By Bill Finley
You may know Rose Maddox (Grazen) the horse. A 4-year-old California-bred filly, she's won five races, including the Golden Poppy S. and the Moscow Burning S., and is 6-1 in the morning line for Tuesday's GII Great Lady M. S. at Los Alamitos. But you may not know of Rose Maddox the person.
She was an American country singer-songwriter and fiddle player who passed away in 1998. Born in Boaz, Alabama and the daughter of sharecroppers, her family sold all their possessions for $35 when she was seven and left for California to find a better life. They began their journey on foot before hopping a freight train to complete the journey. She'd go on to have 14 hits on the Billboard country singles chart between 1959 and 1964, including several duets with Buck Owens.
She's exactly the type of person owner-breeder Nick Alexander looks to honor when he names his horses.
“I always try to find people who have succeed against long odds or persevered and she fit the bill,” Alexander said.
When it comes to naming horses, no one is more clever than Alexander. Now 80, Alexander has been a fixture at the California tracks since the late seventies. He races exclusively California-breds and many are named after people who are, to Alexander, real-life heroes who haven't gotten the recognition they deserve.
“What I do, it's an opportunity to put something out there that just isn't a combination of the dam and sire's name,” he said. “I've always thought that was kind of a dumb idea. I'm trying to give some notoriety to people who had either been forgotten or were never very well known.”
The list is a long one.
Desmond Doss (Grazen) is among Alexander's better horses. He's a three-time stakes winner who has earned $456,911 and is named after the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor. Doss is best known for distinguishing himself during the Battle of Okinawa by saving an estimated 75 men. Doss refused to carry a weapon into combat because of his personal beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist against killing, the reason why he became a combat medic. His story was the subject of the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge.
“Desmond Doss had very strong convictions about his religion,” Alexander said. “He was determined to save lives rather than take lives. I can't imagine how in the Battle of Hacksaw Ridge he did what he did in those conditions. He singlehandedly saved 75, 80 wounded marines through the night of a miserable battle against the Japanese. He survived, came home and married his high school sweetheart. You have to admire someone like that.”
Alexander's father served in the Navy during World War II, a reason why he likes to name horses after people who served with honor during the war. Alexander owns an unraced 2-year-old colt named Butch O'Hare (Grazen), who is named after another World War II hero. O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named after the Navy fighter pilot.
“He was a very atypical World War II navy fighter pilot,” Alexander said. “Most of them were tall, dark and handsome and looked like movie stars. He was short, balding and pudgy. He flew into a a squadron of Japanese bombers who were headed toward the Lexington, which at time was our only operational aircraft carrier after Pearl Harbor. He was coming back from a mission where he didn't find anything and he was flying alone. He flew right into the middle of this group and took out five or six of them to the point where they turned around and went back.”
He's also a baseball fan. Growing up in Los Angeles, he has been a Dodger fan going back to their days in Brooklyn. He liked the team because he was a big admirer of Jackie Robinson. He has yet to name a horse after Robinson but does have a Pee Wee Reese (Tribal Rule), whose wins include victories in the GII Eddie D. S. and the GIII American S. and is named after one of Robinson's teammates.
“Pee Wee Reese is one of my best horses ever,” Alexander said. “He was the captain at time Jackie came up. Pee Wee was from the South originally and some of southern players on Dodgers signed a petition saying they didn't want to play with Jackie. Pee Wee was the one that changed minds and made people realize why wouldn't you want someone as good as Jackie Robinson playing for your team, no matter what color he was?”
Sometimes, Alexander will name horses after fictional characters. That list includes Isabel Ludlow (Grazen), who will start in Tuesday's third race at Los Alamitos, a Cal-bred maiden special weight race. Isabel Ludlow is the name of a character in the movie Legends of the Fall. Alexander said it's one of his favorite movies and that he was a fan of the character played by Karina Lombard.
He says he doesn't spend a lot of time researching names or doing anything out of the ordinary.
“I'm 80 years old and I've been around a long time, so I guess I know a few things,” he said. “I'm not a serious scholar, but there are things I'm interested in like World War II.”
Facing open company in a graded stakes race after running second against state-breds in the Fran's Valentine S., Rose Maddox will be in a tough spot in the Great Lady M. Alexander is hoping for the best.
“It would be awesome to win a race like that,” Alexander said. “We've had a couple of Grade II winners from our homebreds, but it's always exciting to see another one come along who has the potential. She started out modestly at Golden Gate but she can do just about anything. She's won short, long, on synthetic, on dirt, on turf. I don't know if she's good enough to run with those horses. We will find out. But she's a wonderful horse to have in the barn.”
And so well-named.
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