In Memoriam:
HUCkLEBEY BERRY (1984 - 2011) by Linda White It’s a good bet that anyone who ever saw Hucklebey Berry perform carries with him or her an indelible image of a bright chestnut stallion with four white stockings and a beautiful face, looking through the bridle and wearing himself like a king. A king, he was. His starstudded show ring career made him the stuff of legend. His subsequent renown as a sire of Arabians and Half-Arabians who won national championship after national championship only added to the luster. The frosting on the cake, says Marla Ruscitto, who showed him to his last show ring victory, the 2000 U.S. National Championship in English Pleasure AAOTR 18-39, was his good natured, kind temperament. It was a quality he passed to his progeny. Ruscitto was 12 years old when she met Hucklebey Berry, the summer she stayed with Gene and Erin LaCroix to fine-tune her riding skills for that year’s Youth Nationals. HBB, as he was most often called, and MHR Nobility were standing at stud with the LaCroixes, who were then in Whitefish, Montana. The young girl learned to collect and handle the two stallions.
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“MHR Nobility was good to handle, but I fell in love with HBB,” she admits. “Gerry and Babs Maddoux, who had owned him since 1988, had no interest whatever in selling him. When my parents (Empress Arabians owners Lou and Carol Ruscitto) came to Montana to visit me, they too got to meet HBB. They immediately fell in love with him, as I had, and respected and admired him tremendously.” It was 1995, and LaCroix was preparing Hucklebey Berry to try for a fourth U.S. National Championship in English Pleasure. The stallion’s record was already outstanding: he had won U.S. National Championships in 1989 and 1991 with Tim Shea, along with a U.S. National Reserve Championship in 1990, and LaCroix had ridden him to a third U.S. National Championship in 1993. All three of the national championships were unanimous. “My dad called Gerry Maddoux to ask about buying HBB,” Ruscitto continues. “Dad and Gerry met in Albuquerque and came to an agreement. I couldn’t believe it! Gerry told Dad he knew how much I loved the horse, how well I got along with him, and that he knew HBB