4 minute read
Carry Me BACK
Carry Me BACK
By Jimmy Hatcher
I’m carrying you back to the summer of 1955.
I had sold my show horse and was judging the Farmington Junior Horse Show. Mrs. Lela Ellis, the show steward, came up to me between classes and asked if I could come to Hot Springs, Virginia, two weeks before the horse show at the Homestead and help her with invitations and such.
That was a job Molly McIintosh Vere Nicoll usually did. But Molly was about to have a baby, and Mrs. Ellis needed help. I accepted immediately, went home, arranged transportation and was ready to go.
Then the phone rang. Mrs. Ellis wanted me to bring riding clothes, a tip-off that she really wanted me to ride an old horse she had retired. I called the previous rider and learned he’d been retired because he had opthalmia, a disease that can cause temporary blindness.
Mrs. Ellis called once more to see if I was still coming. I decided to go, but left my horse show clothing at home. And once I arrived at Hot Springs, it became obvious that Mrs. Ellis had “periodic forgetfulness” when I was greeted with “Jimmy Hatcher. What on earth are you doing in Hot Springs?”
I introduced Mrs. Ellis to the young lady I had gotten a ride with. She told me to go down to the cottage the girl’s parents had rented at the Homestead and to be back by 6 o’clock for dinner.
She also told me to leave my suitcase with her and she’d have someone take it to my quarters after Ed Hutton got his things out of the upstairs. Seems that Mr. Hutton took all the upstairs bedrooms for himself because he didn’t sleep well and liked to move around from bedroom to bedroom.
Little did I guess that Ed Hutton was, indeed, financier E. F. Hutton, once married to Marjorie Merriweather Post and the father of actress Dina Merrill. As it turned out, the Ellises had also been early sponsors of Mr. Hutton when he went into the investment business.
Happily, I went down to my friend’s cottage, driving Mrs. Ellis’s Jaguar sports car. Arriving back at the appointed 6 o’clock dinner hour, I found the Ellises and the Huttons already seated at the dinner table and fortunately, there was a place setting for me.
In those days, a train to New York City came into Hot Springs, and the Huttons were catching it for an overnight trip back to Manhattan.
The clothes being worn by the dinner guests were rather interesting. Mr. Hutton was in black-tie, Mrs. Hutton and Mrs. Ellis wore short formal gowns, Mr. Ellis wore a Hawaiian shirt, and Jimmy Hatcher had on a polo shirt.
Everyone was in a great mood. Mr. Hutton was actually laughing at all my clean, corny jokes, and I was laughing at all his clean, corny jokes. His last words to me as he was leaving for the train were “be sure to call me when you finish college for a job.”
Mrs. Ellis explained to me later that week just who he was. And no, I never called him when I finished Hampden-Sydney College. Big mistake.
Years later, at a dinner in Huntland, a guest who had been CEO at E.F. Hutton’s Chicago branch listened to my story and said, “oh Jimmy, you should’ve called him. He loved horse people. He once re-uniformed the entire New York City mounted police force.”
