MacKenzie Miller: An Aiken icon
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MacKenzie “Mack” Miller was not a steeplechase trainer, but he certainly had connections to jump racing through Aiken, S.C., where he wintered over several decades of his Hall of Fame career. Miller once owned the steeplechase race course where the Aiken Steeplechase has been held for many years.
As he told Audrey Korotkin in 1991, he had two principal goals. He wanted to win Saratoga Race Course’s Travers Stakes (Gr. 1), and he accomplished that goal in 1987 with Paul Mellon’s Java Gold. A son of the Blue Grass, he also wanted to win the Kentucky Derby (Gr. 1), but that goal had eluded him at the time the following chapter of the unpublished "Great Trainers of the Twentieth Century" was written. He checked that box two years later with Mellon’s homebred Sea Hero, a half-brother to Hero’s Honor. Sea Hero, by Polish Navy out of Glowing Tribute, also won the 1993 Travers.
Mack Miller retired from training in 1995 and died on Dec. 10, 2010, at the age of 89. His wife, Martha McCauley Miller, died March 22, 2015, at the age of 91.
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It was mid March in 1991, and the first intimations of spring's approaching warmth whispered through the ancient pines of Aiken, South Carolina, a lovely, sedate Victorian community where the Thoroughbred has been king for much of the 20th century. MacKenzie Miller, a winter resident of Aiken for more than 30 years, settled his narrow, 6 foot 2 frame into the desk chair and leaned back as he spoke on the telephone.
Surrounding him in his stable office were warmly paneled walls filled with winner's circle photos from years past, remembrances of the outstanding horses and the outstanding owners with whom he has been associated. As he spoke, his eyes wandered toward the office's screen door, looking for the next set of two year olds heading for the training track. On the other end of the phone line, an employee of Paul Mellon's Rokeby Farm in Upperville, Virginia, was briefing Miller on the past day's events. As Mellon's private trainer for 15 years, Miller also was responsible for the development of the young horses back on the farm.
Past, present, and future: All of them had their place as Mack Miller prepared for the 1991 racing season. In a few short weeks, he and his crew would depart Aiken's gentle mornings and ship to New York. But here in Aiken, which is separated from New York by more than miles, Mack Miller was in his true element. It has a history, a pace, and a style of life that ideally suit the man. "The people here have always been true Southern ladies and gentlemen, and that means an awful lot, having been in New York,'' he said.
Indeed, Miller has been in New York, has trained successfully there for decades, has scored many of his principal triumphs there. Whether they ran at Saratoga or Belmont Park or Atlantic City Race Course (horses that he trained won six runnings of the United Nations Handicap [G1], now renamed the Caesars International Handicap [G2]), all of them trained at Belmont Park after spending the winter at Aiken.
From Leallah, his first champion in 1956, through championship caliber Java Gold in 1987, the horses trained by Miller have won many of New York's most prestigious races. His three grass champions Assagai (1966), *Hawaii (1969), and *Snow Knight (1975) all won the Man o' War Stakes, as did Dance of Life in 1986. Wearing the colors of Mellon's Rokeby Stable, Fit to Fight became only the third horse to sweep the New York handicap triple the Metropolitan (G1), the Suburban (G1), and the Brooklyn (G1) Handicaps in 1984.
Winter's Tale, one of the trainer's favorites, won the 1980 Suburban, Brooklyn, and the Marlboro Cup Invitational Handicap (G1). Among Miller's stellar grass runners were Hero's Honor, Tentam, and Halo. Java Gold, who had the misfortune to come along in the same year as Alysheba, defeated the 1987 Kentucky Derby (G1) winner in the Travers Stakes (G1) and also won that year's Marlboro. Because of the quality of the horses and the quality of the man, MacKenzie Miller was inducted into the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame in 1987.
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Mack Miller at the 1993 Preakness Stakes. Miller was running Rokeby Stable's Sea Hero in the race. Sea Hero finished fifth, with jockey Jerry Bailey up.
©Anne M. Eberhardt, courtesy of Bloodhorse
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Miller has moved in the top ranks of Thoroughbred racing for so long that it is easy to forget that although born in Kentucky's Bluegrass, in Versailles on October 16, 1921 horses were not directly a part of his family background. His father, Scott Miller, was a racing fan, however, and took his and his wife Jane's middle son to the first Keeneland meet in October 1936. After briefly attending the University of Kentucky and serving four years in the Air Force during World War II, Miller decided to enter the horse business, but his prospects were so unpromising that he had difficulty finding even the most lowly of jobs on Lexington's horse farms. He and his wife, Martha, also spent many lean years before he joined forces with Charles Engelhard in 1961. Miller also has trained for E. P. Taylor and Jane Goodwin, but he has principally trained for two clients Engelhard and Mellon over more than three decades. "I guess I've been blessed with good luck, to have worked for two giants of the Turf and two men of this great quality,'' he said. "It's a miracle it happened.''
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Paul Mellon and Mack Miller in the paddock at Saratoga for the 1993 Travers Stakes. Sea Hero won the race with jockey Jerry Bailey aboard.
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During 1960 and 1961, Miller followed the advice of two friends advice that would change his life forever. First, Jim Maloney touted him on Aiken as the ideal winter home for his stable. The following year, Miller tested the waters, splitting his stable between Aiken and Keeneland. "That was my last winter in Kentucky, because Aiken is the best place I know for a racehorse,'' Miller said.
Early in the spring of 1961, fellow trainer and friend E. Barry Ryan decided to take a sabbatical in Europe and asked Miller to take over the training of three young horses he had just purchased for industrialist Charles Engelhard, whose racing success until then had been confined to England and South Africa. These three horses represented Engelhard's first attempt to crack the American racing scene, and he traveled to Aiken to meet his potential new trainer and get Miller's evaluation of the horses.
"One was a filly named Tan Jane, by Summer Tan his wife's name was Jane. And I said: `Tan Jane is sort of a frantic filly, but she's beautifully sound. It's just a little early to predict what she's going to do,' because it was early in her two year old year. And there was Nassau Hall. He was from the first crop of Nashua he had an impediment in his rear end and he didn't move too well. And I told him: `This colt needs to be castrated.' And he said: `My God, you're the damnedest man I ever saw. I don't hardly know you, and you want to cut my horse!' And I said: `I have to be honest. He's not right behind, and I think gelding will help him.'
"And then he had a horse that I believe may have been by Blue Swords he had terrible ankles. And I said: `That horse you can give away, because he ain't gonna make it.' And he said: `You're the frankest man I've ever talked to.' And I said: `I can't be any other way, I'm sorry.' '' Miller and Engelhard talked for about an hour, and, as the owner returned to his car, he told his new trainer: "Well, you can cut that horse if you think that's best. I never interfere with my trainers.''
But Engelhard insisted that things be done right. Like the other barons of Thoroughbred racing, such as Greentree and Bwamazon, he wanted his own private stabling facility in Aiken. He purchased almost three acres of land adjacent to the training center for about $25,000 and hired a local contractor to do the job. Miller had the center built to his specifications. "This main barn is sort of a copy of Keeneland barns, where I cut my teeth,'' Miller said. "It has 33 horse stalls, a little office, a little tack room, a little utility room. And on the other end we have a feed room.
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Mack Miller's 33 stall barn at the Aiken Training Center. The barns and the Miller home were sold to thoroughbred owner Robert McNair (Stonerside) in 2006, and were subsequently sold to Sheikh Mohammed (Darley) in 2008.
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"And then when things were growing, Charlie said: `I think we'll build another barn.' I said: `I don't think we ought to have any more horses, Charlie, this is big enough.' He said no, that we'd build another barn. So I got rushed into building the nine stall barn, which gets sun all day from the east to the west. It's a lovely little barn, the warmest barn we've got. Now we have 42 stalls and a bunk house, where my assistant has a little office.''
Engelhard's horses did not immediately perform well for Miller, who was operating a public stable, and after the 1964 Saratoga meet Miller called to suggest that perhaps the wealthy owner should find a new trainer.
After lunch at Cragwood, Engelhard's New Jersey estate, they went into the study and closed the door. "He said: `Now, what's your problem?' And I said: `Well, I came here to get out of your hair. I think maybe you ought to try somebody else we're not doing much good, and it's a little embarrassing for you, I think.' And one other thing I said: `As this thing has grown, I was in hopes maybe it would become a private job, because you're obviously interested, and you want to keep growing.'
"And he said: `Is that your problem?' And I said: `Yes, sir, that's it.' And he said: `Well, you notify all those other people that you're going to work for me privately on January 1. I'll send my accountant and my lawyer to Belmont, and you can talk with them. Name your salary, whatever you think it's worth.' ''
The contract lasted a year and contained a clause that, if Engelhard wanted to make a change, Miller would be compensated until he could reopen a public stable. That clause was never invoked. "For some reason, from that moment on, the horses started running,'' Miller said. "And the contract was up the following year, and he told me: `There will be no more contracts. You'll work for me as long as I live.' I worked for him 11 years, until he died.''
During that time, Engelhard acquired more property in Aiken, across a narrow lane from the barns. The land, which had belonged to F. Ambrose Clark and then to John Hay "Jock'' Whitney, included a steeplechase course on which Clark had schooled his jumpers. The Aiken Steeplechase Association now holds the first meet of the steeplechase season there each March, and Miller finds it very useful as a gallop for his turf horses before he ships to New York.
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The old Aiken Steeplechase Course,
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On the adjacent 15 acres, Engelhard decided one day to build Mack and Martha a winter home. "He just said to me one day: `I think we'll build you a house. I want to give you a budget of so much money.' We had seen a house in Kentucky we liked, with a cathedral ceiling and lots of light. So we copied it in a smaller version. Jane (Engelhard) even sent us some furnishings.''
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Dr. Audrey R. Korotkin won two Eclipse Awards for
WBAL Radio
in Baltimore, became the first executive director of Triple Crown Productions in 1986, and—after a career change in the 1990s—now is the rabbi of
Temple Beth Israel
in Altoona, Pa.
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Mack Miller's other big flat racing client, Paul Mellon was enamored of steeplechase, foxhunting, long distance riding
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“I have been an amateur in every phase of my life; an amateur poet, an amateur scholar, an amateur horseman, an amateur farmer, an amateur soldier, an amateur connoisseur of art, an amateur publisher and an amateur museum executive. The root of the word ‘amateur’ is the Latin word for love, and I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed all the roles I have played.”
– Paul Mellon from his autobiography Reflections in a Silver Spoon
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Paul Mellon’s collections included sporting art, multi-generation homebreds, priceless spirits
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Ever discreet about his wealth and philanthropy, Paul Mellon was never reserved in his ardor for jump racing. In a 1975 address to the
Thoroughbred Club of America, Mellon made that clear. “I can’t imagine life without ’chasers,” he said. “I find it deplorable that the racing public and the racing associations treat the sport like a poor relative.”
Revered worldwide as art collector and conservationist, the late Mellon made handsome gifts to Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and the National Gallery of Art. But his most distinguished collection of all was something dear to his heart.
Mellon's stable – steeplechasers, flat horses, foxhunters, even the occasional long-distance competitive trail horse – gave the longtime Upperville, Virginia resident what he once defined as “a certain amount of reflected glory.”
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Born in Pittsburgh in 1907, Mellon was the only son of one of the nation’s richest magnates, Andrew Mellon.
(Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. photo) Andrew Mellon had amassed a great fortune in banking; he served as Secretary of the Treasury for Harding, Coolidge and Hoover and was subsequently appointed ambassador to England.
Paul Mellon attended the Choate School in Connecticut and Yale, with two years of undergraduate study at Cambridge. In England, he became enamored of foxhunting, so smitten with riding to hounds that he fled to Ireland in January, 1936, the day England’s King George V died and hunting was temporarily suspended.
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After Andrew Mellon’s 1937 death, Paul took a keen and lasting interest in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, over the next 47 years working as president, board chair and trustee. Andrew Mellon had funded the original building (now called the West Building) and presented it to the nation together with his collection of Old Master paintings.
In 1978, Paul Mellon turned over the new East Building, designed by I.M. Pei, to President Jimmy Carter.
Paul Mellon assembled through his lifetime a remarkable collection of British sporting art, including original Stubbs and Herring works. Mellon presented a collection to the Yale Center for British Art in 1977, keeping favorites in a private gallery, the “brick house,” at his Rokeby Farm. Those were disbursed to Richmond’s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts following his 1999 death.
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Left to right: Chief Justice and Gallery chairman Warren Burger, Gallery president Paul Mellon, and J. Slater Davidson Jr., president of Chas. H. Tompkins Company, the general contractor, at the East Building ground-breaking ceremony, May 6, 1971.
National Gallery of Art, Gallery Archives
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Mellon once said his greatest accomplishments were to develop bloodlines and procure talented horses, on and off the racetrack.
In 1949, he paid 12,000 guineas for the unraced 2-year-old filly Red Ray. She produced just three live foals, the only filly being Virginia Water.
Virginia Water, unraced due to tricky ankles, foaled Milan Mill, a fragile filly who was unsuccessful in a handful of starts.
From this famously unsound bloodline was born in 1968 a bay colt by Never Bend that etched Mellon’s name in racing history.
Named after a stretch of water near Mellon’s summer home in Antigua, Mill Reef raced in England, winning the Coventry,
Gimcrack
, Imperial and Dewhurst Stakes in a dazzling 2-year-old campaign. Beaten in the Two Thousand Guineas, Mill Reef won the
English Derby
(a first for an American-owned American-bred),
Eclipse Stakes
, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes along with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in France in 1971.
Mill Reef
fractured his left front cannon the next spring; a life-saving operation rescued him for stud duty. He sired Derby winners and future standout stallions Shirley Heights and Reference Point, Arc winner Acamas and Italian Derby winner, Mellon homebred Glint of Gold.
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Mr Paul Mellon and his wife, Ms Rachel Lambert Mellon, with Mill Reef, the winning horse in the George VI and Queen Elizabeth stakes at Ascot, July 1971. Photograph by Popperfoto via
Getty Images
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Mellon was just 30 in 1937 when trainer Jack Skinner boosted college student John Harrison aboard Welbourne Jake to win the Maryland Hunt Cup. What Mellon called one of the worst losses in his career, Welbourne Jake was euthanized following a pasture accident that same September.
(photo courtesy of John E. Rossell's "The Maryland Hunt Cup Past and Present," published in 1975)
A memorable Rokeby showdown came in the 1974 Virginia Gold Cup. In 1974, Mellon homebred Mongogo beat another Mellon homebred, Chapel Street, in the four-mile timber stake. The next year, Chapel Street won with amateur rider Paddy Neilson.
Ridgely White trained both. Other Mellon ’chase trainers included Evan Jackson, Burley Cocks and Jack Skinner.
Mongogo was a son of Marion duPont Scott’s 1963 champion grass horse Mongo out of Mellon’s mare Innocent Abroad, by Sailor (sire of Hall of Fame distaffer and blue hen broodmare Bowl of Flowers.) Chapel Street, a 1965 son of champion sire Nashua, was named for the New Haven, Connecticut address of the Mellon-supported Yale Center for British Art.
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One of only five people designated an
Exemplar of Racing by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame
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Died at Oak Spring, part of his Rokeby, near Upperville, Virginia, on Feb. 1, 1999
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In 1935 married Mary Conover Brown and the couple, who had two children, Catherine and Timothy, moved to Virginia
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Enrolled at
St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland in 1940 but six months later joined the U.S. Army, asking to join the cavalry. Mellon served with the
Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. He rose to the rank of major and was the recipient of four battle stars.
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After Mary's death in 1946 from an asthma attack, he married Rachel Lambert Lloyd, “Bunny,” heiress to the Lambert family that formulated and marketed Listerine and the Warner-Lambert corporate fortune (now part of
Pfizer.)
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He donated the $1 million bonus that Sea Hero won in the Triple Crown Challenge to the
Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, upon his death leaving another $2.5 million to the Foundation's endowment
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1974 Virginia Gold Cup - 2nd fence at the Broadview Racecourse in Warrenton, Va. Left to right: Boca Bird, Minaccia, Chapel Street (Paddy Neilson, up) - 2nd for Paul Mellon's Rokeby Stables, Annual Meeting. Rokeby's Mongogo won the race in 1974. Chapel Street would win the race in 1975.
©Douglas Lees
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Other standouts featured complex family links – Handicap hurdler Bold Beggar was a 1962 son of Bold Ruler out of the Petition mare Petitioner, grand-dam of Danzig. Trained in 1967 by Jackson, in 1968 by White, Bold Beggar was a rare true-black horse and one of Mellon’s favorites. Bold Beggar loved New York: tagging four at Belmont Park and one at Aqueduct 1967-’70.
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Dream Magic was a third-generation homebred out of Magic Singing, out of Bull Lea daughter Tap Day and half-sister to Mellon’s top-rated runner and stallion Quadrangle.
Dam of Mellon homebred Senator Brady – winner of the secondary feature at Far Hills in 1991 – Admiring was second dam of Mellon homebred Sea Hero, winner of the 1993 Kentucky Derby and Travers. Virginia-bred Molotov was one of Mellon’s best ’chasers, annexing the 1991 Carolina Cup as Rokeby’s last hurdle stake winner.
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Sea Hero won the 1993 Kentucky Derby with jockey Jerry Bailey in the irons. Sea Hero would go on to win the Travers that summer, again with Bailey on board. Mack Miller was the trainer.
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Mellon’s final jump winner tied it up with a bow for the owner-breeder the next summer – Double-triple-homebred Hero’s Hour won an allowance hurdle at Saratoga. Hero’s Hour was sired by Glowing Tribute’s champion son Hero’s Honor, from Admiring’s blue-hen family.
An avid foxhunter in England and Ireland as well as his adopted Virginia, Mellon was joint-master of the Piedmont Foxhounds 1954-’58. He continued riding to hounds until the early 1980s.
He also enjoyed long-distance riding, winning the 100-mile
Homestead ride in Hot Springs, Virginia three times. One win came aboard two-generation homebred Silver Goose, a son of his stallion Goose Creek. Silver Goose had a short and very modest career over hurdles from 3 to 5 but retired to acclaim in the hunt field. Another son of Goose Creek, Christmas Goose, won the three-day race twice. Christmas Goose lived to age 31 at Rokeby, dying in 1996.
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Paul Mellon and Christmas Goose were featured in the Style section of
The Washington Post
in April of 1977. "PAUL MELLON was not there when the Yale Center for British Art and British Studies - his radiant gift to Yale and to all of us - opened to the public Tuesday in New Haven. At that culminating moment he and Christmas Goose, his horse, were setting off together for a 100-mile trail ride through the mountains of Virginia."
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Thoroughbreds
By Paul Mellon
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The day my final race is run
And, win or lose, the sinking sun
Tells me it's time to quit the track
And gracefully hang up my tack,
I'll thank the Lord the life I've led
Was always near a Thoroughbred.
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I've had my share of falls and knocks
Pursuing the elusive fox.
I've heard the stirring cry of hounds
From Melton to the Sussex Downs.
Each spring I ride a hundred miles
(My tail bright red, my face all smiles).
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And I have seen the thrilling pace
Of many a cutthroat steeplechase
And watched with breath and mind
suspended
until a classic race has ended.
For those high days can end in pain,
Or in a bottle of champagne.
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So if the downward course is steep
Where smoke and flames and devils leap
I'll hope I'm on a hellish steed
Running his heart out with no need
For voice or spurs or flailing whip
To guarantee he gets the trip.
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But if about the sixteenth pole
God should have mercy on my soul,
I hope He'll raise me to the clouds
Above the grandstand and the crowds
And there I'll take my ease, and wait
Behind the pearly starting gate.
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And long before I break God's bread
Or buy a halo for my head
Or sink into a starry bed
Or say the prayers I should have said
Before the donuts, rolls, or coffees,
I'll find the secretary's office.
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In my first interview, of course,
I'll ask St. Peter for a horse.
He'll lead me down the heavenly sheds
Past miles and miles of Thoroughbreds
And say,"Since you've escaped Old Nick ...
They're on the house; just take your pick".
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So when old Gabriel's golden horn
Echoes from cloud to cloud each morn
And "It is post time" rings out clear
I will be ready with my gear;
My horse and I will not be late
(Though I'll be slightly overweight).
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Then free from every mortal sin
(Including Butazolidin!)
We'll gallop through celestial fields
Where neither mist nor mud conceals
The graceful movements of the horse,
The wide and green and endless course.
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Though some may think and I'll agree
That only God can make a tree,
Before God thought of trees, it's said,
His mind was on the Thoroughbred.
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A foxhunting relationship on the rocks
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Former whipper-in for the Piedmont Foxhounds, Don Yovanovich
(©Douglas Lees, 2010 Piedmont Fox Hounds) says Paul Mellon was an avid hunter with a taste for the finer things in life – not just art and horses.
“I met Mr. Mellon hunting with Piedmont (when I moved to Virginia in the 1970s.) He’d been joint-master but was retired by time I got here. He’d still hunt, sometimes with his friends Jackie Kennedy or Billy Wilbur, but more often, he’d just follow the field with his personal groom, Boonie.
I was whipping one day – early ’80s, definitely a Friday, and those days, Friday country was south of (U.S. Route) 50.
I ran across Mr. Mellon and Boonie around the edge of a covert on (Mellon’s) Oak Spring. We were talking, and he was asking about the fox. He asked if I’d like a sip from his flask.
I took it.
I said ‘Oh my gosh. What is it? It’s incredible.’
Mr. Mellon was very proud of his whiskey, Overholt 1911 Rye. That stuff knocks your head back if you’ve never had it. He’d share it with me every time I saw him from then on. He liked it that I liked his rye.
So, in 1989, I won the Rokeby Bowl (featured open timber at the Piedmont Point-to-Point) for the third time in four years. Every time, Mr. Mellon had presented (the big silver bowl to owner) Molly Nicoll.
After the last one I was walking away. Mr. Mellon said, ‘Don, this is so unfair. You trained, and rode, all three horses and you got nothing.’ There was no trainer or rider trophy back then. ‘What do you want, Don?’
I was thinking, oh my gosh, what do you ask for from Paul Mellon?
I told him ‘I kinda miss that rye whiskey since you stopped hunting with us.’
He always carried a little spiral notebook and a pencil in his shirt pocket. He made a little note, but I never thought a thing of it.
Christmas eve, there was a big box delivered to my house, all done up in brown paper and white string. On the top, scrawled on the brown paper it said ‘Don, I did not forget. Paul.’
It was a whole case of that 1911 Overholt. He was such a generous man, and he just loved it when other people enjoyed things as much as he did.”
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Founded in West Overton, Pennsylvania in 1810, the
Overholt distillery was established by Henry Oberholzer (Americanized to Overholt), a German Mennonite farmer along the banks of Jacobs Creek. Oberholzer’s family had emigrated from an area in central Germany that specialized in distilling “korn,” later called rye whiskey.
In 1881, Oberholzer’s great-grandson Henry Clay Frick took over the company, adding Pennsylvania neighbors Andrew Mellon and Charles W. Mauck as business partners. By 1900, they made the regional product a national brand, and one of America’s biggest sellers.
When Frick died in 1919, he left his share of the successful company to Mellon, just in time for prohibition in 1920.
Mellon had a way around it.
Though the national prohibition of alcohol hit most American distillers hard, then-secretary of the treasury under President Warren Harding, Mellon was able to secure a permit for selling “medicinal whiskey” in drug stores.
After World War II, whiskey fell out of favor with the American public generally, rye whiskey especially, as drinkers switched to vodka.
The brand struggled until sold to Kentucky distiller Jim Beam in 1987. Jim Beam’s Old Grand-Dad whiskey and Old Overholt rye are marketed together as the company’s “
Olds.”
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