It was a photo that required that I find out the story behind it. A young woman bends at the waist to accept a trophy from an elegant presenter in evening gown and fur coat. And the rider is bareback, on a gleaming gray horse.

Anne Huberth laughs when I ask about this—she vividly remembers when she won the knock-down-and-out class at the 1944 National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. And she remembers that when Pabst Brew didn’t appear for the awards ceremony, she rushed back to the stall and found her groom so drunk he couldn’t tack the horse up. So, she threw the bridle on, hopped up bareback and went in to get her trophy.

This was in the glory days of the National Horse Show, when society ladies and gentlemen populated the boxes and stands bedecked in their best finery, and the top international show jumpers did battle. And Huberth (who then went by her maiden name of Morningstar) was just a teenager and reveling in it all. “It was a very different time. It was a very happy, good time. The Garden was always such a wonderful place to be,” she said.

In 1944, Huberth was just 15 and had won the ASPCA Maclay Final the year before. World War II raged in Europe, but the shows went on. Huberth had the ride not only on her own horses, but also on Mrs. Bailey’s Pabst Brew, a cross-bred mare.

“She wasn’t a Thoroughbred. She was… I don’t what she was,” Huberth said. Pabst had been a rented field hunter in Greenwich, Conn., going out hunting with whoever paid her $5-a-day fee, when show jumper Joe Green spotted her jump and sold her to Mrs. Bailey.

“And she turned into this great Pabst Brew,” Huberth said. “She was just a fantastic little mare, her heart never quit. When she’d get to the corners, she’d kind of canter in place and rock, and people watching loved it. She’d just rock back and forth for a couple strides. If I was shortening her up for something, she’d rock a bit and then go. But she never missed a beat; it was just part of her. And she’d jump the moon.

“That night we won at the Garden, in the knock-down-and-out class, she and another mare named Velvet Lassie had about six jump-offs. The fences went so high that they had to bring blocks from the hunter walls to raise the standards. She jumped so beautifully and won,” Huberth said.

Huberth grew up in Greenwich and had a precocious start to her riding career, not only winning the Maclay Final in 1943 but also getting rides on top hunters and jumpers. “I did so much riding early on; I was very lucky,” Huberth said. “I rode regular hunters and I got to ride Magic Luck, Mr. Bowen’s good chestnut horse. He was high score conformation hunter champion for two years in 1945 and 1946. I was 16 and 17. All through my teen years I had some wonderful opportunities and rode some lovely horses. I rode against all the professionals. My parents didn’t ride, but they were very supportive of me.”

Anne Huberth on the top regular conformation hunter Magic Luck.

In fact, Huberth grew up alongside a horseman who would go on to be quite famous. “George Morris was just starting out and I asked him if he’d like to come and teach Pony Club in Greenwich. He said yes, and when he came, he said, ‘Do you think I could get $1 per person for a lesson?’ When I think now what he gets today for a lesson, I laugh,” she said.

Huberth distinctly remembers the moment when her life changed. “We were coming back from the Ox Ridge Show, having dinner at a restaurant, and I’d been riding a lot of horses. I said, ‘I want to turn professional and buy a car,’ to my parents. The next thing I knew, I was at Pine Manor College [Mass.]. That conversation didn’t go over at the dining table at all,” she recalled wryly.

A few years after studying music at Pine Manor, Huberth married Harry Huberth, a businessman and avid foxhunter and show rider. “I kind of got out of the big shows when I got married. I had three children right in a row and that slowed up my showing. But I never stopped riding,” she said.

Huberth, now 85, showed and foxhunted throughout her life, also getting into breeding with her foundation broodmare Milkweed. “I bred some nice horses and kept showing. I showed as an amateur; I never took a penny to ride any horse,” she said. Her marriage to Harry ended, and in 1976 she moved from Greenwich to Southern Pines, N.C. “We started coming down here in the early ‘60s to hunt. And then I bought land and built a house in 1966, and then moved down permanently in ’76. I love it here,” Huberth said. She keeps eight horses on the farm and takes care of them every day.

“I rode until about 10 years ago when arthritis got the best of me,” Huberth noted. Her daughter, Annie, rides and events, while her son Harry rode as a child but then moved on and her other daughter Laurie showed and worked on the racetrack.

“The horses never let you down if you don’t let them down,” Huberth said of her life. “Some have more talent or are braver than others. They were always very honest with me. You learn a lot about right from wrong.”

Anne Huberth on Better Marked, the horse she won the ASPCA Maclay Finals on in 1943. 

Anne Huberth jumping 7′ on the horse that started it all for her, Micky Rooney. Photo by Carl Klein