Mead was born and raised in Pendleton, Texas. He has been training horses for the public most of his life. He married barrel racer Sue Lane Miller in 1968. Training horses is still a full time job for both of them.
Mead had two main heroes in his life, one was Roy Rogers the other was his cousin Johnny Melon. Johnny taught him a lot, which was to be the beginning of his horse training career. He also idolized those great trainers he worked for and learned from, such as; John Brown, Punch Oglesby, Gil Lewis and Lewis “pine” Johnson (who trained Poco Bueno).
He has trained and shown horses for halter, reining , western pleasure, cutting, roping, western riding, pole bending and barrel racing.
For the last several years, while still training horses for themselves and other people, he has been hauling his wife to rodeos all over the United States. Sue has qualified for the National Finals Rodeo four times and has qualified for the Texas Circuit Finals twelve times.
