Allaire duPont’s contributions deserve immense gratitude.

Everyone who knew her probably has a favorite story about Allaire duPont, the legendary Maryland horsewoman who died in January at the age of 92.

Mine took place in the mid-1980s, when I had recently come to work for The Maryland Horse magazine and Mary Thomas was general manager of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. Mrs. duPont had invited Mary to lunch—actually an informal meeting to discuss equine rescue, one of Mrs. duPont’s favorite causes—and Mary took me along.

Mary decided that we must take Mrs. duPont a gift; before starting up the highway to Chesapeake City we stopped at a garden center near the MHBA office, and Mary purchased two potted chrysanthemums with bright yellow blooms. She had the shopkeeper wrap each pot in gray foil, and tie a gray ribbon around it. Yellow and gray, of course, were Mrs. duPont’s racing colors.

The effect on Mrs. duPont when we walked into the restaurant carrying the two plants was amazing. Genuinely thrilled, she turned them around and examined them from all sides as if they were exotic orchids, exclaiming over the perfection of the flowers, the pots, the ribbons.

Receiving gifts from people outside her immediate circle of friends and family was most likely a rare occurrence for Mrs. duPont. Solicitations, however, must have traveled a well-worn path to her door. You could almost picture the requests coming in every day: for donations, sponsorships, recollections of her wonder horse Kelso. Could that explain why a couple of yellow chrysanthemums gave her so much pleasure?

Not long ago I described that scene to one of Mrs. duPont’s longtime friends. She said I’d figured it out correctly, and added that the plants are probably still alive somewhere on Mrs. duPont’s farm, because conservation, in all of its forms, was so important to her.
Maryland was blessed to have Mrs. duPont as one of its citizens, and to have her for a very long time. She made incalculably vast contributions to this state—encouraging the growth of Chesa­peake City as a center of Thoroughbred breeding, helping to secure literally thousands of acres in land preservation programs, and breeding a succession of quality race horses, to name just a few.

I only hope she somehow knew how much she meant to us all.