Remembering Red Mile’s Tom White: Celebration set for April 6
Tom White, the longtime public relations director at Red Mile whose career promoting harness racing earned him hall of fame honors, died this month at the age of 85.
Thomas Wayne White, who died Feb. 4 in Lexington, served two stints as the public relations chief at Red Mile from 1973 to 1987 and again from 1997 until his retirement in 2005.
A celebration of his life will be held at a memorial service from 1 to 3 p.m. April 6 at Red Mile Clubhouse. Friends are invited to share their personal memories and stories of White at the event.
“Everywhere I went, people knew my father,” daughter Marianne Mosley said of her memories growing up. “He was this little guy full of energy. He walked everywhere really fast. I would have to run alongside to keep up. He wore loud jackets and pants all the time — just a really outgoing, positive person who was well-known and loved.”
Both children remembered Red Mile during White’s time there as one of Lexington’s prime attractions and a fixture in their lives.
“The best thing about having Tom White as your father in Lexington was you met every celebrity that came through town and you always had a job at the Red Mile that usually involved a lot of manual labor and getting bit by horses,” his son, Scott White, said.
White fell in love with harness racing while covering it as a deputy sports editor for the Lexington Leader, according to his obituary.
Born in 1933 in Plymouth, Ind., White grew up rooting for Notre Dame and the Chicago White Sox, but was drawn to Lexington following the success of Paul “Bear” Bryant and Adolph Rupp at Kentucky in football and basketball, respectively, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, according to his obituary.
His journalism career began at the University of Kentucky where he was sports editor for the Kentucky Kernel his senior year. After graduation, he became a sports writer in Somerset before joining the Lexington Leader in 1961, where he helped cover Kentucky basketball and football, Transylvania University basketball and high schools sports. He had a regular high school sports column for the Leader titled “The White Line.”
White left the Leader to write for “Horseman and Fair World” and “Hoofbeats” magazines before taking on the role of director of publicity for Red Mile and Tattersalls horse sales in 1973.
He left Red Mile in 1987 to take up the same position for Scioto Downs Racetrack in Columbus, Ohio. He later returned to Lexington to write for Standardbred magazines and coordinated publicity for The Little Brown Jug at the Delaware County Fair in Ohio, the third leg of harness racing’s Triple Crown.
In helping promote harness racing and Red Mile, White regularly appeared on local television and radio and continued to write features for the Lexington Herald-Leader. He also initiated the first Red Mile Chili Cook-off and the Concerts at Red Mile in 1980, according to his son.
“It was a lot of fun in the 1970s,” his daughter Mosley said via Facebook. “He always had all kinds of promotions going on. He had me dress up as Belle Brezing once, ha.”
The United States Harness Writers Association honored White in 2004 with induction into its Communicators Hall of Fame.
“I actually went into PR at first and learned from him that you always take care of the press — make it as easy as possible for them to cover your story, especially being in the Standardbred industry in Thoroughbred country,” Mosley said. “Dad was always accessible, always on the clock. He made the top drivers and trainers accessible.”
White wrote two books, “Harness Racing History in Kentucky” and “A Century of Speed,” a compendium of stories, photographs, and interviews celebrating Red Mile’s centennial.
A Tau Kappa Epsilon pledge as a UK student, White went on to teach a sports writing course at Eastern Kentucky University and to mentor college students through internships he established at UK and EKU.
White was a member and elder of Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church and active in the Men of Maxwell.
White was preceded in death by his wife of 60 years, Frankie (Frances Thornbury White) and siblings Jon White and Mary (White) Bloxham.
In addition to his children and their spouses Susan White and Gary Mosley, White is survived by four grandchildren, Caroline and Nathanael White and Emily and Elizabeth Mosley.
He asked to have his ashes spread at Red Mile, Kroger Field, Notre Dame Stadium, his hometown of Plymouth, Ind., Delaware, Ohio’s racetrack, Goshen, N.Y., the site of the hall of fame, and Comiskey Park.
“He was a pretty small guy, so here’s hoping there’s enough of him to go around,” his obituary read.
Donations in White’s memory are suggested to The Round Barn Stable of Memories, care of Red Mile, New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program (HorseAdoption.com) or Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church (MaxPres.org).
