Born in 1945 in Oklahoma City, Shorty, given name "Lavonna," spent most of her youth in the tiny community of Fairfax in Oklahoma's northeastern Osage County. Shorty got her first horse when she was a teenager. She taught herself to ride bareback, eventually galloping into the world of barrel racing and bull riding. Although Shorty worked the rodeo circuit, earning a name for herself as a fearless rider and for her never-say-die spirit, she struggled to find a career that would fulfill her cowboy dreams. She ran a Western store for a while, helped a friend start a Subway sandwich shop, and ponied horses up the starting line at the horse races at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds raceway.

"Honestly, I was obsessed with cowboy culture," Shorty says. "My love was always with the Western lifestyle."

After Shorty's father died in the 1970s, her brother sent off two of her father's cowboy hats to be renovated and cleaned. "When my brother got those hats back and they were ruined, he told me 'As much as you love rodeos, you ought to get in the hat-cleaning business.' It was like a bolt of lightning. I said, 'Holy cow. What a great idea!" Like everything else in her life, Shorty learned the art of hat renovation and creation by trial and error.

 

Shorty now owns and runs Shorty's Caboy Hattery in Oklahoma City and travels throughout the country to massive shows and competitions. Each of Shorty's hats starts out with quality beaver and rabbit fur from Ukraine. Each custom hat takes at least five days to make, but the handcrafted effort pays off. In Shorty's eyes, everybody who wears one of her hats is a celebrity.