Like a dust devil in a plowed field, the late Fern Sawyer, born in 1917, a member of the Cowgirls Hall of Fame and a founding member of the National Cutting Horse Association, could create a commotion in a vacuum.

Pat Hall, a longtime friend of Sawyer’s, remembered Christmas Eve 1970, when Sawyer attended midnight mass at the Episcopal church in Lovington, New Mexico, along with Hall and her husband, Bill. Sawyer, who lived in Lovington during the late 1940s and early 1950s, had forgotten her glasses that night and as they waited for the service to begin, she queried the Halls about people who entered the church.”

She asked me about everyone in her stage whisper,” Pat Hall recalled. “And Fern whispered louder than she talked.

“Finally, Johnny Carter and his wife were seated immediately in front of her and she leaned over to me and said, ‘I thought Johnny was a Catholic.’

“Johnny turned around and said, ‘I was Fern, until I married Sandy.’

“And Fern, in her usual unflappable manner, said, ‘Hi Johnny. How are you?'”

When the service finally began, a hush spread across the congregation. Even Sawyer was quiet – until the priest intoned, “Mary was large with child conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

With that, Sawyer turned to Hall and said, “I find that pretty hard to swallow. Don’t you?”

“Fern, if you do not believe in the virgin birth, what on earth are you doing here?” Hall asked her friend.

“I wanted to hear you sing Silent Night,” came the reply.

Watch for more stories throughout the year about Fern Sawyer, a third-generation rancher and one of the most colorful cowgirls of the 20th Century.