SNOWMAN - could there be a better name for a horse or more heartwarming story for a Christmastime feature?
“He was a Cinderella horse,” agreed Harriet de Leyer, speaking about her father Harry’s famous show jumper. His story was the inspiration for books and films: an Amish plough horse, bought off a load of slaughterhouse-bound horses, that went on to win the American show jumping Triple Crown, appeared twice in Life magazine features and on national TV.
To illustrate the widespread popularity of Snowman in American culture, he even appeared on The Tonight Show when host Johnny Carson climbed on his back. Imagine Gay Byrne aboard Boomerang on the Late Late Show set.
“He was our horse of a lifetime in every which way, because he was incredible. He was my father’s champion, he was our biggest pet, it’s like he was our everything horse for everybody. He was the family horse.”
I first heard of Snowman at the 2015 Equus Festival in New York, where the documentary Harry and Snowmanfeatured amongst 150 films screened in a film theatre in the city’s Ukrainian village district.
Produced by the award-winning director Ron Davis, it was a fascinating rags-to-riches story, shown on a big screen streets away from Madison Square Garden, where the $80 horse and de Leyer won titles galore.
Aside from the show jumping and blue ribbons angles, Harry de Leyer’s heroic past during WWII, before he became one of millions of immigrants to make a better life in the United States, adds another element to his life story.
Six of his and wife Johanna’s eight children became professional riders or trainers, including Harriet.
“I’m actually in Florida right now, riding and training. It’s a lovely 70, 71 degrees, the sun is shining and it’s like the perfect riding day. Wellington didn’t even exist back in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Back then, you didn’t go to horse shows in the winter. After New York, Harrisburg and the Royal Winter Fair in Canada, our horses were off for January, February, March. You went foxhunting instead. It’s totally different now!”
A different world indeed from the show circuit a young Harry de Leyer first competed in. And how he got to America at all was due to one family’s gratitude.
Paying it forward
Born in St Oedenrode in 1927, Harry grew up on the family farm. A keen show jumper as a youngster, that all ground to a halt once World War II began and the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940.
His family helped the Dutch resistance by hiding Jews and downed Allied pilots, crew and paratroopers on the farm, covering up their hiding place door with manure to camouflage it. Harry also rescued cavalry horses, abandoned as the war waged on.
“You know, saving people, saving the horses... it was very much that they [that generation] don’t talk about it. Anybody that was involved in the resistance during the war, none of them spoke about what they did.”
His daughter knows though of her father’s bravery and how he later got his immigration papers.
“He would go out during the night and collect the dog tags off the dead [US] soldiers, before burying them and then send the dog tags back to the parents or family so they had something, they had some kind of peace.”
Those acts of closure and kindness led to the North Carolina parents of one soldier offering to sponsor Harry and Johanna when they decided to emigrate to America. Having arrived in 1950, the couple later settled in Long Island, where Harry became the chief riding instructor at the Knox School, a girls’ private school.
There were little nods to their homeland; their farm was named Hollandia for example and in their children’s names.
“Yes and no,” replied Harriet, when asked if she was named after her father. “In the Netherlands, the first child is named after the father’s father. The second child is named after the mother’s father, then the father’s mother and then the mother’s mother. So that’s kind of how it went. I had a brother, he passed away and he was Harry also.”
Harriet was responsible for one name choice: the luckiest horse at an auction in New Holland, Pennsylvania.
The famous show jumping horse Snowman who was rescued off a truck bound for the slaughter house
Snowman come home
Pennsylvania Dutch Country is home to the largest Amish population in the United States. Many of the original settlers, primarily in the late 17th century, arrived from Germany’s Rhineland region.
Shunning the modern world, the Amish population are known for their simple lifestyles and dialect. Horsepower is still relied on for transport and farming amongst the current population of 400,000 Amish, who live mainly in Pennsylvania and neighbouring Ohio.
Several horse auctions still take place in these two states and, back in February 1956, when looking to source some quiet lesson horses, de Leyer drove from Long Island to Amish country.
A flat tyre en route meant the auction had already ended by the time he eventually got there, but he noticed a grey plough horse amongst a batch of horses bought for slaughter. There was something about the horse, already loaded on the trailer, that appealed to the Dutchman, who bought him for $80.
Snowman’s background is an even greater mystery than that of Stroller, but he was believed to be eight years old in 1956.
The Amish horse had a welcome reception waiting when he was delivered to the de Leyer’s farm. “My older brother and my brother, right after me, were all there when he walked down the ramp and I’m like, ‘Oh, he looks like a snowman!’ Because in those days, the trucks were not enclosed, so the snow was coming through the slats and he was covered in snow.”
Snowman started off as a lesson horse before Harry doubled his money by selling him for $160 to a Dr Rugan, who lived six miles away. However, when Snowman kept returning home, jumping the fences along the way, de Leyer realised he had a jumper on his hands. “Some are given feet of clay and some are given wings” are lyrics from a John Denver song - Snowman had both in two careers.
New York’s finest
1958 - Brazil won the football World Cup and the US president was Dwight D Eisenhower. He had served with distinction as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, overseeing the Normandy landings that would eventually liberate de Leyer’s homeland.
It was also the year that Snowman was catapulted into the American public’s attention when the former plough horse won at the Madison Square Garden’s Diamond Jubilee Show.
Founded in 1883, the National Horse Show changed New York locations to Madison Square Garden in 1926. Not the current MSG beside Penn Station (where the show moved to in 1968), the prior Madison Square Garden venue was located further uptown on Eighth Avenue at 50th Street.
It’s where New York’s high society gathered in top hats, black tie, evening gowns and jewels to watch show jumping. It’s where John Ledingham and Kilbaha’s predecessors and heroes - Col. Billy Ringrose and Col. Ned Campion - competed on the Army Equitation School string of horses. And it’s also where Snowman won his Triple Crown.
The public always loves an underdog and there was no better example than the fleabitten grey Snowman and his Dutch-born rider winning in the Big Apple. Their Triple Crown win in 1958 stands out when Harriet was asked what her late father would regard as his biggest win.
“It was always that Triple Crown win. In the racing world, you know, you have the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness Stakes, the Kentucky Derby, that’s the Triple Crown of horse racing. And, back when my father was on Snowman, it was the National Horse Show, including the PHA [Professional Horsemens Association] Horse of the year - those things were the Triple Crown of show jumping.
“And the fact that he did it twice on Snowman... the first year was a surprise. The second year [1959] was like no one has ever done this kind of thing!”
Auld Lang Syne
For her own part, when asked about a favourite Snowman memory, Harriet replied: “My personal favourite is when I was nine years old, my father put me on Snowman and I jumped six foot! He put me on the horse, we were in the indoor ring and he goes, ‘You’re fine, just go!’
“And, pretty much, I was. I just held onto the mane and Snowman just jumped. Certainly, I wasn’t giving him a whole lot of direction, but he was a very kind soul of a horse and he took such good care of us as children. And my dad, you know, it’s like the two of them helped each other to new heights.”
He epitomised a family horse as one photo shows the children lined up on Snowman’s back. “All eight of us [siblings] got on there! We’d also go to the beach and say ‘Let’s use Snowman as a diving board!’ He had just the most beautiful temperament,” said Harriet recalling their Long Island Sound swimming companion.
Among the Youtube video clips of Snowman, there’s one of him jumping a parallel fence with another horse standing between the front and back poles. That shot made Life magazine.
De Leyer and Snowman continued as household names on the US circuit until the horse was retired.
His official retirement ceremony took place, fittingly, at the 86th National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Kilbaha had ‘Simply The Best’ playing during his send-off at Dublin Horse Show; Snowman walked out of the arena as the New York crowds sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
He spent a happy retirement with his family until kidney failure struck in 1974. Snowman was put down that autumn and was buried in a corner of his favourite field on Hollandia Farm.
Harry later moved to Virginia where he continued on the competition circuit, although no other horse could match Snowman’s success. The Dutch immigrant-turned-household name show jumper passed away in 2021 at the grand old age of 94.
Dashing through the snow
The US show jumping scene has moved on in leaps and bounds since that era.
“It’s like life in general. The show jumping world has evolved to different heights than it was back in the ‘50s when my father was doing it on Snowman. The courses are totally different, more complicated, more technical.
“You have more people here, people from Ireland, England, Israel, from Cuba, from Mexico. Everyone gravitates to Wellington in the winter,” remarked Harriet about the current scene.
If there is one season to dip back into nostalgia, it’s surely Christmastime.
Harriet recalls wintertime in Long Island with America’s most famous show jumping horse. “Our winter tradition with Snowman was, instead of going to the beach and swimming, he would take us skiing through the fields!
“We had a sled that he would pull too and we would hook up lines through the harness and he would just canter through the snow, pulling us on our skis.”
It’s very hard to picture another Grand Prix horse multi-tasking like that, however Snowman was an extraordinary creature that deservedly won his place in American culture.
Rescue missions, whether it was helping injured US soldiers or buying a thin plough horse off the slaughterhouse lorry, ran through Harry de Leyer’s life.
Gratitude is another; the sponsorship of the Dutch immigrant and his wife by a family who paid forward Harry’s respect for their son and how grateful this rider was for this ‘Green card’ opportunity. And to Snowman.
At the end of the ‘Harry and Snowman,’ documentary, his rider visits the horse’s grave.
“He made me,” was his closing line.
Did you know?
By the numbers
$225,000 - prize fund for the 2023 Longines FEI World Cup qualifier at the National Horse Show, won by Shane Sweetnam and James Kann Cruz. 2,825 the times of Snowman’s purchase price.
$100,000 - the then-astronomical sum Harry de Leyer was said to have been offered for Snowman.
1958 - the year of Snowman’s show jumping Triple Crown: the American Horse Shows Association Horse of the Year, Professional Horseman’s Association Champion and Madison Square Garden’s Diamond Jubilee champion.
$80 - what Harry de Leyer paid for Snowman.
$36 - best price found on eBay for a Snowman Breyer model. Postage/customs tariffs to Europe though? $40.75
10 - awards for the “Harry and Snowman” documentary.
8 - de Leyer children all aboard Snowman at the same time.
3 - books written about Snowman.
2 - back-to-back open championships won at Madison Square Garden.
1 - New York Times bestseller: The Eighty Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation, by Elizabeth Letts and published in 2011 by Random House.