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WALT HARRIS
The Good Ones Need To Be Remembered
From the February, 1983 New Mexico Horse Breeder Magazine • by Debbie Fletcher
I was ten years old when I discovered
an issue of the Quarter Horse Journal
and horseracing. Inside, there were
marvelous articles about Bart B.S., Hard
Twist, Monita, Pelican, and Black Easter
Bunny. They were the very best running
horses alive, and all the horse magazines
that had anything to say about Quarter
Horses were full of their photos and
accounts of their race records. Being ten,
the only thing I was interested in was
the horses and I thought at the time that
surely no earthly mortal was allowed to
actually TOUCH one of them. Of course
I was wrong, because there was one man
who touched them all.
He came to New Mexico with his
parents in a covered wagon. All the way
from Hamilton County, Texas, to Hope,
New Mexico, and he came to work. His
father instilled in his children a deep sense
of responsibility and a strong desire to
succeed. Told to mind the stock as a young
boy, he knew his father meant that literally.
He was totally responsible for the stock all
the time, and in every way. If one animal
got itself lost, the boy didn’t return without
it even if it meant sleeping out in the hills
alone until the stray was located. But, stock
farming just wasn’t what he wanted to
do. Every chance he got he was either on
top of, or underneath a horse. Horses he
loved with a passion, and racing became
his life. In 1946, Marvin Ake bought
himself a gangling looking sorrel colt, and
he turned him over to a boy from Hope,
New Mexico. Mr. Ake didn’t know it at the
time, but he was placing one legend into
the hands of another. Because the longheaded
colt was Pelican, and the hands
belonged to Walt Harris. Pelican was the
first horse Walt ever ran at a pari-mutuel
racetrack, and the race they came to run in
was the New Mexico State Fair Futurity.
It would interest most of us to realize
that Quarter Horse racing was in its
formative years in 1946. The American
Quarter Horse Association vied with the
rival National Quarter Horse Association
for prospective clients. When Pelican was
a two year old, he had no registration
papers. Most Quarter Horses didn’t,
and they were being accepted into the
Associations by inspectors. Marvin Ake
told his trainer to get his colt inspected
before he ran at the Fair.
Walt Harris, 2nd from left, with Monita after winning the
Champion Handicap at Bay Meadows on May 2, 1951.
Pelican was one of those horses that
got better looking as he got older. But
when he was a yearling, he was small
and stringy. One day when Marvin
Ake had checked on him out in the
pasture, he had come across the colt
standing next to the watertrough eyeing
a balefuly a full grown pelican. The
horse and the bird both craned their
necks the same way, and that was what
Ake remembered...how much this long
headed, stringy hided horse reminded
him of a bird. And so he was officially
named, but not without a little trouble.
Both Walt Harris and Pelican were
coming to the New Mexico State
Fair prepared. They had toured the
unrecognized race meets in Texas and
New Mexico, and had already run six
times to win six races. Pelican was fast
proving himself a capable racehorse, but
he was short on good looks. When the
inspector for the A.Q.H.A. saw Pelican,
he turned him down. He wasn’t a pretty
horse, and Walt couldn’t persuade
the inspector to change his mind.
No matter...Walt paid the five dollar
entrance fee, and Pelican went to the
post for the Futurity anyway.
It was another easy victory for
Pelican, as the wide angled photo finish
showed him very much alone at the
wire. It was also an easy victory for the
National Quarter Horse Association
when Mr. Ake turned the American
branch down. All this fuss was lost on
Pelican. All he wanted to do was run,
and run he did. In his next six outs,
he tromped the opposition every trip
including the then prestigious Arizona
Derby at Rillito. Arizona was the center
of Quarter Horse racing in the forties,
and winning the Derby helped capture
the 1947 Champion Running Colt
crown for Pelican. Walt was on his way
to the top.
The real break for Walt came in the
early 1950s when Quarter Horse racing
opened up in California. Bay Meadows
ran one short horse race a day in 1949,
48 New Mexico Horse Breeder