Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 3 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
By Deborah Fitts
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Sure, we’ve read the book and now we’ve seen the movie. But how many people are still around who can say they once
kissed Seabiscuit gn the nose?
Tbrrance Watkins can.
The 84-year-old Middleburg resident not only kissed the famous racehorse. She even rode him once.
“He was a perfect gentleman all the time I was on him,” says Watkins.
A petite 5-foot-1, she grasps a visitor’s hand with a bonecrushing welcome. Watkins’ daughter and namesake, Torrance Watkins, is a widely known three-day eventer and an Olympic gold medalist. But the elder Watkins had a successful career of her own with horses, competing at home and abroad.
And by the time Seabiscuit rose to fame, Watkins had four racehorses of her own.
Bom in 1919 to an affluent family, she overcame crippling childhood polio and as a precocious teenager cut a swath through society. Left at school in Washington, D.C., by her globe-trotting parents, she became a regular fixture at the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt took her under her wing.
She worked in the
96.5%