I worked closely with Dad from October 31, 1983 until December 31, 1989. I was his secretary, or administrative assistant as Dad wanted me to describe my position while his employee. Dad had a hard time being my boss as well as being my father at the same time. Usually he was my father but I was expected to get the work done and when Dad had to play the boss role, it wasn't fun. Perhaps it was during these six years that I came to know Dad best. The talks we would have that weren't work-oriented (anything history under the sun, we discussed it all).
Dad tried to mold me after himself as a life and health insurance agent. He wanted someone to continue the good work that he did providing a good insurance product to men and women. But I didn't have the "sales" personality. Dad wasn't either, but he worked at sales for years and was best as an agent selling life and health insurance products and in the later years investment products for retirement savings and trusts for people to avoid probate costs.
I'm not sorry for decision in my life that took me from being Dad's secretary and into library school. When Dad told me, "I can't support you, Sarah, all your life!" It was time for me at 28 to find something else to do. Dad didn't support me, I was his secretary and did the clerical things necessary to allow him to do more sales. I "put out the fires," as Dad called office work so that he could be out with his clients.
I just finished a book called "Wild Ride" about the collapse of the Calumet Racing Stables in Kentucky in the 1990s after the death of the Farm's famous racehorse and stud, Alydar. I used to think that the owners of the farm had done in Alydar for the insurance money, but as the book explains, somehow Alydar smashed his leg kicking the door to his stall in the barn and when it was surgically repaired, he reinjured the leg and had to be euthanized. The way they bury famous thoroughbred horses like Alydar and the others, Affirmed, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, is not too kindly to these famous animals who made millions of dollars to their owners. I'll let this thought finish into nothingness.
Getting back to Calumet Farms, it was started by the Wright family from Chicago in the 1920s who patented the Calumet Baking Soda or Powder company. When Dad was a young boy he loved horse racing and told my sisterrs and I about the famous Kentucky Derby winner, Whirlaway, in 1941 (I think) and how Whirlaway was from Calumet Farms and Dad said that when Whirlaway ran down the track, his long tail would stream out behind him, like a flag.
