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The
Seabiscuit Story - a local connection ..
by Eileen White |
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As they cooled down from the cinematic workout, the names Charles Howard, Red Pollard and Tom Smith were discussed around office coffee pots and cubicles, tack rooms and trail rides. Many may have recounted how Seabiscuit won the "Big Cap"…and may have freely used the term like a veteran turf writer. But a few weeks have passed and American’s minds are occupied with back-to-school sales and which college football team is ranked number one in the nation. What will be remembered of the lives of the characters that are at the center of the Seabiscuit story? Perhaps a few of the more avid fans that read the book penned by Laura Hillenbrand will know that Seabiscuit lived out his retirement at Ridgewood Ranch and died at the relatively young equine age of fourteen years. Even fewer turf fans will be interested in the Charles Howard’s racing stable that continued to race many of Seabiscuit’s progeny. After reading the epilogue in Seabiscuit: An American Legend, one would think that Tom Smith only trained one more horse after 1947, when he won the Kentucky Derby with Jet Pilot, then virtually disappeared off the backstretch radar. But his name did not disappear from racing programs, and so now, to tell the story of how Seabiscuit’s trainer had ties to Illinois racing…I’ll talk for silent Tom. Tom Smith was not forgotten or unappreciated after his days of training for Charles Howard. Hillenbrand’s epilogue recalls that some questionable and unfortunate circumstances lead to the revoking of Smith’s training license. He would go to work for Elizabeth Arden Graham, a woman who believed in him and cleared his name in the backstretch controversy. Graham was known to grow through trainers "like chewing gum" as described by Hillenbrand. But she believed in Smith’s ability to train her horses and he in kind repaid her loyalty by giving her stable a win in the 1947 Kentucky Derby. Hillenbrand mentions Smith training for Graham and winning the 1947 Derby, but she does not acknowledge Tom Smith’s employment with the Illinois-based Ada L. Rice stable. The only additional comments regarding Smith’s post-Seabiscuit training career are "He descended into obscurity just as he has risen from it. He eventually parted with Graham and wound up training a single horse at Santa Anita." Generally, readers are left with an impression of Tom Smith as a man who rarely trained after 1947 and eventually died a lonely death. Reference note : refer to pages 331-333 of Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand that discusses Tom Smith’s last years as a trainer. During the 1930’s when Smith was developing the racing stable for Charles Howard, another farm located in the heart of the nation was laying the groundwork that would lead to a future partnership with the trainer. It all began in 1929, when Tom Smith was 50 years old and managing "Ten Ton" Irwin’s racing circuit. At the same time a Chicago couple purchased over 1000 acres of farmland near the west suburban town of Wheaton. This gentleman farmer and his talented skeet-shooting wife named the new estate "Danada" a poetic, non-Spanish combination of their given names, Dan and Ada Rice. Mr. Rice, ever the sportsman, enjoyed hunting, golfing and competitive shooting. He owned a football franchise with actor Don Ameche and also held partial ownership in three racetracks, Hialeah, Washington Park and Arlington Park. They farmed the land, raised draft horses and dogs and grew trees by the acre-full. Mrs. Rice attended the races in Chicago frequently. When she told her husband she would like to own a racehorse, Mr. Rice responded by purchasing 8 thoroughbred yearlings in 1943 at the Keeneland sales. Seven of the eight horses went on to win at the track. Among the Ada L. Rice stable’s early stars were Sirde and Snow Boots, who set a world’s record for 1 1/16 miles at Santa Anita in 1946, covering the distance in 1:41 3/5. A remarkable coincidence that may have been foretelling the future was when, Snow Boots captured the Seabiscuit Handicap at Santa Anita in 1946. Snow Boots also is remembered for carrying the Rice colors of cerise and white for his first start, which also was the first race won by the Rice’s on June 3, 1944 at Hawthorne. After the success of the seven runners in their stable, the Rice’s began to really get involved in the sport. In 1947 they purchased a portion of the famed Idle Hour Stock Farm of Col. E. R. Bradley to establish a breeding farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky. The Wheaton farm was expanded with the development of a half-mile training track that included a 4-position electronic starting gate and a large Kentucky-style barn staffed with a veterinarian and X-ray machine. The Wheaton farm served as headquarters for breaking and training the young horses. Over 1800 acres of gently rolling woods and meadows surrounded the stone mansion, two immaculate white barns and numerous paddocks. The Rice’s divided their time between their farms and a home in Florida. Summers were spent at Danada in Wheaton, where Mr. Rice was within a stone’s throw of the Chicago Golf Club, where Mr. Rice guested (and bested) numerous jockeys and celebrities on the links. In 1948 their breeding operation began to roll, eventually producing the likes of Pet Bully (earned $365,702), Pucker Up ($283,760), Pia Star, Delta Judge and Lucky Debonair. With a growing thoroughbred business, Mr. Rice hired Tom Smith in 1947 to train for the Ada L. Rice Racing Stable and is the trainer of record for the talented colts Admiral Lea and Model Cadet. By 1949 the Rice’s had entered the big leagues, not only by retaining Tom Smith as trainer, but with the Kentucky Derby entry of Model Cadet. Smith gave Dan and Ada Rice their first trip to the Kentucky Derby, a thrill every thoroughbred owner and breeder hopes for. This was the first of 4 visits by Danada Farm to try to win the run for the roses. Model Cadet finished back of the leaders in 7th place. But the Rice’s celebrated continued success in future Kentucky Derbies placing 6th in 1957 with Indian Creek, 1st in 1965 with Lucky Debonair and Advocator ran 2nd in 1966, losing by a neck to Kauai King. Even though Smith trained the first Kentucky Derby mount for the Rice’s, it would prove to be his fourth and last horse shipped to Churchill Downs for running on the first Saturday in May. Smith had previously trained Mioland (4th 1940), Porter’s Cap (4th 1941) and Jet Pilot who won the Kentucky Derby in 1947 for owner Elizabeth Arden Graham. Tom Smith, still silent after 70 years, left the Ada L. Rice racing stable at the end of 1949 and returned to take over the Main Chance Farm horses of Elizabeth Graham. But one man from Illinois whose life crossed paths with Tom Smith was Lester Wander. Once a groom for Smith and the colt, Model Cadet, Lester worked his way up to head trainer at Danada Farm in Wheaton, Illinois. In an Aurora Beacon-News article written in May 1970, Wander explained how he came to work for trainer Tom Smith. "My dad died in 1928 leaving my mother with five kids. We either got out and worked or we starved." Lester was 12 years old at the time. "Well, like any kid, I loved horses. I was small in size, so I figured I’d get a job as a jockey. But I couldn’t even ride a bicycle. I’d fall off without handlebars! Really, I wasn’t too good a rider, but I did gallop horses quite a few years before I got too heavy." Wander quit elementary school to work for "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, longtime alderman in Chicago’s 1st Ward, who maintained a racing stable of nearly 60 horses. As Wander cared for the horses, he traveled from the tracks of Chicago to New Orleans then to Santa Anita in California where he worked with the Brolite Farm. "Tom Smith was training horses for the Rice’s then, and needed a man, so I went to work for him," he recalled. "Old Tom was a good horseman. He’s the one who made Seabiscuit into the great horse he was. Anyway, that’s when I went to rubbing. I groomed Model Cadet, and we’ve been together almost ever since. He was a two-year-old then, and doing pretty well in California. When he was a three-year-old, Model Cadet was shipped to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby and I went with him. That was 1949, and Olympia was the favorite. We thought we had a pretty good chance in the Derby, but there was some pretty good stock in the race." (Wander would go on to train several yearlings out of Olympia, including Pucker Up, winner of the 1957 Washington Park Handicap and awarded 1957 Handicap Mare honors). "A horse named Ponder won that ‘Run for the Roses,’ the second successive Derby victory for Calumet Farm. Olympia finished sixth and Model Cadet was just behind in seventh place. Fourteen horses started that race. Model Cadet finished about the same way in the Preakness (7th) and we didn’t try for the Belmont. He was a ‘bad luck’ horse. Something was always happening to him. I remember that summer, he hurt himself and he was turned out to pasture for a whole year. Then he went back into training and won his first time out. He started 15 or 16 times and won about $85,000. He retired from racing when he was a six-year-old." During the summer of 1949, when Model Cadet was recuperating, Wander, now an experienced 33-year-old horseman left the racing circuit. He hired on as the yearling trainer at the Rice’s main homestead, in Wheaton. "That’s the year we broke Pet Bully," Wander recalled. Pet Bully was one of the Rice’s best-known horses until Lucky Debonair won the Kentucky Derby in 1965. Lester Wander continued on as the head trainer at Danada Farm, training the yearlings shipped up by Howard Endicott who managed the Lexington-based Danada Farm. Wander once again managed Model Cadet, one of several stallions that stood at the farm. It was a friendship that spanned four decades from the racetrack to the breeding shed. With the death of Mrs. Rice in 1977, Wander relocated with his wife, Violet, to the warm training grounds of Ocala, Florida. He worked at Double Diamond Farm until his death in 1992. All that remains of the white ranch house that Lester and Violet lived in at Danada Farm is the concrete sidewalk and the birch tree she planted. Violet recalled, "I used to watch the horses run up and over the hill and out of site" as she looked beyond her backyard. The well-mannered, white-faced Model Cadet never left the farm, but remains at his only home, buried in the back pasture. Harold Washburn is a Kentucky horseman that worked for Tom Smith and Danada Farm. He started out as Tom’s assistant with the Ada L. Rice racing stable, then managed yearlings and injured horses at the Wheaton farm. Washburn began, "When the Ada L. Rice stable hired Tom Smith, he was in New York. He picked up the horses in New York. That was in the fall of 1947. We took (the yearlings) to California and of course they turned 2-year-olds at the first of the year and then we raced them out there." Washburn told of how he was hired, "I came from Detroit and went to Washington Park. I was getting on the outside horses and was looking for a good job and someone told me to go over and see Jimmy Smith. I didn’t know Jimmy Smith and I went over to see him. He told me Tom Smith was his father and that Tom, his dad, had taken over the Ada L. Rice stable. He had some horses and was breaking some yearlings that were throwing some riders in the shedrow. So Jimmy hired me to get on those yearlings." One of the unruly yearlings was Model Cadet. The colt had thrown a rider which resulted in a broken collarbone injury. Washburn recalled, "You don’t break yearlings at the racetrack. He hired me to get on them and it was duck soup to me. They set me on Model Cadet and him buck-jumping me a bit in the shedrow, that was like me sitting in a rocking chair. So Jim got all excited and decided to hire me and sent me to California to his dad." Washburn arrived carrying 132 pounds on his five foot eight frame, causing Tom Smith to question his son’s latest hire. "So when I got there I was a little bit heavier than most exercise riders," he explained. "So Tom kind of looked at me when Jim first sent me there and said ‘I ain’t got no elephants here to ride’. But after two or three days Jim said ‘you’re gonna need him, believe me.’ So after about a week or two there Tom was getting to know and understand me and began to use me." "After he hired me, Tom started playing games with me and started putting me on bad horses. That’s how he was. That goes on all the time. I was so used to that. Pretty soon he got to know I knew horses and I knew people. Then in 30 days he was asking me who should I put on this horse or who should I put on this horse, and that’s the way it went on from there". "So I stayed with him and ended up being his assistant. I took some horses to Chicago. Ten of them for Rice. Ran them in there and did pretty well at Washington Park. I won five races at the whole meet and I only had twelve horses there." Rice only raced at Santa Anita in the winter. In early March they shipped back to Chicago and New York. "So I stayed (employed) with Tom and went to the farm (in Wheaton). I broke a batch of yearlings at the farm and that’s when I became pretty good friends with Ada." Model Cadet was at the Wheaton Farm before and after the 1949 Triple Crown races. " A kid named Halfday went down there with him," Washburn remembered. "Tom only took Model Cadet and maybe his pony to Churchill Downs. They sent him back to me because he had problems." "(In 1949) Rice asked me to go to California with Tom but I didn’t want to do it. Tom had already got another assistant, another foreman, and I thought I would be interfering. So he (Rice) told me to go to Los Angeles and wait for him." Washburn went briefly to Washington then returned down the West Coast. He continued, "So I called Dan and he said to stick around, to take some horses to Mexico, but that never panned out." In the next few months Tom Smith was let go by Dan Rice. Washburn stayed on to assist the new trainer in getting acquainted with the horses, then moved on to work for Louis B. Mayer. Harold Washburn also provided his personal touch when managing the Rice’s string under Tom Smith. He explained, " I did most of the decorating and painting. I did her logos on the door. I designed her logos, the ARL in the diamond shape and hand painted them on her doors. I tell you what. That was a beautifully run stable. You should have seen it. A stable anyone would be proud of who was at the races." The Thoroughbred of California reported the passing of Tom Smith and another horseman,William Patrick Kyne in the March 1957 issue. Kyne’s obituary was listed first, in a large, bold type set and showed a photograph of the former treasurer and general manager of Bay Meadows racetrack. Smaller text reports "Tom Smith Passes" in the lower right page and headlines the briefer eulogy to Smith. Tom Smith was not forgotten when he passed on, but was honored at Santa Anita racetrack, when Mr. B.K. Beckwith placed a floral wreath at the base of the statue of Seabiscuit the day of Smith’s burial. Though Hillenbrand reports no one was present at Tom Smith’s funeral on January 23, 1957, he was survived by his widow, Janet; two daughters Erline Talbot and Vera Smith; and one son, James W. Smith. How I happened across the Tom Smith/ Danada Farm story: An amazing coincidence occurred in my life while I was reading Seabiscuit: An American Legend. I was two days into reading the book when I drove to the Univ. of Illinois,Urbana/Champaign to visit the cramped, musty archives that house the thoroughbred journals from that past 100 years. My goal that day was to complete my research on the 1949 and 1957 Triple Crown races. Though I had previously viewed the 1949 Kentucky Derby statistics, I did not mentally made the connection between the Tom Smith listed as trainer for Model Cadet, and the Tom Smith that I was captivated with in the book. As with every time I have visited the University Library, I set up office in a little corner of the 2nd floor stacks, and proceeded to pour over the older editions of The Blood-Horse. Usually I focus my attention on the year-end Index that lists the noteworthy horses and owners alphabetically. But sometimes an article or photograph will catch my eye (unrelated to the Rice’s horses) and I will note it for a future article, but during this whole process I always keep my eyes alert to any font showing "Ada L. Rice". Well, that day my internal radar paid off. While I was flipping to a page in the Dec 24, 1949 The Blood-Horse edition, I spotted the name Ada Rice. And what did I find? But a small 17 line, 1 column story stating that Tom Smith had resigned as trainer for Ada L. Rice and had returned to train for Elizabeth Graham. Since I was only 44 years old, and not of the Seabiscuit generation, I asked myself, "Is this the same Tom Smith in the Seabiscuit book, or is it such a common name that two men with this name have worked in racing?" Continued research and a few phone calls to turf historians and librarians confirmed that Tom Smith went on to train for Ada Rice after his long alliance with Charles Howard. Whether Tom Smith ever visited the Wheaton farm is still a question to be answered. But knowing his association with the Wheaton farmland I love to roam compelled me to visit Santa Anita racetrack, and sign up as an ‘extra’ in the filming of the Seabiscuit movie. I was in California on December 14, 2002, and I watched the filming of several ordinary thoroughbreds as they looped around the oval track, but in my heart I heard the thundering hooves of Seabiscuit and felt the warm breeze of Lucky Debonair swiftly crossing the finish line.
Loved to run at Santa Anita Shipped east to prove their mettle Won the ‘Big Cap’ Two stablemates, Same name: Hired same trainer Always to be remembered: |
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