A dear friend in Orange County who triples as an Appellate Court Justice, the holder of a Stanley Cup ring and the brilliant author of the award winning column, A Criminal Waste of Space, just informed me that NBC will be running a “virtual” Kentucky Derby tomorrow afternoon. The race will be showcasing the greatest thoroughbreds of all time, I’m told, running against each other. For me, it’s already a done deal who will win, but you, dear reader, will be able figure out my pick by the end of this article.
During a Graduation Season, sadly impacted by the COVID pandemic, I thought of all of the young women who are now graduating from high school and colleges here and across America. I dwelled on that and pondered wistfully about a ‘glass ceiling’ that still exists in which recent Forbes and Pew Research studies show women earning 83% of what men earn in full and part time median hourly wages, an estimate that shows that it would take an extra 44 days of work for women to earn what men do. Add to that a 5 year study that showed women holding 16.3% of CEO positions in our country. And then, for extra measure, a continuing TV ad that spoke of the great heart of the greatest race horse of all time. Suddenly, I was transported back to 1973.
I was fresh out of college in Lexington, Kentucky, where I’d pulled down tuition money working at the venerable Keeneland Racecourse. Being a pari mutuel ticket seller and member of the local union, I was invited each year to work one of the infield windows for the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. It was, as tradition dictates, the first Saturday in May. 70,000 people were in the once-yearly opened infield for that year’s Derby. Earlier in the day, my pal Bronson and I had walked through the stable area and stopped to look at the vaunted colt, nicknamed “Big Red.” Rising up a full 16.2 hands, his towering height belied the easy manner of this three year old cold named Secretariat who would go on to shatter records while warming the hearts of America.
On that 5th day in May, our country was embroiled in controversy over the Vietnam war, the Watergate hearings, the resignation of Vice President Agnew as part of a plea bargain in his extortion/bribery case and the evolving feminist movement, characterized as “bra burners” by those in opposition. As such, America cried out for something good, decent and heroic and beginning on May 5, it came in the form of a towering, disarmingly docile, chestnut colt.
On that day, Secretariat won the 99th running of the Kentucky Derby in a still record time of 1:59 2/5 minutes. In addition, he had run each quarter-mile faster than the last, with times of 25 1/5, 24, 23 4/5 and 23 seconds, which still holds the record for any quarter mile in the Derby. Two weeks later, he won the second leg of racing’s Triple Crown in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, Maryland. The last leg was the Belmont Stakes, which consists of a grueling mile and a half and criticized by many as being too harsh for adolescent 3 year old colts. The Belmont featured 5 horses that day as we and much of America watched from our television sets. Comparatively close at the beginning of the club house turn, Secretariat eyed his rival Sham, who had beaten him in the Wood Memorial Stakes and then opened up a 3 length lead going into the home stretch. 3 lengths evaporated as Big Red chewed up the turf to 5, then 10, then 20 lengths, as any wide angled lens was unable to show him and the place horse in the same photo, crossing the finish line an unbelievable 31 lengths in the lead. His time of 2:24 over the mile and a half and 31 length margin of victory are records that stand to this day.
America had found its hero on that day in 1973, but behind her hero was a champion of equal renown and stature. Her name was Helen Bates Chenery, known to all as “Penny.”
Penny Chenery had a love of horses from childhood, learning to ride at the age of 5. She attended a competitive girls’ school in McLean, Virginia, winning a scholarship to Smith College in Massachusetts. After college, she worked for a company that designed war craft for the Normandy invasion, then volunteering for the Red Cross where she traveled to France to help war-weary soldiers to transition to ships home at the end of World War II. She married John Tweedy in 1949 in Boulder, Colorado where she lived the life of a suburban housewife, raising 4 children.
Her father, Christopher Chenery, was born in 1886 amid the post-Civil War poverty of Ashland, Virginia. Bright and ambitious, he became a millionaire financier and at the age of 50, in the post-Depression era of 1936, bought back the family’s Meadow Stable in Caroline County. Seeking the Derby Cup which alluded him all of his life, the Meadow trophy room under him however overflowed with silver. Christopher Chenery’s Meadow Stables began a turn for the worse in 1968 when he was admitted to the New Rochelle Hospital, where he remained until his death in 1973. Exacerbated by his illness, the profitable stable began losing money in the late 60’s. With their father no longer running the stable’s business all of his siblings originally planned to sell the operation. Upon the eve of placing Christopher Chenery’s beloved stable for sale, the three siblings met.
At that time, Penny Tweedy, the youngest sibling at age 45, was far removed from the Meadow Stable, married to a Denver attorney and raising four children. Yet, she had ridden horses all her life and held her father’s dream of some day winning the Kentucky Derby. Being a minority of one, she held out for keeping the stable. Older brother Hollis said at that time, “We ought to sell everything and make some investments that will involve all three of us.” Retelling the story, Penny Chenery said “It was time to play the daddy card.” She told them they should do what their father would do if he was still healthy, “The land has always supported the horses, and the horses have always supported the land.”
Grudgingly, her older brother and sister agreed. The first year, she pared down the stable’s racing and breeding stock from 130 to 68 horses, losing slightly less than $100,000. The second year, the stable showed a profit of $60,000.
Penny Chenery, upon grabbing the reins of the Meadow Stable, fired her father’s longtime trainer, Casey Hayes, replacing him with Roger Laurin who weeks later jumped from the female run Meadow Stable to the established and powerful Phipps family stable. Caught up in the good old boy stable of thoroughbred horse racing, luring a talented trainer to a stable run by a woman during that time was a task approaching insurmountability. Former Derby winner Riva Ridge had been trained by Lucien Laurin, who had quit training when Penny Chenery came to him. All but pleading, she convinced him to stay and train Secretariat. As she later said, “When Lucien was in the barn, he was a great observer. He was a better trainer than his son who didn’t have the intuition Lucien did. Lucien had a different regimen for every horse. He saw something in Secretariat that I did and agreed to train him.”
Throughout those early lean years, her tenacity, work ethic and love of the sport became noticed by one of the giants of the close knit fraternity of thoroughbred racing, Bull Hancock of the esteemed Claiborne Farms, who, without reservation, counseled the fledgling breeder. Upon the elder Hancock’s death in 1972, his 23 year-old son Seth honored his father’s friendship with Penny Chenery, putting together a breeding syndication of 132 shares at $190,000 which bought the investor the right to breed one mare to Secretariat for the stallion’s lifetime, insuring the continued success of Meadow Stables.
As the record reflects, Secretariat went on to win the Triple Crown in 1973. Penny Chenery went on to be the first woman admitted to the Jockey’s Club in 1983. From 1976 to 1984, she served as president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeder’s Association. Additionally, she helped found the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, an organization dedicated to saving thoroughbred horses who no longer compete from neglect, abuse and slaughter. In 2006, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association honored her with the Eclipse Award of Merit for a lifetime of outstanding achievement in thoroughbred racing. In 2009, she was awarded the Smith College Medal for extraordinary professional achievement and outstanding service to her community.
I can still recall watching the royal blue and white silks of Secretariat, with Ronnie Turcotte in the irons, as they thundered by the finish line in Louisville, then Belmont Park, when for just a moment, the pain of a nation divided against itself was forgotten and replaced with something approaching grace. On those days, America was the beneficiary of two champions: one who yearned to run with all his heart for the finish line and another whose great heart and refusal to be denied brought him to the starting gate.
Penny Chenery died on September 16, 2017 in Boulder, Colorado. I believe that some things- commitment, resilience and courage- are eternal, remaining untarnished by human events or Pandemics, things with which Penny Chenery shattered the glass ceiling of thoroughbred racing with and continue to be passed on, especially on the first Saturday in May, to the women of the Class of ’20. Long may you run.
Jon Alexander lives in Crescent City, CA. Jon can be reached at jonalexanderlaw@yahoo.com
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