Archive for the ‘Horses’ Category

« Older Entries

Obit watch: February 5, 2024.

Wednesday, February 5th, 2025

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr. (USAF – ret) has passed away. He was 100.

He was one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen who saw combat during WWII. (That’s the way the paper of record phrases it. I wondered about that phrasing, but according to Wikipedia (I know, I know):

On February 2, 2025, Lt Col. Harry Stewart Jr. died, thus leaving Lt. Col. George Hardy as the last surviving member of the original 355 Tuskegee Airmen who served in World War II. James H. Harvey, III, who did not serve in combat during World War II but who did later manage to be a member of the USAF’s inaugural “Top Gun” team in 1949 and serve in combat missions in the Korean War, lives as well, as does Lt. Eugene J. Robertson, who also did not serve in World War II combat missions.)

He flew 43 missions — almost one every other day — from late winter 1944 into the spring of 1945.
On one mission, to attack a Luftwaffe base in Germany, Lieutenant Stewart and six other American pilots were baited into a dogfight with at least 16 German fighter planes. Firing his machine guns and performing risky aerial maneuvers, he downed three enemy aircraft in succession, fending off a potential rout.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, cited for having “gallantly engaged, fought and defeated the enemy” with no regard for his personal safety.

Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, also known as The Aga Khan IV.

Urbane, cosmopolitan and often media-averse, the Aga Khan — born Prince Karim Al-Hussaini — rejected the notion that expanding his personal fortune would conflict with his charitable ventures. He said his ability to prosper complemented his duty to enhance the lives of Ismaili Muslims, a branch of the Shiite tradition of Islam with a following of 15 million people in 35 countries.

…

His projects included developing the island of Sardinia’s ritzy Costa Smeralda resort area, breeding thoroughbred racehorses and establishing health initiatives for the poor in the developing world.

…

Even though he had no inherited realm in the manner of other hereditary rulers, the Aga Khan’s fortune was variously estimated at $1 billion to $13 billion, drawn from investments, joint ventures and private holdings in luxury hotels, airlines, racehorses and newspapers, as well as from a kind of Quranic tithe levied on his followers.

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, Planes | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 16, 2024.

Monday, December 16th, 2024

Robert Fernandez. He was 100.

Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.

In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”

…

In his recollection of the attack, Mr. Fernandez said in the video that he had awakened that morning feeling excited to go dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with his friends that night.

That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.

The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”

Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.

Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.

Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.

In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.

…

“He’s a horseman,” Steven Levy wrote in a profile of Jenkins in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977. “A rider might get over a fence, but a horseman will make the horse jump, as if it’s a birthright to leap like a cheetah and land on the run. A horseman does it because the animals and he are on the same wavelength.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Noted.

Saturday, December 14th, 2024

It turns out that, among the many people Joe Biden has either pardoned or commuted the sentences of, is…

…crazy horse lady Rita Crundwell.

You may remember Ms. Crundwell from previous coverage in this space. She used to be comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, until it was discovered that she’d embezzled $53 million from the town, and used the money to fund her quarter-horse breeding operation.

She had been sentenced to “nearly 20 years” in 2013. If she served the standard 85% of her federal sentence, she would have been imprisoned until October 20, 2029. But she was placed on house arrest in August of 2021 due to COVID concerns, and her sentence was commuted on Thursday.

Posted in Horses, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Crazy horse people update.

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024

Crazy horse woman took a plea.

Tatyana Remley, 43, pleaded guilty on Thursday to a count of solicitation to commit murder stemming from an attempt to hire a person to kill her husband, Mark Remley. She also pleaded guilty to having a loaded, concealed gun that wasn’t registered to her, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.

As part of the plea, she’s taken a stipulated sentence of three years and eight months, but it isn’t clear to me if she has a chance at parole or some other form of early release.

Posted in Bagatelle, Horses, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 20, 2023.

Monday, November 20th, 2023

Rosalynn Carter obit roundup: NYT (archived). WP (archived).

I’ve had one person complain to me that they can’t access archive.is links, and I’ve seen reports of this on Hacker News as well. The problem from what I’ve read is a DNS issue between archive.is and CloudFlare, and I don’t know how to tell folks to resolve it. I would love to be able to use another archiving service, but I’m not aware of another one. I feel like my choice is: knowingly post paywalled links (which has gotten me griped at in the past) or post archived links and take the complaints on that. If someone knows of another archiving service, please leave me a comment or drop me a line, and I’ll try switching to that as an alternative.

And I’m not linking to the Atlanta newspaper because, you guessed it, they’re excessively aggressive about ad blockers.

Bobby Ussery, jockey. Mostly noted here because I don’t get to use the “horses” tag as often as I would like, but he did win the 1967 Kentucky Derby (on Proud Clarion, a 30-1 shot). He won a total of 3,611 races between 1951 and 1974.

Joss Ackland, actor. Other credits include “K-19: The Widowmaker”, “The Hunt for Red October”, and “The Apple“.

Posted in Horses, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | 2 Comments »

I do love a good classical reference.

Wednesday, September 13th, 2023

Shot:

Chaser:

Look, I know this is a story of mostly local interest. I know this is from a second-rate tabloid newspaper, which has been covering it to excess.

But, wow, these people sound…bats–t crazy. I find it hard to pick out just one element to highlight how bats–t crazy they sound, though the horse’s head in the bed is certainly a favorite of mine. Then there’s the mysterious house fire.

Following the fire, recalled Tatyana’s friend, “The police were called to the house. Officers asked for Tatyana’s ID and there were four loaded guns in her purse. Police arrested her for gun possession.”

Two is one, and one is none. But what is four? I guess four equals two plus two, so four is two. And does she have back problems from carrying four loaded guns in her purse?

(I’m reminded of the old joke with the punchline, “Not a damn thing in the world, Officer.” If you haven’t heard that one, leave me a comment.)

Amazingly, that is not even the most shocking incident involving the couple and firearms. “Mark got arrested once,” said the friend, “because he was standing naked at the top of the driveway with an elephant gun. He had come after her with a knife and she had to run out of the house in her underwear.”

I have to wonder if the “elephant gun” was a real elephant gun, or if we need an “elephant gun” entry for the Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification, alongside the AK-47.

Also, is it just me, or are horse people as a general rule just…bats–t crazy? Not that I hang around the horsy set a lot, but I’ve seen more than a few horse cases on the TV court shows…

Posted in Guns, Horses, Law | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 10, 2022.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Taiki Yanagida, Japanese jockey. He was trampled during a race a week ago, and had been hospitalized since.

Ryan Fellows. He was on a show called “Street Outlaws”, which airs on Discovery, and seems to involve drag races on closed public roads.

Citing “a source connected with the show,” TMZ says Fellows crashed during the eighth out of nine races scheduled for the night and that Fellows was driving a “gold Nissan 240Z.” It’s unclear whether this is actually the orange “Scooby Doo” Nissan documented extensively on social media and described as a 280Z by Fellows on YouTube or a different Z altogether. The Street Outlaws star reportedly lost control near the finish line causing the car to roll and catch fire. Onlookers apparently attempted to get him out but could not do so in time.

Gene LeBell, noted stuntman. 252 credits in IMDB.

During taping, it was reported that Lee was beating up on the stuntmen, prompting stunt coordinator Bennie Dobbins to bring in LeBell to help set the actor straight by “putting him in a headlock or something.”
In his 2005 autobiography The Godfather of Grappling, LeBell remembered grabbing Lee, who then “started making all those noises that he became famous for … but he didn’t try to counter me, so I think he was more surprised than anything else.”
He then hoisted Lee over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran around the set as Lee shouted, “Put me down or I’ll kill you.”

If that rings a bell, yeah, Quentin Tarantino says that Mr. LeBell influenced the Cliff Booth character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Apparently in more ways than just the Bruce Lee bit.

Booth also had an accusation of murder hovering over his head, which might have been a veiled reference to LeBell being charged in the murder of private investigator Robert Duke Hall in 1976. LeBell was acquitted of that charge, and his conviction as an accessory to the crime was later overturned.

Here’s a PDF of a vintage NYT article about the Hall murder, if you want to start down that rabbit hole.

Posted in Cars, Horses, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

A horse is a horse, of course, of course…

Tuesday, July 19th, 2022

…and no one should flee from a horse, of course,
Especially (of course) if the NYPD owns that horse.

Somebody in the thread responded with a still, but what the heck, let’s go to the ‘Tube:

(Jessica Walter! Damn!)

Posted in 1970s, Horses, Law, NYPD, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 1, 2022.

Wednesday, June 1st, 2022

Lester Piggott, one of the great British jockeys. I don’t know a lot about British horse racing (or Irish horse racing, for that matter, though I can tell you who Shergar was) but even I’d heard of him.

With 30 victories, Piggott holds the record for the most wins by a jockey in the five British Classics races — the Epsom Derby, the 2,000 Guineas Stakes, the 1,000 Guineas, the Oaks Stakes and the St. Leger Stakes — and he is the last British jockey to win his country’s Triple Crown, aboard Nijinsky in 1970.

…

“The way he rode, with an unusually short length of stirrup for a relatively tall man and his bottom high in the air, must have made the horses feel there was no weight on them,” Luck said in a phone interview. “People said to him, ‘Why do you ride with your butt in the air?’ And he said, ‘Well I have to put it somewhere.’”
Luck added, “Piggott ushered in a golden generation of riders in Europe; he was the one they all aspired to.”

Kenny Moore. He sounds like an interesting guy: he was an Olympic marathon runner, an early tester of Bill Bowerman’s shoes (which went on to become Nike), an All-American in cross-country…

…and a long-time Sports Illustrated writer, specializing in track coverage.

“He wasn’t a writer of devices,” Peter Carry, a former executive editor of Sports Illustrated, said in a phone interview. “He was a guy with a real literary bent and a real sense of language. He was quite economical and eloquent at the same time.”

…

George Hirsch, a former publisher of Runner’s World magazine, which Mr. Moore wrote for after he left Sports Illustrated, said that Mr. Moore’s athletic past had enhanced his access to his subjects.
“I can remember when he interviewed someone like Bill Rodgers or Joan Benoit,” Mr. Hirsch said in a phone interview, referring to two elite marathoners, “and he would run with them and see who they were in ways that he couldn’t have done if he had not been an elite runner.”

Charles Siebert, actor. Other credits include “Xena: Warrior Princess”, “Mancuso, FBI”, “And Justice for All”, “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye” (and of course “The Rockford Files”), and “Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo”.

Posted in Horses, Movies, Obits, Spiders, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Important safety tip (#22 in a series)

Wednesday, January 19th, 2022

Lawrence brought up an important safety tip the other night, based on two documentaries the Saturday Movie Group has watched. (“Barry Lyndon” and “Gone With the Wind”.)

Don’t buy a horse for your child.

It never ends well.

(Did you know IMDB has a “riding accident” keyword?)

Posted in Horses, Safety, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#44)

Wednesday, August 11th, 2021

I did not give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I believe they should have been cancelled this year, they should remain cancelled for all time, and cities should use the money to provide free guitar picks for the poor.

So I missed this story last week, but you know it is the kind of thing I can’t pass up, and I don’t think it got a lot of attention.

The coach of the German modern pentathlon team was disqualified on Saturday.

As it happens, “modern pentathlon” is one of the few Olympic sports I care much about: how can you not like a combination of swimming, fencing, running, horses, and shooting? (Plus: Patton. Minus: they are apparently using laser guns these days, instead of real pistols.)

But that’s not why the story is interesting. She was disqualified because…

…she punched a horse.

The footage “showed Ms Raisner appearing to strike the horse Saint Boy, ridden by Annika Schleu (GER), with her fist,” the group said in a statement. That violated UIPM competition rules, they said.

I believe we have video of the event.

Okay, I’m sorry, that was a cheap joke, but it never gets old. Here is the actual footage:

Posted in Bagatelle, Horses, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 4, 2021.

Friday, June 4th, 2021

F. Lee Bailey.

What a career:

Mr. Bailey flew warplanes, sailed yachts, dropped out of Harvard, wrote books, touted himself on television, was profiled in countless newspapers, ran a detective agency, married four times, carried a gun, took on seemingly hopeless cases and courted trouble, once going to jail for six weeks and finally being disbarred.

And props to him for honorable service in the military:

Francis Lee Bailey was born on June 10, 1933, in Waltham, Mass., the oldest of three children of an advertising salesman, whose name he was given, and a nursery-school teacher, Grace Bailey Mitchell. He graduated in 1950 from Kimball Union Academy, in Meriden, N.H., and enrolled in Harvard but dropped out after two years to join the Navy. He transferred to the Marines and became a fighter pilot and an officer representing servicemen in courts-martial, although he had no legal training.

The NYT obit hits all the high points of his legal career: Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Boston Strangler, Patty Hearst, Capt. Ernest L. Medina, O.J….

In 1977, Mr. Bailey, a master of turning simplicity into complexity, successfully defended a racehorse veterinarian, Mark J. Gerard, from two felony charges in a notorious racetrack fraud at Belmont Park. The defendant was accused of switching two look-alike horses — a top 3-year-old, Cinzano, for a long shot, Lebon, that the New York Times sports columnist Red Smith said “couldn’t beat a fat man from Gimbels to Macy’s.”
The switch produced 57-to-1 odds, and Mr. Gerard won $80,000. But the strands of the case proved too hard for prosecutors to untangle in Nassau County Court on Long Island, and Dr. Gerard, who had tended Secretariat and Kelso, got off with a misdemeanor and a few months in jail. “The record,” an appeals court said, “reveals a factual scenario that might have been authored jointly by an Alfred Hitchcock and a Damon Runyon.”

I have a vague memory of seeing F. Lee Bailey’s “Lie Detector” when I was younger. And this is a good story:

Bailey was featured in an RKO television special in which he conducted a mock trial, examining various expert witnesses on the subject of the “Paul is dead” rumor referring to Beatle Paul McCartney. One of the experts was Fred LaBour, whose article in The Michigan Daily had been instrumental in the spread of the urban legend. LaBour told Bailey during a pre-show meeting he had made up the whole thing. Bailey responded, “Well, we have an hour of television to do. You’re going to have to go along with this.” The program aired locally in New York City on November 30, 1969, and was never re-aired.

Lawrence also mentioned that he voiced himself in an episode of the animated “Spider-Man” series.

Posted in Horses, Law, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

« Older Entries