California Riding Magazine • April, 2010

Flying Changes

Jarvis Esenwein

Jarvis Esenwein was born on April 13, 1929 in Buffalo, NY, and she grew up in Pennsylvania. She graduated from The Bishop’s School in La Jolla in 1947 and from The Juilliard School of Music, where she studied opera. She also attended Texas Christian University and lived in Fort Worth, TX.

In Texas she started riding and showing hunters and jumpers.
After moving to La Jolla in the 1960s, Esenwein showed as an amateur all over California. She and Linda Kibbee opened a training stable in Rancho Santa Fe in 1966 and ran a very successful business in both Southern and Northern California for the next 35 years. They showed hunters and jumpers in California, Arizona and Washington as well as the East Coast and Florida.

Esenwein was a judge and course designer for local and major horse shows in California from the 1970s through 2006, when she retired because of health problems.

She was an avid photographer and continually took pictures of people, animals and landscapes or anything else that caught her attention. She loved to play racquetball, which she took up at the age of 70 at LA Fitness. Not even a cardiac arrest in 1999 slowed her down. She helped start racquetball tournaments at the gym and played herself until she moved to Malibu in 2001.

In 2005, Jarvis returned to Chino where she lived until her death on March 1. She is survived by nieces and nephews in New York and Minnesota.

A celebration of Esenwein’s life was held on March 16.