Mark J. Thomas Sr., racing steward, dies at 88

Mark J. Thomas Sr. traveled the country taking care of horses. Family legend has him handling polo ponies as a teenager, in the early 1940s, for a "wealthy businessman" in Miami.

The businessman would "come up to my father and tell him, 'Remember, you don't know who I am. My name is Mr. Smith,' " Thomas' daughter, Margaret Thomas of Carle Place, said.

It turned out that Mr. Smith was the notorious mobster Al Capone, she said.

Whether it really was Capone didn't matter to Thomas, who often told his daughter he'd rather shovel a ton of horse manure "than deal with an ounce of human malarkey."

She said her father "loved horses more than anything."

Mark J. Thomas Sr., a retired New York Racing Association steward whose four-legged experiences ranged from Capone's ponies to Secretariat's Belmont Stakes triumph that clinched the 1973 Triple Crown, died of heart illness at his Carle Place home June 13. He was 88.

He was a state racing steward assigned to Belmont Park when Secretariat made his historic run. Thomas' granddaughter, Andrea Morale, of Wantagh, said watching Secretariat's victory was among his finest horse-racing memories.

"He worked all the tracks, from Belmont to Saratoga," she said, "and he rubbed shoulders with the most important and wealthiest people. But he was the most humble, most unassuming man you'd ever want to meet."

His family said Thomas caught his equine passion as a youngster in his native New Haven, Conn., growing up near Yale University and watching the wealthy entertain themselves with polo matches. Thomas later trained ponies for the 1938 Yale polo team, which won a collegiate championship, Morale said.

He also worked with polo ponies in Westbury before World War II, when Post Avenue was rich with matches and horse-related shops. Thomas worked transporting horses between New York and Florida for wealthy owners. Later, he helped develop a nine-stall horse trailer, new to the industry at the time, his daughter said.

After serving as an Army infantryman in World War II, Thomas married and moved to Carle Place, where he lived for 60 years.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a brother, Thomas Gagliardi of New Haven, Conn.; son James Thomas of Simi Valley, Calif.; daughters Mary Anne Brown of Mineola, Fla., Regina Ruede of Altamont, N.Y., and Frances Clinton of Carle Place; 36 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. A son, Mark Jr., died in 1999.

A funeral Mass was celebrated June 18 at St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church in Westbury, followed by burial at Cemetery of the Holy Rood, Westbury.