theplaidhorse.com • May/June 2017 • 45
Ninety-two-year-old guys are supposed to die. But not Bobby Burke. The world loved having him around too much. Bright, sharp, funny, quick-witted. Too handsome for his own good as a young dude, he just kept getting better-looking as the decades rolled by. Women were drawn to Bobby like Winnie the Pooh to the honey jar. Elizabeth, his favorite ex-wife (there were 4 or 5, can’t remember how many), loved him so much that she married him twice. Years ago, I sat in a diner with Bobby and another friend of mine. Burkey was 65ish, my friend Josh (who thought he had game) was 30, PHOTO © JAMES L. PARKER. and the waitress was an 8+ on the Trump scale. Josh used all his best moves, lines, and smiles, but he may just as well have been Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. By the time we got to the apple pie, that pretty young girl would have gone to Bora Bora and back with Bobby. Robert Jerome Burke wasn’t famous because of his magnetism; he was famous because for 20+ years he was the greatest hunter rider on the planet. Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he found a barn, learned to ride, and surprise, surprise was good at it. Really good. Back from his service during WW2, he decided to see if he could make a living at riding and never looked back. During the 50’s and 60’s, good horses and big wins followed Burke like puppies follow their mom. Shining Hour and Bronze Wing, Showdown and Sutton Place – all in the National Show Hunter Hall of Fame and all Burke disciples. He showed up on game day (probably after a very late night), hopped on, and won. Simple as you please. Cappy Smith, Raymond Burr, Dave Kelly, are all Hall of Famers of that era and all worthy competition. But, they weren’t Bobby Burke. He didn’t just win, he won with style and panache. He was the Ali of the show ring and he made the show ring sexy. It’s pretty hard for a millennial/Gen Y, 21st century reader to relate to some old guy who rode when Eisenhower was in the White House, gas was 20 cents a gallon, and the most expensive show hunter ever sold was $20,000. But let’s look at it another way. The next time you’re showing your pony in the model and Jimmy Lee is the judge, you’re showing in front of a man who, as an undergrad at UVA, rode for one of Bobby Burke’s main competitors. “Hello, Mr. Lee”. One degree of separation. Or maybe you
ride with Liz Pandich who worked for Peter Leone who rode with George Morris for whom Bobby Burke was one of his oldest friends and biggest heroes. Three degrees of separation. You hear the names and look at the black and white photos with the big puffy britches and it’s difficult to think that any of it has anything to do with you. But, oh, how it does! From the length of your rein to the weight in your heel, you and your riding are the product of the men and women that came before you. You ride down the road that they paved. For a bit of time, when the world was simple, when people dialed their phones and when hunters were king, Bobby Burke’s star was the brightest in the galaxy. So bright that the legends that followed never forgot him. Three years ago, standing on the bridge overlooking the warm-up ring for the Grand Prix at WEF, I looked down and there, in a snappy blue blazer and cowboy hat, was Burkey. And over they came. Morris and Madden, Kraut and Minikus, Ward and Hough. One after another, on foot and on horseback, they came to pay homage to a man who hadn’t worn a show coat in decades. At almost 90 years old, he was still the one they all wanted to be when they grew up. You never forget the best that ever was.
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BY TIMOTHY WICKES
Godspeed, Bobby Burke