VON HEMEL NA ISSUE 26_Jerkins feature.qxd 18/10/2012 01:03 Page 2
DONNIE K. VON HEMEL
The unmistakable profile of
DONNIE K. VON HEMEL With only four horses stabled at Hawthorne Race Course near Chicago, Illinois, trainer Donnie K. Von Hemel is having an easy morning. While Alternation gallops under regular rider David Contreras, the trainer observes over the top of the white picket fence bordering the racetrack from the backstretch; horseracing’s version of the American dream. A wandering barn cat rubs against his ankles, and Von Hemel shakes hands, accepts congratulations for a recent win, and answers one question over and again: “Donnie K.! How’s Don?” “He’s good, he’s good,” Von Hemel replies each time. WORDS: FRanceS j. kaROn PHOTOS: BaRBaRa D. LIVInGSTOn, HORSePHOTOS.cOM, FRanceS j. kaROn
“D
ON” is Nebraska Racing Hall of Famer Don E. Von Hemel, who remains at the age of 78 an active trainer, with 2,441 wins to date. The name “Donnie K.” distinguishes father from son. “I’m not a junior,” Von Hemel says, pointing out that his birth certificate identifies him as Donnie, not Donald. “Is that weird?” he asks, laughing. “It hasn’t been weird to me.” Their Dutch ancestors changed their surname from Van den Hemel around the turn of the 20th century. This branch of the family is also Native American, as they are members of the Miami (pronounced “My-am-uh”) tribe.
Don, whose mother was half Indian, was registered as a full-blooded Native American as a youngster because the roll was getting low, officially if not genetically making Donnie Von Hemel half Miami. “If you’re in Oklahoma,” he says, “it’s neat to be part of one of the tribes.” But Von Hemel is more cowboy than Indian, with a Stetson never too far out of reach and the sacred bald eagle feather given to him by a Miami chief tucked safely away in a box. “My grandfather, I never saw him outdoors without a hat on. Ninety-nine percent of the time it would be a cowboy hat,” he says, and it’s a tradition that he carries on. “I always wear it in the afternoons. Most people, they don’t recognize you without your hat. In the
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