Letters from an American - May 3, 2025

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

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May 3rd, 2025. I had thought to post a picture tonight and then realized that today was the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby. The event was launched in 1875 as horse racing with its famous black jockeys, who won more than half of the first 28 derbies was gaining an audience in the US. A horse-based event gives me the opportunity to repost a piece my friend Michael S. Green and I wrote together a number of years ago on 10 famous American horses. While it has no deep meaning it does illustrate that there is history all around us, a theme you'll hear more about from me soon. And it was totally fun to research, too.

I spent hours watching Mr. Ed shows and reading entertainment theory. But the insightful detail and the inclusion of cartoon is all Michael. This piece remains one of my favorite things I ever had a hand in writing. So tonight, let's take the night off from the craziness of today's America and recall past eras when horses could make history. Number 1. Traveler. General Robert E. Lee rode Traveler, spelled with two L's in the British style, from February 1862 until the general's death in 1870. Traveller was a gray American saddle bread of 16 hands. He had great endurance

for long marches and was generally unflappable in battle although he once broke both of General Lee's hands when he shied at enemy movements. Lee brought Traveller with him when he assumed the presidency of Washington and Lee University. Traveler died of tetanus in 1871. He is buried on campus where the Safe Ride program still uses his name. Number two, Comanche. Comanche was attached to General Custer's detachment of the Seventh Cavalry when it engaged the Lakota in 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

The troops in the detachment were all killed in the engagement, but soldiers found Comanche, badly wounded, two days later. They nursed him back to health and he became the Seventh Cavalry's mascot. The commanding officer decreed that the horse would never again be ridden and that he would always be paraded, draped in black, in all military ceremonies involving the Seventh Cavalry. When Comanche died of

Colick in 1891, he was given a full military funeral. The only other horse so honored was Black Jack, who served in more than a thousand military funerals in the 1950s and 1960s. Comanche's taxidermied body is preserved in the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Number 3. Beautiful Jim Key. Beautiful Jim Key was a performing horse trained by formerly enslaved veterinarian Dr. William Key. Key demonstrated how Beautiful Jim could read, write, do math, tell time, spell, sort mail, and recite the Bible. Beautiful Jim performed from 1897 to 1906 and became a legend. An estimated 10 million Americans saw him perform and others collected his memorabilia, buttons, photos, and postcards or danced the

beautiful Jim Key two-step. Dr. Key insisted that he had taught beautiful Jim using only kindness and beautiful Jim Keys popularity was important in preventing cruelty to animals in America with more than 2 million children signing the Jim Key Band of Mercy in which they pledged, I promise always to be kind to animals. Number four, Manowar. Named for his owner, August Belmont Jr., who was overseas in World War I, Manowar is widely regarded as the top thoroughbred racehorse of all time. He won 20 of his 21 races and almost a quarter of a million dollars in the early 20th century.

His one loss, to upset, came after a bad start. Manowar sired many of America's famous race horses, including Hardtack, which in turn sired Seabiscuit, the small horse that came to symbolize hope during the Great Depression. Number five, Trigger. Entertainer Roy Rogers chose the Palomino Trigger from five rented horses to be his mount in a western film in the 1930s, changing his name from Golden Cloud to Trigger because of his quick mind and feet. Rogers rode Trigger in his 1950s television series, making the horse a

household name. When Trigger died, Rogers had his skin draped over a styrofoam mold and displayed it in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in California. He also had a 24-foot statue of Trigger made from steel and fiberglass. One other copy of that mold was also made. It is Bucky the Bronco, which rears above the Denver Broncos Stadium, South Scoreboard. Number six, Sergeant Reckless. American Marines in Korea bought a mare in October 1952 from a Korean stable boy who needed the money

to buy an artificial leg for his sister, who had stepped on a landmine. The Marines named her Reckless, after their unit's nickname, the Reckless Rifles. They made a pet of her and trained her to carry supplies and to evacuate wounded. She learned to travel supply routes without a guide. On one notable day, she made 51 solo trips.

Wounded twice, she was given a battlefield rank of corporal in 1953 and promoted to sergeant after the war when she was also awarded two Purple Hearts and a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal. Number seven, Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed was a talking palomino in a 1960s television show by the same name. At a time when Westerns dominated American television, Mr. Ed was the anti-Western, with the main human character a klutzy architect and the hero a horse that was fond of his meals and his comfortable life, and spoke with the voice of Alan, Rocky, Lane, who made dozens of B

Westerns. But the show was a five-year hit as it married the past to the future. Mr. Ed offered a gentle, homely wisdom that enabled him to straighten out the troubles of the humans around him. The startling special effects that made it appear that the horse was talking melded modern technology with the comforting traditional community depicted in the show. Number 8. Black Jack. Black Jack, named for John Jay, Black Jack Pershing, was the riderless black horse in the

funerals of John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Douglas MacArthur, as well as more than a thousand other funerals with full military honors. A riderless horse with boots reversed in the stirrups symbolized a fallen leader, while Black Jack's brands, a US brand and an army serial number, recalled the army's history. Black Jack himself was buried with full military honors. The only other horse honored with a military funeral was Comanche.

Number nine, Cartoon. Cartoon was the prize stud horse of Jack Waltz, the fictional Hollywood mogul in Mario Puzo's The Godfather. In one of the film version's most famous scenes, after Waltz refuses requests from Don Vito Corleone to cast singer Johnny Fontaine in a movie, Waltz wakes up to find Cartoon's head in bed with him and agrees to use Fontaine in the film. In the novel, Fontaine wins the Academy Award for his performance. According to old Hollywood rumor, the

story referred to real events. The rumor was that mobsters persuaded Columbia Pictures executive Harry Cohn to cast Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. As Maggio, Sinatra revived his sagging film career and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Number 10, Secretariat. Secretariat was an American thoroughbred that in 1973 became the first US Triple Crown winner in 25 years. His records in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes still stand. After Secretariat was stricken with a painful infection and

euthanized in 1989, an autopsy revealed that he had an unusually big heart. Sports writer Red Smith once asked his trainer how Secretariat had run one morning. Charlie Hatton replied, the trees swayed. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.