Anyone who ever knew Brereton C. Jones can stop reading now. I won't be telling you anything new. He was smart, kind and compassionate. And that is a rare trifecta. But he was so much more than that.
Nearly two decades ago, when I first started Old Friends, I made an appointment to see him at Airdrie Stud, a farm as modest and forthright as he was. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You're going to get these horses, including stallions from Japan, and you're not going to race them or breed them or sell them. What exactly are you going to do with them?”
“I'm going to put them in my yard and hope people come to visit.”
He tried his hardest to disguise his incredulity, reached into the lap drawer of his antique desk, pulled out a scraggly checkbook, and wrote a check to Old Friends for $5,000.
“Good luck,” he said, as he shook one hand, and handed me the check with the other. That, to paraphrase my favorite movie, “Casablanca,” was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Without him, Old Friends might have never existed. And it wasn't just the money. That was the least of it.
Over the years, we retired several Airdrie stallions, including You and I, Patton, and Afternoon Deelites. And, he made several trips to the farm to check on how things were going. Years later, his filly, Lovely Maria was running in the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland. I ran into him a few days before the race and he told me that if she won the race, he'd write Old Friends a check for $25,000. She did. And he did. And it wasn't because of me, it was for the horses and horse racing.
I have two wonderful, hand-written notes – one from our late veterinarian, Doug Byars, and one from Brereton C. Jones. If we ever have a fire, I'm going to grab those notes first and come back for the rest of the stuff.
It's very unlikely that anyone like Governor Jones will ever come around again. I'm just grateful he was here once, and I was fortunate enough to stumble across his path.
Michael Blowen, President and founder of Old Friends
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