Page 81 - Speedhorse September 2017

James & Judy Markum with Steve & Jo Burns and family
“He never meets a stranger.”
– Steve Burns DVM
. . . he loves to create and enjoys seeing the fruits of his work.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Born in Blair, Oklahoma, James grew
up around horses. “I’ve loved horses since
I was a little boy,” he says. “I used to drive my dad’s team from the time I had to get up on a bucket to put the harness on. He was
a trader, and we always had a pretty good roping horse around the house.”
When James was in ninth grade, his dad bought a market in San Juan Capistrano, California. “We had that grocery store for
a while, then bought a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley in Northern California. We stayed there for a few years, then came back to Southern California.”
James spent two years in the Korean War, then went to junior college. “That’s how I met my wife, Judy,” he says. “We’d had a history class together and she knew my sister. Judy was working for the Bank of
America in Santa Ana between her junior and senior year of college, and I had a little grocery store at the time. I saw her behind the counter, and asked the girl who took my deposits who she was. I met her that day, and probably a year and a half later, I married her. She’s stuck with me for 56 years and I’ve drug her to every horse sale in the country!”
Judy taught elementary school and worked as assistant principal for 32 years; James ran their little grocery. “We about starved to death with that grocery store and then about 1965, I got into real estate,” he says. “I was really interested in the horse properties on the edge of town. We had a little 2-acre place there. That’s when friends said I ought to get into the race business because then I could write off the trucks, trailers and barns. That kind of lit a light bulb in my head.
“An old friend of mine, Mr. Younger, got me into the business,” James continues. “He had a Thoroughbred that I kept for him for a while.”
James’ first racehorse was a mare named Miss Jo Kelly, whom James bought from the manager at Los Alamitos Race Course. “She had a Duplicate Copy foal at her side and was in foal to Duplicate Copy,” James says. “That was around 1970 or 1971.”
Since then, James has partnered
mainly with Chuck and Terryll Griffeth of Dawsonville, Georgia; Steve Burns; Royce Rogers of Weatherford, Texas; and Cindy Knox of Arkansas. He has also served on the PCQHRA race board and the race committee, and has held shares in First Down Dash, Separatist, Cassidy Casanova, FDD Dynasty and Foose.
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