In the sixth race tomorrow at Belmont Park, to be contested at a mile and an eighth on the turf, we have entered four-year-old W.C. Jones. He last ran 11 months ago, in a similar race, finishing a fast-closing second, beaten a head, after trailing the field at the top of the stretch. Because he has been away from the races for such a long time, recovering from an injury, he may need tomorrow's race to return to his peak form. We plan to be at Belmont to see his return.
I named W.C. Jones after my late uncle, William C. Jones, whom I called "Uncle Willy." My late partner in the horse business, Peter Karches, always said that I was the man who had cost him the most money, because he had never owned horses before he went into partnership with me. Uncle Willy had the same lifelong effect on my pocketbook by introducing me to Thoroughbred horses in 1961. He invited me to the running of the Virginia Gold Cup steeplechase races near the farm that he and my Aunt Lucy had bought and on which they were raising Thoroughbreds. At such country races, the police looked the other way while the bookies operated with their chalkboards in full view. Unfortunately for me, I won the last five out of the six races I bet, including my bet on Carry Back in the Kentucky Derby, which was run the same day. In 1963, during the summer between my junior and senior years at Princeton, I worked at Saratoga for Uncle Willy's trainer as a hotwalker, the lowliest of stable employees.
As my Aunt Lucy says, life with Willy was never dull! He was an entrepreneur in the paper industry who always operated with flair, even in later years when he worked as an executive for a company that he did not own. He had grown up riding horses under the eye of his demanding father, and he bred, sold, raced, and foxhunted Thoroughbreds in Virginia and later in New Jersey. He bet at the racetracks in New York and New Jersey, especially on grey horses, which he also preferred to ride. Before breeding Thoroughbreds, he had excelled as a breeder of bird dogs, Tennessee Walking Horses, and prize beef cattle. He always had the most avant garde equipment for his sports activities, which included at various times tennis (with his own court, of course), golf (at one time, all custom-made woods, no irons), shooting (he used over-and-under shotguns), and deep-sea fishing (his expeditions were launched from his houseboat, which slept 10). His sporting passions changed without warning, except that he always loved dogs. Most important to me, he gave me my dog, Colonel, for my twelfth birthday.
Uncle Willy was a cool guy! Always a natty dresser, he changed cars constantly. (My father, who also loved to buy a new car, used to say that Willy turned in a car whenever the ash tray filled up.) Uncle Willy drove the first Jaguar I ever saw, a black XK-120 with red leather upholstery and a white convertible top. The Jaguar was followed by a parade of exotic cars, including at least one Aston-Martin that I can recall.
One night while I was a student at Princeton, I was staying at Uncle Willy's farm in New Jersey and borrowed one of his cars so that I could take out a date. I dented the front end of the car and spent the night worrying about his reaction. When I saw him the next morning, he was reading his Sunday paper. When I told him what I had done, he simply asked, without looking up, "Anybody hurt?" Later that morning, when we went to the garage to take another car, his custom-made Mercedes convertible, to brunch, he walked by the car that I had banged up without so much as glancing at it. Of course, he refused my offer to pay for the repairs.
I don't know how Uncle Willy would have reacted if I had tried to name a horse after him while he was alive. I asked Aunt Lucy for permission to do so at his funeral, and she liked the idea. She saw W.C. Jones a few months after I bought him at a yearling sale and liked his looks and manner. She noted that, unlike his namesake, he seemed easy to train. We have fun discussing his training and racing over the telephone. I'll be calling her at her Virginia Beach home right after the race.
