Trenton, NJ — Donald Wiest rises at 5:30 a.m. every morning, feeds his mares and babies, enjoys breakfast, goes to the fairgrounds to train his two racehorses and returns home around 11:30 a.m. From there he watches races on TV to avoid the heat, and retires to bed after the 11 p.m. news. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider this. On Tuesday, Wiest turns 94.
Donald has lived through 16 presidents, starting with Herbert Hoover. He has seen changes in culture and in harness racing as a trainer and driver, and he is still going strong as a trainer. His horse, Tuis Angel, recently won the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes consolation for 3-year-old filly trotters at Mohegan Pennsylvania’s Pocono Downs. His son David and his grandson Justin also drive and train.
Born in Gratz, Pa., Wiest now resides in Lykens. He has had a winner at Pocono Downs nearly every year since it opened in 1965. He won 479 races in his career as a driver, and he has 236 wins and just shy of $3 million in earnings since the inception of official trainer stats in 1991. His wife Beverly passed away five years ago, and Donald fought through the mourning period to continue his career.
He currently trains Tuis Angel and Attis Rock, a 3-year-old male trotter. Sitting for a conversation with Wiest turns into so much more than harness racing as his still-sharp mind can recall countless stories over nearly a century.
I got to hear some of those stories during an hour-long talk with the ageless wonder.
RF: Let’s start with your win in the PA Sire Stakes consolation. What can you say about your horse, Tuis Angel?
DW: I have the broodmare too (Tui) and she set the world’s record for a 4-year-old mare with a 1:52.3 mile at Pocono (since broken). I’m hoping this filly would hit $100,000 this year and she probably will. She’s got a couple of overnights yet. That will tickle me. Her mama didn’t get her record until she was a 4-year-old, and this filly looks like she’ll be better at 4 than as a 3-year-old.
RF: How does Tuis Angel compare with mom?
DW: Her mom as a 3-year-old won the final of the New Jersey Sire Stakes (in 2011) and was timed in 1:53, and Tuis Angel now has been timed in (1):53, so she’s following right in her mom’s footsteps. Her mama took off as a 4-year old. She beat the boys as a 4-year-old in the open trots.
RF: There’s a 70-year age difference between you and Tuis’ driver, Braxten Boyd. How are you able to relate to the young guys?
DW: It’s just like everything else. Some catch drivers can drive real good. They’ve got the hands to drive a trotter, and the next guy don’t have the hands to drive a trotter. Braxten Boyd is a young fellow coming up through the ranks and he’s got my kind of hands. He can handle a trotter. That’s why I’ve got him driving. She’s made breaks with the other guys I’ve had drive her. I wanted to get this Braxten Boyd, he’s hard to get. But once he gets a good horse, he won’t get off him. He loves Tuis Angel so he’s sticking right with her.
RF: Is he willing to listen and take advice?
DW: Absolutely, he’s willing to take advice. But I don’t go to the track much anymore; I watch them on TV. My boy takes them up to the track now.
RF: But you still train them.
DW: I do all the training. God blessed me with good health, I don’t have a problem, don’t take a pill, I’m doing everything I did as a teenager…but a little slower.
RF: You also train Attis Rock. What’s he like?
DW: He’s just a horse. But his mama was Pine Yankee who made me nearly a million dollars between her offspring, racing and selling. (Her offspring include Big Barb, the dam of millionaire Back Of The Neck, and Sigilwig, the dam of Grand Circuit-winner Sig Sauer.) She’s not the fastest horse I ever had but she’s a money maker.
RF: Who made the most for you?
DW: Tui made $372,000; she made me the most.
RF: Let’s look back on your life a little. Didn’t you start your career watering horses for $1 a day at Gratz Fairgrounds?
DW: That’s exactly right. That was right after the depression years. Loretta Lynn was a coal miner’s daughter; I was a coal miner’s son. We never had much money and back in the 30s and 40s, a dollar a day was good money. There were no big jobs back then. I was walking horses out there when I was 8 years old. They’d give me 10 cents an hour. Back then they’d walk them for an hour when they were done working to cool them out.
RF: Eventually you quit school to go work at Roosevelt. Were your parents OK with it or did you have to fight them on it?
DW: I didn’t have to fight them because they knew I was gonna make money. They didn’t have much money. At that time, all us young guys who were turning 16 quit school and went to work. You don’t know how tough it was after the depression years in the 30s and the early 40s. Some people never got over it.
There was no money when I was growing up. To get a 50 dollar-a-week job in the early 40s I thought was real good. Believe it or not, that summer I had saved $500 at 50 a week. Roosevelt paid you $10 every time you went to the paddock. Now when I pay somebody to go to the paddock up there, they want $100. Back then the racetrack paid you, now you pay the grooms.
RF: What are your memories of Roosevelt?
DW: I went to Roosevelt in 1946. I saw the first starting gate. (Hall of Famer) Steve Phillips was an aeronautical engineer. He designed the first starting gate so I witnessed that. I drove my first race up there in ’48.
Back in those days, there were no young people breaking into the business. (Hall of Famer) Stanly Dancer, Eddie Wheeler and myself were the three youngest starting to drive. I never won a race that year. I didn’t have any good stock. But I loved to drive, and Roosevelt is the biggest track there was.
When you think about it, there were 40,000 to 50,000 people going from the lower turn to the upper turn. The whole home stretch you could never get a seat. It was amazing but it was right after World War II. It was the only game in town. This was something new and every night the track was packed.
RF: You started working with Hall of Famer Sanders Russell in 1949. How did that come about?
DW: He had all young fellows working that were my age, all from Alabama. We were stabled right across from him, and I was taking care of five horses at that time for $50 a week. Sanders Russell had a second trainer, and he was at one of the bar rooms and got pretty woozy and one day he wasn’t there working and the boys told Mr. Russell, “Why don’t you go over and ask Mr. Wiest? If you offer him a good job, he’ll come because he’s only getting 50 bucks a week.”
So, he came over and said, “I understand maybe you could go to work for me.”
“It all depends, what will you pay me?”
“$200 a week.”
“I’ll be right over.”
I thought I was in heaven.
RF: You left Roosevelt and went home to work for a tile center. Why did you leave?
DW: After I went with Sanders Russell I got drafted into the army. I had to go to Korea. I told Mr. Russell I want to come back after I serve. I was an aircraft and engine mechanic during the war. I had a good job. I loved flying and I learned to fly over there all by myself.
I got discharged in February of 1953. At that time Roosevelt didn’t open until May 30. I told Mr. Russell, “I’m gonna stay home for three months and get with you when you come back up to Roosevelt.” I wanted to knock off a little steam before I went back there.
In the meantime, I met my wife, Beverly. It was a choice between Beverly and Mr. Russell. Of course, Beverly won out. That’s when I had to get a job at the tile center. I worked as a tile setter from 1954 until 1965 when Pocono Downs opened.
I said, “That’s it, I’m going back into the horse business.” In one week, I had 20 horses (to train and drive). Even when I was a tile-setter, I kept training and racing at the Pennsylvania county fairs. I had about four horses when the pari-mutuel bill was passed. It didn’t take me long to get a big stable of horses and I took them all to Pocono.
RF: And you’ve stayed at Pocono ever since?
DW: Yeah. I’d go to Buffalo and Batavia, wherever there was a New York Sire Stakes. I did real well in the New York Sire Stakes. But my main stable was at Pocono.
RF: I guess the obvious question is how are you able to keep doing this at your age? What keeps you going?
DW: Believe it or not, it is the horses that keep me going. I have nine on the farm — broodmares, yearlings and weanlings. When I go to bed at night, I know what I’m gonna do the next day. I’m gonna go out, feed them horses and see them grow up to be racehorses. When they get to be yearlings I take them to the fairgrounds, break them, race them, and sell them unless they’re a broodmare. That’s what keeps me going.
RF: No exercise regimen or anything like that?
DW: I don’t do any workouts. I do exactly what I did my whole life. I don’t go to bed before 11:30. I always watch the late news. I don’t need any special diet; I eat regular food. I only weigh 155. I’m not overweight, I ain’t underweight, I can walk real good, I can even run.
The Lord blessed me with good health, I don’t have a single problem. Every year I get the wellness test you gotta take after you’re 65. I have the same doctor every year, he says “You are the only amazing person that I know of over 90 years old that can still walk in here without a cane or a hearing aid and don’t have a single problem.”
RF: Did Beverly help you with the horses?
DW: She helped when she was younger. As she got older, she had diabetes and a lot of problems.
RF: I give you credit. A lot of people lose their spouses late in life and kind of shut down. You just keep plugging away.
DW: It hit me hard. We were married 65 years and it’s hard to lose somebody. But I had the horses, so I had something to look forward to. I had to carry on. I just couldn’t sit and brood. The horses were my outlet, and they are my outlet through life. I do the same thing every day.
RF: It’s been quite a life.
DW: Yeah, and I’ll tell you one thing, the only reason you’re talking to me, the only reason I’m alive, is because of one girl.
RF: Let’s hear it.
DW: I went down to Stevenson, Alabama with Sanders Russell. I was about 22. It wasn’t far from the Tennessee border. He had a whole bunch of boys my age and come Saturday night we went to Sherwood, Tennessee for a square dance. It’s about 35 miles over the mountains. All the girls come out of the mountains for the Saturday night square dance. It was a little town, a general store with a dance floor in it.
I had a ‘47 Studebaker. I was the only one there with a car. Everybody else came out of the mountains on horses and mules, walking, whatever. Saturday night was a big thing for them. We were dancing and my buddy came over and said, “A couple guys want to go for a ride in your Studebaker.’”
We drove out of town; it was all mountains and dirt roads. We went off the main dirt road onto a cutoff into the mountain. All of a sudden, a guy with a real bright light with a shotgun is aiming right at me. The girl started screaming, “Don’t shoot! It’s me Orabelle, Jake Benson’s daughter!” He shined it on her and said, “Orabelle what are you doing up here in the mountains?” She said, “I just came for a ride.” He said, “You know your daddy’s working back there.”
They were moonshiners!
At that time the Pennsylvania license plates were on the front of the car. He said, “What’s this Yankee doing here? You know this man?” My buddy said, “This man works for Sanders Russell.” Everybody knew Sanders, so he told us to get out of there as fast we could.
When we left, that girl was crying. She said, “They’ve got a code in the mountains. You shoot first and then you ask the questions.” We were so lucky! I always tell everybody the only reason I’m here is because of Orabelle. I named a horse after her too, and she did real good for me. She made me a hundred thousand and I sold her for 100.
RF: That’s an amazing story. You’ve got a million great stories. Do you feel like Lou Gehrig? You’re the luckiest man on the face of the earth?
DW: Yup, I tell everybody if I die tomorrow, I had a good life. I enjoyed my life. I have no regrets about my life.