My Cousin Trudy, Her Stallion Karonek, and the First Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show (with a cameo by Zayne, John Wayne’s Arabian)

 Tobi Lopez Taylor

 This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on Penny Chenery and Secretariat, Hank the Cowdog, Man O’ War’s son By Hisself, Major-General Jonathan Burton, and Doc Pardee. 

        Almost anyone in North America who’s involved in showing Arabian horses knows about Arizona’s Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show, which was founded in 1955 with financial support from  Fowler and Anne McCormick; Philip and Helen Wrigley; and Ed and Ruth Tweed. (I’ve written about all three couples here, here, and here.)

Ed Tweed’s champion Skorage at the Arizona Biltmore arena

        In 1955, there were only 14 shows in the entire U.S. that were strictly for Arabians, and the modern U.S. and Canadian National Championship shows hadn’t been invented yet. In addition, the Scottsdale Show wasn’t yet known as the Scottsdale Show, in part because it wasn’t initially held in Scottsdale. Rather, that first show was a two-day affair held in Phoenix, in the arena of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, which was then owned by the Wrigley family. (In contrast, today’s Scottsdale Show is an 11-day event that takes place at the city’s WestWorld facility. It offers hundreds of classes, in a variety of disciplines, and draws Arabians and Half-Arabians from across the U.S. as well as several foreign countries. It also adds upward of $50 million to the local economy during those 11 days.)

        Back in February 1955, a total of 135 Arabians competed at the first not-quite-Scottsdale Show. In addition to the Arizona entries, horses also arrived from California, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The list of owners was a “Who’s Who” of that era’s Arabian fanciers, including John M. Rogers, E. E. Hurlbutt, Frank and Helen McCoy, Harvey Ellis, Owen McEwen, Carol Chapman, and Gerald Donoghue. (Of all the competitors, the latter’s horses may have traveled the farthest to Phoenix, making a 2,000-mile round-trip journey from Goliad, Texas.)

        Even though the show was relatively small, with only 27 classes, it attracted some high-profile Arabians, including Ibn Hanrah (a future Canadian National Champion Stallion), the future U.S. Top Ten Stallions Natez and Habu, and the future U.S. and Canadian Top Ten Mare Rose Rahnafin. The show’s first champion stallion, Tisaan, is remembered as the sire of Hillcrests Tishamba, winner of three National titles, while the first champion mare, *Serafire, later produced two U.S. Top Ten Mares.

        The focus of this essay, however, is on  the winner of the 1955 Scottsdale Show’s Western Stake class: the well-bred champion stallion Karonek, owned by Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Trimmell of Westminster, California. Mrs. Trimmell—the former Gertrude “Trudy” Eldridge—was born in Arizona in 1914. Trudy’s mother (Nettie Lee Norwood) and my grandmother were first cousins. My grandmother’s extended family hailed from Arkansas, and a number of her Norwood relations made their way to Arizona in the early 1900s.

        One of those Norwood relatives—Trudy’s uncle, James “Jasper” Norwood (1883–1972)—sent my grandmother a photo postcard in 1920 showing Jasper himself driving a “skidder” in northern Arizona. Jasper was a cowboy and muleskinner, and he eventually retired to the Arizona Pioneers’ Home, in Prescott, in 1961. Jasper’s decade-long tenure at the home closely overlapped that of Eugene “Pecos” Higgins (1883–1971), who arrived in 1962. Higgins—a cowboy, performer with the Miller 101 Ranch Show, and celebrated cowboy poet—is best known for composing the poems “Barney” and “Looking For Work.” How well Jasper and Pecos were acquainted is unknown, but during the decade they lived in the Pioneers’ Home, they surely would have had a lot in common to talk about.

        As for Cousin Trudy, I met her only once, but she made quite an impression on me. In the summer of 1976 or thereabouts, this well-dressed woman visited my grandmother at her house on Moreland Street in Phoenix for the first and only time, and I—age 11 or so—happened to be there. When Trudy arrived, I was sitting on what my grandmother called the “settee,” reading a horse book. Trudy noticed that and said, “My husband and I used to have horses—Arabian horses.” I was so excited! An actual family member had owned Arabians! I recall telling her they were my favorite breed and informing her that only two years earlier I’d attended my very first Scottsdale Show at McCormick Ranch (for more about that, go here).

        Trudy then mentioned that she and her husband, Dick, not only owned Arabians but bred and showed them as well. When I pressed her for more details, Trudy replied, “That was a long time ago!”  Then, deciding she’d humored me long enough,  she went back to talking to my grandmother, and they sat down at the yellow formica kitchen table to discuss Norwood family history, the reason for Trudy’s visit.

KARONEK

            What Trudy hadn’t told me during our single, brief conversation was that she and her husband had owned and showed the well-regarded champion stallion Karonek. More than 40 years after Trudy and I met, I happened to notice this 1953 advertisement, with their names as his owners:  

 

        Karonek, born in 1947, was bred by Dr. and Mrs. Claude Steen of Fullerton, California. His sire, *Raseyn, had been imported in 1926 to Pomona, California, by Carl Raswan for cereal magnate W. K. Kellogg. Then a three-year-old, *Raseyn was among the first offspring of the famous Skowronek to arrive in the U.S. from England’s Crabbet Stud, established by Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt. Kellogg liked to have his Arabians in the public eye, so *Raseyn appeared in parades, participated in the ranch’s Sunday Shows, was sculpted by Annetta Johnson Saint Gaudens, had his picture taken with various movie starlets,  and appeared in motion pictures, including The Scarlet Empress.

        *Raseyn proved to be a notable breeding stallion. His daughter Angyl was an early U.S. National Top Ten Mare. The first U.S. National Champion Stallion and Mare, Mujahid and Surita, were grandget of his. Marian Carpenter included *Raseyn in her book Arabian Legends, which devoted a chapter apiece to 24 of the best-known horses the breed has produced. Also honored in her book were six of *Raseyn’s descendants: Bay-Abi, Bay El Bey, Ferzon, Khemosabi, Skorage, and Xenophonn.

        In 1948, the year after Karonek’s birth, it was determined that *Raseyn (now 25) was sterile. During World War II, the Kellogg Ranch had been donated to the U.S. Army and was designated an Army Remount Station. Army protocol demanded that any “non-functioning” horse, like the elderly *Raseyn, be destroyed. Somehow, Arabian breeder Alice Payne, of Whittier, California, got word of *Raseyn’s impending death. According to breed historian Andrew Steen, Payne asked the man who ran the local grocery store if his son—a newly elected U.S. Congressman named Richard Nixon—could help her. Steen noted that Nixon “pulled some strings,” and *Raseyn went on to live out his days at Payne’s Asil Arabians. (See here for more on Richard Nixon and Arabian horses.) Interestingly, this episode took place around the same time that Nixon, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, was trying to expose Alger Hiss, a career State Department employee, as a Communist. (I highly recommend John Berresford’s podcast on Hiss.) Within a few years, Hiss went to  jail and Nixon became Eisenhower’s Vice President. Later, Nixon’s daughters Julie and Tricia learned to ride on a descendant of *Raseyn named Gali-Ferra, a gift to President Eisenhower from breeder Daniel Gainey (for more on Gainey, see here and here).

        Karonek’s dam, Kasila, was bred by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. She was predominantly of Davenport breeding—i.e., horses brought from Syria in 1906 by political cartoonist Homer Davenport, who at one time worked for Hearst. (See here for more on Davenport and Hearst.) One of Kasila’s ancestors, the stallion *Muson, is famous today for having been ridden by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody at Madison Square Garden. Interestingly, Kasila’s dam, Alilatt, foaled in 1927, has an Arizona connection: both her sire, Saraband (Harara x Sedjur), and her grandsire, El Jafil (*Ibn Mahruss x Sheba), were purchased by General Levi Manning, onetime mayor of Tucson, for his breeding program at Canoa Ranch. Manning was the first Arizonan to breed purebred Arabians, and he was guided in his purchases by self-proclaimed horse expert Hamilton Bassett, whose wife, Betty Bassett, was Alilatt’s breeder. (See here for more on the Bassetts.)

        Although Kasila produced 10 foals, Karonek was far and away her most high-profile offspring. He won “lots of blue ribbons and BIG trophies,” according to Cousin Trudy’s son, David Trimmell, who was a young child during the period that his folks were breeding and showing Arabians. The earliest documentation I’ve found for Karonek in the Trimmells’ ownership is May 1952, when he won the stallion championship at an Arabian horse show in Westminster, California. (I wasn’t able to ask Trudy and Dick my questions, as both are long deceased.)

THE TRIMMELL BROTHERS

It’s possible that Trudy and Dick became involved with the breed because Dick’s brother and sister-in-law, J. D. and Chrystie Trimmell, who also lived in California, had purchased Arabians in the late 1940s and became involved in showing them. By 1953, J. D. was the vice president of the Arabian Horse Association of Northern California. The Trimmell brothers were originally from Kansas and were distantly related to other horse-owning Trimmells, including some who bred Arabians.

The earliest Arabian I’ve traced to J. D.’s ownership is the 1937 gelding El Farkad (Ribal x Fasal), bred in Arizona by Robert T. Wilson. J. D. purchased the horse sometime after 1944 and sold him in 1949. Owning El Farkad may have been the impetus for J. D. and Chrystie to begin breeding their own Arabs in the late 1940s at their JDT Ranch, located first in Porterville and then in Lafayette, California.

        

        JDT Ranch purchased the mares Othmadeyna (Ferdeyn x Othmanee), Ferviseynna (Ferseyn x Vivienna), and Claraea (Sahiby x Sanada) to use as breeding stock. The first two mares were closely related—their sires were of the *Raseyn male line and their dams were both by Joon (*Azra x Dahura), a stallion of primarily Davenport bloodlines. The very successful *Raseyn-Joon cross appears in the pedigrees of notable horses such as Courier (sire of four National winners); Latsemah (dam of three National winners for Ed Tweed’s Brusally Ranch, each by a different sire); and Aza Destiny (Canadian Reserve National Champion Stallion, U.S. Top Ten Stallion, and Scottsdale Champion Stallion).

        Othmadeyna produced five foals for JDT Ranch (photo courtesy of Dolores Adkins). Her son Redraff turned out to be a useful sire for Ralph Smith in Montana; a granddaughter of Redraff, named Murzadaii, was 1969 U.S. Top Ten in Western Pleasure. Another son, Othmadareb, sired only three foals. One of Othmadareb’s foals, Nevada Traveler, was out of John Rogers’s notable desertbred mare *Thorayyah; she also produced Ankthor, a record-setting Tevis Cup winner who was shown at halter by Dick Trimmell. Othmadeyna was sold in 1953 to Mrs. and Mrs. A. D. Lindsay of Walnut Creek, California.

       Othmadeyna’s grandson Nevada Traveler was initially quite unprepossessing. According to a March 1959 Western Horseman article, he was purchased from his breeder (Rogers) by a young girl but “soon showed why he had been sold. He bit everybody that came to see him, broke down stall doors, chewed up lead ropes, and got into the grain bin.” He was nicknamed “Stinky” because of his poor attitude. Finally, his trainer “decided to make a cow pony out of him—since that seemed to fit his aggressive temperament.” He started to win cutting classes and capped off his career by competing in the 1958 Nevada State Championship Horse Show, where he “won open hackamore, Western pleasure, champion Arabian hackamore horse for 1958, champion Arabian Western pleasure horse, champion Arabian gelding, and came within one point of being reserve champion open hackamore horse.”

Ferviseynna had three foals for JDT Ranch. She was closely related to Karonek; they shared the same sireline and damline. (Perhaps J. D. instigated his brother’s purchase of Karonek, since those bloodlines had worked so well for him.) Ferviseynna’s son Faroseyn was sold to Dick and Trudy, and Dick showed him. Ferviseynna’s daughter Maarseynna had a number of foals by Karonek, including the champion mare Karoneynna, who was purchased from Dick and Trudy by Robert Aste of Desert Arabian Ranch. (Aste was famous for being the first Scottsdale breeder to import horses from Poland and the last owner of the famous Polish stallion *Lotnik.) Several years later, in the ownership of Harold and Elizabeth West, Maarseynna produced Greenacres Galaxy, a Canadian Top Ten English Pleasure winner. The Wests also bred the multiple National winner Green Acres Gideon, whose granddam, Karonamaara, was a daughter of Karonek out of Maarseynna.

Claraea produced three foals for J. D. and Chrystie but wasn’t as notable a producer as their other mares. It’s possible that she died after her last foal, in 1949, as no mention is made of her having been sold.

Claraea and filly Clareeta (by Barka), 1949. Courtesy of Dolores Adkins.

Her daughter Clarasina was sold in 1952, and Clareeta was not in the JDT Ranch’s ownership as of 1955. Her gelded son Adahm, sold to E. S. “Sarge” Beggs in 1950, did make the Pomona Progress newspaper in in March 1951:

Both Trimmell brothers were employed by Bechtel Engineering, and in late 1955, J. D. learned that he and his family were being transferred to Saudi Arabia and thus would need to sell their remaining Arabians, which included the stallions Othmadareb and Ibn Daraff, and the mare Costana, a granddaughter of Claraea. Although J. D. and Chrystie eventually returned to California, they didn’t resume their Arabian horse activities.

 

While one couple’s Arabian activities were winding down, the other’s involvement with the breed was ramping up. Dick and Trudy got involved with the Long Beach Mounted Guard, the Tri-Cities Wranglers, and the Southern California Arabian Horse Association. They also opened the Circle T Western Shop, in Garden Grove. Their son David, dressed as a cowboy, appeared in ads for the store.

JOHN DEREK AND JOHN WAYNE

    Around 1952, Dick began to show Karonek, who won a number of halter championships. Karonek also racked up wins in Western and costume classes. Dick showed Karonek to a win in a pairs class, partnered with the up-and-coming film actor John Derek (who, if he known at all today, is remembered as the Svengali-esque husband of Linda Evans and Bo Derek). In the pairs class, Derek rode his own Arabian horse, Fa-Karr (Ankar x Fadahma), bred by Leland Mekeel. Derek also insisted on riding Fa-Karr in the feature film The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954), which can be see in its entirety on Youtube (see here).

John Derek and Fa-Karr in The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954)

        Dick and Trudy additionally purchased the purebred Arabian gelding Faroseyn (bred by JDT Ranch) and the mare Feranta (Ferseyn x Joonanta) as well as two Half-Arabian mares, Alla’s Gypsy (by Alla Amarward) and Shamrah (by Shameyn). Feranta, like some of J. D.’s broodmares, was by a son of *Raseyn and out of a mare by Joon. She produced at least two foals for Dick and Trudy: a filly by Mraff and a filly by Risab. Feranta then had two foals by Karonek; Donald L. Jones is credited as their breeder, but it may be that the older of the two foals was bred by the Trimmells and sold with Feranta to Jones. 

        David Trimmell recalled that “my dad had a small stable in back of the property [in Westminster] where he trained his horses. Karonek was his pride and joy....No one got to ride Karonek except my dad. I remember asking him innocently once how much he would sell him for. His answer as I recall was that he wouldn’t take $100,000 even if someone offered.” In 1954, Karonek sired his first foal, the previously mentioned champion mare Karoneynna, who was of all-Trimmell breeding. Karonek would sire 17 foals while he was owned by Dick and Trudy, several of them out of mares bred by Dick’s brother. 

        David Trimmell also told me that his family relocated in 1958 from Westminster to La Puente, California, where his father managed a Thoroughbred ranch reportedly owned by actor John Wayne. John Derek also boarded Fa-Karr at the facility. Interestingly, the mare Feranta, who at one time was owned by Dick and Trudy, produced a colt by Mraff in 1956 named Zayne. He was a full brother to the Trimmells’ mare Na Em. Zayne was purchased by John Wayne and, in 1961,  Zayne won the Western Pleasure Championship Stake at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show—the same title that Karonek had won in 1955!

 

THE KLINE YEARS

        Sometime around 1963, Karonek came into the ownership of well-known Arabian breeder Jim Kline, who was just starting out with the breed. When asked about his father’s sale of the stallion, David Trimmell replied, “He never spoke of it.” 

        Kline got involved with Arabians initially because of his daughter Linda’s interest in horses. Laura Jacobson writes, “As Linda matured and her interest in the horses waned, Jim’s was just getting fired up! He purchased several domestic-bred horses as his own love of the horse transformed into a passion.” Later, Kline would discover and begin breeding Egyptian-bred Arabians, for which he is best remembered. However, the first stallion he acquired was Karonek. It had been a while time since this son of *Raseyn had entered the show ring, but Karonek was soon back to his winning ways, garnering a halter championship in 1963—at age 16.

In total, Karonek sired 47 foals. These include the stallion Baronek, bred by Linda Kline, who was 1975 U.S. Top Ten English Pleasure Amateur Owner To Ride; Legion of Merit winner El Prado++, who was Region 9 Top Five Gelding, with championships in Western pleasure and halter; Western pleasure champion Nikara; halter champion Karoneynna; halter reserve champion Binkarona; English pleasure reserve champion Zikar; and winning jumper Belonek.

Karonek appears in the pedigrees of more-recent performers in a variety of disciplines, including: Star Sir Galahad, U.S. Reserve National Champion in Prix St. Georges dressage, in addition to four other National titles in dressage; Greenacres Gideon+++/, U.S. Reserve National Champion Gelding with Regional wins in English Pleasure, Pleasure Driving, and Informal Combination; Shamsilah, Canadian Reserve National Champion and U.S. Top Ten Gelding; and Star Sir Marhalt, U.S. Top Ten Second Level Dressage and U.S. Top Ten First Level Dressage at the Youth Nationals.

The last word about Karonek goes to Paul Husband, a member of the Khemosabi family and perhaps the only living person to have sat on Karonek. On Facebook, Paul recalled that the stallion “was an excellent saddle horse….I rode Karonek one time. Margie Coen (now Marge Henderson) wanted to take a trail ride with Belinda (Mr. Kline’s mare who Margie rode to U.S. Top Ten Western Pleasure in 1969) and I accompanied them….Karonek also sired some really nice fillies, like Binkarona, Bint Binhara, and couple of real good offspring for Dr. Harold West, owner of Green Acres Ranch—Dr. West had the show mare Karonamaara, shown by Liz West, who was by Karonek, and a Karonek son, the excellent stallion, Green Acres Star.”