Page 30 - New Mexico Winter 2021

Strong “Mooring” for the Long Haul by Diane Ciarloni
W.L. Mooring of Double LL Farm in Bosque, NM is the real deal cowboy. His handshake is solid 18-carat gold. It’s as good as a contract, with no ambiguous clauses and no double meanings. What he says and
what he does is what you get and that is, indeed, a very good thing.
“That’s the way daddy raised me,” the 77-year-old horseman said. “We were close, and I always knew where he stood. He was
tough and he didn’t hesitate to hand out an ass-whooping when he felt it was deserved, but he was also fair.
“Daddy never finished high school, but he made sure I and my brother Jerry graduated. We never wanted for anything, and that included seeing his face in the bleachers at track meets and football games.”
Bill Mooring may have been just a tad short on formal education, but that did nothing to dampen his entrepreneurial spirit.
“There was a time when he ran 5,000 ewes,” W.L. recalled. “He gave me and Jerry the orphan lambs and that got us started in our own businesses when we were just kids. He taught us about hard work and that it felt good to always have money in our pockets.”
“He always liked horse racing, regardless of what he did to make a living. I grew up with livestock and watching him with his love of fast horses.”- W.L. Mooring, about his father
28 New Mexico Horse Breeder