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PROFILE
Churchill Downs’ track champion
The home of the Kentucky Derby has gone through numerous management changes during its 136-year history, but for more than 40 years Raymond ‘Butch’ Lehr has worked at Churchill Downs to become one of the sport’s most respected track superintendents. By Frances J. Karon
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S home of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs is the most widely-recognized racetrack in the United States. With an arsenal of 135 years of history behind it, the Louisville, Kentucky, showpiece is the first stepping stone for any horse whose connections hope to achieve the ultimate in racing immortality, the Triple Crown. While Churchill Downs Inc. has undergone a myriad of management changes, one thing that has remained a constant is track superintendent Raymond “Butch” Lehr Jr. Lehr, who has also been a vice president of Churchill since 1991, is happiest in the cab of a tractor or making rounds on the
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backside. In his office, when the phone on his desk rings, it sounds out the Call to the Post. On the wall above hangs this framed reminder given to him by outgoing president Steve Sexton: “If we don’t take care of our customers somebody else will.” Lehr says, “That’s true, but I like this one the best,” indicating a caricature of a frog strangling a stork that’s trying to swallow it. The caption reads: Don’t ever give up. Lehr’s uncle, at one time an assistant to Churchill’s renowned superintendent Thurman Pangburn, helped Lehr and his younger brother David get work on the superintendent’s staff, where Butch started in January, 1967. The draft board interfered with his plans to attend night school, and he spent 1969-’70 in the Army. He says, “I was on orders
for Vietnam, and President Nixon stopped sending troops the cycle I was in Tigerland,” the military post in Louisiana that preceded an automatic send-off to Vietnam. “I was just lucky.” Spared from active combat, Lehr was sent to Fort Carson, Colorado, where he trained soldiers to use radar. “I really learned a lot in the military that helped me be where I am today.” ‘Where he is today’ is firmly rooted at Churchill Downs as one of the most respected track superintendents in the business. Even when he lived a thousand miles away in Colorado, Churchill was never out of the Louisville native’s blood. “I even came home on leave and worked here. I’d come home for two weeks and work because I needed the money. And that’s what I did on my vacations.” Brother David, who, as Butch’s assistant, stands to inherit the role of superintendent “when...if…” Butch retires, chimes in: “We had money, too. It was good money.” “Good money” equated to $57.83 per week. Of his low starting salary, “There aren’t many vice presidents over