Maricopa County AZ Archives News.....C.W. (Doc) Pardee November 21, 1966
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Joshua Taylor http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00006.html#0001358 June 27, 2005, 7:10 pm

Arizona Republican November 21, 1966
GLENDALE--"Horses have been my life," said C.W. (Doc) Pardee, 81 and the
picutres of horses which hang on his barn office attest to that.

Pardee has reaped the thrill of bronc-riding, movie making, racing and as a
trainer and breeder of Thoroughbreds.  With good reason, his status today is a
far cry from his days as a hungry farm boy.

Drought drove the Pardees from Kansas to seek new farm land when Oklahoma
Territory opened.  As a boy of 5 he chopped holes in the baked earth with an ax
to plant the Kaffir corn the famliy had brought with them.

"I rode my first race when I was 8 and got fired for it," he said.  "I was
working for a country doctor and raced the horses on their day of rest.  I got
35 cents for the race, but lost my board and clothes job."

Pardee with three terms of schooling, left home at 10 to work a 12-hour night
shift in a cotton gin.  He thought he'd struck it rich.  The pay was $1.05 a shift.

"I went into business for myself at 14," he said, "when I bought a small livery
stable with horses for $400 on the time payment plan in Wellston, Oklahoma.

He's been buying, selling and racing horses ever since.

"Anyone can mke money if they work," said Pardee, who picked up the nickname Doc
from his veterinary school days.  "I never had trouble making money, but I was
not very astute at saving."

By 1907 he was buying horses in Nebraska and shipping them to Texas and
Oklahoma.  He stared his own Wild West shows.

"On Christmas Day in 1912," he recalled," after the Calgary Stampede in Canada,
someone in Medicine Hat wagered $50 that I could not ride a vicious bronc with
saddle clinched backwards.  I collected the bet."

Movie star Tom Mix was in the audience when Pardee won the world's championship
in bronc-busting in Dewey Oklahoma.  Their friendhsip developed and when Pardee
landed broke in Prescott in 1913, he worked with Mix with the Selig Polescope
Company.

The Frontier days in Prescott about folded when Mix left," Pardee recalled.  "I
helped re-organize the rodeo, bringing in the first bucking horses from Cowboy's
Park in Juarez."

Rodeo announcer for many years in Prescott, Pardee owned a livery stable there.
In 1923 he moved to the Phoenix area to begin a long career in buying and
selling horses and working at the Arizona Biltmore stables.  He played a bit
part in a Gary Cooper movie and that opened the door to other screen activity
for horseman on the West Coast.

"I was making $75 a week working with the stock," Pardee recalled, "and when I
got a bit part my pay moved up to $150 a month. I knew I was really making money
then."

He played bit parts with Jack Holt in "Wild Horse Mesa" and with Richard Dix in
"The Vanishing American."  Mrs. Pardee did not care for Hollywood life, and the
couple returned to Arizona.

At the Biltmore, Pardee met Sam Riddle, owner of "Man of War."

"I had the thrill to be the only man other than the exercisers and jockeys to
ride the famous horse," Pardee said.  "Man of War stepped around like he was on
springs."

Pardee in 1942 acquired acreage here at 51st Avenue and Grant, where today his
horse breeding farm boatss a well known tenatn "Flying Fury" son of Nasrullah.

he has perfected an exercise and hot walker for use at race tracks and breeding
farms.  The device, electrically driven, and in use at his farm, operates
somewhat like a merry-go-round, with compartments for horses and can be used to
cool off horses after races.

Pardee who also provides racing horses at Turf Paradise, was this month named to
th Horseman's Hall of Fame at Memorial Coliseum.


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