HARRISBURG PA –
Jules Siegel, squire of Fashion Farms in Pennsylvania, twice national owner of
the year in the U.S. and Owner of the Decade as named by Standardbred Canada,
and Margareta Wallenius-Kleberg, an important breeder, owner, and board member
on both sides of the Atlantic, have been named as ballot candidates for the
sport’s most prestigious honor, the Harness Racing Hall of Fame, this past
weekend by the Hall of Fame Screening Committee of the United States Harness
Writers Association (USHWA), the largest and most influential trade media
organization.
Siegel, who will turn 90 four months from today, graduated from
Rutgers with a degree in pharmacy, and operated a chain of drug stores for 40
years. When he sold the drug stores in 1995, his wife and partner Arlene, who
passed away in 2010, insisted that “you cannot retire to nothing,” so the
Siegels’ Fashion Farms soon became home to some of Standardbred racing’s best
broodmares and racehorses.
Tagliabue won the Hambletonian the year Jules Siegel retired – the
first of eight Dan Patch award winners for him. He has five Breeders Crown
victories to his credit as well, three of them homebreds with the farm’s
“Broadway” first name: Broadway Hall, Broadway Schooner, and Broadway Donna
just last year.
Wallenius-Kleberg is the owner of Menhammar Stuteri AB, the most
successful breeding farm in Sweden for the last nine years; her family has
owned the farm for 70 years, having been purchased in 1947 by her father Olof
Wallenius. Menhammar Stuteri is noted for having stood the transcontinental
champion Mack Lobell at stud, and also for standing two stallions sent to
Sweden by Wallenius-Kleberg’s business partner, the late Hall of Famer Norman
Woolworth: Zoot Suit and Smokin Yankee.
A tireless worker for the sport, Wallenius-Kleberg is a director
of the Hambletonian Society in the U.S., and in 2011 received the Pinnacle
Award for promotion of the sport. In Sweden, she was the former chair of the
Swedish Breeders Association and of the organization operating Solvalla
Racetrack, home of the famous Elitlopp, and is an honorary lifetime member of
these two organizations and of the Swedish Trotting Association. If elected,
Ms. Wallenius-Kleberg would become the first woman enshrined in the U.S.
Harness Hall of Fame.
Siegel and Wallenius-Kleberg were among nominees sent in by the
chapters of USHWA for the consideration of the Screening Committee; after
meeting with an Advisory Committee comprised of Hall of Famers, USHWA’s
Screening Committee made their decisions on the day of the annual Hall of Fame
Induction Dinner, the first Sunday in July.
Siegel and Wallenius-Kleberg will be joined on the midsummer
ballot by Carl Becker, racecaller/auctioneer/ pedigree authority, and Dave
Briggs, nine-time winner of the Hervey Award for outstanding writing about the
sport; they are the candidates for the Communicators Hall of Fame. If a nominee
receives 75% of the yes-no votes cast, she or he will be elected; the results
will be announced shortly after Labor Day.
The new Hall of Famers will be first feted at the Dan Patch Awards
Banquet, to be held Sunday, February 25, 2018 at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort
in Orlando, in conjunction with USHWA’s annual meetings. The new Hall of Fame
class will be formally inducted during the Hall of Fame Sunday Dinner in 2018
on July
1.