While Mid-Shore resident Lehr Jackson has made himself a remarkable career in urban development, particularly with his unique partnership with urban planner James Rouse in the 1970s and 1980s, those who know him best realize that his greatest gift might be that of storyteller.
From chronicling his Vietnam years, to his pioneering work with Rouse on Faneuil Hall in Boston, or, most recently, his push to tell the tale of Stymie, a remarkable race horse of the 1940s, Lehr seems to have an uncanny ability to sniff out some really remarkable American stories.
In this case, it is the remarkable journey of a racehorse that was all but given up on in the early 1940s. Stymie, groomed for success on King Ranch in Texas, failed to show promise after his first two years of racing and was purchased by the now legendary Maryland horse trainer Hirsch Jacobs, for $1,500 and by the time he retired from the horse track at the end of the 19540s, his career winnings came close to $1 million, an unprecedented amount of money for the time.
In Lehr’s third interview with the Spy, he talks about Jacobs, Stymie, and the amazingly counter-intuitive way in which this amazing Maryland horse was trained to finish 131 lifetime starts with Stymie winning in 35 races, placed in 33, and showed in 28.
This video is approximately five minutes in length
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