The Women of Dallas Are Armed and Dangerous, Thanks to Mama Jeanie

"Never," we answered, with a collective eye-roll and chuckle.

On the range, I stood toe-to-toe with her to learn the proper stance — left foot forward, right foot back. She and I held the gun at my hip to fire it once and feel the recoil. She positioned my hands and shoulders, making adjustments along the way like a yoga teacher.

Danny Fulgencio

Jeanie (left) and the Lipstick and Lead instruction team. Yes, that's her pink truck.

Danny Fulgencio

Jeannie's granddaughter is a competitive shooter, too.

Details

Send feedback to editor@dallasobserver.com.

Related Content

• The Stars' New Logo Seems to Have Leaked
  May 24, 2013
• The Stars Showed an Empty Seat and Called it "Manti T'eo's Girlfiend" (Photo)
  January 20, 2013
• Fist Bumps And Body Smashes
  March 7, 2013
• Plano Has Become a Hockey Prospect Factory, Which Canadians Find Very Puzzling
  December 20, 2012
• Watch Ronald McDonald Give Allen's Minor League Hockey Team a Stirring Pep Talk
  March 20, 2013

More About

• Mama Jeanie
• A.J. O'Neal
• NHL Western Conference
• Professional Hockey
• Hockey

"I got this, I promise I won't let go," she said, sensing my tense shoulders and vice grip on the gun. I expected it to feel like a sucker punch to the shoulder, but it didn't. It wasn't so bad.

"Now you're gonna bend your left knee only and stick your butt straight out behind you," she said. "Finger on the trigger, eyes in the sky, head down, eyes up, let's go!"

She kept her hands on the gun as I shot. It was guiding more than confining, a comfort, not a hindrance. She later described herself as a "pseudo-shooter," aiming the gun at the target with me, improving my chances at nailing a disk. "I'm creating a situation whereby you can be successful," she said.

I pulled the trigger and missed. But it was more effortless than I'd imagined.

I missed again with the second shot, probably no closer. Jeanie told me to relax. Now that I knew what to expect, I consciously lowered my shoulders, which had been up to my ears. I let myself go. And I nailed the next two.

"Yeah, all right, good job," Jeanie said, and high-fived me. I laughed loudly, feeling prouder than the occasion warranted. Later, I told her that my excitement seemed to outweigh my success.

"It was your moment," she said calmly. "You are so entitled to that moment."

Mama Jeanie is everything cable television-watchers think Texan women are, but she's not originally a Texan. She was born in North Carolina on a military base and moved often, depending where her father was stationed. She spent the most time in San Antonio, where she went to high school and met her first husband, Ken Robertson.

He was on the Air Force shotgun team at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio; Jeanie's father was a gunsmith for the pistol team. They met in church. He was from Southern California, so they began their life together there.

"Bless your heart, you did not expect this today, I'm sure," she says over lunch, pausing at the question of why she married her first husband. "Um, I had no place else to go. Mother was, at that time in her life, very powerless. I was an only child, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no extended family whatsoever, and I couldn't stay with my dad."

She'd been abused by her father.

"He ruined my childhood," she says.

So there she was, in California, starting her own family as part of a convenient and beautiful escape. Her husband made his name as a competitive shotgun shooter, technical adviser on Hollywood sets and instructor, filming instructional videos that remain popular today. Once, on the set of Dynasty, Joan Collins could not hold the gun properly, so there's a brief scene where it's her husband's hands latched around a gun that's peeking from behind a tree.

Jeanie was mostly a mother and wife in those days, but she kept shooting and kept racking up state and national titles. She'd often pack her four children into a motor home to travel wherever her husband was competing. Once, in Northern California, she decided to shoot too. She broke 94 of 100 targets in the first round of American trap shooting, beating out the other women.

Then it was time for the Calcutta, where people place bets on shooters, like horses at a race. Jeanie's friend bet on her. Her husband broke 91 of 100 clay targets. She broke 97. Her husband posed with her in every photo, she says, explaining to people how much he taught her.

"She always kind of took the backseat and let everybody else have the glory," her son, Scott, says. "She was a mom first, so she was very good about putting herself at the end of the line and everybody else at the front of the line."

In those days, Jeanie's expertise was in American trap, not the Olympic version her granddaughter prefers. Nevertheless, in 1982 she got a call from her friend Glenda Stark, an International trap World Champion silver medalist. There was a spot for her on the Olympic team — or maybe just a tryout. Neither woman remembers exactly. But there was an opportunity, and Jeanie wanted to pursue it.

Jeanie's husband had failed to qualify for an international training team that same month. When Jeanie broke the news, it was met with silence, followed by a devastating ultimatum.

"I didn't get to go, so you're sure as hell not gonna go," she remembers him saying. "And if you do try and go, by the time you come back, I'll have filed for divorce. I'll take the children ... so those are your choices. Go or stay."

"So I put the Olympics, in my mind and my heart, in a box," she says. "And put it away."