·Harness Racing:Indiana's Heritage

and the Roleof

North Vernon

By: Jim Calli

Primary Interests:My patients--specifically the management of heart failure and Arrhyth-mia.Medical Students-I try to spend more time in teaching and hope I canhave an influence to let students see the special privilege medicine is.Africa-Ann Marie and I founded Giving Back to Africa in 2003 and thisoccupies much of our time. We fund and support an orphanage inKinshasa, DRC and run a scholars program for University students at theProtestant University of Congo.Bicycling- We are fortunate to be able to travel and enjoy mountain ter-rain riding around the world.

"My life was formed by North Vernon and being fortunate to grow up inan environment of support and wonderful friends. These relationshipsand my love and gratefulness to this community and my fiends onlygrows with time. Being able to donate the Calli Nature Preserve hasbeen one of my fondest moments. Seeing kids and families and theirdogs playing and enjoying the trail give me a great continuing sense ofconnection with the land I love so much. There is nothing special aboutme donating it, I'm just luck enough to have been able to. There wasnever any questions this land should be preserved for people to enjoy itas much as I did.

Dr. Jim Calli was born in Massena,New York in 1946 and moved toNorth Vernon in 1949.He is a graduate ofNVHS Class of1964 and John Hopkins University.1972.McGill University lst year1973.Medical residency 1972 ..1973-1982 Adult Medicine inNorth Vernon.1982-1984 University of UtahMedical Center.1984-1986 University of Vernon1986 to present: InvasivecardiologistClinical Assistant Professor ofMedicine-Indiana University Medi-cal School.

Harness Racing: Indiana's Heritage and theRole of North Vernon

Dan Patch, Greyhound, Worthy Boy. The list goes on with thenames of harness horses in Indiana. The above names were the Mi-chael Jordan of their day, their speed the talk of the local sportsdiscussions in every town around Indiana. The local fairs all hadharness racing as the centerpiece of the event and this was whereeveryone wanted to be.

Jim Calli

What is harness racing? What is a Standardbred? What was NorthVernon's role in this industry? All race horses are felt to have de-scended from Messenger, a thoroughbred from Europe brought tothe US in the late 1700's. There was much cross breeding withMorgans and Arabians to produce the Standardbred of which alltrotters and pacers are today. Hambletonian, a grandson of Messen-ger sired over 1300 foals and virtually all Standardbreds racing to-day come from four of his sons.

Harness racing consists of two gaits, trotting and pacing. In trottingtwo legs on one side come together while those on the other side goapart. In pacing the side legs move together as a unit. Each race hashorses of only one gait. Pacers are faster but trotters are consideredthe "purest" as this was the gait from the buggy days. In harnessracing a cart (sulky) is used along with the harness attachments. Thedriver (not called a jockey here) sits on the cart and in contrast tojockeys, weight is not a major factor since the horses start on therun behind a car specially equipped with wide arms that the horsesput their heads next to. The distance raced is usually a mile and allrecords are at this distance and thereby standardized (hence Stan-dardbred).

Horse racing dates back to around 4000 BC in central Asia and waspopular in Europe after the crusades as the Arabian line wasbrought in. Harness racing is an American institution and grew outof racing on country roads in the horse and buggy days. This wasthen formalized at county fairs and harness racing was the center-piece of thousands of county fairs throughout the Midwest, East,

for the best horses over the next century. With the advent of the auto-mobile the sport died down and it did not surge back till the late 30'sand particularly when Roosevelt Raceway in New York City openedand had pari-mutual betting. Its popularity then soared. Greyhoundwas Horse of the Year in 1937 (the same era as Seabiscuit), establish-ing a trotting record of 1:55 Y. for a mile at the Indianapolis Fair-grounds, a record that stood for over 35 years. Dan Patch was thenfoaled in Indiana and became a nationwide celebrity, traveling thecountry in his own railway car and also setting records (1 :55) thatstood for over 30 years. He was truly the most celebrated athlete of histime.

Indiana was at the epicenter of the industry yet never was able to reapthe benefits of the sports popularity because of the lack of pari mutualbetting in the state. Every state on our borders had this and huge in-dustries and breeding farms sprang up there because the monies frompari mutual supported the tracks and farms with their sires stakes. Vastsums of money went out of Indiana to these neighboring states andhorsemen here tried for years to change this but were unsuccessful. Bythe time this was changed the sport was in a decline which continuesto this day. This began with the movement of the major race in harnessracing, the Hambletonian, from its historic site in Duquoin, Illinois tothe Meadowlands, a mega track in New Jersey that offered purses farexceeding what other tracks could keep up with and this money helpedto fuel the decline, and now virtual absence, of county fair racing aswell as a slow death of the major tracks. Casino and off track bettingalso helped fuel this decline. The only areas of resurgence are whereslots and casinos have been allowed at the tracks. Paradoxically, Indi-ana has had a dramatic rise in money in its sires stakes purses due tothe casinos, albeit too .late. The love of the sport for its beauty andspirit, from racing your neighbor down a country lane to the countyfairs, is gone. The love of the beauty and athleticism of horses is but amemory, and economically it is not viable to those thousands of smallowners and drivers who have been the life blood of the sport for years.

The History ofthe Harness Industry in North Vernon

The history of the harness industry in North Vernon is centered aroundthe Russell family, namely Curt Russell. The Russell's came here in1821 and had harness horses at that time. They subsequently builttheir training track in 1870 (the same plans were subsequently used tobuild the old track at the city park). Curt, clearly the focal point for thelocal development of harness racing, probably first began racingaround 1899 at local fairs and raced his last race in 1962 at the age of80. Curt and his family were the springboard for many to come here to

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live, raise, and race horses. Bo Anthers got into the horse business justso he could woo Curt's daughter Ann. It worked, they got married andBo continued with horses throughout his life.

My father Dr. Louis Calli, Sr. was in the Army at Fort Knox and hap-pened to buy a horse. When he got out he was driving back to New Yorkand went through North Vernon. He asked if they had a doctor here andDr. Green was getting older at the time and Dad thought this looked likea good place to raise horses and practice medicine so he stayed, boughtthe house on State Street and a small farm in Commiskey and his careerbegan. The presence of Curt here was a clear influence on his staying.Our stable along with others was housed at the city park where the racetrack was well laid out with banked turns and stalls for 30 horses. Whenthe town decided to do away with racing and the fair moved out of town,the track was taken down and Dad bought the farm on highway 50 andbuilt our own track. That farm and track are now plowed and farmed withno sign ofthe hundreds of horses that roamed the fields.

There were many others as Jennings County was a hotbed of the sport.Russell VanBlaricum had a stable and one of his early workers was ayoung woman named Carol Hukill. She worked with Russell and becamevery successful, driving in races at major tracks, one of the few womendrivers in the country. I remember being at a county fair when Carol wasdriving. I was about eight. She was in a wreck and her foot got caught inthe sulky and she was dragged all around the track. It scared me as thishorse was running wild and I jumped up in the truck. She was OK andcontinued to drive later.

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Another main stay of local racing was Dave Howard who worked withRussel VanBlaricum and then built his own track on his farm near thestate school. Dave was the last harness horse man in town and has onlyrecently retired. Dave was a true horseman who raised, broke, trained,shoed, and was the vet for all his own horses. The Hill family fromBloomington who loaned much of the memorabilia we have here tonight,were major players in the state industry. My brother Sam Calli drove inhis first race at 16 and continued driving the rest of his life. He wouldcover most of the Indiana fair circuit, all through Ohio and Pennsylvaniaand raced through most major tracks in North America from Winnipeg,Manitoba to New York City. Dad and Sam bought a stud, Mahlon Hano-ver who had been the top two year old in the country and was an earlyfavorite for the Hambletonian, but then went blind. Most of the horses inthe stable were home bred but Dad was always trading and buying and atone point we had over 150 horses. Dad would trade frequently with theAmish who prized harness horses for their buggies when they were tooold to race.

Sam was well known throughout the tracks as "Singing Sam". He lovedto since and croon, a la Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and did this at thebars which were the after race venues for the drivers. When the raceannouncer would call horses at the head of the stretch he wouldyell." ...and here comes Singing Sam on the move".

The era of the harness horse has passed. It's a passing of more thanjust racing. It's also a loss of the link to a history and a time when manand horse were linked not only in sport but in daily life. Images remainsuch as Scott Leighton's beautifully artistry of harness horses fromCurrrier and Ives lithographs, the pre camera images for newspapers suchas Harpers. The Kentucky Horse Park is a place that pays homage to thebeauty of the animal and its history, but it's only images, as the smell ofthe barns, the steam rising over the horses being "walked out", and thestable talk of "I should have grabbed that hole" are gone.

Every horseman was always waiting for the "big one", the horse thatwould win them the envy of other horsemen, and race and beat the best.Very few ever won much money but whether it was a $100 claimer or aHambletonian winner, the real sport was the competition. My fondestmemories are of standing at the fence with Dad at our farm, which isnow the Violet and Louis Calli Nature Preserve, and watching the newyoung colts out in the field every year. With the same belief and hope hewould always point to one ofthe foals and say" Look at that gait, he's anatural trotter, that's going to be the one!"