Luke McKathan

The island is still there, nearly 50 years later, which would have surprised Nick de Meric at the time. He'd have assumed that there could be nothing left by now. "Because they were basically mining it off the map," he recalls. "It was made of iron ore. So they had these massive Euclid trucks, wheels high as a building. And all these men on shift work, living in long huts. Not quite a prison environment, but it was all-male, tropical heat, nothing to do but drink beer and play cards....

James Bryan "Luke" McKathan, Sr., the patriarch of one of Florida's most successful racing families and an accomplished horseman and pinhooker, died Feb. 14 at the age of 89. According to a lengthy profile on the McKathan family in a 2004 edition of the Florida Horse magazine, Luke McKathan was born and raised on a family farm in Alabama, where he picked cotton, and left home at 13 in search of a better life. He began his career in racing with Standardbreds and found a job with legendary harness racing...