Lohmeyer, Remmen reflect on Meadowlands’ Opening Night

by Debbie Little

Storming the castle took on a new meaning on Sept. 1, 1976, as the newly-built palace in East Rutherford, NJ was under siege, but those attempting the assault were not there to plunder, but to wonder.

Opening night at The Meadowlands saw a more-than-capacity crowd descend upon what became the mecca of harness racing.

Hall of Famers Ed Lohmeyer and Ray Remmen were eyewitnesses to the goings-on a half-century ago, which, according to reports at the time, saw the parking lots full prior to the start of the racing.

“They had so many people, and they had no room to get in anymore I guess because of fire codes, so they closed all the gates so nobody else could get in,” Lohmeyer said. “But the people were climbing the fence and jumping over to get in the grandstand.”

Lohmeyer, 82, said the massive crowd was a hot topic in the paddock, especially because some horsemen almost didn’t get there as a result.

“Oh, we were talking like crazy about it, because we couldn’t believe it,” Lohmeyer said. “One [horseman] came in [the paddock] and said, ‘Wow, I just made it. I had to go around this circle here and over there just to get here and I had to park my car over there and walk in.’ It was really an event.”

Remmen, 79, said he remembers checking in early that night, anticipating things might get out of hand.

“Well, we were all inside the fence and everybody else was outside the fence, so we were in a pretty good spot,” Remmen said with a laugh. “It was probably a little intimidating, but like I said, we were inside the fence. Those people on the outside, we really didn’t know what was happening.

“Being from out of town, we’d always heard such bad stuff about Newark and we knew Newark was just down the road. We knew the traffic was bad and then they were breaking down the fence, and we didn’t know if that was good or bad.”

The attendance tally for the night of 42,133 is believed to be somewhat low since the gatecrashers were not included. Both the attendance and handle of $2,446,955 were records for the Garden State, which far surpassed those set at Freehold Raceway of 15,747 and $1,105,326.

“When you were driving, the crowd was just amazing with how many people were in there, and the noise and everything, and it was very exciting,” Lohmeyer said. “You knew it was going to really be a great place and they put together a great team. Sonny Werblin was so great to have in there, and Jack Krumpe… it was a good bunch of people, and of course they brought in Joe DeFrank for race secretary, and they hit a home run there.

“I was young and, you know, just starting to really take off in my career, so it was really nice. I still have the program actually.”

DeFrank was also the race secretary at Ontario’s Windsor Raceway, not far from Detroit, MI.

Remmen, a native of Saskatoon, SK, said he raced in Windsor in the wintertime and DeFrank had invited both him and fellow horseman Greg Wright to come out and race at The Meadowlands.

“It was a big experience for a lot of country boys,” Remmen said with a laugh. “Everything was so impressive. And if you were on the grandstand side, you could see New York City, and they kept advertising, ‘Only so many minutes from Times Square.’

“Everybody was from a different place and everybody was just glad to be here [in New Jersey]. All the horsemen, we all felt privileged just to be here to race.”

Remmen was stabled at Hazel Park in Detroit, MI prior to shipping east to race in New Jersey.

“Well, we never planned on moving here, we just thought we’ll come down for the meet and go home, but the meet went right on through to August; it was an 11-month meet, actually,” said Remmen adding with a laugh. “I’ve been here 50 years.”

Sept. 1, 1976 was not yesterday, but Remmen remembers everything from that night like it was.

“I can tell you that everybody who was participating, all the horsemen on the backstretch, were all very, very excited and we’d never seen a place like this,” Remmen said. “Nobody’d ever been to a place like The Meadowlands. So, there was a lot of magic in the air, I’d say, that night for everybody.”

Perhaps Remmen’s rosy racing recollection is somewhat strengthened by his historic victory with Quick Baron in the first race officially contested at The Meadowlands.

“It was special, and then as time went on, it became more special,” Remmen said. “We beat a horse called Napal Dew of Greg Wright’s, who was way better than us when we left Detroit.

“But the track that night was a little loose and it was the first night, and it had quite a cushion on it, maybe a little deeper than it should be. Quick Baron, the horse I had, he had bad feet, so it really suited him.

“I remember, going up the backstretch, and I was a pretty conservative driver in my day, but I remember moving first-over against Napal Dew, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m in a bad spot here,’ because I’ve got a better horse on the inside of me, but as it ended up my horse went a big race and it was a great feeling.”

In addition to a couple of second-place finishes, Lohmeyer also won one on that night’s 10-race card.

“It was with Andy Lobell, he was the sweetest horse to drive,” Lohmeyer said. “He won the preferred or the sub-invitational, it was a big race. It wasn’t the top open pace that night, but it was the second down. What a nice horse he was to drive. Yeah, I remember that for sure.”

The feature race, the $50,000 Meadowlands Premier, was won by “the horse that God loved,” 6-year-old Rambling Willie and owner/trainer/driver Bob Farrington in a career best at the time of 1:55.3 over Joe O’Brien’s Nero.

“Not only was it great to race there, but for a horseman who grew up in the business, it was so great to see all these great horses come in and race,” Lohmeyer said. “Sometimes [depending on where you raced] you wouldn’t get to see them, but they all raced [at The Meadowlands]. Some of them raced every week, and they were really good horses, really good.

“So, you know, my wife [acclaimed veterinarian Patty Hogan] asks me all the time, ‘What do you think’s going to happen, am I going to have horses to work on?’ I said, ‘Patty, I’ve been, you know, almost my whole life in this business.’ I helped my uncle at the mile track at Goshen when I was 12 years old, and I’ve seen so many tracks come and go, and I tell her, ‘Don’t worry, we’re always going to have horses… You never know when the next [track is] going to close, and all of a sudden somebody’s going to build one over here.’ And it’s true. I told her, ‘It’s definitely going to downsize, but as far as horse racing goes, you’ll never have to worry about that.’”

Just as Remmen won the first race at The Meadowlands, he also won the first Hambletonian contested at The Big M in 1981.

“It’s a matter of being at the right place at the right time,” Remmen said. “We’d never have had one in the Hambletonian if it had been out west, you know, so that was all just timing. And that’s the same as the first race looking back at it. You think when it happens, ‘Well, you’ll get lots of chances again,’ but we never had many chances after that, because we didn’t have a Grand Circuit stable. We just had a racehorse stable.

“So, it was the right place at the right time, and it all happened at The Meadowlands. There’s no place that’ll ever be like The Meadowlands again.”