With a Triple Crown on the line in this year's Belmont Stakes and interest in racing high, thoughts of Arkansans turn back to one of this state's great businessmen and thoroughbred owners, W.C. "Cal" Partee Sr. of Magnolia.

Partee, who died in November 1999 at age 89, owned 1992 Kentucky Derby winner Lil E. Tee, becoming the first Arkansas owner to win the Run for the Roses. Partee, who was introduced to thoroughbred racing at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, purchased his first thoroughbred in 1954. By 1983, his horses had earned $4.5 million. By the mid-1980s, he had one of the largest thoroughbred stables in the country, ranking 20th among North America's leading owners in 1984 with winnings of almost $1.4 million.

Partee was inducted posthumously into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2008.

He once explained his success this way: "If you work at it hard enough, you make a lot of your own luck."

Pat Day was aboard Lil E. Tee on that first Saturday in May 1992 at Churchill Downs, wearing Partee's orange-and-white colors. Day is a 1999 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductee. The win capped a 14-year partnership between Partee and trainer Lynn Whiting.

"He understands me, and I understand him," Partee once said of Whiting. "We kind of look at a horse the same way. He's in it to make money, and I am, too."

When Partee was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, his son, Cal Partee Jr., said his father's goal for years was to win the Arkansas Derby. The Kentucky Derby was little more than a dream.

"I would say he was the happiest person in the whole world about the way things turned out," Partee Jr. said of his father.

During the 2008 Hall of Fame induction banquet, Partee Sr.'s intense dislike of mushrooms was mentioned. At a dinner shortly before the 1992 Kentucky Derby, Whiting told the owner about a strange dream the night before: "You were eating mushrooms and Lil E. Tee won the Derby."

According to his son, Partee looked at the plate of mushrooms on the table and said: "Pass me those damn things down here."

The European import Arazi was a heavy favorite going into the Kentucky Derby. The media could focus on little else. The New York Times called Arazi "mythical and almost mystical." Time said Arazi "is fast winning a reputation as the second coming of Secretariat." The legendary Joe Hirsch of the Daily Racing Form said Arazi was "such an extraordinary animal that he makes other great horses look like hacks."

Arazi's jockey, Patrick Valenzuela, had won the 1989 Kentucky Derby aboard Sunday Silence. Valenzuela said before the 1992 race: "This race is over."

Arazi finished eighth.

Lil E Tee had been purchased as a yearling despite the fact he was coming off stomach surgery. As a 3-year-old, the horse won its maiden race, captured the Jim Beam Stakes and finished second in the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn. The winner of the Arkansas Derby that year was John Ed Anthony's Pine Bluff. Anthony was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.

Arazi was flying during the first half mile of the Kentucky Derby. But in a masterful ride, Day passed Arazi, Casual Lies and Dance Floor to take the lead.

Lil E. Tee finished fifth in the Preakness two weeks later and was scratched from the Belmont due to a lung infection. He won the Razorback Handicap as a 4-year-old before retiring with seven wins in 13 races.

Lil E. Tee spent his retirement days at Old Frankfort Stud and sired Oak Tree Derby winner Mula Gula among others.

It's that day in Louisville, though, that race fans in Arkansas long will remember.

Here's how Maryjean Wall and Christy McIntyre described it the next day in the Lexington Herald-Leader: "On the most international of days in the Kentucky Derby's 118-year history, there was homespun irony in the local team of Lil E. Tee upstaging French invader Arazi. The winner of this $974,800 race was a colt the crowd of 132,543 least expected to carry Pat Day to his first Kentucky Derby victory, breaking a nine-race jinx for the jockey.

"Lil E. Tee had been only a face in Arazi's crowd here all last week. Lil E. Tee was a star only in the barn of his owner, Cal Partee of Magnolia, Ark., and trainer Lynn Whiting of Louisville. He wasn't even stabled in the Derby barns but kept with the rest of Whiting's horses in an area well removed from the commotion that saw hundreds of people follow Arazi to the track each day. Day and Whiting were not reluctant to say last week that they liked their colt's chances. But so few people paid attention, while caught up in Arazi's spell, that Lil E. Tee went postward the sixth betting choice."

"I wheeled him in the exacta, so I had to like him a little," Partee said after the race.

A few weeks after the Derby win, Kane Webb described Partee's suddenly high profile in an Arkansas Business story: "It's the day after the Preakness Stakes, 15 days after the Kentucky Derby. For thoroughbred racing fans, the 'now' horse is Pine Bluff, an Arkansas-owned colt who captured the second jewel of the Triple Crown at Baltimore's Pimlico Racecourse. Kentucky Derby winner Lil E. Tee, another Arkansas-owned horse, finished fifth.

"At Little Rock Regional Airport, William C. 'Cal' Partee, the 82-year-old owner of Lil E. Tee, is in the baggage claim area, hoping his luggage has made it from Baltimore. A long drive back home to Magnolia awaits. The fanfare from the Kentucky Derby has died. Or so he thinks.

"'Hey, Mr. Partee,' a man yells. Could he please get an autograph? A 10-year-old boy also recognized Mister Cal, no doubt from television. He, too, wants a signature. Not bad for a modest, publicity-shy lumber and oil man from south Arkansas."

Partee told Webb, "I was tickled to death. There have been hundreds of people writing and calling. Before - nobody."

When a reception was held in Partee's honor at the First National Bank of Magnolia soon after the Derby victory, more than 1,000 people showed up to shake his hand and look at the Kentucky Derby winner's trophy.

Partee, the bank chairman, was scheduled to stay two hours at the reception. He ended up staying five.

Partee was born in 1910 at Stephens, about 18 miles north of Magnolia on U.S. Highway 79 in Ouachita County. His mother died soon after this birth. Partee was raised by his father, a well-known doctor who rode a horse to make house calls in the area. Partee was a three-sport star at Stephens High School and earned a scholarship to what's now Henderson State University at Arkadelphia. After six weeks in college, Partee's father died. Already struggling with an injury that was keeping him on the sidelines at Henderson, Partee decided to return home to Stephens.

He soon became involved in the timber business. His brother-in-law owned a sawmill at Emerson, just north of the Louisiana border in Columbia County. Partee and a friend formed a partnership to haul logs to that mill. They eventually started their own mill near Emerson. Partee sold his half of the mill for $600 in 1935.

After three months out of the lumber business, Partee and a new partner purchased a mill for $600.

"I was working 18 hours a day, and he was leaving as soon as the whistle blew," Partee said of his partner. "I bought him out. Gave him $600. Funny, all those deals went for $600. That won't do much these days."

Partee soon added mills near Magnolia at tiny Spotville and McNeil. In 1938, he sold the McNeil complex for $60,000. He said state and federal tax collectors came looking for their cuts of the windfall.

"The federal man came and said, 'Cal, I told you to keep books.' I kept my books in my pocket. That was my books."

Webb wrote that Partee paid his taxes and still had plenty left to take a vacation to Palm Beach, Fla., and Havana. He also bought his wife, Chrystelle, a Ford, and "the first day she drove the automobile, a truck sideswiped it and ruined the paint job. Chrystelle came home to her husband crying. Partee told her not to worry. He would fix it or get her a new Ford. He was confident the money was not going to run out. It never did."

Within a decade, he owned the Partee Lumber Co. and the Partee Flooring Co. An even better investment, though, was in the oil business. In 1947, Partee invested in a well just east of Stephens. After he sold his share a year after the first gusher, he was a millionaire.

Well into his 80s, Partee came to work every day at Partee Flooring, purchasing rough-cut timber and producing hardwood flooring in addition to selling flooring wholesale. Many of his employees bet on Lil E. Tee in early wagering in Las Vegas when the horse was 70-1. The week after the Kentucky Derby, those employees took out a full-page ad in the Magnolia newspaper that read: "Good Guys Sometimes Do Finish First ... We Love You. They Guys & Gals At The Mill."

Partee also was heavily invested in the banking business. The Kentucky Derby winner's trophy was kept in the First National Bank vault in Magnolia.

Partee was a happy man, and thousands of Arkansans were happy for him on that day two decades ago.

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