March/April 2024 Issue

Page 62 March/April 2024 EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN Poppy Gotwals and Andrea Gotwals Boone with Foggy Night in 2022, just before the horse was shipped to Florida for her winter break. Photo credit: Amanda Eichfeld By Suzanne Bush Everyone calls him “Poppy,” a sobriquet that only suggests 91-year-old Bill Gotwals’ spirit. He could also be called “savvy,“ and “kindly.” And whatever you might call someone who doesn’t like the word “no.” “His dad died when he was young, and the way things worked back then, he went to live with one of his older sisters,” his granddaughter Andrea Gotwals Boone says. At some point, his mother remarried, and the family was reunited. Gotwals, co-founder of Brook Ledge Horse Transporta- tion, started a dairy farm with his brother in Oley, PA, in his 20’s. As the dairy farm expanded, Gotwals and his brother diversified the business, around 1955. “They got into trucking and started hauling pigs to the packing plants in In- diana,” Boone explains. And that is when a brand-new opportunity presented itself to the brothers. Doesn’t Like to Say No “The person they bought their trucks from told them he knew someone who wanted to get out of the horse hauling business,” Boone says. Poppy was all in. His brother, not so much. As Boone says, “Poppy doesn’t like to say no.” And so, in the 1970’s the two dairy farmers purchased HUTT Horse Transportation and embarked on a new venture: Brook Ledge Horse Transportation. Boone says that part of the reason her grandfather was willing to buy the other com- pany was that “he wasn’t going to let anybody down.” Boone says that her grandfather is still active, but not available for interviews. Brook Ledge is now one of the country’s largest horse trans- portation companies, providing ground and air transportation of horses throughout the lower 48 states and Canada. They transport show horses, racehorses, and trail horses. A big part of their busi- ness is transporting horses from the various Thoroughbred sales around the country. So Brook Ledge agents and drivers—along with Gotwals family members— are always at the sales. From Hauling Horses to Buying Them Gotwals started buying broodmares at auctions, which Brook Ledge Founder, 91, Enjoys Success with his $20,000 Stakes Winner surprised his family. “No one knew he was buying horses. He wanted to buy horses of racing age,” Boone says. She recalled a conversation her grandfather had with her father about one of the horses he had bought. He wondered when the mare would be ready to race. He had bought the mare at a yearling sale, and Boone’s father told him the filly couldn’t race until she was at least two years old. “At least a year? I may be dead by then,” he said. The family wanted to protect Poppy at the horse auctions, Boone says. So her father told their agent not to let him buy a horse. The auctions have crews of bid spotters who fan out to make sure the auctioneers don’t miss any bidders. At the Ocala Breeders Sale in 2022, Poppy had his eye on a two-year-old named Foggy Night. But he couldn’t seem to get the auctioneer’s attention. “One of our friends who knows the bid spotters told them not to let him buy a horse,” Boone says. The man who doesn’t like the word “no” decided that he was going to bid on that horse no matter what. “At some point, he moved to a different section,” Boone says, and he bought Foggy Night for $20,000. “Everyone was drawing straws to figure out who was going to tell my father that Poppy managed to buy a horse,” she says. Foggy Night, it turns out, was a great bargain, as she has won nearly half a million dollars so far in her career. Trained by Butch Reid at Parx, in 2023 she won the Delaware Oaks, Grade 3 at Delaware Park, was second in the Monmouth Oaks, Grade 3 at Monmouth Park, and won the Cathryn Sophia Stakes at Parx. “People spend their lifetimes hoping to buy that one horse that will take them to the winners’ circle,” Boone says. “It’s been a good ride.” In addition to Foggy Night, Gotwals owns another Thorough- bred, First Joke, that he pur- chased as a weanling in Keene- land, KY. He has said that one of the reasons he started buying racehorses is that he wants to give back to the industry that has been so good to him and his family.