[HOOPER] Fred Hooper Obit

[GiarsCJRJ@aol.com]

In the Denver Post today, August 7, under "Deaths Elsewhere"

Fred W. hooper
Horse owner and breeder, 102

    Fred W. Hooper, who became one of the giants of horse racing after he won 
the Kentucky Derby in 1945 with his first thoroughbread, Hoop Jr., died 
Friday in Ocala, Florida.  He was 102.
    In a half century as an owner and a breeder, Hooper bred or raced the 
winners of more than 100 stakes. In 1992 he won the Award of Merit, the 
highest honor in the thoroughbred business.  He was 95 at the time; the 
master of the 1,100 acre Circle H fram in Ocala and still a tall, somewhat 
stooped but imposing figure at the racxes, nearly 50 years after he spotted 
Hoop Jr. in the auction ring in Kentucky.
    He was born on Oct. 6, 1897, on a farm in Georgia.  He quit school in 
eighth grade, raised cotton, broke horses, even went to barber school and cut 
hair for a living.  He worked as a schoolteacher, a carpenter, a riveter, a 
prizefighter by night and a potato farmer by day.  And after a blight ruined 
his potato crop, he borrowed money to get a job building a road and became 
rich.

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