• Jennie took a challenge to ride a bucking bull in a rodeo and won $1.00 for her efforts
• She rode alone for 2 months through the prairies that stretched as far as the eye could see
• Her whip could take a cigarette out of your mouth, or strike a match from ten feet away

Jennie Reninger, born in Zion City, Illinois in 1903, was a remarkable woman, rancher, real estate broker, world traveler, founder director of a bank, newspaper reporter, tour director and in later life the Chamber of Commerce titled her Good Will Ambassador and Official Greeter in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

She and her family lost everything in the great depression and lived in a one-room shack. Jennie went to work for a newspaper, increasing their circulation by 50%.  She wrote a very popular column, "The Tattletale".  Later a radio program titled "Just Jennie" aired.  Jennie invested part of her wages in Cattle. During the 1930's and 40's, Screw Worms sucked the lifeblood out of the Florida cattle industry,  Also a disease known as "Salt Sick" caused by a deficiency of certain materials in the grass was almost as big a problem.  For two years Jennie rode alone from daylight to after dark tending the cattle.

Jennie and her family founded the Easter lily industry in Lake Placid from a gift of fourteen bulbs.  They multiplied into twelve acres of lilies and the Reningers went from rags to riches.  Due to the war, Japan no longer imported lilies.  Then disaster hit.  Someone burned her barn and $30,000. worth of bulbs went up in smoke.  A new grower brought in diseased planting stock and introduced "Fleck" to Highlands County, a virus disease that caused spotting.  Then came the big freeze and the end of the lily business.