The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Grooms, drivers, trainers forge ahead in wake of disaster

Lebanon Raceway trainer Dan Munson talks Thursday, Dec. 10, about what his life has been like after the fatal fire in Barn 16 at the Warren County Fairgrounds. Munson lost everything in the fire - his clothes, his racing equipment, and his five horses.

Staff photo by Apryl Pilolli Lebanon Raceway trainer Dan Munson talks Thursday, Dec. 10, about what his life has been like after the fatal fire in Barn 16 at the Warren County Fairgrounds. Munson lost everything in the fire - his clothes, his racing equipment, and his five horses.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Bishops: New birth control rule ‘a first step’
2/11/12
Local reaction mixed on Obama’s switch on birth control provision
2/10/12
City revenue streams going in different directions
2/10/12
Police patrolling for overweight trucks
2/10/12
Mild winter helps improve health
2/10/12
> More headlines

By Rick McCrabb, Columnist Updated 9:01 PM Monday, December 14, 2009

LEBANON — Nearly 20 years ago — on the same day Dawn Deaton was diagnosed with breast cancer — she experienced her “worst day.”

Her favorite standardbred mare, Julia Child, suffered a muscle injury racing and was euthanized as Deaton held the horse’s head.

Burying a horse and beginning her breast cancer battle — more than most people could handle in one lifetime, let alone one day — now takes a backseat to what she experienced a week ago.

Her home phone rang at 5 a.m. Dec. 5 with the numbing news that one of the barns over the hill along the Lebanon Raceway backside was on fire.

Deaton, 40, a longtime groom at the track, works for trainer Chris McGuire whose 10 horses are stalled in Barn 17, one of those over the hill.

Deaton, along with other grooms, trainers and drivers, watched helplessly as Barn 16 — located only a few yards from Barn 17 — engulfed in flames, collapsed, killing two grooms, Ronnie Williams of Lebanon, and James “Turtle” Edwards of East St. Louis, Ill., and 45 horses.

“That day doesn’t even seem real,” Deaton said Thursday, Dec. 10, while standing inside a chilly Barn 17. “One day the barn was there, then it was gone. For those people who owned the horses, there was no good-bye, no closure. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that. I don’t think any of us will.”

She couldn’t grieve long. She had to return to her job as a groom, which is as glamorous as shining a Major Leaguer’s baseball shoes.

“It’s a nitty, gritty job,” McGuire said.

The single mother gets her three children — Jared, 17, Ryan, 15, and Timothy, 14 — ready for school, then heads to Lebanon Raceway.

She feeds the horses, cleans their stalls, equips them with harnesses and bridles so McGuire can exercise them around the track. When he returns to the barn with a horse, Deaton has another horse ready.

Race after race, night after night, they do everything possible to cross the finish line first.

As their reward, they receive a percentage of the purse, their pictures are taken standing in the winner’s circle, while the other drivers, eager for their next opportunity, return to the barns.

This scene is repeated 10 times a night.

“This,” Lebanon Raceway trainer Dan Munson said, “is a competitive business.”

And compassionate.

“You know how you may bicker with some of your relatives?” Munson said. “But when you see them at a family reunion, everything is forgotten and it’s one big family.

“It’s the same way here.”

That was never more evident than this past week. Munson, 43, lost everything in the fire — his clothes, his racing equipment, and the most painful of his possessions, his five horses.

He called the fire “absolutely devastating … there’s been a lot to deal with.”

He paused, then added: “It rips your heart out and takes your guts, too.”

In the days following the fire, horsemen from around Ohio — and states as far away as California — have assisted horsemen in Lebanon.

A shipment of equipment — bikes, saddles, blankets, buckets — arrived last week from a training center in Georgia, and drivers who cut their teeth at Lebanon Raceway — which calls itself the “cradle of drivers” — have donated portions of the winnings.

Most of the items are being stored in Barn 17, located only a few yards from where Barn 16 once stood. Deaton and trainer Chris McGuire said they’re not surprised by the outpouring of support.

“We care for each other,” said McGuire, 44, a 1984 Franklin High School graduate.

“It’s a family back here,” Deaton said.

Deaton lives in Lebanon, just a short drive from the Warren County Fairgrounds. She never sleeps in the barn, but she understands why Williams and Edwards were staying in Barn 16 on the night of the fire.

She said housing always is “an issue” in the horse-racing industry. She said the two grooms — almost inseparable — probably stayed up late Friday following the races, and since they typically got up early in the morning, they slept in the barn.

Williams, she said, remained in the barn throughout the day. He didn’t have a car, didn’t have a house. For him, the track was home.

“They enjoyed their lives,” Deaton said. “It’s just hard to believe that they’re gone. This place won’t ever be the same.”

Munson is lost right now. He’s a trainer with no horses.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said Thursday morning while standing in Roy Wilson’s Barn 7.

Horse racing is all he knows. When Munson was 8 and living in Illinois, his mother asked her three children their career aspirations.

His sister: rock star.

His brother: president of United States.

Him: Horse trainer.

He’s not about to walk away. Not now. Not never.

“I’ll live and die right here,” he said. “I eat, drink and sleep this.”

Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.

Share this article