Page 207 - September 2019

“Things are finally breaking in our favor here in Florida, thanks to Woody Lawlis and the Van Lennep associates, the AQHA, the Quarter Horse Racing Owners of America, and our local organizations. We now have prospects for some of the best Quarter Horse racing in America.”
Tucker briefly gazed off into the distance and then said, “My old friend, Geech Partin, and I were talking recently, and we decided between us that if we didn’t get our racing straightened out soon, we wouldn’t be able to get out to the track to see them run!”
Like Abou Ben Adhem, Raymon Tucker
is one who ‘loves his fellowmen’ and works actively for his Mormon church, which owns the Mormon Deseret Ranches of Florida. Tucker gives his time, talent, energy, and money to this cause. The Mormons, he says, pay full income and property taxes on their possessions, refusing tax exemption for church property.
The Haw Creek squire finds time to devote as much time as necessary for “the Lord’s work,” helping run Deseret Ranches. Its 300,000 Central Florida acres do not faze Tucker, nor does their head of 36,000 brood cows, or
the large-scale timber operation. He says its operation is “just like my ranch, only bigger.”
Although the Quarter Horse is the native American of horse aristocracy, going back over the centuries to the Virginia and Carolina bred, the American Quarter Horse Association is a relative newcomer.
In 1939, at the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show in Fort Worth, Texas, Raymon Tucker and a few other dedicated Quarter Horse breeders decided to establish a national association. In March of 1940, the group – principally from several southwestern states and Mexico – met in Fort Worth, again, and organized the American Quarter Horse Association.
Today, there are more than 15,000 registered Quarter Horse in Florida, alone. Raymon Tucker has 125 of them, producing about 25 foals a year.
This loyal American believes not only in good government and good communities but in getting involved. He does, and with a vengeance.
Tucker is now in his third term as president of the Eastern Brahman Cattle Association (they won’t let him out of office); immediate past president of the Flagler County Farm Bureau;
a former director of the Tri-County North Florida Growers Exchange; perennial president of the Flagler County Cattleman’s Association; member (for the past 20 years) of the Flagler County School Board; a State director of the Florida Cattlemen’s Association, and chairman of the Feeder Calf Sale Committee of the Florida Farm Bureau.
It was Raymon Tucker who brought the Extension Agency and the Soil Conservation
Service to Flagler County. He and his wife furnished the leadership to get electricity and the telephone to their community, and Tucker helped to clear the right-of-way some 25 years ago.
Recently, he helped organize the Flagler County Rough Riders, and he and his daughter, Brenda, lead the Quadrille at the different rodeo events. This group, with the cattlemen and the Farm Bureau, established a public recreation park north of the town of Bunnell, complete with barbecue pits, rodeo arena and race track. They sponsor an annual “Cracker Day,” where more than 2,000 participants enjoy horse races and games, a barbecue, and a social get-together. This self-help effort, assisted by the county agent, resulted in the county and State also participating to make the show and recreation park a perpetual county-owned project.
Tucker is a long-time advisor, constructive critic, admirer and friend of Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture, Doyle Conner, and is a member of the Commissioner’s Quarter Horse Breeders Advisory Council. As a member of the Council, the University of Florida- educated Tucker was responsible for the Florida Department of Agriculture administering the Florida-bred Quarter Horse Breeders’ Award
(it will pay about $10,000 to Quarter Horse breeders during its first year of operation).
At the urging and counsel of Tucker, Commissioner Conner was the first State officer
to appoint a full-time horse marketing specialist (now some 15 states have them).
“Conner likes to run horse races with us, too,” said Tucker, “and he recently came up with a good one in Go 8 Sugar, who won three or four in a row at our recent meet at Pompano Park.”
Tucker is very proud of his family. He was just “bustin-out-all-over” because his No. 5 daughter, 15-year-old Eve, won the “Best-All- Around” at the recent Flagler Stampede. Using one of their Quarter Horses, she made points in calf roping, goat tying, pole bending, and cattle cutting. Her prize was a beautiful hand-tooled, silver-trimmed Billy Cook saddle, with two colorful Seminole Indian blankets.
Daughter Denise, now a college freshman, also shows the Tucker spunk. Two years ago,
on Skeeter Hawk (son of Little Dick Priest) she won the Quarter Horse division of the grueling 100-mile Umatilla drive through the Ocala National Forest. Despite a rainy day and the effects of having being thrown 10 days before
the trials, the spirited equestrienne and her horse turned in a performance of championship calibre.
“This is the kind of life I love,” said Tucker. “However, I only wish I had more time to run Quarter Horses.”
Like Agriculture Commissioner Doyle Conner says, “the squire of Haw Creek Ranch, Raymon Tucker, is truly a horseman’s legend in his own time!”
Raymon and Kip
SPEEDHORSE, September 2019 205
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Raymon Tucker aboard Kip, the grandsire of Little Dick Priest, in 1945.