CARL BECKER, DAVE BRIGGS TO COMMUNICATORS
HALL
FREEHOLD NJ –
Longtime Pennsylvania owner and breeder Jules Siegel, less than two months
short of his 90th birthday, joins Margareta
Wallenius-Kleberg, one of the driving forces of harness racing in her native
Sweden and a leader in European-American harness connections, as members of the
Harness Racing Hall of Fame after their election by a joint polling of the
members of the U.S. Harness Writers Association (USHWA), the sport’s leading
media organization, and elected members of the Hall of Fame.
Also elected were Carl Becker, veteran announcer-pedigree
expert-auctioneer based in his native Midwest, and Dave Briggs, whose nine
Hervey awards for outstanding writing have set the standard for quality harness
journalism in recent years, have been elected as members of the Harness Racing
Communicators Hall of Fame by a vote of USHWA members.
In both cases, nominations were made by chapters of the Harness
Writers, and then winnowed down to these four by blue-ribbon panels of veteran
journalists. The quartet needed 75% of the yes-no votes cast by eligible
electors to gain the sport’s ultimate honor.
IRREPRESSIBLE SIEGEL ENTERS HALL;
WALLENIUS-KLEBERG FIRST FEMALE INDUCTEE
Jules Siegel was at Pocono Downs a couple of weeks ago when his
Fashionwoodchopper (carrying the name of his Fashion Farms) won a Pennsylvania
Sire Stakes Championship. And it is safe to say that of the large group in and
near the winner’s circle, no one was more excited that the soon-to-be
nonagenarian.
Siegel and his late wife Arlene established Fashion Farms in
eastern Pennsylvania for their own pleasure, but when the college pharmacy
major sold his successful chain of drugstores and retired in 1995, Arlene
insisted “that you cannot do nothing,” so the Siegels acquired first-rate broodmares,
bred them to top sires to achieve successful racehorses, then retained the
females for future breeding and built success upon success, lasting to this
day.
Tagliabue, the Hambletonian winner in Siegel’s retirement year of
1995, was the first of his eight Dan Patch Award seasonal champions. He has
five Breeders Crown winners to his credit as well, three of them homebreds
carrying another farm-naming trademark, “Broadway”: 2002’s undefeated champion
Broadway Hall, his daughter Broadway Schooner, and then “Schooner”’s daughter
by Donato Hanover, Broadway Donna last year.
Margareta Wallenius-Kleberg, the first woman elected to the Hall
of Fame, is the owner of Menhammar Stuteri AB, a breeding farm which has been
in her family for 70 years and has been the leading breeder in her native
Sweden for the last nine years. Wallenius-Kleberg created a North
America-Europe comingling of racing and breeding talent with her partner, the
late Hall of Famer Norman Woolworth, headed by champion horses such as Mack Lobell,
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
BECKER, BRIGGS TAKE DIFFERENT PATHS TO
COMMUNICATORS HALL OF FAME
One, though a good writer, made his mark on harness racing through
announcing and presentation of pedigrees at auction; the other, though an
intelligent and glib speaker, has set the standard for writing excellence
through his domination of the Hervey Awards. But Carl Becker and Dave Briggs
share the characteristics of clarity, class, exhaustive knowledge, and insight,
and thus both have risen to the top of their professions and a place in the
Communicators Hall.
Carl Becker, a native of Illinois, began his career in harness
announcing in 1963, traveling 300 miles to a matinee in Iowa where he worked
without pay, just to gain experience. Soon, major tracks were seeking him out
to provide his insightful calls and commentary, most notably DuQuoin IL, where
he called the Hambletonian and World Trotting Derby (and where Stan Bergstein
took the young but obviously-talented Becker under his wing); The Red Mile in
Lexington, where he announced Niatross’s historic 1:49.1 time-trial; and
Louisville Downs.
Becker helped to transform the job of auctioneer and pedigree
reader with his prodigious knowledge of breeding, family achievement, and
“nicks,” combining these with his enthusiastic announcing style to “draw out”
the assembled bidders, pointing out a tidbit that might keep an auction going.
In this capacity, he worked the sport’s two major sales, Harrisburg and
Lexington (and later both when two companies offered at Lexington), as well as
for Garden State Sales and Blooded Horse Sales.
Dave Briggs, a native of Western Ontario, achieved most of his
early journalistic success through a series of increasingly-responsible roles
at the venerable Canadian Sportsman magazine, while also writing for other top
trade journals. In the last couple of years Dave has been in charge of the
reborn Harness Racing Update online newsletter, which provides coverage of the
sport’s major events along with commentary examining trends on the current
harness scene.
With this workload have come awards – lots of them. Before Briggs,
the most USHWA Dan Patch journalism awards won had been five, achieved by the
late Hall of Famer Phil Pines (curiously, also the former director of the
Harness Racing Museum). Briggs has shattered this standard by winning nine John
Hervey awards, including an award in each of the last five years – and in
2012-2015, for four different publications! He has an equally long list of
Canadian and international awards for journalism to his credit.
The new Hall of Famers will first be feted at USHWA’s 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 then be formally inducted during 2018’s Hall of Fame Sunday
Dinner, on July 1.
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