Page 57 - Speedhorse November 2019

Below:
Baxter Andruss and friend Malon Cowgill
at the 2018 Oregon Championship Banquet.
Above:
Baxter (right) with
friend Sig Aumuller
at the 2019 Oregon Championship Banquet.
lot of little bush tracks around, particularly in Washington: Rimrock near Yakima, Waitsburg, Dayton, Kennewick, Spokane and others. Baxter would always be there advocating for more Quarter Horse races, and always had a trailer load of horses to run there. And in the old days, after Portland Meadows’ season closed, what used to be Long Acres and is now Emerald Downs season started, then fair season started in Oregon: Union, Grants Pass, Klamath Falls, Lakeview, Burns, Prineville, and so on. Half those meets have disappeared now, but nonetheless, Andy was always there working to make sure we had Quarter Horse racing on the program.”
At 94, Andy has been a lifelong proponent of not only Northwest Quarter Horse racing, but also of the OQHRA Oregon-Bred program. In recognition of his efforts, in April 2007 the OQHRA named its Oregon-Bred Juvenile after him: the Baxter Andruss Oregon-Bred Futurity.
HIS FORMATIVE YEARS
Baxter, now also known both as Andy (to the old-timers) and Bax (mostly to family members), was born to Ephraim and Oral Andruss in Melbourne, Arkansas, in 1925. He attended Melbourne public school along with his two sisters, Lois and Della, and a brother, Lowell Dean “Diz.”
His uncle had a big farm with horses and mules, and Baxter would spend summers there riding Jake, the white pony his uncle gave him,
and later, a mule named Jim. On Saturdays, the farmers would go to town “to buy groceries, they said, but we all know better than that!” says Baxter’s wife, Chris.
“The farmers would unsaddle their horses and leave them tied up, and Baxter and his friends would ‘borrow’ a couple and go down to the river and match race them, then give them
a bath, cool them out, take them back and tie them up,” she continues. “The farmers probably knew, but didn’t seem to care.”
During World War II, the Andruss
family moved from Arkansas to Vancouver, Washington, to work in the ship yards, where Baxter also got a job when he was around 18. He worked as a cook, for the paper mill, and other jobs, and ended up driving an oil truck for a man named Charlie Work who had horses — including a really good Quarter Horse stud, Mister Terrific (Ricky Taylor-Legal Tender
B, Hard Twist). “No one ever showed Baxter how to get a horse fit and trained; it was just something he figured out on his own and he got really good at it,” Chris relates.
Through that experience, Baxter met others with racehorses. “In the ’70s, I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a racehorse,” Chris says. “It was kind of a household thing. When they opened Quarter Horse racing at Portland Meadows, you’d look at the program and they were all your friends — and Baxter was training most of them!”
Baxter Andruss rallied his resume of traits to promote his childhood love of match racing into an established industry, convincing track secretaries throughout his region to approve Quarter Horse races.