HARRISBURG PA – Barbara
Brooks, secretary of the United States Trotting Association (USTA), a person
who during her remarkable 62-year career with the Association has worked with
generations of horsemen and horses via the USTA’s Registration Department,
ensuring meticulous recordkeeping and a smile at every turn, has been voted the
sport’s Unsung Hero Award by the members of the United States Harness Writers
Association (USHWA), the sport’s leading group of communicators.
When Barb first joined
the USTA, the world record for a mile was 1:55; now it is 1:46. When she first
went to work there, the tools of her trade were the typewriter and the file
folder; now they are the computer and the database: just like the speed for a
mile, research and production go much more quickly and efficiently. This upturn
in individual production time is part of what has allowed the USTA to retain
its ever-growing mass of records about the sport, and to explore and implement
new ways of serving its public.
The one constant, the
other half of the equation for this progress, has been Barb Brooks, at the end
of a telephone, mail, or (now) computer inquiry directed to the USTA’s registry
by a horseman or horsewoman wanting to make sure a horse, parentage, and
ownership has been correctly recorded. Barb is by no means a “one-man team” –
as she would be the first to acknowledge – but it seems no accident that the
Registration Department has functioned so smoothly over decades in an
exponentially-expanding sport, and she has represented the best of customer
service, knowledge, and collegial cooperation. Barb Brooks retires from the
USTA on Friday, but the effects of her service to the Association, to its
history and its future via the registry, will be felt for decades to come.
Mike Tanner, executive
VP/CEO of the USTA, noted, “Barb Brooks exemplifies everything that is right
about this industry.” No higher tribute can be made.
