Page 121 - January 20 2012

pari-mutuel office, spending time talking with jockeys and trainers, and time in Millie’s office. Whatever knowledge I lacked for the job, she generously helped me to obtain.
It bothered Millie that more women were not recognized for their role in racing, whether it was trying to crack through that glass ceiling or being the one who stood behind the man and held down the home front while mucking stalls. She had tremendous respect for women and their challenges, as she knew them well.
Many are not aware of Millie’s beginnings with Los Alamitos. It began when she was dating Frank, Jr. She was the cute, petite blond sitting on the fender of his truck when his dad began Sunday match racing at the farm. So many oth- ers in the community began to show up to watch this new, exciting action that Senior (the name she used to refer to him, with great fondness) decided to add some bleachers to make it more comfortable for them to sit and enjoy. It would rain during the night, so he covered the bleachers with an overhead tarp to keep them dry. But one day the tarp, heavy with rain, collapsed on a few of the fans. Now married to Junior, Millie’s first job at the race track was to take a long pole in the morning before the races began, and poke the tarp up so the water could drain off.
And then, she told me, Senior decided those folks needed something warm while they sat in the dampness. So she began serving coffee and hot chocolate and realized this new fan base was willing to pay! She decided they should have something to snack on as well, and asked Senior if she could open a little snack and drink stand. She had big business serving hot dogs and drinks. Each night after the races,
she would take her money and spread it out on the living room rug to separate it all and add up her day’s income. One night Senior came
in while she was counting, and was surprised
to see her stack. He asked where it came from. When she told him it was income from the snack stand, he told her he could use it for purse money, so she gave it to him...along with all the proceeds every Sunday thereafter. I was a quite taken aback with this story and asked her, “Well, didn’t that upset you, with it being your idea and all your hard work?” She looked at me, stunned! “Absolutely not!” she replied. “He needed the money for the horsemen!” That night she taught me one of my biggest lessons, and a lesson I’ve never forgotten. You have
to take care of the horsemen first if you want good racing. If it wasn’t for them and their horses, she told me, there would not be a need for a snack stand.
After I got the OK from Scoop Vessels to pursue the idea of recognizing a woman of the year in honor of his mother, I took it to Jerry Windham, Chairman of the AQHA Racing Committee at the time. He loved the idea, I think in part because his wife Pat, is his own unsung hero for her role with the success of their horses. He improved the suggestion by adding
the Gordon Crone Award to honor a man. Connie Hall had just become the first
woman to win the All American Futurity with A Classic Dash, owned by Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, which seemed timely. A few years prior Mille had called me to share her excitement over Connie winning the Bay Meadows Futurity with Chicks Beduino. Millie was excited not just because she owned and stood Chicks Beduino’s sire, Beduino-TB, but because a woman won it.
I had told Millie the story about how, when Connie was already a great trainer/ conditioner off the track, she could not get a trainer’s license when she first applied at Bay
Meadows. They wouldn’t even give her an assistant trainer’s license. She had to settle for
a groom’s license in order to continue training, not because she wasn’t fully qualified to be a trainer, but because she was a woman trying
to break into a traditionally-male industry.
It seemed only fitting that Connie was the woman honored with the first Millie Vessels Award, and I was proud to nominate her know- ing that Millie would be cheering from above.
Besides their great humility, Dawn and Rhonda List cherish and respect the name in which they have been honored. If Millie were with us today, I think she would simply say... “Back atcha, Sistas!”
Scoop and Millie Vessels check out the grandstand at Los Alamitos in 1977.
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