“Mary O’Hara” is a part of the Capitol Avenue Bronze public art collection . . donated to the City of Cheyenne by private individuals, organizations or companies. For more information about the Capitol Avenue Bronze Project, visit Deselms Fine Art at https://deselmsfineart.com
Mary O’Hara has a special place in the history of children’s literature, especially the literature in the stories occurring in the west. She was born in 1885 in Cape May Point, New Jersey, the daughter of an Episcopal minster and, through him, a descendant of William Penn. She married early, age 20, to her third cousin Kent Kane Parrot, an attorney who in the 1920s was considered the “boss” of Los Angeles politics. That marriage ended after the birth of two children.
After she and Parrot divorced, she pursued a career as a Hollywood screenwriter. Perhaps her most memorable contributions are to the silent versions of The Prisoner of Zenda and the original cinematic version of Braveheart. She met and married a Swede, the very Nordic named Helge Sture-Vasa, who worked for the U.S. Army’s Remount Service, the branch of the Quartermaster Corps that bred and trained horses for when the army cavalry, from the Civil War through the 1910s, rode on horseback.
O’Hara and Sture-Vasa moved to Laramie County in 1930, a few years before the onset of the Great Depression, and bought a ranch originally established in 1886. They renamed it the Remount Ranch and began a sheep operation. High hopes quickly ended in tears when the Depression hit. To survive, the couple resorted to delivering milk in nearby Cheyenne and hosting summer camp for the scions of wealthy east coast families.
While on the ranch, O’Hara was inspired to write My Friend Flicka, the sentimental tale of a young boy, Ken McLaughlin, the son of a no-nonsense rancher, and Ken’s devotion to his horse Flicka. The story was eventually made into a movie and, for a short-time, was a series on the ABC broadcast network. My Friend Flicka (1940) was part of trilogy with Thunderhead (1943) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1946).
In the same way that Flicka saved George McLaughlin, so did the novel save O’Hara and Sture-Vasa from ruin. Two days before a $3,800 mortgage on the Remount Ranch was due and the impecunious couple unable to pay, a check arrived in the mail for $4,000. The classic magazine Redbook paid O’Hara the sum to publish a serial version of My Friend Flicka in its pages. 20th Century Fox would eventually pay $50,000 for the film rights.
O’Hara would eventually divorce the philandering and hard drinking Sture-Vasa. She moved back east and tried piano composition and writing for musical theatre, including To Catch Colt, first performed in 1961. She died, age 95, in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
To learn more about the Capitol Avenue Bronze Project, visit this link . For more information about each artist, sponsoring a bronze, or becoming a donor/supporter at any level, please contact Harvey Deselms at Deselms Fine Art, located at 303 E. 17th Street Cheyenne. Email is deslemsart@aol.com or call at 307 432 0606
