Triplett makes Draft Teamster Hall of Fame

Whitefish resident, Tom Triplett, 81, has been selected as an inductee for the Montana Draft Teamster Hall of Fame.

The induction will take place on Sept. 19 at the Powell Country Fairgrounds during the Big Sky Draft Horse Expo.

Other 2009 inductions into the Hall of Fame include Allan Lien of Bozeman and Rollie Hebel of McAllister.

Tom Triplett comes from a family of horsemen, dating back to the days when the Tripletts were friends and neighbors of President George Washington. His ancestors took Washington's guests fox hunting and helped the future president with their carpentry skills.

His parents moved from Missouri to Oklahoma in horse-drawn wagons before his birth, then back to Missouri and later on to Montana. Four years before Tom was born they moved in wagons from Plentywood to the Flathead Valley.

For Tom, horsepower was the only source of transportation and power into his early adult years. He logged with horses, worked mules with the forest service grading landing strips, skidding poles and putting up hay.

Through his years of draft horse and mule work, he developed the depth and breadth of expertise and experience that can only come from daily hands on work — privately and professionally.

His knowledge of the horse was clearly stated when one of his nominators into the Hall of Fame explained, "as a horseman, Tom Triplett may not be able to walk on water, so to speak, but he could sure enough get a horse or a mule to do it."

Triplett's depth of knowledge, experience and patience, his commitment to safety and the comfort and the well being of the animals, and his obsession with figuring how to get everything "jeeest right"— which all combined, puts him in a class of his own among horsemen.

During the 1970s he participated in many covered wagon trips in western Montana, some of which covered more than 200 miles. He has taught and helped innumerable people to drive and work horses, build and repair harnesses, as well as rebuild wagons and equipment. As an expert in his field, he has helped teach a teamster course at Flathead Valley Community College, as well as participated as an instructor in Doc Hammill's Workhorse Workshops for the last decade.

Triplett is a true Montana treasure who has spent his entire life earning a living training, shoeing, packing, riding and driving horses and mules. He has earned the respect and friendship of horsemen throughout the great state of Montana and the entire nation.