Page 143 - Speedhorse October 2018

The Heritage Place groundbreaking took place in 1978. Hatley was instrumental in the building of the facility, located west of Oklahoma City.
of Dream Baby by Depth Charge TB. The final bid on Sea Nymph was $105,000, a record breaker in AQHA public auction history. The existing record bid was $66,0000 for the mare Go Josie Go, in 1964. Nineteen horses later, Sea Nymph’s record was broken by the final bid of $111,000
for a five-year-old Hatley owned-sorrel mare, Chickamon, AAAT and an All-Time Leading Money Earner by Triple Chick out of Monita by Joe Moore. The next individual in the ring was Mel’s thirteen-year-old bay mare Paula Laico, AAAT producer and dam of the All-Time Leading Money Earning Horse of the day, Laico Bird. The final bid on Paula Laico was $125,000.
Two of the 80 horses offered for sale at Briarwood in 1969 were scratched and did not go through the sale ring. The remaining 78 brought a gross of $992,300. An announcement during the sale informed bidders that the two horses that were scratched would be offered for sale at private treaty as their hip numbers came up, immediately following the sale. The sales of these two brought the gross to $1,001,950. The sale average, $12,524.50, toppled the existing national average record that Mel and Bob Moore had set in 1967.
From Briarwood Farms to now, Mel has owned or partly owned a legion of outstanding individuals. Some of them are:
• Mares that have won in excess of $100,000
– Barnes’ Lady Bug, Chickamona, Decketta, Favorite Past Time, I’m Gorgeous, Miss Gold Angel, Miss Thermolark, Native Empress, Possumjet, Quincy Rocket, Ruby Khan, Sea Nymph and Twelve Five.
• Some individuals on the general list of outstanding horses: Bold Tactic, Catchajet, Double Knit, Found Worthy, I’m Sincere, Joy Moon, Roll A Coin, Society Section, Takeme Freely and Real Dish TB.
• Stallions that have run out in excess of $100,000: Current Concept TB, Kingdom Key, Mr Jet Moore and Triple Beat.
• Mel also owns a quarter interest in Hempen TB, and he has shares in several Thoroughbreds, including Effervescing, Thermos and Syntariat.
• Today Mel continues his involvement in several building companies, is a partner in the D. Wayne Lukas Farms in Lexington, Oklahoma, and lives with his wife, Judy, at the Hatley Farm in Norman, Oklahoma. “The farm in Norman is predominantly
for my broodmares and their offspring. John Walters is my manager and he does a real good job. This farm is special to me. It’s the first time I’ve been able to look out of a window in my home and see most of my mares right there in my own front yard.”
A few of the mares in the Hatley band are Barnes’ Lady Bug, The Lady Bug, Miss Paula Bug and Lela Barnes, who are all daughters or granddaughters of the great FL Lady Bug, plus the fine mares Miss Gold Angel, Favorite Past Time, Go Wench Go, Catch Snap, Ima Surprise and Lovely Surprise.
In 1978, Mel continued his experience in building with his dream of seeing an equine sales facility of Bluegrass quality west of the Mississippi.
He asked a group of people to consider coming in with him to put up the money to build Heritage Place, Inc., on 80 acres flanking MacArthur Boulevard west of Oklahoma City.
After prospective investors understood the scope of the project, some walked and eleven finally stayed: Ruth Bunn, the Gentry brothers of Lubbock, Charles Wesley Graham DVM, John Hastie, Esq., Buddy Suthers, Johnny T.L. Jones, D. Wayne Lukas, Walter Merrick, Bob Moore and Carl Swan.
Heritage Place groundbreaking took place in the early springtime of 1978. Under the supervision of Jim Carwile, sub-contractors moved ahead. Heritage Place General Manager Bob Vantrese was liaison between Operation and Administration. Less than five months later Heritage Place was on the ground, a totally sheltered sale facility of more than 187,000 square feet.
“All the people who brought Heritage
Place in were achievers with vision, doers not talkers, people who do what they say they will do. It’s achievers like these people who make this industry, and everything else they touch, go forward. There were so many times in the building of Heritage Place when situations were grave, big problems. We had to talk about them. You could count on Dr. Graham to finally say something like, ‘Let’s quit talking and get on with it.’ I don’t know if he’ll ever know how good words like that made us feel. But they did.”
During a recent interview, Mel Hatley was asked a barrage of questions about the industry
“I feel like the industry has been built on quality, pedigree and performance, and that 100 years from now it will still be the same – quality, pedigree and performance.”
SPEEDHORSE, October 2018 141
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JUNE 1980 ISSUE
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