevents her from seeking corporate dollars to help save her big ranch. Only five months after Peterson died, she testified before a hushed legislative committee in Lincoln.

She marvels at her new assertiveness, her tenacity, the way she forced herself to telephone more than 60 strangers to find one rancher willing to graze 4,000 cattle on her land this summer. Without that income, she wouldn’t have been able to make December’s land bank payment.

Doubts still intrude. “I’m determined to keep the ranch going, but I don’t know how,” she said. “I’m determined I won’t go down the drain, and neither will my kids, but I’ve never held a job. When Pete died, I didn’t have a house key, I didn’t know how to fill out a deposit slip.

“Pete worked at the ranch. I raised children, gardened, shopped, played a little golf. What did I do with all my time? I really don’t know.”

Now, she said, she is learning to put deals together, “to think more like Pete and less like his pampered wife.” She now pays attention to the commodities market, to long-range weather forecasts, to theories about getting rid of grasshoppers.

Wants Home for Retarded

Mary Peterson’s ultimate goal for the Mule Shoe Bar is to convert it into a private, nonprofit home for mentally retarded men. “Everything is there,” she said, “bunkhouses, offices, gardens, water, even fire trucks and farm machinery.”

The ranch staff has shrunk from dozens to six loyalists. Bookkeeper Lila Fiebig, Bignell and Mary Peterson spend hours sorting paper work, trying to learn details Peterson kept in his head.

Slowly, the grieving victims of a suicide statistic are piecing their lives together.

“I’m sure Pete never thought he would cause so many people so much pain,” said Mary Peterson. “One friend’s young son rides his bicycle to the cemetery to visit the grave. His old friends are angry he didn’t reach out for help.”

The worst times for her are at the ranch. Every horizon represents a happy memory.

Bids Goodby to Bo

Mary Peterson seldom cries, but when she got into her van to drive back to town, she wept as she bid goodby to Bo, the ancient black dog who was her husband’s constant companion.