Penny tweedy biography

I didn't have any personal ambitions. It didn't occur to me that I'd have a career. As a child, Chenery and her family which also included her mother Helen, brother Hollis and sister Margaret lived in a Tudor-style, granite mansion in Pelham Manor, N. In the s, just north of Richmond, Va. He swore his family would not do the same and became a successful public utilities executive.

So we didn't suffer. I was young, but I remember I was the only one in the class who got new dresses. Christopher Chenery had been fond of horses as a boy and while Hollis or Margaret didn't follow in his footsteps, the youngest child, a "daddy's girl," gravitated toward his interests. She spent most Saturdays and Sunday mornings on horseback or watching her father's fox hunts and polo matches.

In the mids, her father purchased back The Meadow, which his cousin had lost in because of financial troubles. While he replenished the dilapidated land and built stables and a home, Penny attended Madeira School in nearby Fairfax, Va. As Meadow Stable started producing competitive Thoroughbreds, Chenery was involved only as a board member — she worked for a naval architectural firm that built the Normandy invasion's landing craft; joined the Red Cross in France, where she served soldiers doughnuts and coffee; attended Columbia University's business school; and married Jack Tweedy, a Columbia law student.

They moved to Boulder, and by she was pregnant with the first of their four children. Chenery needed a horse-racing crash course when she took charge of Meadow Stable. To familiarize herself with the business, she studied The Blood-Horse , Thoroughbred Record and Daily Racing Form cover to cover, trying to absorb as much information as her brain could soak up.

She also met with Bull Hancock, who owned Claiborne Farm and had been one of her father's close friends. Living in Boulder, Chenery got Bluegrass updates about three times a week from secretary and family friend Elizabeth Ham. She also took monthly trips to the Virginia farm, supervised breeding plans and, in the beginning, followed her father's blueprint.

He had been breeding his older mares to First Landing. As Chenery immersed herself in the sport and began learning its intricacies — How often should this horse race? How long does it take this horse to recover from injury? She carried that attitude when dealing with Casey Hayes, her father's longtime trainer. Few horse farms today breed and also race their progeny, but Meadow Stable was among the group that did in the '70s, which meant the training track was as important as the breeding shed.

He can't outrun a fat man. The future Triple Crown winner finished fourth, and Laurin launched a chair across the box seat. That uncharacteristic behavior signaled to Chenery that her trainer expected more from the colt. Secretariat went on to become U. Horse of the Year as a two-year-old, and by his Derby morning, the media swarm buzzing around Chenery was thicker than it had been the year before.

She was now a well-known figure in the horse-racing world, a spokeswoman who was always smiling and fielding questions. Penny was the thing that put it over the top. Chenery says the timing was right, for her and her horse. He wore blue and white blinkers and was a bright red horse," she says. By mid-afternoon of Derby Day , Chenery had already spoken to everybody she knew.

But there's only so much idle chatter one can handle; then it's wristwatch-glancing and trips to the ladies room until race time. So Lucien and I got to be very good friends. Secretariat unraveled the tension as he blazed his way to victory at Churchill Downs, sprinting each quarter-mile faster than the previous one. Then he won the Preakness.

At first, she was married to her long-time boyfriend John Tweedy. The couple first met while she was attending Columbia Business School. Since then the couple dated for several years before getting married. In May , the couple tied the knot. The couple stayed together for nineteen years. They welcomed 4 kids together.

Penny tweedy biography

During the racing season of , the mother of 4 had an affair with Lucien Laurin. Because of the affair, her marriage turned into divorce in late After that, she met another gut named Lennart Ringquist. The couple eventually dated for a while and got married. In the early s, she moved to Lexington, Kentucky and later she moved to Boulder, Colorado to spend her final years near her children.

She attended the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia , a prestigious girls' boarding school with an equestrian program. Chenery was captain of the Equestrian Team in her senior year. After graduating in , Chenery worked as an assistant for Gibbs and Cox , a company that designed war craft for the Normandy invasion ; subsequent to the invasion, she quit her job to join the Red Cross, at the urging of her brother.

When Chenery returned from Europe in , her father was concerned that she had no employable skills, so he offered to pay her the equivalent of the highest job offer she could get if she would go to graduate school instead. Chenery decided to attend Columbia Business School where she was one of 20 women in a class of men. At her parents' suggestion, she dropped out of school a few months short of her MBA to marry Jack.

They moved to Denver , Colorado , where he practiced oil and gas law. He was later Chairman of the Board of Vail Associates. Chenery's life changed when her mother died suddenly and her father became ill in late Due to Mr. Chenery's advancing senility, Meadow Stable, the Chenery thoroughbred breeding and racing operation in Virginia, had been neglected in the mids and was no longer profitable.

Chenery's siblings wanted to sell the operation since their father could no longer manage it. Chenery, however, hoped to fulfill her father's dream of winning the Kentucky Derby. The board of Meadow Stable elected her president and in , she began the long process of cutting costs, repairing facilities and returning the stable to profitability.

In , she fired long-time trainer Casey Hayes. On the advice of longtime family friend and business associate Bull Hancock of Claiborne Farm , Chenery hired Roger Laurin to train and manage the Meadow Stable horses. With Laurin's help, the stable began to produce a few stakes winning horses in and However, in May , Roger Laurin left the Meadow to train for the much vaunted Phipps family stables, so Chenery turned to his father, Lucien Laurin , as a temporary substitute.

However, Laurin Sr. Chenery's lifelong dream of producing a great horse. That same year, another Meadow colt, the two-year-old Secretariat had such a dominant fall season that he became American Horse of the Year which was a rare honor for a two-year-old. The following year, Secretariat captured the imagination of racing fans worldwide when he became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, setting records that still stand in all three races and winning the Belmont by an unheard-of 31 lengths.

Eventually the Meadow in Doswell, Virginia, also was sold to settle the estate. She eventually was able to sell her photographs in Fleet Street. Tweedie's breakthrough came in when she worked in an unpaid job with the charity Shelter and her photographs were used in the media. She set herself further assignments and this was funded by cover portraits of celebrities for the Radio Times and the Reader's Digest magazines and technically demanding work including the Embassy cigarettes gift catalogue.

Tweedie was denied commissions to cover the East Pakistan crisis and photographed Air India 's in-flight meals at Heathrow Airport in order to obtain a ticket to Calutta now Kolkata. She was contacted by The Sunday Times after the newspaper used a photograph of hers on one of its front pages. The group was arrested by the Indian Army who mistaken them for spies.

They were imprisoned in a gaol and Tweedie was isolated in the women's section. Upon being released, she borrowed cameras and took photographs of the plight of refugees and the bodies of Bengali intellectuals being massacred by the retreating Pakistani forces. She was one of the journalists expelled from Uganda by its president Idi Amin in during his deportation of Asians.

Another commission saw her tour the United States with the journalist Alistair Cooke. This led her to take up dual citizenship and resided in Canberra and the Northern Territory. Her work on the Aboriginal people published in the National Geographic. Tweedie wrote her first book This My Country in Tweedie's work was widely exhibited and was awarded the Walkley Award for photojournalism in She chose not to publish her work before taking the book proofs back to Anhem Land to ensure that the people were satisfied with their portrayal.

She also kept travelling which saw her work with non-governmental organisations on the effects of landmine victims in Cambodia.