Helen Bates (Penny) Chenery: 1922 – 1973

WRITTEN BY MARION E. ALTIERI

What can be written about Penny Chenery, that hasn’t been written or said already? The youngest of Christopher T. Chenery and Helen Clementina Bates Chenery’s three children, Penny was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1922, and reared in nearby Pelham Manor.

Penny loved horses from early childhood; she learned to ride when she was five. In 1936 she was 14, and her father built The Meadow, his Thoroughbred breeding farm in Caroline County, Virginia. (Penny also shared her sire’s business acumen – an attribute she would call upon in the early 1970s.) She attended the elite Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, where she was Captain of the Equestrian Team in her Senior year. (Of course, her talent for riding was a logical and emotional response to the species – but genetics and familial predilections surely played roles, as well.) She credits her father, for she believed that she had inherited that affection.)

"My father really loved horses. I think a parent often communicates his love to a child."

From the Madeira School, she went on to Smith College, from which she graduated in 1943 with a degree in American Studies.

Graduate studies followed, then marriage to John (Jack) Tweedy; four children and eventually, a move to the Wild West: Colorado. Penny’s life took a turn in 1967, when her mother died suddenly, and her father became ill. (He entered New Rochelle Hospital in April, 1968 and remained there until he died in 1973.) The Meadow had fallen into disrepair, and was in debt. Three of the Chenery siblings hoped to sell the farm, but The Meadow’s Board had elected Penny to be President. In 1968, she began the long and arduous journey to bring The Meadow back to her father’s vision, and profitability.

She assumed breeding responsibilities, and by 1972 had a great stakes horse in her beloved Riva Ridge. Riva, as she called him, won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and the Belmont – thus, achieving Christopher Chenery’s dream of producing a truly great racehorse. The Meadow was once again viable – thriving, in fact. That same year, two-year-old Secretariat was named Champion Two-Year-Old Colt, thus foreshadowing his true greatness, and establishing his legacy.

Had not Penny insisted that The Meadow should be saved, her father’s name and passion for horses and the sport would have become an asterisk in racing history books. But Penny had the drive to do right by her sire, to give him a gift that he so-richly deserved: horse racing immortality. Only a daughter of extraordinary fire, grit, intelligence and love for family and Thoroughbreds could have given her father and the world, Riva Ridge and Secretariat – arguably, the greatest Thoroughbred, ever to live.