Jeanne Craver on the history of her 50 year involvement with Al Khamsa

Jeanne is the mother of Al Khamsa. Her involvement with the organization she helped found, which she documented in a recent post on Facebook, reads like a history of Al Khamsa of sorts:

I was graduating from college, and realized that I could now fulfill a dream and have a horse. Fell in love with Arabians by seeing one presented at a clinic. Read the Ott articles in Rider and Driver, and wrote to them. I got a gracious reply from Mrs. Ott, who told me to get educated by visiting Walter Schimanski, HB Stubbs, and Charles Craver. All three were wonderful to newcomers. I fell for Lothar at Walter’s, and will always remember the special quality of the *Al Hamdaniah daughter, Al-Ka-Han. Skin like oiled silk, which gleamed. Walter sold me a mare bred by “Chubb” Stubbs named Fatimah, by Julyan x Fadaa. And I bought another Julyan daughter out of Sirrulla, named Sirrulya. Leased Sirrulla, and she was a real treasure. And of course, Charles and I fell in love and got married.

Before that, Jane Ott had stopped publishing annual updates to the Blue Catalog, and the “Blue” community was losing contact. So like the idiot kid I was, I started a newsletter, hand typed, for us to stay in touch. The Breeders Service Bulletin sounds pretty pompous, and it really dumped me headlong into the politics of the Blue folks at the time. I learned to watch out for what some people told me, and then putting it in print. Error! After Charles and I were married, the “BSB” became a real little magazine, and it was obvious the community was growing, but in a sprawling, disconnected sort of way. I don’t know if I pulled Charles into it or the other way around, but we got together with Walter, Nan Burket, Alice Martin, and of course, Diana Marston (later Wiener). Charles’s widespread friends, and new friends like Darrell and Ruby Purdue, Jackson Hensley, Ed and Hope Skinner, Jim Bullard, Joe and Sharon Ferriss, Richard Pritzlaff. Oh, so many, many special people. Apologies to any missed. And we decided we needed a real organization.

We set our first meeting at Edwardsville, March of 1975. Chubb Stubbs was our host. Diana had named the group Al Khamsa. We wanted a name that was closely connected to the Bedouin, but did not favor any one group of horses. Hard to do! The first meeting was a great success. Charles was elected leader, Nan Burket was secretary. We decided we wanted a fellowship of fans of the true Arabian horse, we wanted no bylaws, an annual get together that moved around the country, and no politics, no competition, just a fraternity in service to the Bedouin Arabian. We published the Al Khamsa Directory, which was a real directory of owners, and pretty thick already! Three years later, we met at Waco, hosted by Bentwood Arabians, and realized we needed loose bylaws and a more formal organization to protect ourselves. Walter was chairman, Edna Weeks was secretary, and she volunteered to get us incorporated in Tennessee, and we were off! (It has been a joy to reconnect with Edna in 2019, so many years later!)

At that point, the Otts, who had been supportive of Al Khamsa, decided that our insistence on treating all Bedouin Arabians the same (not sub-listing bloodlines, as the Blue Catalog did) was not to their liking, and demanded that we remove any connection with them. Of course, we respected their wishes, and began to do our own bloodline research into the background of all Al Khamsa horses, and so Al Khamsa, Inc. began to grow up. The book Al Khamsa Arabians was published in 1984, and Joe and Sharon Ferriss took the little Khamsat newsletter, and made it into a real magazine, with an international mailing list and reputation starting the same year. There have been ups and downs, bumps and dips, along the way. But we just keep plugging, in service to the Bedouin Arabian. Next year is our 50th year, believe it or not! Knock wood, we will keep on keeping on for many more!