It’s the season for reminiscing, a time to recall the year gone by, which I will do on this website before 2024 ends.
But at the moment, I am reaching further back with my nostalgia; a half-century, in fact, remembering a horse and rider who made their mark in a very different time.
We always celebrate the competitors at the very top of the game, Olympians or professionals who make a living in horse sport. But this story is about an amateur who achieved recognition with her equine partner of a lifetime. It happened before warmbloods dominated the jumper ranks, when what were often considered big money prizes added up to five figures (or even less), and the heyday of horses selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) was still to come.
A field hunter who had a habit of overjumping his fences went to a horse dealer for dispersal. The gelding, an appendix-registered Quarter Horse without papers, eventually wound up with New Jersey rider Diane Ward. The horse was Traveler, who became a dominant force in the Northeast’s amateur-owner jumper ranks during the 1970s. Anyone who witnessed this pairing will never forget the determined way they conquered the fences; they always drew a crowd.
Diane Ward and Traveler airborne in their typical exuberant style.
Traveler took the A-O division’s American Horse Shows Association Horse of the Year title in 1974; yes, 50 years ago, which is why we’re commemorating this anniversary in 2024. Then he did it again in 1976. (AHSA was one of the predecessors of the current U.S. Equestrian Federation).
The memorable partnership began this way: Diane’s friend, Jo Iacono, bought Traveler from the dealer in 1969 (or so) after Diane tried him out for her and then showed him. But the dynamic horse didn’t turn out to be Jo’s type of ride.
“He wasn’t broken well on the flat,” recalled Diane, who noted, “riding on the flat, at least with the jumpers, is 50 percent of your ballgame. You don’t just get on and go to a fence.” But when it came time to ride a course, Traveler could jump with enthusiasm and accuracy, getting sharper with more training..
Diane was in the saddle when he demonstrated his prowess by winning in Preliminary jumpers (a division based on prize money won that doesn’t exist anymore) at the old Middlesex County show in New Brunswick, N.J., one of the state’s biggest fixtures at the time.
“This is a horse I want,” decided Diane, who had a limited budget. She didn’t let that stop her, however.
“We negotiated, sitting around all day. How much was I going to pay for him?” remembered Diane, who had ridden the horse all year and spent the winter doing dressage work with him.
The price was $5,000, an unreachable figure for the prospective buyer. Diane finally talked her way into paying $2,800, which was her limit, to get the horse. He turned out to be a bargain.
As a child, Diane began taking saddle-seat lessons in West Virginia. When her family moved to Smoke Rise in Kinnelon, N.J., she informed her parents that she wasn’t going unless they bought her a horse. That’s how the Morgan mare, Caramel, came into her life.
She remembers showing Caramel in saddle-seat classes at the old Junior Essex Troop Show in West Orange, N.J., during the mid-1950s. Trainer Vic Goines, who coached riders at Oakland Academy, felt Caramel would fit in well with the school’s program. So that’s where she and Diane went.
Patricia Byrne, who would later become one of Diane and Traveler’s chief rivals with another quarter horse, East Side Drive, remembered Diane from her own early days working with Vic.
“I knew nothing, was totally in awe when watching Diane ride,” recounted Patricia, now a horse show official.
Diane moved on to work with trainer Ben Purifoy at Smoke Rise in Kinnelon, N.J. In 1971, after buying Traveler, she started the year as amateur-owner jumper champion at the Saratoga, N.Y. show. Traveler competed against such well-known pairings as Michele McEvoy (now Grubb) with Advance Ticket and Melanie Smith (now Taylor) who rode The Irishman in amateur classes and was the division’s national champion in 1970. (She eventually rose from the amateur ranks to compete internationally and won team gold at the 1984 Olympics with Calypso.)
Melanie remembers that the combination of Diane and Traveler was one “to always watch, and hope you went after them in the jump-off” in order to beat the sizzling clockings they set.
Pat Campbell, who also competed around that time, recalled Traveler as “just an incredible horse, fun to watch.”
Patricia, who would take the national amateur-owner title in 1977 with East Side, commented about Diane, “She was always the one to try and beat. Traveler was lightning fast, turned on a dime and Diane was a fierce competitor.”
In 1972, things were off to a promising start for Diane and Traveler. They went to the old Winter Haven show in Florida, got the championship again at Saratoga, and did well at Ox Ridge and Fairfield. Then Traveler competed at a small show in New Jersey as a tune-up and stepped on a rock.
“That was it for the year,” noted Diane, noting the veterinarians were stumped trying to find out what was wrong with the horse.
Meanwhile, Pete Bausum, a nephew of one of her friends, had recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school and examined Traveler. He X-rayed Traveler and found a crack in his coffin bone. That started Diane’s friendship with Pete, who became a top practitioner.
The choice of treatment was “complete stall rest or nerve him.” In response, Diane said, “I’m not nerving him,” so stall rest it was.
During the horse’s recovery, farrier Ralph Snyder built Traveler a special cast-type support shoe. The horse was out of action for close to a year, recuperating while on stall rest, a difficult situation for an animal that previously had been worked every day.
Traveler came back in May 1973, after nearly a year off, and finished fourth in the national standings. He was just warming up.
“In 1974, he was unbelievable, he kept winning,” said Diane, of Traveler’s first national championship year. He was profiled in the yearbook, “Champion Horses and Riders of North America,” a volume put together by former U.S. Equestrian Team Executive Director Jack Fritz.
The program from the 1974 Eastern States Horse Show, where a photo of Traveler was featured (upper right).
Among the titles that Traveler won was the A-O championship at the North Shore Horse Show on Long Island. That has special significance to Diane because actor Paul Newman presented the trophy.
After a relatively quiet 1975, Traveler earned the national championship again in 1976. Diane had a lot of offers from people who wanted to buy Traveler. Some bids were around $30,000, “which in those days was pretty good money,” the horse’s owner pointed out, but she had no intention of selling her amazing partner.
Traveler earned enough money in the amateur ranks to qualify for the glamorous open jumper division in 1971 at the National Horse Show, which was one of the highest-profile events at the old Madison Square Garden, between forty ninth and fiftieth streets in Manhattan. (The current Garden opened above Penn Station in 1968).
“I sent the entry form in as a lark,” said Diane. After learning she had been accepted, she thought, “I hoped I wasn’t in over my head.”
The portrait of Traveler and Diane that hangs in her livingroom.
She cleared the National’s storied puissance wall at 6-feet, 6 inches, but was understandably nervous about trying anything that was bigger (puissance competitions often went to 7 feet or more).
In the next round, “I was so glad he brought the back rail of the spread fence down (a required obstacle in the class) because I didn’t want to jump any higher,” she said.
Traveler got third-place and fifth-place ribbons at the show, competing against the legendary Idle Dice with Rodney Jenkins and The Cardinal, another star of that era, ridden by Bernie Traurig.
After taking the AHSA A-O championship in 1976, Diane turned professional and retired Traveler from high-level competition. Her daughter rode “Trav,” as Diane called him, in the junior jumpers, and eventually Diane started using him for flat lessons. But she had to be careful:
“You couldn’t let him see a jump. He’d just point at it and go. He taught so many kids over the years to walk, trot and canter until he was in his 30s. Even a 5-year old could ride him.”
Diane’s Jack Russell also used to get on his back. Traveler was used in a lesson the day before he died at age 33 in 1993.
Diane Ward with her AHSA championship ribbons and plaque.
Diane moved to Ocala, Fla., from New Jersey, after her husband, Don, passed away in 2012.
“I fell in love with the place, with the trees. It’s a gorgeous area,” said Diane who lives 10 minutes from the World Equestrian Center and can go there to watch her fill of the jumpers.
With her own showing days long over, she keeps busy volunteering at VOCAL for Pets, (Voices of Change Animal League) a welfare group that offers everything from low-cost spaying and neutering to foster care and vaccinations. Diane is involved with their fundraising Fur Ball and a pet food program that has her unloading pallets of feed every Sunday.
Though Traveler has been gone since 1993, he is still a presence for Diane. A drawing of him hangs in her living room, where she sees it every day. The gelding was more than a brilliant competitor, he had a special personality to go with his athletic ability.
“He was not really a horse,” Diane contends.
“He was like a dog, he would follow you anywhere. He was so good to so many people.”
A memorial ad for Traveler.