Mother says teen died doing what she loved
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pb...ING20/70321014
By GINNY LAROE
ginny.laroe@heraldtribune.com
VENICE – It seemed like Mary Angela Jaquith was born to ride horses.
By the time she was 4, Mary was riding regularly. Through her childhood, when she wasn’t riding a horse she was talking about how she wanted to become a veterinarian.
Mary, 13, died Saturday as she and fellow Pony Club members were practicing for an upcoming jumping competition at the Jaquith family’s East Venice farm.
When a younger rider had problems with one of the family’s horses, Mary, who was more experienced, hopped saddled up to see if she could help.
Unknown to the nine riders, two instructors and parents who were there, the horse was likely back sore. When Mary mounted the horse it reared back, throwing her to the ground. Then it rolled over her.
Mary’s mother, Debra Jaquith, rushed to her side and tried to care for her. But Mary was unconscious and bleeding heavily.
Despite the riding helmet, she suffered a fracture to the base of her skull.
On Sunday, the blue-eyed girl died in her mother’s arms at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she was airlifted after the accident.
Jaquith, who rode horses with her home-schooled daughter four days a week, said she isn’t angry about the way her daughter died. Instead, she is comforted by the fact that she was doing what she loved.
“God wants us to live in the moment more than he wants us to dwell in the past,” Jaquith said. “That’s what he’s really teaching me.
“The day He created her, He knew He was going to take her back. You can’t second guess that. You accept it.”
If it wasn’t a horseback riding accident, it could have been a car wreck or something worse, Jaquith said.
On Wednesday, family and friends gathered at the Farley Funeral Home in Venice to grieve for the girl who wanted to become a veterinarian and a mother.
Friend Molly Martin, 13, one of the Pony Club members who was at the farm Saturday, remembered the way Mary was unafraid to be herself.
“She never cared what people thought of her,” Molly said.
Michael Jaquith,a local orthopedic surgeon, said his daughter had a strong faith in God and she showed it in the way she treated people.
While always mature beyond her years, he said he had noticed a change in her over the last year.
“She just became increasingly virtuous, avoiding arguments and not having to get her own way,” Jaquith said while surrounded by his wife and some of his surviving seven children.
Mass of Christian Burial will is scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday at Epiphany Cathedral in Venice.
They will be ok. (darn itchy eyes)
You can't keep your little ones in cotton wool, but Oh! it's hard.