Everyone at Lincoln Farms will miss gentleman Bob - he was one of the best

Race nights won’t be quite the same without Bob.

In just five years, it’s fair to say he’d become Lincoln Farms’ favourite partner, his cheery face always welcomed in John and Lynne Street’s hospitality room by the Alexandra Park birdcage.

Sadly, Bob wasn’t there to see his latest horse Simply Sam rocket home from last on Friday night. They buried Bob a week earlier, his 89-year race run.

In the five years since the death of Joyce, Bob’s wife of 62 years, the quiet and unassuming man from Ararimu, 40 minutes south of Auckland, endeared himself to everyone at Lincoln Farms.

Fulfilling Joyce’s dying wish that he get a share in a racehorse to give him purpose, Bob immersed himself in the Lincoln Farms team.

Bob getting friendly with one of his favourites, Double Or Nothing, at Lincoln Farms’ Pukekohe stables.He won 37 races with a succession of talented pacers including Make Way (14 wins), Trojan Banner (10), Bondi Shake (6), Double Or Nothing (3), American Dealer (2) and Beaudiene Western (2).

Twenty five of those wins were scored in Australia but Bob enjoyed nothing better than being there in person and he became a regular visitor to Lincoln Farms’ Pukekohe property.

“He enjoyed most going to the stables, yarning with John, Ray and the boys,” said his son Robert. “It kept him going and the family is very grateful for that.”

Only a month ago, Bob was on to Lincoln Farms’ business manager Ian Middleton, indicating the pacers from the next crop he was keen to take shares in.

“He was always a gentleman to deal with,” Middleton said. “He never complained and was always enthusiastic about the next runner he had.”

That Bob could be so successful picking out winners wasn’t surprising, says Robert, as he always had an eye for a horse.

Both Bob and Robert once trained themselves from the 32ha Ararimu farm where they farmed sheep, cattle and goats.

Robert admits neither of them really knew what they were doing when they played around with a few poorly-bred thoroughbreds for a few years in the 1970s.

“We didn’t have much luck but dad bred from them and got some apaloosas and quarter horses for the farm.”

The turning point came when their vet Tony Parker suggested they have a go with standardbreds.

“We were able to buy a couple of reasonable weanlings from Doug Grantham’s dispersal sale at Lobell Lodge. You could afford a lot better bred pacers than gallopers. The first two fillies won five races and became our foundation mares.”

Bob, second from left, celebrates with some of his fellow owners after one of Make Way’s early wins at Alexandra Park.In all, Bob trained 11 winners and 17 placegetters from 86 starters between 1985 and 1995. His first, Kitty Lobell, scored in August, 1985, in the hands of Peter Wolfenden but his best horse was Awesome Dude, who won five races and was the regular drive of Maurice McKendry, who ironically piloted Simply Sam last Friday night.

Bob’s exposure to horses came much earlier in his life, however, when as a young boy in Kerikeri he’d ride his pony Sox to school.

“He didn’t enjoy going to school,” Robert told Bob’s friends at his memorial service.

“His teacher used to ridicule him in front of the class for being left-handed and she would hit him on the hand if he was caught using it to write.

“She finally got her way when Bob at the age of nine was a victim of the 1940’s polio epidemic which affected his left arm that never developed and had no strength. “He spent two years at the Wilson Home in Auckland where he learned to use his right hand.”

Despite his disability Bob, who nearly died of diphtheria at the age of four, never complained and got on with his life.

It was when he moved to South Auckland to work at the Kingseat Psychiatric Hospital that he met Joyce, also a trainee nurse.

“Bob worked there for 20 years becoming a charge nurse and eventually running the alcoholics’ unit.

“Bob used to tell the story of the time one of the patients died during the night shift so he propped him up in the front seat of his Morris 8 and drove him to the morgue.”

A familiar sight at Alexandra Park, Bob, fifth from right, watching one of his winners return to scale.Another of Bob’s stories was about how he and Joyce introduced their children, Robert, Julie, Michelle and Brian to horses through their first pony Nicholas.

He “bought” the pony at a hack sale just on 50 years ago when he was asked to sign for a $35 bid.

Best had been standing behind a woman he thought was bidding, and despite not ever raising his hand, somehow caught the eye of the man with the gavel.

In the end, Best agreed to take the horse anyway despite having nowhere to keep him.

“I just took him home and tied him up behind the house,” Bob said.

That easy-going attitude stayed with Bob throughout his life, enriched in recent years with 10 grand children and 15 great grand children.

Robert says his family’s best memories will be of “a good man who was never confrontational, moved with the times and accepted new things and opinions. He went out of his way to help his family and always tried to do the right thing by others.”

Bob was still in quite good health until three or four weeks before his death from cancer, says Robert.

“He was very accepting of it, though, and said he’d had a good life.”