Debbie Little on her unexpected route to the CHOF
by Debbie Little
When honored at February’s Dan Patch Awards banquet, I told people to read my column on July 4th weekend and I would tell the story of the mind reader, but I think a little background might be needed before I get into that narrative.
No one gets into the Communicators Hall of Fame (CHOF) on their own and there are people that need to be recognized for putting me on this path.
First, I would like to thank my childhood friend, Lisa Nicholas Cardillo. She got me the job at Yonkers Raceway that started the ball rolling. And God bless the late Tom Cosentino for hiring me sight unseen.
Unlike many in the CHOF, being involved in harness racing was never on my radar. I was a science and math major with an aptitude for accounting, but I did grow up loving horses.
Even though I currently write a weekly HRU column about the top track in the world, The Meadowlands, Yonkers Raceway will always have a piece of my heart, because it’s my hometown track, and where I met and married my husband. Tim Rooney and Bob Galterio taught me what it was like to work for people that truly care about their employees.
Early on in my nearly 27-year tenure at the New York Post, I learned that harness racing was never going to be given the same light or space as its thoroughbred counterpart, but that never stopped me from trying.
Whenever I was going to a big race out of town, I would politely ask if I could file a few paragraphs. It didn’t cost the Post anything because I was paying to travel to the Jug or Le Trot Mondial and since I was an employee, they never paid me to write about harness racing.
Multiple people have told me that working at HRU over the last few years is what got me into the CHOF, but I will always believe doing what I did at the Post was more important for publicizing the sport.
People always say you should write what you know, but I’ve always said you should write about what you love, and the Post was great about letting me freelance for harness racing magazines.
I started out with TIMES: in harness. David Dolezal and Frank Cotolo saw something in me that I don’t think I saw in myself at that time.
In critiquing my work, Cotolo once told me, “You don’t know where to put a comma, and don’t always use the right tense, but if that’s the worst you do, editors will love you.”
I would like to think I’ve gotten better at both, but I will leave that judgement up to Dave Briggs.
While at TIMES, I wrote a story about the difference in penalties for TCO2 positives between the states of New Jersey and Illinois. Not long after my story was published, Illinois put together a task force to revamp their rules and a copy of my story was included in the folders given to each member.
When TIMES: in harness went out of business, I eventually moved on to TROT Magazine.
Darryl Kaplan, Kim Fisher, and currently, Dan Fisher, have always been amazingly open to receiving my story ideas. Even though they don’t like them all, they continue to let me pitch, which is all a writer can ask for.
My defining story for TROT was the one that won me the 2020/2021 Hervey, The Legend of Walter Case, Jr.
I always felt if I could ever get Case, Jr. to agree to the interview that I could hit it out of the park. After so many attempts, I was ready to give up, but Dan Fisher convinced me to make one more call and that made all the difference.
Magazine writing gave me a creative outlet that I didn’t generally have writing race advances and recaps at the Post, but on occasion I did freelance for other departments at the paper, which did allow me to spread my wings. Writing for the Travel section allowed me to do a story on a small zoo in Oklahoma where I came to sponsor several hybrid wolves. Since I was writing pretty regularly for TROT at that time, all the money I made from them I donated to caring for the wolves.
Although my time at the Post ended sooner than I wanted it to, I will always be grateful for the opportunities it gave me, including jogging Niatross before his 1996 North American tour.
If you have ever worked for a newspaper, you will understand that it’s a job you want to have for life. The phrase “They’ll have to pry that keyboard out of my cold dead hand,” was a typical refrain.
Being laid off in 2020 because the Post was “hemorrhaging money” during the COVID-19 pandemic, was difficult to take. Trying to find a job when everyone is looking to downsize was daunting and disheartening.
When everything looked to be at its bleakest, Dave Briggs asked me to write something for Harness Racing Update on the 2020 Hambletonian. Since I lived close to the track, I could give a first-person account of what the normally bustling place was like during the pandemic.
It turned out to be the first of several pandemic related stories I would write for HRU over the next couple of months. I remember filing one on Oct. 1, four days before I wound up in the hospital for six days with COVID-19.
As an asthmatic, it was a slow recovery, but Briggs continued to give me assignments, before giving me my own column, Meadowlands Matters, that debuted on Nov. 22.
And then, in April of 2023, I was named HRU’s associate editor. Reading the columns submitted by our talented writers has made me better at what I do. I can’t thank you all enough.
I said this at the Dan Patch awards, but it deserves repeating, “I would like to thank every caretaker, owner, trainer, driver, racetrack employee and fan that has taken the time to speak with me. This is your award as much as it is mine, because I may be the artist, but you are the paint and without you the canvas is blank.”
Finally, it’s time for the mind reader story.
For those of you who don’t know, I met my husband of 35 years, Dave Little, on the phone. I was confirming entries and results from Yonkers Raceway and he was working at the New York Post. We met in person when he came to do the radio show, the Hervey award winning Live From Yonkers Raceway, with my boss at the time, Cosentino.
I quickly dumped the guy that I had been dating for three years to go out with Dave in April 1988. We got engaged in November and married the following September in the winner’s circle at Yonkers Raceway.
A couple of months after Dave and I started dating, the Westchester County Fair rolled into town at Yonkers Raceway. One of the attractions was a mind reader named Russ Burgess.
The basics of the act is that Burgess would be blindfolded and somehow connect with members of the audience to answer questions.
In order to participate, you wrote your question down on a small piece of paper, which you then folded in half. The papers were gathered by an assistant and put into a tray that was held in front of Burgess.
As a participant, your job was to concentrate on your initials.
Since this was an afternoon performance in the middle of the week, there were maybe 25 people there, none of which I knew.
Burgess picked out a piece of paper, crumpled it in his hand and said the initials, DD, for my maiden name.
He then asked me to think about my question, which was, “Did I make the right choice?”
He said, “Yes, you made the right choice, and when you go home, say hi to Dave for me.”
Dave and I are the only married couple in the CHOF, and although there are other husbands and wives in the Hall, at least one was enshrined as an Immortal, so we are the only living married couple to be elected and inducted in the entire Hall.
I’ve always told people I had a Hall of Fame marriage; this induction and the mind reader show I’m right.
