2002 - Harness Tracks of America, Inc.

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA
Executive Newsletter
A daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyond
Stanley F. Bergstein, Editor
HTA ART CATALOG ONLINE
HTA’s 2002 art catalogue -- the 25th anniversary
edition -- now is online on our Web site,
www.harnesstracks.com. One hundred and twenty
works of art have been accepted for show and sale
this year, with a new category -- Treasures of the
Past -- offering 28 pre-owned paintings, including
8 by the late Philip Berkeley, one of the most popular
artists ever to participate in the HTA competition.
The catalogue will be bound into 15,000 copies
of the September issue of Hoof Beats magazine,
and the work will be displayed in the Red
Mile grandstand from Monday, September 23
through Saturday, September 28, Kentucky Futurity
Day. All 120 works of art will be sold the following
morning, Sunday, September 29, at auction
in the Tattersalls Sales Arena adjacent to the Red
Mile. Advance bidding will be accepted at the HTA
office, 4640 E. Sunrise Drive, Tucson, Arizona,
85718, by phone, fax or e-mail, and telephone bidding
will be available on sale day starting at 8:15
a.m. All net proceeds from the sale go to the HTA
College Scholarship Fund for children of participants
in the sport, or participants themselves.
TOM SHEHAN DIES AT 91
Tom Shehan, who covered racing and other major
sports in this country and abroad for 75 years, died
Friday in a nursing home in Scarborough, Maine.
He was 91, and had fought cancer through 12 surgeries
over the past decade. Shehan possessed
one of the most remarkable memories in sports,
and the mention of a name --in racing, golf, boxing,
baseball or football -- would unleash a treasure
trove of stories and anecdotes. He never
played golf, but ghost wrote Ben Hogan’s Power
Golf, and other works on Byron Nelson and
Sam Snead. Shehan had been a track manager,
state steward, presiding judge, and
publicity man par excellence.
August 12, 2002
His managerial work covered six tracks in harness,
thoroughbred and greyhound racing, and he
also served, during his long career, as executive
secretary of both Harness Horsemen International
and the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association.
Editor of that association’s Horseman’s
Journal for 15 years, he took the magazine’s circulation
from 650 to 18,000. An aggressive battler
for horsemen’s causes, he once was barred
from Hollywood Park for leading a strike for higher
purses. He was inducted into the Writers Corner
of the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in Goshen in
1987, was honored by HTA a year later, and was
profiled in Hoof Beats magazine last March. HTA
sends its deepest condolences to his widow, Peggy.
NEW PENNSYLVANIA TRACK?
A company headed by former Pocono Downs president
and HTA director Joe Lashinger Jr. says it is
committed to building a harness track along the
Delaware river in Chester, Pennsylvania, just south
of Philadelphia. Lashinger says his firm, Chester
Downs and Marina LLC, will redevelop the former
site of the Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock company
with a track, marina, restaurant and amphitheater,
and will apply to the Pennsylvania Harness
Racing Commission for a license this month.
Pending approval, Lashinger says construction
could start as early as next spring, with simulcasting
starting next fall and live racing beginning on
Memorial Day, 2004. Lashinger, 49, was vice
president and general counsel of Penn National
Gaming until his resignation a few months ago, and
was a Pennsylvania state legislator from the late
1970s until 1990. His partners are Kevin Flynn,
head of a Philadelphia construction company that
will help build the facility, and George Miller, a
New Jersey gambling authority who wrote the gambling
law curriculum at Widener University Law
School.