'We used to have a race track'

'We used to have a race track'. Memories of Man o' War, Seabiscuit and Citation in Havre de Grace. , Forty-three years ago this week, horses crossed the finish line for the last time at the Havre de Grace Race Course. Charlight, ridden by Moose Peters, etched a place in Maryland racing history as the track's last winner., It's unlikely that many of those among the reported crowd of 8,226 people who wagered $686,755 on that final eight-race card April 26, 1950, realized the track horse placers from all over the country had affectionately called "The Graw" was about to be "executed," in the words of Ellsworth Shank, curator of the city's Susquehanna Lockhouse Museum., Left behind were 38 years of memories. Man o' War romping to victory under 138 pounds in the 1920 Potomac Handicap; Seabiscuit's 1938 triumph in the Havre de Grace Handicap; Citation's momentary setback in the mud in the 1948 Chesapeake Trial, the appearances by Triple Crown winners Sir Barton and War Admiral; the track records set by Exterminator and Billy Kelly; Saggy's world record for 4½ furlongs in 1947; the presence of hall of fame jockeys like Earle Sande, Johnny Adams, Johnny Loftus and George Woolf., Shank is assembling a small exhibit about the track for the Lockhouse Museum, which is located in Havre Grace's McLhinney Park. The exhibit will be on display throughout the summer beginning in early May., His main objective, he said, is to honor the memory of the track and the role it played in the city's life during the first half of this century., "I also wanted to do this while we still have some people living here who were part of it," he explained. "Their numbers become smaller every year.", From his desk in the supply depot at the Maryland National Guard's Havre de Grace Military Reservation, Dacey Lilley can walk a few feet and be standing on the old track's mutuel's parlor. "We helped to tear everything out when the National Guard took over," he explains. "I could have gotten a lot of stuff then.", Lilley, 63, worked at the race track during its final four years between 1946 and 1950. For most of the 43 years since, he has occupied an office in what was the lower portion of the track's grandstand, where he works as a civilian clerk for the guard., His office is adorned with photographs of the track and some of the great horses that ran there including Exterminator, the 1918 Kentucky Derby winner who tied the Havre de Grace track record for a mile and a sixteenth in 1919 that was broken by Man o' War the following summer., Lilley also kept some of his losing mutuel tickets and the top of one of the numbered wooden posts that were used to line off the owners' boxes that were toward the east end of the grandstand., "I have a ticket from that last day somewhere," he says. "When they were pulling out the posts, I asked someone to cut one off for me; they didn't know what they were, but I did.", Chief among Lilley's memories of the track is Saggy's 1947 world record for 4½ furlongs that stood for a decade after it was set., "I dropped the timer's flag in that race," he said, explaining that the timing of a race didn't begin until the horses reached a full gallop about 50 yards out of the starting gate, where Lilley was stationed with a flag he waved to alert the track timer in the grandstand that the first horse had reached him., The Maryland National Guard acquired the 99-acre race track property, with its grandstand, clubhouse, barns, paddocks and other buildings still largely intact, on July 24, 1950, six months after Havre de Grace's 25 racing dates had been sold for $1.7 million to the Maryland Jockey Club, which owned Pimlico and also the Laurel Race Course in those days. The State Military Department paid $10 for the property, less than 10 cents an acre., After leaving racing, Mergler worked for his brother and later for the Glenn L. Martin Company in Middle River. He now lives in Florida six months of the year and said he makes it out to Delaware Park with five or six other oldtimers for one day when he's back in Havre de Grace during the summer. His nephew, Charles Hadry, is a successful trainer on the Maryland racing circuit., "Man o' War was the best horse I ever saw," Mergler said., Too young to ride in the races the day of "Big Red's" 1920 Potomac Handicap victory, the 12-year-old Mergler exercised another horse who ran in that race , 1920 Kentucky Derby winner Paul Jones., Memories of the old track, the people who worked and played there and the horses that established its place in racing history, still surface frequently in Havre de Grace., At his Bayou Restaurant on Route 40, Lou Ward has hung Robert Dietz's mural painting of the track behind the bar in the restaurant's banquet room., Ward also has collected memorabilia from the city's racing era, including a chalkboard from one of the illegal bookie joints that flourished in downtown Havre de Grace and, according to Ward and others, outlived the track itself by several years. "I'm not an authority on the track," Ward says, "but it obviously played an important part in Havre de Grace's history.", The city was an inland trading center with a reputation for good waterfowl hunting and fishing when the races first came there in 1912. That it became a major league horse racing venue was probably no accident, according to David R. Craig, a former Havre de Grace mayor and now a member of the House of Delegates, who has done extensive research on the track's history., "Harford County had racing days allotted to it early in the century, primarily as for a fair meeting," Craig said. "In those days, there were a lot of little places that had racing around Maryland, and when this truck was started it was supposed to be in conjunction with a fair. The corporation that owned the track was the Harford Agricultural and Breeders' Association.", But from the beginning, he continued, New York money and muscle were behind the track. "The local people who were the first directors were very quickly replaced by people from New York.", Craig said he thinks the election of reform minded Charles Evans Hughes as New York's governor in 1908 sent the Empire State's racing moguls looking south for greener pastures., Neither New Jersey nor Pennsylvania permitted pari-mutuel wagering in those days, but Maryland did and Havre de Grace was the first large town they came to after crossing the Mason-Dixon line., Edward Burke, a New Yorker with ties to American racing patriarch August Belmont, became the Havre de Grace track's first president, eventually moving to the city., Craig said the track quickly established itself as a first-class operation with its strong stakes schedule, attractive setting and modern facilities. Both major local railroads of the day, the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio ran special trains to ferry patrons from the big cities to and from the track each day, since automobiles were still very much a rarity., Along with Pimlico, Laurel and Bowie, Havre de Grace was an important stop on the main Eastern racing circuit every spring and fall. The Philadelphia area was the biggest draw for the Havre de Grace track, Craig said, and the trains that came from the north on racing days were almost full with horse players., "People from Havre de Grace worked at the track; they took out-of-town people into their houses; they owned businesses that served the track , it was important to the city's economy," he said., It also gained Havre de Grace the reputation as a "Little Chicago," replete with bookie joints, whorehouses and illegal gambling dens, although Craig said he thinks some of the stories about supposedly freewheeling days of the '20s and '30s may have been embellished over time., Racing was suspended in Havre de Grace during the World War II years of 1943, 1944 and 1945, ostensibly for gasoline rationing. Shortly after the war ended, Garden State Park opened in New Jersey, across the river from Philadelphia., The new competition hurt Maryland racing, but it wasn't what killed the Havre de Grace track, Craig maintains., "Edward Burke died in the '40s and local people apparently gained control around that time," he explained. "After the war, there was a movement in Maryland to consolidate all racing at one or two tracks [supposedly to better compete with New Jersey]., "It's pretty clear that in the late '40s the people who were in control of the track were doing everything they could to kill it. They ran head-to-head against Delaware Park, they shifted to fall dates into July when supposedly nobody would come to Havre de Grace, and still it wouldn't die., "One thing I discovered was in spite of the claims the track was not doing well financially, it was more profitable than either Bowie or Laurel and usually finished just below Pimlico in betting handle.", The track's owners kept insisting they were losing money and couldn't afford to put up the higher purses necessary to attract the top stables., In January 1951, stockholders of the Harford Agricultural and Breeders Association voted overwhelmingly to sell the 25 racing dates to the Maryland Jockey Club. The race track property itself was supposed to be sold for industrial development, but ended up being all but given to the state instead., Local newspaper accounts at the time treated the track's demise with kid gloves, calling the consolidation effort "good for Maryland racing." In retrospect, it's easy to see why nobody bothered to look any deeper, since two prominent Harford County people were obviously pulling most of the strings., Gen. Milton A. Reckord, a World War I hero and longtime state adjutant general, was the last president of the association. He and Sen. J. Millard Tydings, who had recently been defeated in the 1950 elections, had gained control of a voting trust that held 37 percent of the stock in the race track., Barely a week after the Havre de Grace stockholders accepted $225 a share for the 7,700 shares in the association, Reckord was named president of the Maryland Jockey Club. When the National Guard took over the race track property the following year, he was still its commander., Craig said he thinks Tydings may have had more to do with killing the track than Reckord, whom Craig interviewed before the general's death in the early 1970s. By then well into his 90s, Craig said Reckord asked him, "Son, are you trying to destroy my lifetime of work?", "I think Reckord really believed he was getting a good deal for the state," Craig said. "The guard had just lost Fort Ritchie [at the time the state's main military reservation] to the federal government, and the race track property probably was a good replacement.", Today, Tydings' and Records' portraits hang in the gallery of famous Harford County residents that adorns the old section of the courthouse in Bel Air., Although too young to have been to the track when it was running, Craig said he became intersected in its history because everybody still talked about the track when he was growing up in Havre de Grace. And everywhere else he went, people seemed to know something about it, too., "We would go on vacations out West or down South and someone would ask where we were from, and I figured who would have ever heard of Havre de Grace?, "So, I'd say something like, 'I'm from a little town on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland" and when they asked which one and I said Havre de Grace, more ofthen than not the reply would be: 'Sure, they used to have a race track there' or 'We went to the races there.' It's been well remembered all these years.", In the legislature, Craig is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee which handles racing related legislation., The freshman delegate said he's often amused by the people who run the state's racing industry when they come in to tesify before the panel and seem surprised that he knows something about racing and its jargon., "That's when I remind them I'm from Havre de Grace, and we used to have a race track.", "I think it was a pretty good deal for the state, the National Guard and the county, don't you?" says Col. James Degatina, a Jarrettsville resident who is commander of the Havre de Grace Reservation, which is home to the guard's surface equipment maintenance depot, three local guard units and the property and fiscal office, which handles the payroll and accounting functions for the entire military department., According to Degatina, 134 people work fulltime at the reservation on Old Bay Lane which has a combined annual payroll of nearly $90 million. "We couldn't get along without it," he said of the reservation. "It's very important to the National Guard.", The former track grandstand, its seating area now covered over, is the hub of the maintenance office which is responsible for the care of the 43,000 pieces of surface equipment , trucks, tanks, troop carriers , used by 63 local guard units across the state., Degatina's own office is in a single story brick wing that the guard added to the west side of the grandstand. The area had been a covered walkway between the grandstand and the railroad tracks where trains were switched over from the old Pennsylvania Railroad's mainline to the race track, bringing in horse players daily from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, even some from far away as New York and northern New Jersey., Many people remember it say the walk from the trains had the atmosphere of a carnival midway. Vendors sold steamed crabs, shad roe and other local delicacies, touts offered their dope sheets and youngsters hawked newspapers, racing forms, programs and pencils , a scene as much a part of "The Graw" as the races themselves., The former clubhouse building east of the grandstand is now used as an armory by three local guard units. The seating area that faced the track was long ago enclosed, but the rest of the building's exterior and facade hasn't changed, and its hardwood floors and oak bannisters have also been kept., The financial and property office of the guard is in the two-story brick colonial building east of the clubhouse that was the track's administrative office. Several of the horse barns are used for equipment storage, as is one former indoor saddling paddock., "For the most part, the site is basically the way it was when the guard came here in 1951," Degatina noted., Although the racing strip is long gone about 35 acres of the original 99 have been sold to the city for a sewage treatment plant and public works shop, the area that was the track's grass infield remains undisturbed., Degatina said the guard needs another equipment maintenance shop which would presumably be built somewhere in the former infield, "but we haven't been able to get the money for it.", From behind the counter of a downtown video store where he works, Wilber Ervin says he well remembers opening day, April 12, 1948, and the biggest upset in the Havre de Grace track's brief history: Saggy's victory over Citation in the Chesapeake Trial., "I saw the race," says Ervin, now 69. "It was a day just like this, raining and the track was real muddy. They had a goodly crowd though. Carson Kirk, who was riding Hefty, carried Eddie Arcaro and Citation wide on the turn. Don McAndrews kept Saggy down on the rail and won it, but of course Citation came right back the next week and beat him in the Chesapeake Stakes.", Ervin says Citation was the greatest horse he saw at Havre de Grace, as does Dacey Lilley. Citation won his first race at Havre de Grace as a two-year-old in 1947 and had 19 victories on 20 starts the following year when he became the eighth horse to win the Kentucky Derby., But, it's that one 1948 loss that everyone in Havre de Grace old enough to have gone to the races there, and even a lot who aren't, still talk about., "Arcaro was talking to Buddy Mackin right after the race and he wound up having Buddy take him in his taxi to Wilmington to catch the train back to New York," Ervin said, "It's little things like that you remember.", Ervin started going to the track which in those days was outside the city limits, in the mid-1930s, and recalls seeing a young Seabiscuit run for a $1,500 claiming tag and 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral win the Eastern Shore Handicap as a two-year-old in the 1936 fall meet., Seabiscuit would later return as a champion, winning the 1938 Havre de Grace handicap just before he beat War Admiral in a match race at Pimlico to claim Horse of the Year honors., "As kids we would zip out there, especially in the spring because we'd have the Monday after Easter off from school and that's when they usually started running," Ervin said. "It was great in the '30s. All the big stables would stop off here coming north from Florida, New Orleans, Oaklawn Park and Oriental Park in Havana. There was no competition in those days.", One of four major mile tracks in the state then, Havre de Grace was allotted 25 racing days and conducted a split meet, 12 or 13 days in April or early May and the same in late August or September., Ervin said the city would fill up for the races. People would rent out the extra rooms in their houses to jockeys, trainers and horse players. The area's three hotels of that era, the Colonial, the Chesapeake and the White House in Perryville, couldn't accommodate the influx., "Of course, most of the people who played the races came in by train, and they got good crows, especially on Saturday when you couldn't move out there," he continued. "The tracks would vie with each other to get those Saturday dates.", Just after the 1948 spring meet Ervin was sent to Iceland for two years by the U.S. Weather Service. When he came back to the states to work at Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Havre de Grace track had already closed for good., "It was a shame to see it go; most people didn't realize it was happening," he said. "It was sold down the river, I believe it was.", Still a horse player, Ervin goes out to Delaware Park and makes an occasional visit to Santa Anita because he has friends from Havre de Grace who now live in southern California., He saved most of his old programs from the Havre de Grace track. And, he carries a $10 mutuel ticket someone gave him from 1926 in his wallet., 'It was a wonderful track for the horses, they really liked to run on it," recalls Donald Mergler, a jockey from 1923 through 1934 and a member of Havre de Grace's first family of racing., Mergler, 85, rode at the major East Coast tracks from Florida to New England and also in Chicago, "until I got too heavy." His three late brothers, Lamar, Merritt and Charles, were also on the track starting from the time they were youngsters., "I started riding when I was 11 or 12," he said, "We spent the summer at the track and the winter in school, only because they didn't race in the winter in those days. Our parents died when we were young. Lamar, he was the oldest, went out there first and we all followed.", Mergler said he weighed about 75 pounds when he started riding competitively. His first race was Pimlico. "It was a mile and sixteenth race and I rode a filly, but I can't remember her name. I finished second.", Mostly, he said, "I rode a lot of cheap races because that's what they had then; $1,500 was a good purse. The stakes races had $5,000 and $10,000 purses." Jockeys were paid $10 a mount, from which $2 had to go to the jockey's agent, $2 to his groom and 50 cents for his laundry bill. They got $25 if they won. In a big race, Merler said, they could get a percentage of the winner's purse, "if you could catch up with the owner before he left town.", In 1927, three of the Mergler brothers rode in the same race at Laurel and the fourth rode in a steeplechase later on the same card (none of them won). It was the first and only time in American horse racing history that four brothers have ridden at the same track on the same day., Lamar eventually quit the tracks and became a successful electrical constructor in Havre de Grace. When the other brothers got too big, they went into steeplechase riding. All the major tracks including Havre de Grace had steeplechase courses in their infields and regularly carded those events, flat racing on the grass was a rarity. Eventually, they all became trainers., Merritt, who everybody called "Monk," trained for Peter Boswick from New York. The nickname, Donald Mergler explained came from a race in New York when his brother lost his saddle and stirrups "and hung on like a monkey to win." J.C. trained for Alfred G. Vanderbilt for 35 years., "I tried training, but it wasn't my forte," Mergler said. "I fouled up a couple of times and I quit."