Visionaries united by love of the horse
by Joseph P. Pons Jr.

Now, as then, it’s all about ideas, from a body of men and women serving as board members of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association—the first, the oldest, such organization in the country.

Then was 1929. The verdant hills and valleys of Maryland grew horsemen like grass. Grandsons of Civil War cavalrymen, captains of commerce, transplanted Long Islanders in unspoiled country, courtly politicians, daring steeplechase riders. Beautiful Maryland attracted the allegiance of such men, who shared in common a love of the horse, whether a flat racer at Pimlico, a Hunt Cup warrior, or a Sunday-safe riding horse. In the agrarian society of the late 1920s, these men all thought it a good idea to pool their talents into a team.

At his desk, Louis McLane Merryman examined the original Articles of Incorporation drafted for the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. He put his chin in his hands, covering his muttonchop sideburns, and was lost in thought.

Yes, to further all things to do with horses—ponies, race horses, draft horses—a broad purpose for our association. I’ll sign that.

Dr. J. Fred Adams thought about his stable of race horses, of crisp spring mornings at state tracks such as Havre de Grace, the sun banking off the Chesapeake Bay as horses worked in the breaking day.
It’s time to band together to serve as stewards for this exciting pastime. Think what we’ll accomplish if we work together. Where do I sign? Janon Fisher Jr. had horses to ride. Helluva good idea. He signed.

The Maryland Horse Breeders Association became a legal entity on the signatures of these three men. Their first order of business? Elect a president. Breckinridge Long stood tall among the horsemen. Assistant Secretary of State during World War I. Gracious owner of the Monticello estate between the towns of Bowie and Laurel. Urbane. A born leader. First president of the MHBA. He surrounded himself with talented board members.

H.G. (Hard Guy) Bedwell, trainer of Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner (1919); Major Goss L. Stryker, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and Harford County farm owner; Sylvester W. Labrot Sr., owner of Holly Beach Farm near Annapolis; Edwin Warfield, the son of a Maryland governor; Howard Bruce, Baltimore banker and owner of famed jumper Billy Barton. The starter’s flag dropped, and the MHBA was off and running.

A half-dozen years passed, and in 1936, Labrot’s farm manager, Humphrey S. Finney, was elected to the board. Author of A Stud Farm Diary, a day-to-day account of life on Labrot’s farm serialized by The Blood-Horse in 1935 and ’36, Finney had an idea he put before the board: Why don’t we do a monthly newsletter?

Splendid idea, Finney. Head it up. Finney pulled some newsworthy items from his desk drawer, his “saddlebag” as he called it, and the periodical Maryland Horse was born, weighing in at four pages at birth. Finney’s idea would grow in time to be the standard against which all other state breeders’ magazines would be measured. Finney became field secretary for the MHBA and editor of the magazine. The “office” was a second floor bedroom in Finney’s Towson home.

World War II brought challenges to the horse world. Sons went off to war. Racing was suspended. Necessities were scarce—metal for horse-shoes, for example. Janon Fisher ran his horses barefoot. After the War, Finney handed the MHBA reins to Raleigh Bur-roughs, who intended only to serve as “interim” editor: He served four MHBA presidents.

In May of 1961, Snowden Carter left his reporter’s job at the Sunpapers to become editor of The Maryland Horse, and the following year, general manager of the MHBA. He had plenty of good ideas. Let’s give Nancy Boyce a raise for her monthly cartoons. They’re very popular with readers. Let’s take Peter Winants up on his offer to photograph horses for us. Winants had offered to take pictures “on any day, free of charge.” The board loved the idea.

In Annapolis, meanwhile, the MHBA board was pushing the biggest idea of all: Let’s reward folks for breeding and racing in Maryland—no other state pays you for raising race horses. Lawyer/horseman Hal C.B. Clagett remembers it well. He argued the merits of such subsidies, which derived from raising the takeout on bettors. The race tracks fought the idea.

Clagett says: “Acting as one voice, the MHBA carried the message to the legislators, who could say to themselves: ‘The people have spoken.’”
In a state whose population was spreading to the suburbs, swallowing farmland as it went, suddenly there was a reason to hold off developers—our business is growing.

The pages of The Mary-land Horse told of new farms bought for the purpose of participating in the Maryland-bred program. New stallions arrived. Mares fol-lowed. In 1963, a Maryland mare gave birth to a colt who would win the Kentucky Derby. A sales pavilion was built in Timonium by a partnership of the MHBA and the Fasig-Tipton Company. Other states looked at Mary-land, and began lobbying their legislators.

Meanwhile, Carter published the National Geo-graphic of the horse world. Same unique page size. Same snug feel. Same great photography. Just a smaller world—the horse world in our state. A Marylander could travel to Kentucky, to California, to Ohio, to Louisiana. “Man you guys put out a great magazine,” would be heard. It was an association to be proud of.

Maryland became known for its “firsts.” First state breeders association. First state horse magazine. First state-bred program. When Carter retired in 1986, his legacy was secure. But times were changing. Other states had caught up. We needed another “first” to distinguish us. Jim McKay had an idea: Why don’t we run a mini-Breeders’ Cup, just keep it to Maryland horses? Chick Lang knew the value of a catchy name: How about calling it the Maryland Million? Billy Boniface laughed at the math: We don’t know where we’re getting the first dollar from, so what difference does it make what we call it? With skepticism plentiful, McKay, Boniface and Lang had come up with a novel idea to shine the spotlight on the state’s breeding industry.

The MHBA knew its limits, and a whole new board was born—the Maryland Million board, with a number of overlapping members. The MHBA searched for and found the executive to wear those two hats. Rich Wilcke succeeded Carter. Armed with a good idea, Wilcke traveled to all corners of the state, introducing himself as well as the plan. We need your help. You need to nominate your foals and your stallions. That’ll raise half the funds. We’ll solicit the other half from corporate sponsors.
The Maryland Million idea reached out to the region. Our program appealed to breeders in other states because they didn’t have to foal their mare away from home. You could foal her in her own stall in Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York or Canada or Alaska, as long as the nominated stallion stood in Maryland and you paid the foal’s nomination fee.

A region Wilcke saw Maryland as the center of the Mid-Atlantic region. He pushed the idea that survival meant adapting to the reality that erosion of our stallion base and of our horse farms to development ultimately would kill the advertising that fed The Maryland Horse. We’ve got the best staff of any horse magazine outside Kentucky, he felt. Let’s preempt the other states by transforming The Maryland Horse into the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred. The board of the MHBA agreed. Wilcke also recruited neighboring state breeders organizations to publish their “newsletters” in the Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, and the magazine’s roots penetrated the soil of surrounding states.

Wilcke’s innovative mind drew national recognition, and after contributing his talents to the MHBA for a decade, he left for greener pastures, or bluer, when Kentucky called. Wilcke soon stood behind a lectern at the University of Louisville, teaching master’s candidates about the horse business. He hand-picked his successor, Tim Capps, who drew heavily on his experience as an executive with The Jockey Club, and as erudite editor of The Thoroughbred Record.

In an unbroken chain of talent, the MHBA had enjoyed the services of Finney, Burroughs, Carter, Wilcke and Capps, whose first order of business was to raise the state’s awareness of the importance of horse breeding. In two years’ time, Capps persuaded Annapolis that an industry that employs 17,000 Marylanders deserved special attention, and his message brought seventeen million dollars of state lottery funds into the Maryland horse business. Capps also understood the power of the press, and the Baltimore Sunpapers began covering more than just race track news. Thanks to Capps’s relationships in the media, Sunpapers editorials and features on the agricultural side of Maryland’s horse industry began raising the public’s appreciation of horse farms. Legislators couldn’t fail to notice the stories.

As slot machines whirred in Delaware and West Virginia, Capps recognized that the once-unthinkable was now unavoidable: Maryland racing and slot machines must intermarry. He left the MHBA to carry that message to legislators in his new role as an executive with the Maryland Jockey Club. In his place at the MHBA rose Cricket Goodall. A very capable and knowledgeable administrator, Goodall steps into a stressful period in the MHBA’s existence. But Goodall can call on the spirits of the MHBA founders, who shrugged off the Great Depression and soldiered on. Good ideas from talented people have carried the Maryland Horse Breeders Association from its inception in 1929 through this very day.