Little but memories remain of a Florida farm where Affirmed, the last Triple Crown winner, was born.
By BRANT JAMES
Published June 4, 2003
FELLOWSHIP - The old white cinderblock barn sits quiet and dusty, shaded by a pink crepe myrtle and encrusted with bees nests. Lumber and farm supplies fill the old stalls, a brass 80 above one doorway the only clue to the importance of the place. A forgotten place that once was part of Harbor View Farm and is now lost in Florida history.
"Right there, this is the one," said Nathaniel "Mac" McKeever, peering over the door into the stall. Here on Feb. 21, 1975 he helped pull into the world a foal that would be named Affirmed. "This is where it happened."
Twenty-five years have passed since that chestnut colt swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont stakes to become the last to win the Triple Crown. Those 25 years have pulled Harbor View Farm apart and scattered to the winds those who comprised its racing and breeding operations.
Affirmed was euthanized in January, 2001 in Kentucky after falling ill with laminitis, a circulatory hoof disease.
Affirmed's legacy flickers bright when a horse like Funny Cide enters the Belmont with the chance to become the 12th winner of the Triple Crown. But his traces are otherwise hard to find. There is no roadside historical marker, no Affirmed Boulevard.
"There really needs to be some kind of recognition," said Melvin James, hands on hips staring at the old barn on what is now Flamingo Hill Farm, northwest of Ocala. "If it's been 25 years since somebody has done it, it must be a pretty big deal."
It's a very big deal for James and McKeever. Affirmed was their baby.
Standing in the shade of a crepe myrtle, James' mind fires with memories of 18 years spent working in this place. Recollections fill in what time and new owners have removed. Here was the stallion barn. There the long drive to the big house where the farm's owners, Louis and Patrice Wolfson, resided before selling off the property in 1977. There was the pen where James broke Affirmed, teaching him to wear a bridle, bit and saddle before turning him over to Laz Barrera for his career at the track.
"Lots of memories here," James said.
At 58, James is an imposing man in physique and will. He was a football captain at Howard High in Ocala in the 1960s, when his back was as strong as his political views. He smiles when he recalls his days as a self-professed "militant" young man, and asserts with pride that the only time he was arrested was when he was taking his turn picketing outside segregated diners.
A dogged unwillingness to yield helped him become the first licensed horse trainer in Marion County, and trusted employee of Harbor View owner Louis Wolfson.
Now James is farm trainer and assistant manager at sprawling Marablue Farm in Reddick, about a half hour from the remnants of Harbor View.
"Mr. Wolfson said one of the reasons he liked me was because I was so militant," James chuckled. "Nobody could tell me what to do, because if I didn't see it work, I wouldn't do it."
Once when Harbor View's farm manager gave an expensive yearling his own pen away from the herd, Wolfson asked James about the special treatment.
"I said, "You know what that is? That's the rich white kid on top of the hill up there, eating his steak and potatoes,' " James recalled. " "And in a few months you'll send him down to Harlem and he's going to get his a-- kicked.'
"(Wolfson) knew what I was saying, and he made sure they turned that colt out to learn how to be a horse with the rest of them."
James would love to boast that Affirmed foretold his greatness with a romantic flair. But the fact is, Affirmed looked for all the world like a lazy horse.
"Nobody could see a streak of lightning in him," James said. "He was just a very docile, very quiet horse. One of the most noticeable things about him was things that got a horse excited did not bother him. Things would be going on in the barn, grooms would be walking through and horses would be going into the stalls and he would be sound asleep. Laying down, flat sleep. You could hear him snoring.
"Come feeding time all the horses would be banging on the tubs waiting to get fed and he'd be asleep. Some days you'd have to go step over him to put his feed in the stall. He'd raise up maybe a few seconds after you leave and he'd feed, and by the time you got done at the other end, he'd be back to sleep."
That demeanor would later benefit Affirmed, James said. His willingness to "take care of himself" eased the rigors of a busy racing career at ages 2 and 3.
Trainers have a tolerance for a mean colt, perhaps even a perverse respect for the mean and smart ones, because the spitfires often channel their aggression into training and racing. That Affirmed was a gentleman from bit to saddle alluded to great passion. He preferred to unveil himself at the proper time.
That was early in 1977 when he, with a group of other 2-year-olds, was shipped to Hialeah to begin training. His large frame confused handlers and he was sent out for workouts with 3-year-old stakes winners, usually holding his own. So befuddled were the handlers when James told them Affirmed was only 2, they dispatched him by car to Hialeah to personally identify the colt.
"You'd take him out on the track and he wouldn't set off any red lights," James said. "Because when you go out and work him, he'd only go as fast as you make him or as fast as the next horse. But he'd win by a length-and-a-half, a neck, a head."
A length-and-a-half, a neck, a head.
The three measurements that defined Affirmed and decided the 1978 Triple Crown. Credit another talented colt named Alydar for helping define Affirmed too.
Affirmed and Alydar's rivalry began in their juvenile campaigns. Affirmed won four of six meetings, but the closeness and intensity of their races promised much more.
Affirmed and Alydar split company early in their 3-year-old campaigns, Affirmed going off to dominate the West with victories in the Santa Anita and Hollywood Derbys, Alydar rolling in the Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes.
Alydar went off as a 6-5 favorite in the Kentucky Derby with Affirmed at 9-5, but Steve Cauthen, then an 18-year-old jockey, cannily stalked the pace and pulled off for a 11/2-length victory.
In the Preakness two weeks later, Affirmed took the lead a half-mile in and held off a rush by Alydar and jockey Jorge Velasquez to win by a neck.
The Belmont was even more thrilling, a virtual match race despite a six-horse field. The pair thundered down the stretch in unison, with Alydar appearing to take a brief lead beyond the eighth pole. Affirmed dug deep again, however, winning by a head to give racing a Triple Crown winner for the second straight year.
James was among the throng at Belmont Park but far back in the victors party as media surrounded Barrera. The trainer, described by James as a "gentle, caring man" beckoned him into the winner's circle to bask in the glow.
"I never thought we'd be 25 years without another Triple Crown," James said. "And this horse's pedigree wasn't blue blood. He was just a Florida horse, a homebred."
The ghosts of Harbor View Farm walk everywhere.
McKeever, 60, and a laborer on Marvin Davidheiser's Flamingo Hill Farm, sees them every day.
"Mr. Wolfson used to walk down that lane right there every day," he said, his chubby cheeks punctuating his broad smile. "That's how he got his exercise."
Harbor View Farm was a clamoring place back then, when it was the top breeding farm by earnings from 1970-71 and 1978-80 and won an Eclipse Award in 1978. Established by the Wolfsons in 1960, it withstood Louis Wolfson serving prison time for selling unregistered bonds in the 1960s, and it employed dozens of workers. The Wolfsons have since sold their farm properties but run their racing stable through an office in Jacksonville. This spring the Wolfsons campaigned Sky Mesa, a top Kentucky Derby prospect until he was injured.
Patrice Wolfson said they have "no regrets" over selling the farm just before their most famous horse won the Triple Crown.
James used Harbor View Farm as a means to a start a successful career, going from a $52-a-week groom to a successful trainer at a large farm. He used part of the money Wolfson paid employees following the sale to go into training for himself for 10 years.
Just outside his well-appointed office in the training barn at Marablue Farm, where he has worked since 1998, one of Affirmed's last children, a 2-year-old filly, prances in her stall.
McKeever has not been as fortunate. Born in Plant City, he worked his way up the training ranks at Harbor View, but now does odd jobs in and around the barn where he raised Affirmed until the colt was weaned.
An uncomfortable laugh in his throat, he said he has stayed because Louis Wolfson "promised me a burying plot in the backfield."
He misses the old days.
"There were a lot of people around here who enjoyed horses," he said. "Now people are all mad at the world. They walk around all day looking at the clock and wondering when they get to go home. Back then, people would sit down and play with the horses. They liked the horses a whole lot. Once you've been around it, you love it."
And although most involved in the Ocala horse industry prefer to hope silently that another Triple Crown is never won, McKeever is not so bashful.
"It would be better if Harbor View did it," he said. "But otherwise, I'd like to keep it for us."
