From
Hall of Fame Award-winning horse trainer Bill White finds new kind of challenge as mayor of Dunnellon
to City Hall
BY BRAD ROGERS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY RALPH DEMILIO
T
he glass case in the small den in Bill White’s Dunnellon home is crammed with elegant crystal and wood-carved trophies recognizing the 17 individual trainer of the year awards White won during two decades of training race horses at Miami’s legendary trio of tracks, Calder, Gulfstream and Hialeah. There’s also an 18th trophy. It sits somewhat hidden behind the more ornate awards that propelled White into the Calder Hall of Fame. This award stands out because of its simplicity – it’s homemade, just a board with four horseshoes nailed to it, with the name Satu in the middle. Satu was White’s first winner as a trainer. Yes, No. 18 is White’s favorite because it was No. 1. “It was a $3,500 maiden claiming race with a $1,500 purse,” White reminisced. “She won by a neck. She went wire to wire. I remember how exhilarated I was.” That was 1982. Fast forward almost 40 years and White’s days as one of Florida’s most successful and respected horse trainers are be-
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| JUN 2021 | OCALAMAGAZINE.COM
hind him, but he is hardly just sitting on his porch watching the Rainbow River flow by. No, today White is the mayor of Dunnellon, a remarkable happenstance given that he and his wife of 42 years, Laura, just moved to Dunnellon in 2017. “I’m really enjoying it,” White said. “It’s something really new, something fresh. Being in a small town, you can really see the changes you affect. And it feels good. You’re not going to satisfy all the people all the time.” FROM TEACHING TO TRAINING White’s sudden arrival to local politics is not all that different from his sudden arrival to the world of horse racing. After graduating from the University of Florida with a master’s degree in special education, White went to work teaching elementary special education in Sarasota County. He also coached the high school baseball team, which had gone winless the season before he arrived and won a district championship his final season, and the JV high school football team.
But White had a love for horse racing that had been instilled in him by his grandfather while he was growing up in Southern Illinois. So, he would go on weekends to Tampa Bay Downs to get his horse racing fix. During those visits, he met a Sarasota businessman named Burt Butker, who owned and raced a few horses. They became friends. One day, Butker called White, then 30, and asked him if he wanted to train his small stable of horses. “I thought, ‘When am I going to have another shot?’” White said. He took the job, while maintaining his teaching position. In fact, Satu’s win came while he was still teaching – he had called in sick that day. White soon realized training horses was what he really wanted to do, so he resigned his teaching job of six years in the middle of the school year and went to work managing Butker’s modest stable of horses at Tampa Bay Downs. Despite Satu’s win, success did not come quickly. White said it took about three years before he began to see measurable success,
