Hard time for hardware and other Woodlawn lore

The 158-year-old Woodlawn Vase, symbolic of victory in the Preakness Stakes, is commonly valued at $1 million. That’s nice round number assuring its place in opening paragraphs such as this.

The vase lives in the Baltimore Art Museum and is carefully trotted out each third Saturday in May to be on display at Pimlico for the second jewel of the Triple Crown. Winning owners can look, and even touch, but they can’t take it home.

For a memento of the day, they will be handed a one-third size replica of the Woodlawn, complete with its charm bracelet array of filigree, seraphs, and tiny horses. The replica has been awarded since 1953, when Jeanne Murray Vanderbilt, the wife of Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr., decreed that the original vase was too important to be passed around like a bowling trophy. This was a generous gesture that resounded throughout the sport. Then again, as the owners of Preakness winner Native Dancer, the Vanderbilts could afford to be generous.

Comes now the news that the Vanderbilt’s 1953 Preakness trophy will be up for sale by the Doyle auction house of New York. The sale is scheduled for May 23, the 65th anniversary of Native Dancer’s narrow victory over Jamie K.

The 1953 trophy is part of a consignment from the estate of the late Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman, daughter of Alfred Vanderbilt and Manuela Hudson, the first of Vanderbilt’s three wives. Lehman, a respected artist, died in May 2016.

In its profile of the Preakness trophy, the auction house states that they could find only one other sold at auction – the 1970 trophy won by Personality for owner Ethel Jacobs that sold for $32,200 in 2008. Quite unnecessarily, the text goes on to state that Personality did not have the record or reputation enjoyed by Native Dancer, nor was Personality’s owner “as highly regarded and influential to the history of the sport as Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr.”

On the second count, it can be successfully argued that the Jacobs family stacks up with any clan – Vanderbilts included – when it comes to its impact on the American sport.

Hirsch Jacobs, Ethel’s husband, was a preeminent owner-breeder who won 14 national training titles and became a member of the Hall of Fame. Their son, John, took over the training of the family horses upon the death of his father, in early 1970, and won not only the Preakness with Personality, but also the Belmont Stakes with High Echelon. Their daughter Patrice married Louis Wolfson and together, as Harbor View Farm, they won the 1978 Preakness with Affirmed on the way to his Triple Crown.

A third Preakness trophy also was consigned, by the SCP auction company, and went for $41,353 after online bidding in November 2017. Won by Tank’s Prospect in 1985 for Eugene Klein, the trophy had been donated by Klein’s widow, Joyce, to be part of the horse racing display at the San Diego Hall of Champions in Balboa Park. The Hall of Champions was touted as the largest multi-sport attraction in the country, but that did not help sell tickets. It was closed last year, and the 1985 Preakness trophy was one of scores of sports memorabilia items auctioned.

More sensational Preakness trophy news was made earlier this year when a woman was arrested for breaking into a cluster of storage units in Delray Beach, Fla., and ransacking their contents. Among the units was one used by Francine McMahon, daughter of Frank McMahon, the owner of 1969 Preakness winner Majestic Prince.

The alleged thief reportedly accepted a $15,000 advance from an auction house on the Preakness trophy before her arrest. Presumably, the trophy is currently on display in the stolen property locker of the Delray Police Department.

Historic racing trophies always face uncertain futures, even those housed in established institutions like a Hall of Champions. The heirs of winning owners can feel a certain obligation to preserve such historic mementos, but it’s at best a sliding scale.

“For some reason my mom kept their most important trophies locked in a small room beneath the staircase of their home on Lido Isle,” said Jeff Lewis, the son of Robert and Beverly Lewis. “I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I thought about the Kentucky Derby Museum, or the racing Hall of Fame. I just didn’t want to do that. They are, after all, family heirlooms.”

Robert Lewis died in 2006, Beverly Lewis in 2016. Among the many trophies won by their horses included those from two Kentucky Derbies, a Dubai World Cup, a Belmont Stakes, a Horse of the Year Eclipse Award, and two plaques from the Hall of Fame, along with three Preakness trophies – for Charismatic (1999), Silver Charm (1997), and as partners in Timber Country (1994).

Even in the wake of his mother’s death, Lewis still manages a scaled-back breeding and racing operation, and the symbols of the past are important. To that end he re-purposed a room in his Newport Beach home to display the most prominent items in the collection.

“The rest I donated to the chaplaincy program at Santa Anita Park, for them to use in fundraising efforts,” Lewis added. “But the Preakness trophies are right there with the Derby trophies, the Dubai World Cup, and the Belmont Stakes. I like to think of it as a real shrine to the memory of my mom and dad.”

HOVDEY JAY