By Steve Sears

Dr. Octavia Brown, Centenary University Professor Emeritus, received the institution’s highest honor, the Golden Dome Award, on Thursday evening, June 2, at the CU at the Stables annual scholarship fundraising event held at the David and Carol Lackland Center in Hackettstown.

Brown had heard about being named to receive the award two years ago, but the event was canceled for those two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Centenary, however, kept the special honor high on its list of things to eventually do. “It’s lovely,” Brown says. “It’s so nice to be recognized inside the organization where you spent so much time and effort, and I was just thrilled.”

Brown, who taught at the university for almost 25 years, is the 2003 founder and former director of Therapeutic Riding at Centenary (TRAC). The Harvard graduate, who first arrived in the United States in 1964, was part of the group that founded The North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA, now known as PATH International, Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship) in 1969, and also founded Mane Stream in Bedminster in 1972. “I had been in the field for all those years,” Brown says. “Then Centenary asked me to teach a course for instructors. I began doing that, and I was teaching riding and other things, and then someone said, ‘How could we make this better?’ And I said, ‘To have an in-house therapeutic riding program with volunteers and riders and special horses.” The university tasked Brown to make it happen, and she fundraised and created the TRAC program.

Brown, a leader in the field of therapeutic riding, is no stranger to recognition. In addition to her Golden Dome Award and this year being honored with an Equus Foundation Humanitarian Award, she has also been honored by the NJ Horse Council, the U.S. Equestrian Federation, and has been a recipient of the PATH Directors’ Award and the President’s Award, and was bestowed PATH’s highest honor, the James Brady Award for Lifetime Achievement in Therapeutic Riding.  

Brown explains how her involvement in the field commenced. “It truly was one of those doors that open and you just kind of go gently walking through it,” she says. “I was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts when I arrived, and I was a secretary for a professor at Harvard Law School, but I had been a lifelong rider. I found a place to ride, and one of the friends that I had made told me that McLean Hospital – which is in Belmont, Massachusetts – was considering creating a riding program for their patients. One of their staff members, who was from Germany, had heard about therapeutic riding and she thought, ‘Why don’t we do it for our patients?’ Brown, because she could ride horses, was hired, and she and that staff member created a program with four horses for the hospital patients. However, her work had just started. While doing the McLean program, she heard about NAHRA and headed to a meeting and helped form that. Then, after getting married and moving to New Jersey, Brown, now trained in therapeutic riding, set up Mane Stream (initially founded as the Somerset Hills Handicapped Riders Club) in Somerset County. “New Jersey is perfect,” Brown says. “It’s such a horse-oriented state as a whole.”

Organizations were fortunate to have Brown nearby to either start or buttress their efforts, and she is proud of the work that has been accomplished, especially with veterans and the handicapped. “We have involved the veterans, and we’ve involved people with disabilities to become instructors, which is one of my main concerns,” she says. “People who may have some limitations physically, there’s no reason at all why they could not be instructors with the right support system. That I think has been one of the things that I’m most proud of – the people with disabilities who have gone on to become instructors.” 

And then there is her concern for the well being of one of the most beautiful animals on earth, the horse. “There’s a much bigger emphasis right now, as it should be, so that more people become aware of how valuable these animals are,” Brown says. “They are still vulnerable to various and sundry things that could happen. I think the current generation going on will hopefully be very aware of how we keep these guys going and give them long lives in this field.”

For more information about Centenary University’s TRAC program, visit www.centenaryuniversity.edu.