The award is given to a person or group who best serves the greater good of harness racing.
By Jim Smedley
Staff Writer

OXFORD – Suzanne Grover has accomplished a lot in her 50-plus years in the Oxford Hills area.

She taught school, helps run a successful business and volunteers for nine different nonprofit organizations.

And she was a calendar girl (January) for the McLaughlin Foundation in 2003.

But her biggest task was decided in November 2002, when she and a committee of 10 other Oxford Hills residents decided to build a new racetrack for the Oxford County Fair.

“None of us on that Race Track Committee knew anything about building a racetrack,” she said. “We formed the committee and in less than nine months we had the track and were racing on it.”

For her efforts, the U.S. Harness Writers Association gave her the 2003 LeeAnne Pooler Unsung Hero Award.

In honoring her, the association said the Oxford County racetrack “… represents a Phoenix in Maine racing – rising from the ashes of dreams and livelihoods destroyed by eminent domain – it is truly a miracle of perseverance, hard work, and the inability to say ‘no.'”

The association said the award was named for one of New England’s most accomplished harness racing photographers. The award is given to a person or group who best serves the greater good of harness racing, while maintaining a profile which keeps them out of the national spotlight.

The Oxford County Fair lost horse racing in 1967 when it was forced by eminent domain to move from the current site of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School on Route 26 in Paris to land on Pottle Road in Oxford.

The Oxford track, completed in time for the 2003 fair, was the first track to be built from scratch in the United States in 100 years.

Grover said she was urged by horseman and harness aficionado Leo Vadnais of Buckfield to build a track for the fair. He would visit her while she was volunteering at Stephens Memorial Hospital coffee shop.

“I called a meeting of horse people in the area,” Grover said. “We had the meeting at the fairgrounds and then formed a race track committee. The rest is history.”

She said the committee met twice, sometimes three times a week.

“When we started we decided that there was no turning back,” Grover said. “There were some iffy waters, but we couldn’t sweat the small stuff, like making sure everything was painted the same color. There was too much big stuff going on.”

Getting the task done was a struggle and Grover said there was plenty of stress for the whole committee.

They found a contractor. Work started in the fall, stopped and then was completed in the spring.

“We had a building donated, found race sponsors, Keiser Industries built our Eagles Nest (judging stand), and had poles to put it on donated,” Grover said. “Counting everything put into it, including in-kind donations, the track cost a half million dollars. And we still have to do some work on the track.

“Buddy Burke is building a horse barn for people to house their horses so they will use the track to work out horses,” she said. “This will help condition the track.”

She said grandstands will not be built this year, as previously planned. Instead, fair organizers will be concentrating on conditioning the track and improving the programs and buildings to make them better for the fair, which will be held Sept. 15 to 18 this year.

“You gotta keep moving forward,” Grover said. “If you stand still somebody will get there before you. We need to keep the Oxford County Fair an integral part of the growth of the Oxford Hills area.

“It adds a very different dimension to our area,” she said. “I think everyone in our area should get involved. It does not belong to just a group of small people.”

The other members of the Race Track Committee are: Buddy Burke, Paris; Rupert Grover, Norway; Anne Bellwood and her son Jeff, Oxford; Phil Jackson, Harrison; Pete and Jeanne Doucette, Hebron; Shirley Huff, Norway; Cheryl Coffman, Buckfield; and Dennis Whitemore, Paris.