Reminiscing With Bill Harlin

By Sarah Gee
©Voice, February 2006

Sitting down to talk with Bill Harlin is akin to taking a stroll through walking horse history. As a youth growing up at famed Harlinsdale Farm he witnessed the formation of the Tennessee Walking Horse breed, he showed at the earliest Celebrations, and he was live and in-person for the development of a number of our breed’s legends. However, Bill Harlin is an extremely humble man and to hear him tell it, he was just a typical horse-crazy kid lucky enough to continue his horse habit into adulthood.

The eldest son of William Wirt Harlin, Sr., Mr. Wirt, and Luella Leek Harlin, William Wirt Harlin, Jr., Bill and his three younger brothers, Tom, Alex, and Bob, grew up riding saddle ponies. Prior to 1934, the family made their home on the south side of Nashville, Tennessee. Bill recalls, “Dad rented some property behind us and we had some ponies. I had a real nice spotted pony mare at that time.”

In 1934 the family relocated to Franklin, Tennessee and Harlinsdale Farm was born. Bill relates, “Dad had bought this property in several parcels starting in about 1930, and by about 1934 we had finished renovating the house and were ready to move.” The farm was quick to become known for it’s fine Hereford cattle. Of course, the ponies also maintained a presence. Reminiscing about the early years in Franklin, Bill recollects, “They had a horse show in Franklin up on the high school football field. I was so excited that the day of that show I got up about 3 o’clock in the morning, got my little pony out, and I rode across town to the field and had my own little practice horse show in the ring. I went back later that evening with my pony and competed in the real horse show.”

Mr. Wirt was quick to recognize his sons’ interest in horses. Bill states, “Later, after myself and my brothers exhibited some interest, dad bought a little better stock and put it with a public trainer in Nashville named George Parks who had a barn behind what is now St. Thomas Hospital. He trained three and five gaited horses and we had some minor success. George taught us how to ride. Later, when we were organized a little better here in Franklin, my father hired a man named Major Bunton to train here at the farm. He was a Saddlebred trainer also. Our stock continued to improve and I finally wound up with a chestnut five-gaited Saddlebred mare that I placed fourth with at the 1940 Celebration. By that time I was about 16 or 17 years old.”

Now, everyone knows that Harlinsdale Farm = Tennessee Walking Horses, so what about the walking horses? Discussing the early walking horse presence at the farm, Bill states, “We had a few walking horses around at that time but really they weren’t quite the quality that we wanted. We started a breeding program and my dad bought a double-bred Roan Allen horse named No Limit Allen. This was the most highly sought pedigree that you could get. Floyd Carothers had trained him and shown him a little bit but by the time he was four we had him here at Franklin and we were breeding him. We had some pretty good success with him.”

In 1943, at the height of World War II and while attending Vanderbilt University, Bill was drafted to serve in the Navy. He wasn’t discharged until 1945 and missed some of the most momentous happenings in Harlinsdale history. However, he did keep up with events, and relatives filled him in on the details when he returned. He relates, “After the modest success of No Limit Allen, my dad, without advertising it, began to look for something that he thought would be a notch up. He and Henry Davis of Wartrace, Tennessee, were great friends. Henry called one morning and said, ‘Wirt, I believe I’ve found him.’ and that was Midnight Sun. He was owned by John A. Hendrixson and at Winston Wiser’s barn and they went over there and bought him for $4,400. They left him with Winston for a while and then Carl Lee, who had moved down here from Kentucky, rode him a little bit. They carried him to the Celebration in 1944 and both Lee and Wiser showed him. In the meantime, Fred Walker was living two miles from the farm. Fred had lived in Wartrace and had been showing in Tennessee for a long time. He was a good friend of John A. Hendrixson’s, they had both been engineers on the NC Railroad and they rode horses together all the time. Anyway, Fred started riding Midnight Sun.”

Continuing on Bill recalls, “I saw Midnight Sun show at the Celebration in 1946 and it was as exciting as anything I’ve ever seen. Midnight Sun brought some excitement to that show. With Midnight Sun there was some buzz in the community, you’d stop at a gas station and people’d be talking about who would win the Celebration. And then, when they brought Merry Go Boy in that just doubled the excitement. After they came along, the Saddlebred presence at the Celebration was diminished. Before, the walking horse classes at the Celebration were really when you went to get a drink or something. After Midnight Sun came along and then Merry Go Boy came along to challenge him, folks were in the stands waiting for it, cheers went up all the way around the arena.“

Discussing Midnight Sun’s impact on the breed, he adds, “Midnight Sun added a dimension that hadn’t been there before. He put a bold walk on. He identified the gait. He gave the breed some identification. It really didn’t have any before that, just a bunch of horses that looked like they were swimming or something.” In the same vein, Bill states, “There’s been some disservice put on the horse by some folks – talking about him being ugly or being long headed. They just don’t know. He wasn’t ugly, he was bigger than some of them but he was not ugly. If you made him park and set his head up, he looked as good as any. If you didn’t, he looked ordinary. He was a pretty docile kind of horse.”

After being discharged from the Navy, Bill returned to Vanderbilt for about 10 weeks. While there he met Barbara, a nursing student from Rome, Georgia. They were married about a year or so later.

Bill also returned to Harlinsdale following his stint in the Navy. He says, “Nobody asked me to work at the farm, I just moved in. When I left we had old No Limit and another one or two, and when I got back there was Midnight Sun and all this excitement. I volunteered to ride and pretty soon somebody paid me and I just really took to it for a while. We were breaking all those Midnight Sun colts to ride, we didn’t sell any yearlings back then. We’d spend the winter on them and have something new to sell in the spring. I rode a lot of them. It was a good time.”

In the early 1950s, Bill went to work managing a herd of registered Hereford cattle at a nearby farm. At the same time he was monitoring the foaling barn at Harlinsdale. He stayed with that for four or five years and then went to work in Nashville as an accountant for the Harlin family business – the Red Kap Garment Company. He relates, “I had studied to be an accountant when I was a young man.”

1956 was a year of change at Harlinsdale. Bill recollects, “My father and uncle and become partners in the farm operation back in the 1930s. My dad owned the property and they were partners on the horses. My uncle had a slight stroke in 1956 and they decided that they had better split it up. They couldn’t agree on what to do with Midnight Sun so they carried him to Murray Farm. J.B. Smith bought him for Mrs. Livingston. They’d advertised the fact that they were going to put him in that sale so J.B. was over there looking for him and Mrs. Livingston was there. They weren’t sure that they’d have any competitive bids so they sold him outside.”

Over the next several years Bill began to expand his own equine holdings. He says, “I acquired a few mares of my own, which I boarded at the farm. The year after Midnight Sun died I bought five fillies from his last crop of foals at our annual yearling sale. Those five mares turned out to be really good and their pedigrees are still present in the mares we’ve got here now.”

After a number of years, Bill left the family business and struck out on his own. Then, his cousin Harlin Hayes died. Hayes had been the manager of Harlinsdale for years and with Mr. Wirt having reached the age of 95, questions arose about the farm’s future. Bill recalls, “My dad came to me and said, ‘I don’t know what to do with the farm...If you boys want to do it we can close it up.’ I said, ‘Well let me think about it.’ So I talked to my brothers, Tom and Bob, as Alex was in pretty bad health and died fairly soon after that, and the three of us formed a partnership and bought my dad’s horses from him. My dad still owned the property and we rented the farm from him. That continued until he passed away five or six years later.” Following Mr. Wirt’s death, the brothers owned the property in partnership as well.

The Harlin brothers continued to own the farm in partnership until 2004 when the City of Franklin bought the property with the understanding that there would always be a walking horse presence at the farm. The past 50 or so years of Harlinsdale history is dotted with the names of industry greats, names such as Sun’s Delight D., Pride of Midnight (whom Mr. Wirt pegged as the best stallion to ever stand at Harlinsdale), Pride’s Hallelujah, Pride’s Dark Spirit, Pride’s Gold Coin, Pride’s Genius, and The Wise Man.

Since the beginning of the partnership, Bill has taken the most active roll with the horses and since the sale to the City, he’s been the sole operator of the horse business. The Harlinsdale partnership now consists of Bill and Barbara Harlin. Bill states, “Barbara’s my only partner now. Everything that shows belongs to my wife and me. Harlinsdale Farm is still a partnership – my wife and I are the partners.”

According to Bill, Barbara “only really got involved in the horses about 20 years ago when we bought her a pleasure horse and put it with Carol Tosh. We went to some shows. Barbara went to Joe Webb’s school two or three times and that really got her interested.”

About fifteen years ago, the Harlins began placing some pleasure horses in training with Sherrie Szucs of Bellevue, Ohio. Bill says, “Roger Hand, when he was working at the National Horse Show Commission, suggested that I put my horses with Sherrie Szucs. Sherrie’s done a lot for us in her area. She brought customers to the yearling sale and they started buying. It really expanded our business and it opened my eyes to the renewed interest in quality flat shod horses. We’ve got three good mares with Sherrie right now. They walk like Midnight Sun and I do like that distinction. Midnight Sun never wore a shoe bigger than a keg shoe and he could step. Sherrie is so natural with them.”

The Harlins also have a long-standing relationship with Bobo Farms in Shelbyville, Tennessee - first C.A. and now Bill. Currently they have 2005 Four-Year-Old WC and RWGC Rowdy Rev, 2005 Yearling WGC Power Force, and about three others in training with Bill Bobo. The Revelation is home right now, but has also experienced quite a bit of success under Bobo’s direction. Bill Harlin’s eyes absolutely light up when he talks about The Revelation, “I’ve had a million years of fun riding Revelation, he’s all I can handle. When he gets warmed up he’s a tiger.”

Discussing his experiences with the Bobos and Sherrie Szucs, Bill has nothing but praise, “I’ve had horses with some other people too, but I’ve had this continuity with the Bobos and Sherrie. When you’re doing business with people in the horse business, the way money is handled means a lot and in my connections with Charlie Bobo and then Bill, and Sherrie and her family there’s never been any question about financial matters.” The two trainers’ records with Harlin horses speak for themselves.

Show ring successes aside, Harlinsdale continues to stand a top-notch line-up of stallions. Gen.’s Major General, Out On Parole, Sweepstakes, Coin Maker, Classic Generator, Gold Power, and The Revelation all call the farm home. Gold Power (sire of 2005 WGC Main Power and Power Force) and The Revelation (2005 TWHBEA^SM Sire of the Year based on percentage points) are the property of Harlinsdale Farm while the others stand at the farm. Referring to this line-up, Bill remarks, “But I’ll tell you, I’ve reached a point right now where I think I’ve got the best stuff I’ve ever had here. I’ll match this line-up with anybody’s.”

Continuing on about the breeding operation and the involved owners, he says, “My breeding program was really enhanced when Connie Bryant and Karla Landrum decided to let us stand Major General. He really filled a void that I had here at that time and they have been the nicest folks to work with. We’re also fortunate to have the Baskins (owners of Out On Parole), Mrs. Rigual (owner of Sweepstakes), the Campbells up in Pennsylvania (owners of Classic Generator), and Bud Moore and Suzanne Littell (owners of Coin Maker). They’re all high class folks.”

With success past and present, Bill’s thoughts have turned to the future. He relates, “We’ve attempted to steer our children (Clay and Camille) to be involved, to whatever degree they liked, in the horse business. Clay was going to be my big successor but that didn’t work out. We’ve got grandchildren that come here in the summer. Also, I sponsored a family reunion here in June last year and I invited all of my relatives, about 150 showed up. We showed them some nice horses and talked to them about the history they’ve inherited from their grandfather and great-grandfather. I’m hoping that will sink in. I’ve gotten some pretty good responses since then. I’m just hoping that when I go somebody will want to grab it.” Bill puts a lot of his hopes for the future in the capable hands of long-time farm manager Emory “Rocky” Jones. He asserts, “Right now, my main man is Rocky. With him, and hopefully someone else from the family, it won’t die.”