of Fame in 2006 with his parents, siblings and friends in attendance. His most recent accolade was in 2007 when he was inducted into Harness Racing‘s Living Hall of Fame in Goshen, New York. The inductions have not ended for this very talented Canadian.

Two horses stood out for different rea- sons as a young Wally Hennessey received his baptism into the “Sport of Kings”. He reminisced, “There were two horses that I remember working around in my father’s stable when I was very young. At age 11, I was very close to a filly, Farzcy Talia. owned by Allan MacLeod. Following a stakes race, she was being transported from Truro, Nova Scotia when the trailer became unhooked from the truck and she died in the acci— dent. I was informed of this tragedy while in class and it was devastating to me because I was really attached to Fancy Tal/e. Another very special horse was Darn Good Charger owned by Gleason Williams. He was a nice little horse in my dad’s stable and I was the only one who ever groomed him."

Wally remembered clearly that he did the grooming for Fancy Tal/e and Darn Good Charger; however, he wasn't permitted to jog or train them because he was too young. His dad was emphatic on this point. Fancy Tal/e was a very promising stakes filly at the time of her untimely accident. Darn Good Charger was very competitive in the elite classes at that time. This horseman believed that he

12

Behind the Gate

learned valuable lessons from these two.

joe Hennessey was a very competent horseman who taught his sons that to be successful in this sport you had to start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. Wally remembered early morning feedings, mucking stalls, filling water buckets, cleaning leather harness and other seemingly menial tasks for hours on end. He stated, “As a youngster, I learned the game almost exclusively from dad but I watched and observed careful— ly many of the other older horsemen at the Charlottetown Driving Park. I had the best teacher even though he didn‘t have much to say to me then because he taught by example. He was such a pro- fessional horseman. I may be a little biased but he could really drive a horse. His horsemanship was superb because his horses were his whole life. He would not put a horse on the track to compete unless that horse was conditioned to be the best that dad thought he could be. These principles were taught to me at a very early age and have remained with me to this day as I train horses in Florida with my brother, Danny."

During Wally’s formative years, there were a number of quality horsemen at the track to teach youngsters what they must learn and retain to be successful in a life with horses. He informed, “I admired my dad the most but there were other fine horsemen there when I was a kid. Clark Smith was younger than my dad but Clark was probably the first dri-