In the narrative of life, there are those exceptional individuals whose resilience and spirit transcend the ordinary, etching their stories into our hearts with the indelible ink of courage and unwavering determination. Retha Lange was such a person—her story is a moving reminder of the human capacity for strength, grace, and an unyielding zest for life despite the darkest of adversities.
It is with a heavy heart that we honour the legacy of Retha, a woman whose very essence was intertwined with the equestrian world through her creation, Brassy Bit Equestrian. Her journey was not just one of confronting cancer with defiance but of transforming her love for her daughter and equestrian sports into a thriving business that resonated with so many. Before her passing, we had the privilege of interviewing Retha and we felt in order to honour her legacy, we would share her story. Meet Retha Lange, who you may better know as the owner and founder of Brassy Bit Equestrian.
Love of the sport, Retha’s love affair with the equestrian industry started 21 years ago when her daughter, Krystal-Lee, now 25, started showing an interest in horses. “My daughter was about four and wanted to start riding, and my husband said surely kids her age don’t ride. But she was insistent, and she had her first lesson when she was about four and a half, and the rest is history,” said Retha. Little did Retha know that her daughter’s passion would become her own. Not in riding but in providing the sport with locally designed and crafted items for a tack shop she and a close friend would start several years later. Retha stated, “My friend and I sat down six years ago and said, let’s start a tack shop. She brought the business and horse sense to the partnership – but neither of us knew what this would entail. All I knew was what I had learnt as a rider’s mother.”
If you ever met Retha, you would know that a minor hiccup like that would be far from something holding her back. Setting out full steam ahead, the company opened its first store at Weltmeyer Stables in Alberton under the name Brassy Bit Equestrian, offering a range of equestrian clothing, horse and rider accessories, and a small stock of day-today tack. According to Retha, their first shop was a five-by-five-metre space, and it was doing okay when, just over three years ago, Belinda from Penbritte Equestrian Centre offered them a space, presenting a great opportunity and the shop was moved there. During the course of 2023 she also bought out her partner, giving Krystal-Lee the opportunity to buy shares in the business, which she now owns completely.
Facing Adversity and Cancer Head-On, But throughout her story, Retha had multiple hurdles put in her way, and in 2010, she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. The doctors removed half of her left breast and the lymph nodes under her arm. Six months of gruelling chemotherapy, 30 radiation treatments, and years of preventative chemotherapy treatment followed.
Just when she thought she was in the clear, in 2017 she started coughing. “I had a horrible cough, and two doctors said I had flu symptoms. The third doctor wasn’t happy, so they sent me for X-rays and discovered I had a cancerous tumour in the bottom of my left lung. So, they removed the whole lobe. And I started with chemo again.” The road was about to get rockier for Retha. At the same time she was battling stage 4 lung cancer, she was diagnosed with TB. “I had to go to a state clinic every day for the first week, where they kept me in isolation, and I had to wear a mask for six weeks! The pills for TB are not for the faint-hearted. It remains a mystery to me where I even got the TB.” Then, in 2019, she developed debilitating headaches while being treated for lung cancer.
Under the doctor’s orders, she consulted a brain specialist and had an MRI to reveal she now had several tumours in her brain. “This wasn’t the first-time doctors told me I wouldn’t survive a year, at a push, a year and a half. The cancer in my lungs cleared up sometime in 2022; however, it came back in 2023 while I was receiving chemo for the brain cancer – so now they are treating both cancers. And I am still fighting.” And again, Retha’s story didn’t stop. Two years ago, she broke her hip at the femur bone. Unfortunately, due to a struggling immune system, it didn’t heal at the pin, and she continued to walk with a crutch. Doctors then started her on a bone cement drip.
A Story of Resilience and Passion, “That’s my story. I have refused to give up from the start of all of this. I believe I was being prepped for this journey, and God had a plan for me; he wanted me to be closer to him, and I have found peace. My family is amazing. Honestly, my husband has gone beyond any expectations, and so have my children. I can’t look either of my children or him in the eye and say I am just not going on anymore.” Retha was inspiring, and she was motivated. She had put business plans in place to launch a whole new brand with a new range of show jackets, shirts, socks, hat bags and so much more – which she and Krystal-Lee achieved. Whenever she spoke about Brassy Bit Equestrian, you could hear the sparkle in Retha’s voice. She loved the brand and all that it means, stating that every item has been designed with practicality and comfort in mind– bringing quality within reach of the everyday South African rider.
What is Retha’s life lesson to us all? “Never give up. I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2015 with a group of lady friends, and we raised over R100k for the Breast Health Foundation. When you get to the base of that mountain, look up and think, how will I get to the top? The guide tells you, ‘pole pole’, which means ‘slowly, slowly – one step at a time’. “So, how do you climb any mountain in life? One step at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Don’t fixate on the bigger picture. Focus on the now and never give up,” encouraged Retha. So next time you are looking for some advice on your equestrian needs, a team that will go out of their way to help you source something particular, a team which was built on the humility of an incredible woman. Pop into Brassy Bit. A place where the indomitable spirit of Retha lives on in her daughter Krystal-Lee.
