Grit & Grace: Bull Owner Fanchon Stinger to Launch New Charity at World Finals
Can a group of snot-slinging bucking bulls help save a divided country?
Fanchon Stinger believes so.
Stinger is the evening news anchor for Fox 59 in Indianapolis. She is exceptional at her job – the 15 Emmy Awards on her mantle prove that.
She is a woman of abundant talent. She supports a long list of community causes. She radiates positivity and optimism.
She is also professionally beholden to a medium that puts a premium on shock and titillation. There’s a saying about local news: if it bleeds, it leads. And there seems to be more blood every day.
One of Stinger’s biggest and most recognized career moments is wrapped into one of the country’s greatest tragedies – when she rushed to lower Manhattan for her Detroit news station to cover the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Nobody who goes into the news business wants to cover genuine horror.
Stinger went in with her training, but her humility, ability to connect with people, faith, and sheer instincts took over. Reporting from the smoking rubble in the heart of a city reeling and wounded but also swiftly united in a grief that was making everyone a better, kinder human being, she was empathetic yet hard-hitting, and she won an Emmy Award for her Ground Zero reports.
The experience would change how she approached news – conveying the realness of people’s stories for the rest of her career.
Twenty years later, night after night, the job requires her to chronicle a litany of crimes, misdeeds and misfortune that would darken even the sunniest of personalities.
Yet Stinger has found some light. It comes from her family and her faith… and in a pair of 1,800-pound bovines named Stinger and Lil Hott, world-class bucking bulls she part-owns, along with a new charitable organization she has founded to leverage the sport she wants to evangelize to the world to give young women the opportunity to step into their dreams.
The charity, Grit & Grace, will launch during the 2021 PBR World Finals on Thursday night with a special presentation in T-Mobile Arena.
During the 2022 season, Stinger will appear at ten PBR Unleash The Beast events, hosting middle and high school-age girls for lessons on personal growth through leadership, integrity and animal care.
Grit & Grace will also provide mentorship programs and scholarship opportunities for the young women. It is the first community-focused organization to have an official alignment with PBR.
Stinger’s story of transforming from an enthusiastic PBR fan to a bull owner using Western sports to inspire young women, which culminated in partnering with Chad Berger, the nine-time PBR Stock Contractor of the Year, is one of persistence and serendipity, and of course, grit and grace.
Stinger grew up in Michigan and spent a lot of time with family in Mississippi. She adopted a western style, wearing cowboy boots and hats while riding horses and attending rodeos.
The best part of rodeo for Fanchon was the final discipline, the bull riding. She started to become infatuated with the proud, majestic bucking bulls that brought each rodeo to a thrilling close.
“The bulls were always my favorite, and that’s why I became a PBR fan from the year it began in 1992 when I started dreaming about owning a bull,” Stinger said.
In the sport’s early days, she would watch PBR with her dad, admiring the animal athletes and the indomitable spirit of the mismatched cowboys trying to conquer them.
The rides slammed to the dirt would often get hurt, but they’d keep coming back stronger than ever. It was mesmerizing. And inspiring.
The cowboys’ oversized courage and stubborn grit were influencing Stinger to rely on faith, courage and perseverance.
Bouncing back following a setback became a metaphor for her life. She’d get knocked down in her own way but would rise up to keep walking in the purpose she knew God had created for her.
She now lends her voice to fighting for fairness and balance in media and educating people on the issues of domestic/dating violence.
Even as she supported numerous community organizations and continued to win awards and accolades in her news career, Stinger’s eyes remained fixed on PBR.
“I loved what the cowboys represented in toughness, love, honor, determination, and respect,” she said. “And at the same time, I found myself cheering a little bit more for the bulls. I’m an animal lover, and I wanted to find a way to be part of a fun sport that made for good, wholesome family entertainment. Of course, I couldn’t ride a bull. The next best thing was a dream to be a bull owner. I love the way PBR honors its animals and treats the bulls with the utmost respect and the best care. I believe wholeheartedly in that and wanted to be part of it.”
Fanchon appreciated the sport’s completely level playing field, too, a meritocracy grounded in the basic rules of staying on to get paid. The bulls she was growing to love didn’t give a hoot where the rider came from, what he looked like, or how much money he had.
Everyone is the same on the back of a two-ton animal trying to launch its rider into oblivion. Hold on for 8 seconds, or you don’t get paid. Talent was important. Try even more so.
Stinger has always respected those who do difficult things. Riding a bull is very hard. Guys got their butts kicked. Yet without fail, they’d come back to do it again.
The more Fanchon learned about the sport, the more magnetic it became. She’d work for ten years to bring her dream to life as a bull owner.
The journey started at PBR World Finals in 2009, the thrilling wrap to an intense season culminating in an epic showdown between Coloradoan Kody Lohstroh and J.B. Mauney, a young gunslinger from North Carolina.
As good as the title race and bull riding was, Stinger’s goal was to meet Chad Berger.
As a fan, she knew Berger was a very successful stock contractor with a reputation of being an all-around terrific person. In Las Vegas for championship weekend, she didn’t know a soul but made it her business to find and befriend Berger.
Stalking is too harsh of a word, but Berger will joke that’s what Stinger did. Let’s call it uncommon persistence – Stinger found a way to get to Berger at a premium fan experience.
“From there, Chad and I clicked,” Stinger said. “We share the same values of treating animals like family. When his bulls retire and eventually die, he buries them on his property. That really touched me. We became friends that day.”
Back in 2010, the time wasn’t right for Stinger to pursue bull ownership on her own. Berger wasn’t about to offer a fire-sale on one of his rising bulls.
The opportunity finally materialized with her dear friends and now partners Daniel and Melissa Brunner.
They heard Stinger’s vision of using the sport, its animals and female leaders to promote what she and the Brunners call “The Honor Culture” and jumped on board to pool resources and become partners in two of Chad Berger’s bucking bulls.
Stinger finally got the chance to meet her bulls as PBR visited Oklahoma City in 2021.
“It was like a mom going to meet my own child,” she said. “In fact, I told Chad, ‘I want the bull to know I’m his mom.’ When the house lights went down, they said that prayer and played the national anthem, all that emotion overcame me, and I was brought to tears. It was an emotional weekend for me. It made my resolve even deeper to honor and help this sport.”
Fans will remember Stinger on the CBS broadcast atop the bucking chutes bobbing up and down in nervous anticipation as Joao Ricardo Viera mounted her bull below, then jumping up and down overwhelmed with joy when Vieira rode Stinger for 84.5 points.
Through Grit & Grace, she’ll promote the fundamental principles of family, faith and freedom, joined by female mentors at PBR events to share their personal stories while discussing goal setting, developing one’s gifts and talents, honoring others, and nurturing boldness, confidence and integrity.
She sees PBR as an “untapped gem” for bringing people together.
“I’m watching America lose touch with our core values and become more polarized,” Stinger said. “We are losing sight of what makes us a great nation. At the same time, I’ve grown to love a sport that I sincerely believe can be an antidote to the division and discord I see and report on every day. PBR is a big, unified, traveling family, which lives by and promotes important values. People are very thirsty for quenching their desire for family, faith and freedom, and Western sports, which is so connected to animals who are loved, can sate that thirst. I’ve also recognized that young women need a comfortable place to go for safe, family fun. I see PBR as that place.”
And now she’s looking forward to watching Stinger and Lil Hott buck, sharing her love for the sport, and inspiring young girls to work hard, tap into their dreams, seize their potential and do great things in life.
“PBR has welcomed me like family from the very beginning,” she said. “That’s a blessing and a gift to me. And now I want to share that gift with others.”
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