Margaret's godfather, Max Hirsch, in a Life magazine photo
JUNE 10 IS MARGARET’S BIRTHDAY, and while I won’t tell you her age (though you can find it on the TSP site), I will celebrate the occasion by telling you a not-so-secret secret about her, which is that each year at Belmont Stakes time, my sister has some explaining to do.
My family frequently names those we love for sports idols. For instance, among the dozen cats and dogs who have come and gone in my life there was Saratoga Roach, a terrier of a beagle, named for the late-summer racetrack in upstate New York, and Cleveland, a hapless chocolate lab, named for the Browns.
Then there is my sister, Margaret, named for the 1954 winner of the Belmont Stakes.
At one point in his life our father was a turf reporter, spending his winters at Hialeah, his summers in Saratoga and the time between at the racetracks in the East. Amid the crowd he covered one of the great pastimes was naming thoroughbreds. It’s an art—no name can be more than 18 characters, including punctuation and spaces—as well as a science: Names frequently reflect breeding, sometimes with great flourish. For instance, the year before my sister was born, the great horse of 1953 was a colt whose father was Polynesian and mother was named Geisha. Their champion offspring was crowned Native Dancer. It’s a great tradition.
And one that continued into my family. My father had a horse named for him—it was called Sportseditor. I have a sailboat named Ruffian, for the magnificent dark filly who didn’t know the meaning of the word quit, until she broke down at the mile marker in a match race against Foolish Pleasure in 1975.
But all this really started in January 1954, when my father and mother, on their way to Hialeah, stopped off to see Max Hirsch, the great horse trainer, at his winter quarters in South Carolina.
In due course it was revealed that there was an offspring on the way in our household.
“What are you going to name the baby?” asked Mr. Hirsch.
“Well, it will be right at Belmont Stakes time,” said my father, thinking of favorites to win that third leg of the Triple Crown, “so I guess it will have to be Fisherman Roach or Porterhouse Roach,” he said.
“No,” said Mr. Hirsch, “I don’t think so.” And with that he took my parents to a stall of a colt and said, “It just might be that you’ll have to name your baby High Gun Roach.” The groom led out an unprominent 3-year-old who had raced only a few times and who had impressed few people except his trainer, and his rider, Eric Guerin.
Five months went by. One June 10 a 6-pound, 9 ½-ounce daughter was born to the Roach family. Two days later the Belmont had its 86th run with High Gun in the Number 5 post position for the once-around-the-track run of a mile and a half.
The father of the newborn in Flushing Hospital invested $10 on High Gun, acting as agent for the baby.
High Gun did a late-running job under a superlative ride by Guerin, who had been given explicit instructions by Mr. Hirsch. The pace-setter was Fisherman. High Gun was a dozen lengths back of him, in eighth place, with half a mile to go. Then under a vigorous hand ride, High Gun went to work. He cut the lengths to ten, to eight, to five, to three, to one. And right at the end he ran down Fisherman and won by a neck. Porterhouse, he was ninth—for which my sister, Margaret High Gun Roach, is grateful every day.
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I feel compelled to say that although we were always told this story as fact, and that it ran in various newspapers at the time and afterward, that the original birth certificates and Social Security cards and so on for the family (which I possess in a musty old brown accordian file tied with a piece of gray string) do not include any document with my H.G. middle name.
Family stories are so powerful, and they become our truth…but when I go to renew my license at the DMV later this morning, I think I’ll just sign all the forms Margaret Roach. Probably for the best. :)
Now of course I think the story of *your* birth is entirely accurate.
Fascinating. Does it matter whether this story is verifiably true? In the epigraph to The Thirteenth Tale, which I’m now reading (and loving), fictitious novelist Vida Winter writes, “All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.” (Afterthought: The Thirteenth Tale is about sisters–specifically, lost twins. Check it out.)
There is Truth the concept, (as in verifiable) and there is the truth of a story (as in “the truth be told”).
It seems to me High Gun as middle name is The Truth of your Sistory, in that her naming was important in many of the same ways any thoroughbred filly’s naming would be.
“High Gun” reflects the community into which Margaret was born and what needs to be any more true than that?
What I love about the truth is that when it comes to family stories, the truth is only one person’s version of the tale. There is Margaret’s truth that she doesn’t use the name, and mine, which includes no small amount of envy that she has such a grand story to her name. Which is why I love to tell it – not because I envy it, but because it is grand – which, I suspect, we need no shrink to unravel to reveal that every time she is grand, I am, as well. Ah, family.
Welcome back, Rona. Lovely to hear from you. Oh, what a terrific nugget, that if we want to know someone we ask about their birth. Such a great question. And so true. I will now go get The Thirteenth Tale. Please come back soon. We love to hear from you.
Hello, Deb. Yes, her name does reflect our community and that, in turn, tells a tale. I frequently think of storytelling as laying out a deck of cars, or so I tell my memoir students. Laying down this card reveals so much, doesn’t it? Thank you. And please come back soon.
Oh, I love this story, and the analysis of why it’s such a great one. I love the family mythology and the way certain people love to tell certain stories about certain others. Every single time I see my grandmother, she tells the story of the time my cousin and I fired my sister from our family newspaper and then used her stories in the final publication. To some, it seems to reveal the mean-spiritedness of a big sister taking advantage of the little one. To others—ahem—it leaves out the cause for the firing and ignores the fact that it is general practice for an employer to own any work product created by employees. I like the idea that telling your sister’s grand story means you’re also grand, and I too am envious that she has such a grand name story.
My story of my own sister’s birth: When she was born, I was 2. My dad called me from the hospital and told me I had a baby sister. My response, supposedly, was “I wanted a swimming pool!”
Welcome, JR Atkins. I wanted a swimming pool, too (or even just more alone time with the parents). Your stories are wonderful. Even my baby sister (who really cannot understand what *we* went through as first-borns, tee hee) will get it when she hears you tell the tale. See you soon.
Hi, JR, and welcome to TSP. We love your work, and I love this perspective. Yes, point of view, however pointed, is so delightfully the place at which the narrative takes a specific turn on what are mere facts. Emboldening those facts, pumping them full of blood, we inhabit them, wrestle them away to make them ours, identifying ourselves along the way.
Ha, ha, ha to the swimming pool. I adore that. I think we need to collect first lines by older sisters on the subjects of having a sister. I’ll get on it. Please come back for more.