Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

My name is Tonnyre Thomas Joe.

Article Excerpt
I live on the Thomas Ranch, which is in Kenedy and Willacy countries, just north of the Rio Grande Valley. It is a Family Land Heritage Ranch, which means it has been owned and continuously operated by the same family for more than a hundred years. For about seventy years, my family has been raising purebred Charolais cattle, a breed known for its muscle. I grew up here with my brother Mitch, and together we've worked cows with my parents for as long as I can remember. My mother was pulling a calf when she went into labor with me. * I haven't always been a full-time rancher. My grandmother, who I was close to, always wanted me to become a lawyer. So did my mother, and even when I was little, they were both fond of announcing that I would one day attend the University of Texas law school. I didn't think much of it, and when I went to Texas A&M for college, I thought I wanted to be a vet. Then a family friend, whose father is a politician in Mexico, told me, "Tonnyre, if you're a vet, everytime you go to a client's home, they will take you to the kennel. But if you're a lawyer, they will take you to the library." I rethought, things and ended up with a law degree--from UT Law.

In law school I met my husband, David Joe. We got married in 1997, moved to Dallas, and both worked as attorneys until 1999, when our son, Royse, was born. Then I left the firm to be a mom. It was right about this time that my grandmother died. My parents needed help with her estate tax return, so I took care of all the legal paperwork. It was almost as if this was what I'd been training for my entire career, and I began taking on more and more of my parents' and the ranch's legal needs. Bythe time our daughter, Claudette, was born,...