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Washington office of Florida Sen. Claude Pepper, getting dubbed “the youngest girl on the Hill.” With a boost from Pepper she talked Pan American, the now-defunct airline, into hiring her as its first female in a significant post - passenger service representative.
So in the late 1930s, when Watkins and her trainer, Charlie Plumb, stabled her racehorses at Belmont Park in New York, she wasn’t going to let a little thing like the track’s prohibition against women riders stop her.
“I was short of money,” Watkins explains, “and I thought if I could do my own galloping, I could save $55 a gallop.” It took a year for her to become the first woman to ride at Belmont.
And so came the day that Seabiscuit’s rider had to miss a workout. His legendary trainer, the dour Tom Smith, approached Watkins.
“He said, ‘If you’re not busy, would you gallop Seabiscuit tomorrow morning?’ I said, Wes, I’d be glad to.’
“Nobody called him anything but ‘Mr. Smith,’” Watkins adds. “I liked him, but he was a horse’s man. I felt that he read Seabiscuit’s mind.”
Weighing 100 pounds,
97.7%