That Hudson Column
by Ben Hudson, Track Magazine Owner/Publisher

On the very hot last Sunday in June, gathered outside his beautiful home on a Parker County, Texas, bluff high over a bend in the Brazos River, several hundred people bade Texas horseman Preston Carter goodbye.

Truthfully, I can’t remember when I met Preston Carter or what the situation was. I know it was some 30 years ago, and I feel sure that it was either at the now long-gone Phillips Ranch or some event involving B.F. Phillips, Jr., or Dr. Jerry Rheudasil, the Phillips Ranch veterinarian.

For years, you could not be with Jerry or B.F. or Preston very long without one of the others showing up. Or maybe Dr. Charlie Graham would be there.

I remember an early 1980s dove hunt down at Gary Pogue’s place in Kenedy County that was cooked up by Gary and Dr. Graham. They were there, along with Jerry and B.F. and Preston and a brother-in-law, and then there was my partner Jerry McAdams, Sleepy Gilbreath, Chuck Arnold, and no telling who else. Seems like about 15 of us. Preston was the leader and putting on a shooting clinic. It was a lot of fun. I remember Dr. Graham did not even own a shotgun. Before our next hunt, McAdams and I went to K-Mart…this was before WalMart took over Texas…and bought Doc a gun and shipped it down to Southwest Stallion Station. On the next hunt, Doc still had that borrowed shotgun. He would not use the new one (a $200 Remington 12-gauge automatic) because it was too nice to take out in the mesquite. I didn’t think Preston would ever get over that. He was still laughing about it earlier this year.

The story concerning Preston getting involved in race horses was that he showed up on a Harley at the Phillips Ranch one day…his long hair blowing in the breeze…and wanted to buy some race horses. He was a Dallas real estate “typhoon” who wanted to spend some money…and money was flowing pretty easily in those days…and Preston had a new ranch under construction not too far from Phillips Ranch. He wanted to put some speed in those polo ponies.

The next thing I knew, Preston had paid three-quarters of a million dollars—or something like that—for one-quarter interest in a two-year-old named On A High. This was in the spring of 1983 and on Labor Day, Jerry and B.F. and Preston were all jumping up and down in the winner’s circle after their On A High won the All American Futurity. Though I was there for TRACK and trying to remain as objective as I could, I jumped up and down a bit, too. My friends John and Sue May had run a close second with their Mr Suspenders.

Two mornings after the All American win, Jerry and Preston and I flew Southwest Airlines to Houston to attend the Texas Thoroughbred Yearling Sale at those old polo grounds just inside the loop on the northwest side of town.

It was hot and humid only like Houston can be hot and humid, and before the sale started it dumped nine inches of rain on flat, flat, flat Houston, a town which in 1983 seemed to have no storm sewers anywhere.

The Bayou City was flooded and the polo grounds were flooded. With Texans trying to pass legislation to get wagering on horses in the Lone Star State, every major politician in the state was at the sale. And along with the likes of Will Farish, we all got soaked.

Preston, Jerry and I had taken a cab over to the sale from Hobby Airport and when it came time to leave just before dark, Houston traffic was clogged even more than usual by the flooding. There was no way a taxi could get to the polo field and even if it could, the roads in to where we were had all flooded. Finally Dr. Graham said he’d get us to back to Hobby in his single cab Chevrolet truck. I jumped on the toolbox in the back and Jerry and Preston got in the front with Doc. Even though the rain had quit and dark was rapidly coming on, it was still hotter than 18 kinds of…well, you know.

As Doc was driving out of the polo grounds through water halfway up on the hubs of that Aggie-maroon pickup, two rain-soaked women were exiting the sale and carrying their shoes in their hands as they walked through water well over our ankles. The next thing I knew Preston and Jerry were on the toolbox with me as the damsels joined Charlie in the pickup cab. In the traffic and the standing water, it must have taken us an hour to go one-half mile. We finally made it over the Interstate access road just a half-block from the hotel where the women were staying. In the bumper-to-bumper traffic that is so Houston, it seems like we had been sitting at the same traffic signal for an hour…three bums sitting on a toolbox in the back of a pickup, soaked, with straw hats that looked like they had been through momma’s wringer-type washing machine. About this time two really good-looking young girls drove alongside us in a new SL Mercedes with the top down. Today I would never glance at women like these, but back before I met Christine those were the type of women that I would have looked at. Or maybe even talked to. In an attempt to become better acquainted with our new friends in the pretty little car, I used this line as an icebreaker: “Hey girls, these two guys that I’m sitting on this toolbox with made a million dollars two days ago in a horse race in New Mexico!”

The blond behind the wheel replied, “And we’re the first two female astronauts and we just got back from the moon about an hour ago, buster.” As Preston would say, “They seem to be underwhelmed with us.”

Preston and I enjoyed many a round of golf together over the years. He could really hit it…and although Ben Hogan once gave me a lesson, I still just kinda flogged the ball.

One day at Preston Trail in Dallas, Preston said to me, “Have you ever met Mickey Mantle?” And I said, “No.” And then he said, “Have you ever seen Mickey Mantle naked?” And I said, “No.” And at that point Mantle walked out of the shower and sat down and talked to us…all of us wrapped in towels…for about an hour.

Preston was fun no matter what you were doing. Some of my favorite times with him were at John and Sue May’s Glass Mountain Ranch hunting deer and quail and turkey and playing dominoes and poker with McAdams and his dad Gene, Bob Standish, Bob Blakeman, Mike Carter, Dick Galley, Sunny Edwards and a bunch of other guys including John and Doug. Those remain some of my all-time favorite days.

Coming off the success of On A High, Preston was really hooked on this racing deal. Working with Jerry and B.F. and Charlie, Preston soon became President and Chairman of the Texas Horseracing Association. The leadership of that group included many influential horsemen of that period. They worked long and hard and spent lots of money, and finally in 1987 the legislation was passed with Preston leading the way.

I made many a trip to Austin with Preston and got a full dose of the town and the politicians. Preston made alliances with politicians and lobbyists that endured for some 30 years. During the 2009 legislative session, I once again jumped in the truck with Preston and went to Austin as he worked to try to get gaming at Texas tracks expanded. We saw many of those same guys that we had visited more than 20 years earlier. We would still go by the original Hoffbrau and get one of those buttered up ribeyes with the handcut French fries and that distinctive salad with olives. Preston had been eating those since his 1960s days as a University of Texas student. Preston could not put Hoffbrau or his desire to unite Texas horsemen behind him.

Shortly after On A High won the All American in 1983, Preston and Bobby Boston bought the young stakes winning Chick’s Deck mare Chickarun from Lowell Neumayer and Don Brooks. The mare’s second foal was Champion Sixy Chick, who won $751,000 for R.D. Hubbard.

Preston and Bobby raced Chickarun’s next foal, the 1983 colt Sixarun, who ended up making $291,000 while winning three stakes and placing in the Rainbow Futurity and finishing fourth in the Kansas and All American Futurities.

On A High and Sixarun both proved to be useful stallions. On A High sired the winners of $10 million and his daughters have produced the earners of more than $16 million including two-time World Champion Tailor Fit $1.2 million. Sixarun sired the earners of $8.2 million and his daughters have produced earners of $10 million including World Champion and No. 3 all-time leading money earner Blues Girl Too $2 million.

Preston was world class in polo, keeping a big string of horses in Florida for years and playing all over the world. He played with Hollywood personalities such as Tommy Lee Jones (a boyhood friend) and Sam Shepherd, and restaurant king Norman Brinker and Prince Philip of Monaco. He brought some of them to Phillips Ranch to play polo and to serve as jockeys in a fund-raising event many, many years ago.

At Preston’s memorial service, Shepherd told us that Preston had introduced him to polo years ago in Santa Fe, where they both had homes. “The first time we played, we used brooms for mallets,” Shepherd chuckled.

A major real estate developer for years in North Texas, Preston reclaimed the west side of downtown Dallas in what became the highly successful West End Entertainment District. He built country clubs and shopping centers. And like so many others, he got swallowed up in all those bank failures of the late 1980s. Preston was bruised by all that, but he kept on fighting, still doing real estate deals and still working for Texas horsemen.

Preston and his long-time Dallas friend Jim Musselman went to work to assemble a group of Texas horsemen to build a track in North Texas. Joining him in that effort were such Texas figures as Clarence and Dorothy Schaubauer; Pam Phillips; Myrna Rheudasil; Bob and Sandy Erwin; Bobby Cox; Mike Carter; Bob Blakeman; Joe B. Turner, Jr.; Teddy Jones; and even those guys from TRACK Magazine.

In October 1992, the Carter/Musselman group known as Lone Star Jockey Club was awarded the license to build a major track in North Texas.

In May 1993, Mike Carter (who ran the Estate of B.F. Phillips) and Preston and I decided we should go to the Preakness because the guys who owned Pimlico (Maryland Jockey Club) were our partners in Lone Star, and it sounded like a lot of fun. We were given carte blanche by our Maryland partners and were welcomed by our friend D. Wayne Lukas.

There are a bunch of great stories revolving around that trip: Like when our taxi driver whipped the cab over to the curb in a very bad neighborhood only to say as he got out of the cab to buy a lotto ticket, “If you need it, there’s a .45 under the front seat.” Preston replied, “Hand it to me right now.”

With lawyers bringing up all kinds of issues and financing on $100 million projects unattainable, Preston and Musselman sold their interest in the track shortly after construction on Lone Star started. The TRACK Magazine guys exited with them.

Preston moved out of Dallas and bought a 1,200 acre place in Paluxy, a little community about an hour southwest of Fort Worth. At Ruidoso one summer a year or so later, we ran into National Cutting Horse legend Jim Reno, the sculptor and long-time friend of the late B.F. Phillips.

Jim tried to get Preston and I both to take up cutting. Preston bit on it. I continued to be a magazine man. Jim sent Preston to trainer Chubby Turner and the guy who rose to be NCHA president last year was among those who eulogized Preston at the memorial service, saying, “He gave me a leg up in this business and gave me good, solid advice. He was extremely honest and cared. As good a guy as I ever met.”

After Chubby and Preston hooked up, Preston built a cutting horse training center on the ranch and Chubby and his wife Ginger moved there. He was across the road from his lifelong friend Jim Berry Always the realtor, Preston had a chance to sell the ranch and did so. Shortly after that he purchased the big acreage south of Weatherford where he lived for the last 12 years. Chubby and Ginger followed.

Anchored by a 70,000 square foot indoor arena, Preston and two partners developed the 4,000 acres now called “Silverado on the Brazos” into what has to be one of the most successful equestrian communities in the nation. Preston loved competing and living in the midst of all those cutters.

In a little Mexico village nearly 10 years ago, Preston met a woman from Dallas who could hardly spell horse. He was quite taken by her. Before anyone knew it, Preston and Amy were an item. She soon was riding cutting horses every day and loved it perhaps as much as she loved Preston.

In February 2009, Christine and I had the pleasure of giving Preston and Amy a pre-wedding brunch (complete with a white tablecloth and whatever kind of wine we could find in the house on 30 minutes notice) at our nearby Hannibal Store (you need to see this place). They were married later that day at Carter Ranch.

On a hot July day five years ago, Preston, Johnny Trotter and I found ourselves in a JetRanger helicopter overlooking the 535,000 acre Waggoner Ranch in North Central Texas. A judge had ordered the sale of the ranch to settle a long-running dispute among its owners. Preston had assembled a team. Trotter was going to run the cattle, I would be in charge of the horses (the program that some 60 years earlier had produced Poco Bueno), and Preston was going to run the overall operation. We meet with the trustee. Had an oil man with us. Ate in the cook shack with the cowboys. Looked over the livestock and the equipment and the facilities.

A few days later, Preston made an offer of what I think was $250 million…including the $50 or $100 that I was going to be able to put into the deal along with my horse expertise. The Waggoner trustee rejected the offer about as quickly as Sixarun ran 400 yards (:19.64) when he set a track record at Ruidoso. To date, the place still has not sold.

Last spring, with Magna Entertainment (owners of Lone Star, Gulfstream, Santa Anita, etc., and recent owners of Remington) awash in a sea of red ink, Preston decided it was time we made a run at buying Lone Star through Magna’s bankruptcy proceedings. Preston assembled a team that included prominent bankruptcy attorney and cutter Lew Stephens, Mike Carter, Preston’s brother-in-law Bob Crenshaw and myself. We met with Lone Star leadership and a still wet-behind-the-ears kid from the financial guru firm of Miller Buckfire of New York. I liked our team. Mike and Crenshaw understood the money. Lew Stephens had been a classmate of some guys named Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham when they were at Yale. I still can’t figure out why they had me in the group. It certainly was not for my money.

When it was all over, the same Indians who bought Remington ended up with Lone Star…our bid falling some $40 million short. Little did we know it at the time, but Preston’s body was full of cancer and God was just taking care of us all.

A few years ago, Preston and I bought a membership in the Ruidoso Jockey Club. Several times each year we would watch the races from the best seats in the house…those seats right on the finish line where Jay and Betty Pumphrey used to sit.

Last July, Preston and Amy and Christine and I were at Ruidoso for the Rainbow trials. Several times during the weekend, Preston mentioned he had an upset stomach. He left dinner early one evening to go to bed. A few days later he told me that the doctors had discovered he had cancer in four locations.

Until Preston got sick, I had never really been very close to a person who was undergoing cancer treatments. I knew all the horror stories, but I just had never been very close to the deal. I vividly remember when Preston, the guy who never had a bad day, told us he had cancer. “Hey, I always knew I was going to die. I just didn’t know when. Now we’ve got a target date,” he told us.

After Preston began his treatments, he lost what little hair he had, but he never lost that smile, that positive attitude or that twinkle in those blue eyes.

He went to the AQHA convention to see his friend Charlie Graham’s induction in the Hall of Fame. He continued to ride his cutting horses and breed his cutting horse mares. And we continued to play golf.

In the first week of May this year, Preston joined me for a round of golf at our little country course located about halfway between Morgan Mill and Silverado. We played 18…this time without Mantle…and Preston was still hitting the ball 250-plus right down the middle.

Three weeks later on Memorial Day weekend, while watching son James Alan (Rhett) in a cutting near Houston, Preston got sick. Thirty days after that we were holding his memorial service.

Preston is survived by Amy, his children James Alan, Natalie and Keelie, plus his sister Catherine and sister Cissy and her husband Roger Alsabrook. He also is survived by his 2008 national champion cow dog Oreo; Oreo’s younger brother P C; plus several other dogs, horses and farm animals. The number of people who honored this first honorary lifetime vice president of the Texas Quarter Horse Association and member of the Texas Horseracing Hall of Fame by attending his memorial is a pretty good indicator of what people thought about our friend Preston.

Over the years, Preston and I developed a wonderful friendship. Since we moved to the country a dozen or so years ago, Preston and I would have a phone conversation nearly every morning. No particular reason, just checking in. I will miss those talks. And I am sure that about 8 o’clock every morning I will think of Preston…forever.

If you are still reading at this point, I didn’t think this column would get this long. In the nearly 50 years that I have been writing, I am pretty sure that I have never written anything this long.

But then I never knew a better guy…or a better daddy…than my friend Preston Carter.

At Trinity Meadows in 1985.

At Lone Star Park in 1992.

At Ruidoso Downs in 2009.

P.O. Box 222, Morgan Mill, Texas 76465
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Ben Hudson Owner/Publisher
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