Page 122 - August 2016

CRAIG HUFFHINES
“I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to come to AQHA and contribute as much energy and thought as I can to advancing the industry.”
by John Moorehouse
It’s no easy task catching up with Craig Huffhines, who is in his second year as Executive Vice President of the American Quarter Horse Association.
This is not, however, some “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” scenario. Yes, his current position has become all-consuming — in a good way. It’s also the latest and biggest step in an agriculture-intensive career for Huffhines, a lifelong Texan who previously served as Executive Vice President of the Hereford Association for more than 17 years. And, Huffhines has added
to his list of duties recently after being elected to the American Horse Council Board of Trustees.
Serving in the leadership position of the AQHA keeps Huffhines on the go, but he graciously gave us a few moments of his time for the latest installment of our Lighter Side feature.
Q: Where were you born?
A: I was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in Van Alstyne, Texas, on a small family farm where we raised cattle.
Q: What are your hobbies?
A: The American Quarter Horse Association and all
of the diverse specialization of competition, including American Quarter Horse racing, has become my career, my passion and my hobby. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to come to AQHA and contribute as much energy and thought as I can to advancing the industry. Outside of the industry, my wife and I have three sons in various stages of life. I have spent a lot
of time with them coaching competitive baseball over the years along with hunting and fishing. All three of them are sports enthusiasts, and we enjoy following our favorite teams across all sports. My youngest son, Miles, has taken a liking to horse racing. He attended the All American with me last year and fell in love with it.
Q: What is your favorite movie, and why?
A: “The Magnificent Seven” is one of my all-
time favorite movies. For one, it has some of my Hollywood heroes including Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson. Those kind of tough guys don’t exist in Hollywood anymore. They were tough, cool-handed, independent; they were real men’s men. At the end of the movie they put the good of others first, protecting the little guy against incred- ible odds. They proved that tough good guys also have big hearts.
John Moorehouse
Q: Give an interesting fact about your family.
A: My great-grandfather moved to Dallas from Kentucky in the late 1800s. He was an industrious farmer/entrepreneur, who brought a few Kentucky- bred race horses into the north Texas area for match races. And he had a fine Kentucky bourbon recipe. Historian Jim Gateway has written a book called “Slats Rodgers and the Love Field Lunatics”, describing the colorful life of Elmo Huffhines fly- ing his World War I biplane bootlegging whiskey around Dallas to customers like Benny Binion and out to oil boom towns like Wichita Falls during prohibition. He was a big cotton farmer in the Dallas and Collin County area. When my dad
was a kid, two generations removed from Grandpa Huffhines, he would spend hours on end plowing ground on a John Deere tractor at the Huffhines family farm on the corner of Coit and Beltline Road in north Dallas. Too bad they sold that farm in the 1950s.
120 SPEEDHORSE, August 2016
THE LIGHTER SIDE