Call Gracious Brevity an accidental racehorse.
Her breeding was planned, carefully, for the hunt field and competitive arenas other than a racetrack.
A deep dive into the 28-year-old mare's pedigree parallels that of owner Jamie Maher's family. The bloodlines -- equine and human, harken to a different era. Her late father, attorney Ronald L. Maher Sr., grew up in the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville in what she called "a non-horsey family."
Two of 10 children, he and his older brother, Thomas F. Maher Jr., were serious in their equine interests and pursuits.
Maher's mother, Nancy Sehlhorst, grew up in the Guilford area of Baltimore until her parents purchased Harmony Hall in Monkton in the 1940s. An accomplished show rider and foxhunter, she won the Maryland Horse Show Association's D. Sterett Gittings Trophy for horsemanship in 1942.
Meanwhile, young Ron Maher was foxhunting with the Howard County-Iron Bridge Hounds.
"My mother was at the Elkridge-Harford Hunter Trials and had just broken up with someone," Jamie Maher said. "Her vet pointed my father out and said, 'There's a young man you should meet. He's very wealthy and loves horses.' He went to my father and said the same thing to him about my mother. So at the party after the hunter trials, they made a beeline for each other, fell in love, got married, found they both loved horses but neither one had any money."
They settled into life at Harmony Hall.
Thomas Maher bred and owned show hunters ridden frequently to local victories by top rider William "Linky" Smith. Among those was Honey Guide, a mare bred by Augustus Riggs IV and foaled in Maryland in 1953. She was by Grey Coat, a popular sire of hunters, out of Irette (Irish--Reno Lofty, by Cerulean). The "Reno" prefix signifies that Irette's dam was a U.S. Army cavalry remount horse. Honey Guide went to Royal Admiral, a son of Triple Crown winner War Admiral, and the foal, Admiral's Honey, was a 3-year-old in training when Thomas passed away in 1961.
"When my uncle died, Admiral's Honey was part of his estate," Jamie said. "When she came off the track and was for sale, Cappy Smith was buying up all the mares by Royal Admiral because they got such great jumpers."
Morton "Cappy" Smith was a legendary hunter/jumper rider during the 1930s, '40s and '50s with inductions to the Show Jumping Hall of Fame, National Show Hunter Hall of Fame and the Virginia Horse Show Association Hall of Fame. He passed away in 2002.
"Cappy came and looked at Admiral's Honey but said she was way too hot," said Jamie. "She never sold, so my parents got her as part of the estate. My mother started her, and she became a fabulous hunter."
Jamie rode her in the first Maryland Combined Training Association event in 1972, and took her to Pony Club. She had her first foal at 18, and was bred back a few years later, but lost that foal.
Barbara Obre, then owner of Merryland Farm in Hydes, offered the Mahers a breeding to their teaser Well Liked, an unraced son of Jaipur out of the Spy Song mare Spring Tune. The Mahers accepted, and on May 1, 1981, 23-year-old Admiral's Honey foaled a bay filly they named Widow Walk.
Bred to continue the foxhunting line, Widow Walk was shown in hand. She won the Maryland State Fair's Thoroughbred class as a yearling and was named reserve grand champion at Dressage at Devon at 3. She became Jamie's eventing mount, competing to the preliminary level.
Initial attempts at breeding Widow Walk failed, and veterinarians said she had a 50/50 chance of conceiving and an equal probability of carrying a foal. She beat the odds in 1996, delivering a Whatever For filly that April. Determined to try again, Widow Walk was sent to Spencer Young in Virginia right after. He had started several horses for the Mahers and was standing Mokhieba, a son of Damascus out of the Royal Vale mare Court Circuit. The mating worked, and 15-year-old Widow Walk was again in foal.
That Thanksgiving morning, Ron Maher Sr. suffered a fall while hunting with the Elkridge-Harford Hounds. The accident left him a quadriplegic. On May 6, 1997, Widow Walk delivered her Mokhieba foal, a coveted filly, at Young's farm in Virginia.
"When my father was dying, we had that foal and her yearling half-sister," said Jamie. "My mother asked him what we should do with them. He said, 'Let them tell you what to do.' "
Ron passed away July 31, 1997. As his widow prepared for his memorial, she explained her wishes to the minister tasked with the planning.
"So you want a service filled with gracious brevity," he said.
The answer was yes, and Widow Walk's foal had a name.
At the end of her 2-year-old year, she returned to Young in Virginia to be broken.
"He called my mother that spring and said, 'I think she might make a racehorse,' " said Jamie. "And my mother said, 'Huh?' That was never in the plan."
Gracious Brevity went to trainer Ferris Allen at Laurel Park.
"Ferris loved Brevity because she never stopped trying, but the race had to set up for her," said Jamie. "She had one run, and she loved 5 furlongs on the turf. Mom raced her from age 3 to 7."
Allen would have happily taken the mare back for an 8-year-old season, but Nancy Maher told him, "It's Jamie's turn with her now."
After 33 starts, Gracious Brevity retired with a record of 2-9-3 and earnings of $73,158.
Retraining started in spring 2005, concentrating on eventing. She gave foxhunting a go in 2006, but Gracious Brevity had no use for standing around during checks.
“[Spencer Young] called my
mother that spring and said,
‘I think she might make a racehorse.’ And my mother said, ‘Huh?’
That was never in the plan.”
– Jamie Maher about the racing career of Gracious Brevity
A talented jumper with excellent flat work, she was considered a gifted prospect by several professionals with whom Jamie worked. By that time, however, her career as an operating-room nurse in neural and spine surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital left her with little time to devote to the mare's continued training.
Jamie did make time for the inaugural Totally Thoroughbred Horse Show at Pimlico in 2012. The young daughter of a friend had recently lost her pony, and Gracious Brevity seemed like a perfect stand-in.
"We parked on the track, she got off the trailer quietly, then her head went up, she sniffed the track and her feet started moving," said Jamie. "It was all we could do to get tack on her. I ended up getting on her and finally got her settled enough for the walk class. I was on one side of her and Sara's mother was on the other. And you could see Brevity thinking 'I've gotta be good . . . I've got the kid.' She held it together but her toes started twinkling as soon as Sara got off. She wisely didn't take her in any other classes."
Jamie took over for the walk/trot and a jumper class.
"She was a total idiot with me," Jamie said. "The only time she settled was when she went in the ring for the jumper class. As soon as she saw the jumps she calmed down but came out and immediately jigged, fretted. 'Where's the jockey? Where are my blinkers?' Rodney Jenkins was the judge, and she won that jumping class. I took her home and said I would never do that to her again. She was exhausted."
Not surprisingly, Jamie contemplated breeding the mare to continue that strong female line. All had been durable, sound horses with great minds.
Gracious Brevity was 17 when Jamie and friend Carol Tanzola attended a party at Country Life Farm in 2014. The event included a raffle where guests could win a season to a farm stallion.
"I never win anything," Jamie said.
"We don't ever win anything either," Tanzola replied, "but if we do we'll give you the service because we don't own a mare."
When the ticket was drawn for a season to Friesan Fire, Tanzola's husband Jim had the winner. True to their word, they gave the breeding to Maher.
"Country Life called Brevity the 40-year-old virgin," said Jamie. "They bred her three times and she was not in foal. By then, their breeding shed was closed. In August, my vet came to give fall shots. Something about Brevity was different. I told the vet to check her again to see if she was in foal. She repeated that there was no way she was, but put a glove on and started feeling around. She got this funny look on her face and said, 'I have no idea where this foal was hiding.' "
On May 2, 2015, at Country Life Farm, 18-year-old Gracious Brevity foaled a bay filly officially bred by Jamelia Maher and Mr. and Mrs. James Tanzola. Maher named her Christmas Truce.
"When Brevity was in foal in 2014, that was the 100th anniversary of World War I," said Jamie. "I'd read an article about the Christmas Truce of 1914. It talked about 'a brief moment of grace in a horrible war,' and I thought 'Gracious Brevity . . . Friesan Fire . . . fire . . . war.' So I came up with that for her."
The filly never ran, but was shown in hand. She won a ribbon at the 2016 Maryland Horse Breeders Association yearling show.
"Christmas Truce -- we call her Pippa -- was going to be my old-age horse," Jamie said. "My plan was to retire, which I did in 2024, and then I was going to do a little dressage and some lower-level eventing, and maybe do a long-format novice level three-day with her. But that is just not going to happen."
A broken shoulder in an auto accident, followed later by back problems and a broken ankle, eventually grounded Jamie. But she still lives at Harmony Hall, honored to continue stewardship of her family's rich legacy.
Gracious Brevity and daughter Christmas Truce are there with her, happy in retirement.
