Grit, Grace, and DNA, Part 3
How Aunt Toots Fended Off the Oil Men

The year: 1940–1980 or thereabouts
The place: Eastern Montana
Subject: Mildred Blanch Desonia Bantz (1904–1987)

My great Aunt Toots looked like a rough-and-tumble remix of her sister – my grandmother – who raised my brother Ken and me.

They both topped out at a towering four-foot-eleven-inches, with sturdy, wiggly middles built for endurance and big hugs. Short white hair framed their vibrant faces — Gramma’s neatly set, Aunt Toots’s staging a small but persistent rebellion.

Toots was busy dawn ‘til dusk, caring for a thousand head of cattle on her sprawling ranch.  

Toots (Mildred on her birth certificate) married Karl Bantz in 1925 and had two daughters, Ione and Echo. She also had a “man” on the ranch named Otto, who had been around so long no one remembered a time before him.

All reports confirm Otto was a steadfast ranch hand, not a romantic entanglement. No embroglios. No smooching. Just livestock. They worked side-by-side all day, bucking hay, mending fences, feeding cows, maintaining machinery, and fighting insect infestations.

If you ask me, they were probably too exhausted.

Toots had fistfuls of the grit, energy, and courage it took to run a cattle ranch in the mid 1900s. She shone most brightly, in my eyes, for her tenacity in the fight against squads of powerful oil men.

Every year they would show up, rough and rugged, oil leases in hand and intimidation in their hearts.

Toots believed drilling would poison the streams and creeks that stitched life through the scrub of her land and kept her cattle thriving.

So every time the oil men set foot on her land, Toots fought back. She said “no” to oil leases and wads of money. She shrugged off misogyny, taunts, and ridicule. She stood toe-to-toe with those ruffians – all four-foot-eleven inches of unmovable woman – and sent them packing.

My own tenacity, which often manifests in stubbornness and rigidity, has landed me – as one example – a dubious kindergarten report card with the note, “Yes and moreso” under the category of Persistent.

I also came in dead last in a sprint duathlon one day, many years ago. I thought “sprint” meant “mini,” as in “adorable” and “achievable.” It did not.

It was more like, “only elite athletes need participate.”

At the end, I was hoping that I could slink over the finish line unseen, hobble to my car, and pretend the whole debacle never happened.

No. As I crested the final hill, a crowd had gathered on the lawn below. A microphone. Awards. Clapping. My nightmare fully staffed.

The Mt. Bachelor Rotary Club gave me their first-ever Tenacity Plate—a trophy that said:

“Thank you for refusing to quit.”

I like to think it was also proof that the stubborn courage of the people who came before us doesn’t disappear.

It travels forward, quietly, until we need it.

Aunt Toots carried that inheritance in her bones—along with a relentless optimism that helped her persevere, year after year.

For my part, I run my life on Diet Coke, Toots’ optimism, and stubborn hope.

If you take anything from this story, let it be this:

The tenacity you need today may already belong to you—handed down by those who stood their ground and believed in the force of persistence.

Aunt Toots’ legacy helps me fend off dark forces, choose with confidence (right or wrong) and eventually land butter side up.

No matter what.

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This is Part 3 of a new seven-part series, Grit, Grace, and DNA—an excavation of legacy: The brilliance, the burden, and the quiet ways we learn to live butter side up.It continues next week with Part 4, “I Inherited Creativity: How Gramma Built a Woodland Retreat from a Firecracker Shack.”

Read Part 1, “I Inherited Courage: How Lon and Cecilia Threw Themselves from a Moving Train” here.

Read Part 2, “I Inherited Gumption: How Pearly Jack Merwin Walked North into Canada and Disappeared” here.

Side note: I would love it if you would follow me on Substack. All my content is free, and you don’t have to jump through a bunch up hoops to find me. Thank you! ❤️