Alumni Showed, Bets Placed, Fund Won
On March 28 the Dartmouth Club of Northern New Jersey held its annual spring fundraising event at the Meadowlands Racetrack. The club had reserved the Hambletonian Room, where a buffet was served and overhead television monitors gave members a chance to view each race while dining.
The evening began with an introduction to harness racing and wagering provided by the Meadowlands track statistician, arranged for by Michael O'Neil '71. We learned the differences between trotters and pacers, claiming races and stake races, and exactas and trifectas. We learned how to "box" a race (a propitious tip for the club, as it turned out). We were even given a few "hot tips."
All the hot tips in the world would not have helped some of us, but for others, a win here, a place there, even a modest show payoff was all that was needed to convince them to return to the windows. That was important for the two featured races provided by alumni patron support. For each of these races, our patrons were encouraged to place a bet for themselves and a matching bet for the club's scholarship fund. The first featured race was "The Eleazar Wheelock Classic" (dubbed as such by Jacques Harlow '50), which netted us about $80, thanks in large part to a $1 trifecta bet, boxed, which paid off at $60! A great deal of enthusiasm was generated in this first featured race. Little did we know of greater things to come.
The seventh race was featured as "The Dartmouth College Alumni Race." One of our patrons, Bill Lescoe (father of Greg coe '86), had been faithfully applying the tips and tricks gleaned from our track "expert" all evening but without much luck. Throwing the "book" out the window and resting judgment on sheer intuition, Bill badgered an exacta bet on the "six and nine horses, in a box." Number nine, "Sea Worship," was not a long shot, but number six, "Catch the Sun" was. Even for second. The payoff for the $10 bet was $1,200! Needless to say, Bill's evening was made, and so was the DCNNJ scholarship fund. Not even the presentation to Don Smith '53 of a memorial Smith Corona typewriter, circa 1943, as tribute to his communication skills, could pull our fortuitous patron back to earth.
So the evening ended with each of our patrons carrying a memento of the event, and the scholarship fund was an obvious winner.
When "Sea Worship" crossed the finish line first, with "Catch the Sun" a close second, it meant a bigwin for the Dartmouth Club of Northern New Jersey's scholarship fund - with a payoff of $1,200 atthe club's annual spring fund-raising event held this year at the Meadowlands racetrack. Pictured inthe winner's circle are, left to right, a groom, driver Herve Filion, trainer William Seaman, RickMacMillan '66, and Jessie and Spencer Johnson '36.
