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Traci and Jeffrey Quail
As an artist, mother, accountant, and disability rights activist, Traci (Clayton) Quail is living proof that you can change your path in life as many times as you need to — and come out stronger for it.
Quail would have graduated from Dublin High School in 2002, but her family moved at the end of her senior year so she ended up graduating from Gustine High School in a class of only six students. “It was hard for me to move, because I loved Dublin so much,” she said.
After high school, she moved to Fort Worth and worked at Baylor, Scott and White as a dermatology technician for five years. While there, she met her husband, Jeffrey Quail, an Army officer who was stationed at Fort Hood at the time.
The two met for the first time in 2005, when Quail was at a restaurant and karaoke bar after work with her stepmother. “He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I have this great duet and we’re gonna sing it together,’ and walked off,” she remembers.” And I told my stepmother, ‘Get your purse, we have to leave.’”
But they ended up staying and talking, and Quail and Jeffrey began dating soon after. Three years later, the Quails married, and Quail started working for the Department of Defense as a Family Readiness Support Assistant. It was her job to serve as the liaison between soldiers on a deployment in Iraq and their families back home.
“I helped keep the connection with what was going on downrange with the soldiers and families,” she said. “If there was any family emergency here, I made sure that [the soldiers] knew, and when the soldiers came back home, it was my job to make sure that everyone knew about the plane times and when their soldier would be coming home and how all of that took place.”
She also planned conferences to let families know about available resources, and helped when difficult situations arose. During her time there, Quail received three awards for her service: the Army Artillery Order of Molly Pitcher, 1st Cav Troopers Lady Award, and the Ordnance Corps Association Keeper of the Flame.
After nearly three years at the DoD, Quail discovered she was pregnant with her first child. “I went into it going, ‘I will never be a stay at home mom, I love working too much,’” she said. “And then I had this beautiful little baby in front of me and went, ‘Well, I’m useless.’”
Quail wrapped up her responsibilities at work, and gave her two weeks notice. That ended up being a good decision, because at 22 months, her son was diagnosed with severe autism. This, combined with epilepsy and other health issues, meant that Quail spent much of her time in the hospital or at doctors offices. In the following years she had two daughters, one of whom also has autism and epilepsy.
Still, Quail found time to pursue her passions on the side. “I did photography school at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for three years, and I learned a lot of different art mediums I was so excited about,” she said.
She also wrote a children’s book, called “Will Santa Find Daddy for Christmas?,” for children of military parents. “It was really nice to connect with the military community that way,” she said.
But although she loved art and writing, she wanted a backup plan in case she ever needed to support the family on her own. “If, God forbid, anything happened to my husband in the Military, an art degree is not going to pay for all the things that I need to do for our children,” she said. “So I got back to thinking about what I was good at.”
When she was in school in Dublin, Quail had excelled at UIL Accounting, and remembered enjoying working with Coach Karen Hickman to prepare for competitions. “I was really good at accounting, so I thought I’d try that out,” she said. “I went back to school and I got my bachelor’s in accounting, and then I went back and I got my master’s in finance.”
Those years were tough — she often would find herself working all day to homeschool her children and help them get to doctors appointments, and then staying up until 3am to finish her own school. “I finally graduated this year with my master’s and said, ‘Okay, I’m done with school,’” she said. “And so my husband and I opened a business together.”
Through their business, called Quail Family Creations, Quail and her husband sell custom home decor made of engraved wood. “We take regular wood from Lowe’s or Home Depot, and we try and turn it into meaningful pieces,” she said.
Quail works with her husband to make the pieces, and handles all the accounting work for the business. Her husband, who has a masters degree in supply chain management, handles that side of the business.
Because of Quail’s son’s health conditions, he is at extremely high risk from COVID-19, so owning and operating their own business has been useful during the pandemic, and has allowed them to keep the necessary health precautions in place.
Before the pandemic, Quail and her husband started a foundation to help provide recreational medical equipment for families with disabilities. Quail had the idea for the foundation when she would run races while pushing her son in an adaptive wheelchair.
“When we went to those races, we didn’t see other families like ours there,” she said. “Everyone would see us and go, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so great you’re coming out.’ And our first thought was, there needs to be more exposure for people like us. So that’s when it kind of became our mission to get other families in our specific area out and moving and involved — not just for them and their health, but for other people for the visibility of other people as well.”
Quail also works towards visibility for people with disabilities in other ways. “We had two exchange students for two different years, we had one from Germany, and one from Japan, and our main goal was to show kids from countries that maybe don’t have as much exposure to people with disabilities like ours, that our families are just like everybody else,” she said.
Post-pandemic, Quail and her husband plan to continue working on their business and the foundation. In the near future, it’s not certain where the Quails will live. Quail’s husband takes battalion command this summer, and the family will likely be relocated from their home of four years in Hope Mills, North Carolina.
The family can’t be relocated anywhere without adequate care facilities for their son, but that leaves dozens of locations around the country where they might live next.
When Quail’s husband retires from the Army, the Quails hope to live in Kansas. “We’ve looked at national rankings for quality of life and care for people with disabilities, and Overland Park, Kansas, is consistently on the top of that list,” she said. “My family is all in Texas, and my husband’s family is in South Dakota in Arizona, so it’s in the middle.”
Once settled, the Quails have big plans for a new family business. “We’ve always wanted to do something that involves our kids, because we do know that our son will live with us for the rest of his life,” she said. “We want to make sure that whatever we do, he’s able to be involved in at some capacity.”
The family discussed all kinds of options, and settled on a plan to create a community space where people can work on their art together. “We want to someday have a big maker shop that has an area for people who are makers and Etsy shop owners and things like that to come in and have supplies and be able to have a space to build their stuff,” she said. “And then have a storefront on the front end where people can come in and just buy kits. That’s our longterm retirement dream right now.”
Quail and her husband currently live in North Carolina with their three children, Jasper, 11 Audrey, 9, and Caroline, 7. When the family gets some free time, they enjoy gaming together as a team. “My husband fights the big bad guys, I do any arrow work, and then the girls spend their playtime going and getting all the food and stuff to make the potions and things like that,” she said. “We kind of do a whole family thing out of it where everyone gets their turn.”
Through her 11 years of parenting her children with disabilities, Quail has had her ups and downs. “It has not been an easy road,” she said. “I don’t think any disability parent will tell you that the road is easy.”
Her children are a constant source of inspiration to her. “They’re very involved in everything with ‘Team Quail,’” she said. “It’s all about us as a family unit. That really inspires me to see their love for us as a whole.”
Quail’s advice to Dublin graduates is to take life as it comes, and always be open to change. “You can always change your path at any time, whenever you want to,” she said. “There is nothing that says that you can’t change who you are, or what you want to do. Just don’t be afraid to do it.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other graduates, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.