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CASSITYS A RIDING FAMILY Grandfather, Father and Uncles of W. Cassity Were Jockeys. Patriarch of Family Piloted Horses When West Was a Prairie Rode Against Dode Garner. NEW ORLEANS, La., Dec. 14. There are three generations of Cassitys in racing and the most prominent of them at this time is a youth the racing public knows as W. Cassity, but who is Billy Joe to his parents. This youth, who has been galloping horses since he was knee high to a duck, is truly a riding son of a riding family, for his father and grandfather both were jockeys before him and so were three of his uncles. Young Cassitys grandfather, W. M. Cassity, who owns a string of horses, and his father, Leonard Cassity, who trains them, were jockeys years ago. The patriarch of the family was horse-backing around tracks in the western United States when that territory was little more than a prairie and he likes to remember riding against old Dode Garner, head of another prominent family of riders, which includes the late Mack Garner and Guy Garner, who starred on the European tracks after a brilliant career in this country. SUCCESSFUL RIDERS. Leonard Cassity was a successful reins-man himself and once was under contract to W. C. Whitney, while Leonards brother, Harold, now at the Tanforan track, was a saddle star of twenty or more years ago when he rode for Montfort and B. B. Jones. The other of Billy Joes uncles who were successful riders about twenty-five years ago were his mothers brothers, Bill and Joe Varner, both of whose talents still are remembered by veteran horsemen. The Cassity dynasty was established in Kentucky, where the eldest of the family, now 70 years old, was born, but Billy Joe first saw the light of day in Reno, Nev., seventeen years ago. He began galloping horses at the age of 12 and five years later, last June in Detroit, had his first mount. It was on July 11 at Thistle Down that he rode his first winner, Fair, a horse owned by the Darby Dan Farm, which, incidentally, is maintained by the boys cousins, Howard, Woody" and Jack Long, also former jockeys. Billy Joe is .the latest of the family to embark upon a riding career, but he wont be the last, for he has a 10-year-old brother, Jimmy, who can gallop any mans horse right now.
