Prominent Owner/Breeder Phyllis Wyeth Dies at 78

Noted philanthropist and prominent Thoroughbred owner/breeder Phyllis Mills Wyeth died Jan. 14 at her home with her husband, Jamie, by her side, according to longtime adviser and friend Russell Jones. She was 78.

Wyeth came by her love of Thoroughbreds and racing honestly. Her parents, James and Alice du Pont Mills, raced Glad Rags II, who won the 1966 English One Thousand Guineas. Glad Rags II's daughter Terpsichorist, a grade 2 winner, was also bred by the Millses, and when they bred her to Gone West, a $1.9 million yearling bought by the Millses, the 1992 filly Tempo was produced. 

Tempo is the dam of Union Rags , whom Wyeth bred and raced, taking her to the winner's circle of the 2012 Belmont Stakes (G1).

Wyeth had actually sold Union Rags for $145,000 at Fasig-Tipton's Saratoga Selected Yearlings Sale, but buyer's remorse set in quickly.

"She regretted selling something that was from both sides of her family," Jones told BloodHorse in a previous interview. "Union Rags was a gorgeous yearling, and she felt like she got a fair price at Saratoga, but she also thought, 'I'm 70 and don't know how much longer I'll be doing this.'"

When Union Rags showed up in the catalog for The Florida Sale in 2011, Wyeth asked Jones to go down and look at the colt.

"I looked at him and said, 'Oh my God, he's twice the horse that we sold in August.' He worked at the sale the same way he worked last week at Fair Hill—he goes so much faster than your eye thinks he's going," noted Jones. "I told her he was a serious horse, and she said, 'Let's buy him.'

"It was like it was supposed to happen. I told her he would cost two or three times what she sold him for, and she told me to go to $390,000. I made one bid—at 390."

Union Rags paid immediate dividends for Wyeth, breaking his maiden at first asking, winning the Three Chimneys Saratoga Special Stakes (G2) in his next start, and taking the Champagne Stakes (G1) in his third outing. Union Rags lost the Eclipse Award for top 2-year-old when he was headed by Hansen in the Grey Goose Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1), but Wyeth never lost faith.

Wyeth majored in political science in college and worked for Sen. John F. Kennedy. She followed the charismatic Kennedy to the White House after his election as president in 1960 and served as a secretary to the president's special assistant at just 18 years old.

Two years later, Wyeth was the victim of a head-on car accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Nine months later, she emerged from the hospital determined to live life to the fullest. She competed in carriage driving and worked toward improving circumstances for disabled people while also fighting for preservation of rural landscapes and various environmental causes. 

At the Belmont, she reveled in a dream she had long hoped to see become real in Union Rags.

"I had a dream we would make it, and (trainer) Mike (Matz) and (jockey) Johnny (Velazquez) made it come true," Wyeth said at the time. 

Wyeth leaves behind her husband, painter Jamie Wyeth, who is the son of Andrew Wyeth. Her Point Lookout Farm sits on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border on property her great-grandfather purchased in 1903, and she enjoyed looking out over her eight broodmares, Wyeth previously told BloodHorse.

Jones and Wyeth knew one another virtually their entire lives. Both rode point-to-point steeplechase horses in their youth.

Phyllis Wyeth will be remembered at a private ceremony. In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory are suggested to the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum.