56 Facts About Bazy Tankersley

Ruth Elizabeth "Bazy" Tankersley was an American breeder of Arabian horses and a newspaper publisher.

Bazy Tankersley was a daughter of US Senator Joseph Medill McCormick.

Bazy Tankersley's mother was progressive Republican US Representative Ruth Hanna McCormick, making Tankersley a granddaughter of Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio.

When her mother remarried, the family moved to the southwestern United States, where Bazy Tankersley spent considerable time riding horses.

Bazy Tankersley became particularly enamored of the Arabian breed after she was given a part-Arabian to ride.

Bazy Tankersley later ran a newspaper in Illinois with her first husband, Peter Miller.

Bazy Tankersley purchased her first purebred Arabian when she was 19 and began her horse breeding operation, Al-Marah Arabians in Tucson, Arizona, in 1941.

Bazy Tankersley purchased her program's foundation sire, Indraff, in 1947, while living in Illinois.

Bazy Tankersley returned to Tucson in the 1970s, where in addition to horse breeding, she created an apprenticeship program at Al-Marah to train young people for jobs in the horse industry.

Bazy Tankersley set up a second horse operation, the Hat Ranch, near Flagstaff, Arizona.

Bazy Tankersley's nickname "Bazy" came from how she pronounced the word "baby" when she was a toddler.

Bazy Tankersley's father was Joseph Medill McCormick, part-owner of the Chicago Tribune and a Senator from Illinois.

Bazy Tankersley's mother, Ruth Hanna McCormick, was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois, serving in the 71st Congress from 1929 to 1931 as a progressive Republican.

When Bazy Tankersley was four, her father died by suicide, believed to be partly attributed to his defeat for renomination in 1924.

Bazy Tankersley's mother remarried in 1932 to Albert Gallatin Simms, a lawyer, banker and congressman from New Mexico.

Bazy Tankersley spent part of her childhood on her mother's Rock River dairy farm in Byron, Illinois.

Bazy Tankersley later moved to the Southwest with her mother and stepfather, living initially at a ranch owned by Simms in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then moving in 1937 to the Trinchera Ranch, a 250,000-acre property in Colorado that her mother had purchased.

Bazy Tankersley attended a boarding school in Virginia and spent summers in the West.

Bazy Tankersley's mother died of pancreatitis on December 31,1944, two months after a serious riding accident.

Bazy Tankersley divorced Miller in 1951 to marry Garvin E "Tank" Tankersley, an editor at the Washington Times-Herald ten years older than she was.

Garvin Bazy Tankersley had started his news career as a photographer, and he was the managing editor when he left the paper in 1952.

The couple met while Bazy was running the Times-Herald, but Robert McCormick, Bazy's uncle and owner of the newspaper, considered Garvin Tankersley to be of unsuitable social status for Bazy because "Tank" was from a poor Lynchburg, Virginia, family.

Bazy Tankersley saw the latter stance as hypocritical, given McCormick's own complicated personal life.

Bazy Tankersley followed in the footsteps of her mother, who was the first woman to manage a presidential campaign, the 1940 and 1944 efforts of Thomas E Dewey.

Bazy Tankersley later described herself as a friend of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and in 1952, she advocated for the removal of Guy Gabrielson as chair of the Republican National Committee.

Bazy Tankersley had two stepchildren, Anne Tankersley Sturm and Garvin Tankersley, Jr.

At 18, Tankersley began working as a reporter for the Rockford Star, published by her mother.

Bazy Tankersley gained experience running a newspaper in 1946 when she and Peter Miller purchased the LaSalle Post-Tribune in LaSalle, Illinois, and the Peru News-Herald, in Peru, Illinois, merging the papers to create the Daily News-Tribune.

Bazy Tankersley considered her the heir to his newspaper company.

Bazy Tankersley was 28 at the time and was given the title of Vice-President.

Bazy Tankersley was publisher of the newspaper for only 19 months.

When he announced the sale, one of the paper's board members insisted that Bazy Tankersley be given a chance to purchase it, so McCormick gave her 48 hours to match the $10 million asking price.

Bazy Tankersley is recorded as the breeder of over 2,800 registered Arabian foals in her lifetime, making her possibly the largest Arabian horse breeder in the world.

Bazy Tankersley founded the Al-Marah Arabian Horse Farm in 1941 on a 40-acre property when she first lived in Tucson.

Bazy Tankersley consistently used bloodlines from the Crabbet Arabian Stud, both via horses descended from early American importations as well as her own purchases from the estate of Lady Wentworth in the late 1950s.

Bazy Tankersley bought 32 horses, the largest importation of Crabbet bloodstock to the United States in history.

Bazy Tankersley purchased 14 Hanstead horses, the largest group from that estate sold to a single buyer.

In 1958, Bazy Tankersley added to her Double R program when she leased and imported the Rissalix son *Count Dorsaz, a Hanstead-bred horse.

Bazy Tankersley later added another Rissalix son from Hanstead, *Ranix.

Bazy Tankersley used her knowledge of genetics to institute a program of selectively inbreeding horses of bloodlines she considered of excellent quality.

Bazy Tankersley designed many of the buildings on her Tucson property herself.

Bazy Tankersley added new stallions to her herd starting with Dreamazon in the 1980s, followed by a *Silver Vanity descendant, SDA Silver Legend, in 2001.

Bazy Tankersley became the 2006 National Champion Arabian Sport Horse, and the reserve champion was AM Power Raid, a stallion from within her program.

Ultimately Bazy Tankersley operated two facilities in Arizona, her Al-Marah Arabian Farm, a 110-acre facility, and the Hat Ranch in Williams, near Flagstaff.

Bazy Tankersley, though identified as a Republican, displayed a photo of FDR at the ranch.

In 2003, Bazy Tankersley was given the Arabian Breeder's Association Lifetime Breeder's Award.

In 1973, Bazy Tankersley created an apprenticeship program to train people both for work as employees at her ranch and for positions elsewhere in the horse industry.

Bazy Tankersley donated horses to an Arabian breeding program at Michigan State University.

Bazy Tankersley was noted throughout her career for her support of youth involvement with Arabian horses.

Bazy Tankersley closed that program in December 2013 so that he could focus on the Al-Marah horses.

Bazy Tankersley moved the farm name and the breeding operation to his home base near Clermont, Florida.

Bazy Tankersley supported renewable energy, smart growth, and water conservation, and promoted reform of state land management.

Bazy Tankersley helped Defenders of Wildlife preserve the Aravaipa Canyon.

Bazy Tankersley was a consistent advocate of the Arabian breed as a performance horse.

Bazy Tankersley was a major promoter of the Arabian Horse Association Sport Horse Nationals, and her horses acquired many championships at that competition.

Bazy Tankersley founded the Arabian Horse Owners Foundation in 1963 as a charity to fund the needs of the Arabian horse community.