History Blog

I was one of those kids who’d snoop for Christmas presents every year. By the time I was 10, I knew every single hiding place in our house—from my parent’s closet, to the craft room, to the downstairs coat closet way back behind the moving boxes that had been there since before I was born—it was pretty hard to keep a secret from me!

“Many kids would rather ride on the back of a horse… than pilot a spaceship to the moon.” – Walter Farley

I must have read Walter Farley’s Man O’War a million times when I was a kid. I pored over the pages so much that by the time the book finally found a more permanent home on my bookshelf—its spine worn and creased in comparison to the shiny hardbacks that flanked it—it was easy enough to tell which one was my favorite.

“I'm really thankful to have a couple of days off for Thanksgiving to RIDE my horse!” Susan Lee, Advertising

The inspiration for this blog burst into existence like a bright pop of a camera flash, illuminating the dusty corners of my desk and shedding light on the struggle I’d had with trying to think of what to write about for Thanksgiving.

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in his motorcade. America’s grief over their fallen president was accentuated by the sight of Black Jack, the coal black, riderless horse that participated in Kennedy’s funeral procession with his boots reversed in his stirrups, a poignant symbol of our country’s fallen hero.

I have an image of wild horses in my mind—the beautiful mustangs gallop freely across the grassy plains, tossing their manes and playing in the streams. The young foals dash madly about their mothers’ legs and risk the ire of the alpha mare and stallion. And although my perception of the horses that roam our countryside may be correct, I’ve got one small detail wrong.

Unfortunately, they aren’t truly wild. Almost all horses that live in the wilderness today are descended from domesticated horses.

"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words." Anna Sewell, Black Beauty, 1877.

It was a dark and stormy afternoon at The Chronicle office. Lightning flickered outside as gunpowder gray thunderclouds rolled and boiled over the Blue Ridge Mountains toward Middleburg. Fall is my favorite time of year in Virginia, and the bright assortment of colored leaves against the darkening sky created a striking backdrop on my drive home from another day buried in the tombs of equine history.

The Chronicle’s attic is one of my favorite places in our office. It smells like dust, it's hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, and it doesn’t necessarily have any health benefits to it aside from climbing the three flights of stairs from the bottom floor where my desk is, but it’s well worth the climb and the sneezing.

Can you believe the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games are only two days away? It’s crazy, right? It seems like we’ve been working nonstop here at the Chronicle for months on end to prepare for the WEG Preview Issue (which we published on Sept. 17, so don’t miss out on your copy), and now we’re packing camera bags and suitcases and loading cars so we can make our own “Journey To The WEG.” 

Of all the sports at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, I’m most excited to see vaulting. While I have either competed in or covered all of the other disciplines, I’ve never actually witnessed vaulting at a world-class level. Years ago I attempted to vault at summer camp, and I mastered standing and flying re-mounts, but my career as a vaulter was fairly short-lived.

A few theories exist about the roots of vaulting.