Bazy Tankersley, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Bazy Tankersley

noted breeder of Arabian horses

Date of Birth: 07-Mar-1921

Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Date of Death: 05-Feb-2013

Profession: journalist, publisher, horse breeder

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Bazy Tankersley

  • Ruth Elizabeth "Bazy" Tankersley (March 7, 1921 – February 5, 2013) was an American breeder of Arabian horses and a newspaper publisher.
  • She was a daughter of Senator Joseph Medill McCormick.
  • Her mother was progressive Republican Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick, making Tankersley a granddaughter of the Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio.
  • Although Tankersley was involved with conservative Republican causes as a young woman, including a friendship with Senator Joseph McCarthy, her progressive roots reemerged in later years; by the 21st century, she had become a strong supporter of environmental causes and backed Barack Obama for president in 2008. Tankersley's father died when she was a child.
  • When her mother remarried, the family moved to the southwestern United States where Tankersley spent considerable time riding horses.
  • She became particularly enamored of the Arabian breed after she was given a part-Arabian to ride.
  • At 18 she began working as a reporter for a newspaper published by her mother.
  • She later ran a newspaper in Illinois with her first husband, Peter Miller, and then in 1949 she became the publisher of the conservative Washington Times-Herald.
  • That paper was owned by her uncle, the childless Robert McCormick, who viewed Tankersley as his heir until the two had a falling out over editorial control of the newspaper and her relationship with Garvin Tankersley, who became her second husband.
  • After The Washington Post absorbed the Times-Herald, she shifted to full-time horse breeding. Tankersley purchased her first purebred Arabian when she was 19, and began her horse breeding operation, Al-Marah Arabians, in Tucson, Arizona, in 1941.
  • As she moved across the US for her newspaper career, her horses and farm name went with her.
  • She purchased her program's foundation sire, Indraff, in 1947, while living in Illinois.
  • Upon her move to Washington, DC, her Al-Marah operation relocated to Montgomery County, Maryland, where by 1957 it was the largest Arabian farm in the United States.
  • Tankersley returned to Tucson in the 1970s, where in addition to horse breeding, she created an apprenticeship program at Al-Marah to train young people for jobs in the horse industry.
  • She set up a second horse operation, the Hat Ranch, near Flagstaff, Arizona.
  • Over her career she bred over 2,800 registered Arabians and was one of the largest importers of horses from the Crabbet Arabian Stud in England. Tankersley was a patron of many charities.
  • Upon her death from Parkinson's disease in 2013 she bequeathed her Tucson ranch to the University of Arizona and placed the Hat Ranch in a conservation trust.
  • In her final years, she downsized her breeding operation to about 150 horses, and most remaining stock went to her son, Mark Miller, who moved the Al-Marah Arabian farm name and horse operation to his home base near Clermont, Florida.

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