by Debbie Little

When The Meadowlands sent out a release last week adding the name of the late, great Stan Bergstein to the finals of the Graduate Series, the two comments most shared were, “great idea” and “long overdue.”

“I was really pleased to see that the Graduate finals are going to honor Stan,” said Paul Estok. “My personal feeling is that it’s about time. Frankly, I honestly believed more such honors would come his way in the first couple of years following his death. I was disappointed when it didn’t happen. I know he’s not alone in spending the better part of his life giving to harness racing, but I can’t think of many who did so in so many ways.”

Estok, who worked alongside Bergstein for many years at Harness Tracks of America, holding several titles, including executive assistant, general counsel, corporate secretary and executive director, said that he thinks Bergstein would be pleased with the honor.

“Like anyone else, he had an ego,” Estok said. “He was proud of the people he knew. I can’t tell you how many times, in different cities, people would come up to him and say that they remembered him from his days doing the Yonkers broadcast or from any of the other broadcasts he was a part of. And it always pleased him. While there’s no doubt in my mind that Stan would have preferred to achieve immortality by living forever, this little reminder of who he was and what he meant to harness racing would gratify him.”

The customer that reached out via social media to The Big M’s chief operating officer/general manager Jason Settlemoir did not specifically request that the Graduate Series finals be named for Bergstein, but Chris McErlean, the vice-president of racing for Penn Entertainment, Inc., who worked with Bergstein in the early ’90s as an executive assistant at HTA, thinks the track made the perfect choice.

“I want to thank The Meadowlands for honoring Stan Bergstein and it is appropriate the Graduate Series is the event to carry his name,” McErlean said. “Under Stan’s guidance. the Harness Tracks of America sponsored a series of top-flight races for older horses during the 1960s and early ’70s, which is what the Graduate Series emulates.”

Settlemoir said that the opportunity to get an idea like this is one of the reasons he enjoys talking with his customers.

“Honestly, when I read it, I said to myself, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that I’d never thought about this, to name a race for Stan Bergstein,” Settlemoir said about receiving the request on Facebook via Messenger. “When I went to work at Tioga, Stan was entering the last years of his career with the HTA, but Stan was not only just a mentor, he was also a friend and not just to me but to Jeff [Gural] as well with opening the tracks [Vernon Downs and Tioga Downs] in Upstate New York. Stan and I had spoken several times and had seen each other several times during those years going to the HTA. I was actually vice-president of the HTA for a long time.

“He did so much for the industry and lived and breathed harness racing over the years, and to have a race named after him at our racetrack, as prestigious as the Graduate finals, is an honor that should have been done a long, long time ago.”

A feeling shared by Meadowlands president/chief executive officer, Gural, who was honored with the 2006 Stan Bergstein Messenger award from Harness Tracks of America.

“I knew Stan from watching his TV show and as a member of HTA… plus I bought art when he did the [charity] art auctions,” Gural said. “Someone suggested it and I realized it was long overdue.”

Following Bergstein’s death in November of 2011, at their annual meeting in February of 2012, the United States Harness Writers Association voted to add Bergstein’s name to their Proximity Achievement award, the highest honor voted on solely by members of USHWA.

Plainridge Racecourse did contest the Stan Bergstein Pace, a $25,000 open for 3-year-olds, for several years in the 2000s, but it did not carry the prestige of the Graduate Series.

“Stan’s greatest attribute, and there were many, was his ability to mentor and guide so many individuals into this sport and to give them a runway to success,” McErlean said. “I am grateful for that opportunity from Stan, and I know he was a great mentor for Jason as well and helped recent Hall of Famer Tom Aldrich, amongst many others, on their roads to success. This race and series will hopefully put many more horses on their own road to success as well.

“Hopefully, having this series named in honor of Stan Bergstein will keep his name, and most importantly, his well-articulated vision for harness racing, at the forefront.”

NOTE: For those perhaps not as familiar with all the accomplishments of the only person elected to both the Hall of Fame and Communicators Hall of Fame in Goshen, NY, here’s a video by HRU’s Heather Vitale remembering Stan Bergsteinwith a voice-over by Bergstein’s longtime TV partner, Dave Johnson.