Harvey and Michael Pack
“Dad, let’s go to the track” were the last words I said to my Dad after he suffered a stroke and was in a nursing facility near Gulfstream racecourse.
I went to my first horseraces at age 13 with my Dad and have visited as many racecourses as feasible including Gulfstream, Del Mar, Hialeah, Santa Anita, Belmont, Laurel, Pimlico, a track in Northfield, Minnesota and even a track in Warsaw. Poland.
I share the love for a good horserace with Michael Pack, son of Harvey Pack a legendary handicapper for the New York Racing Commission. Harvey Pack tells the story of thoroughbred racing in his 2007 autobiography titled May the Horse Be With You.
How the son of an Armenian oriental rug merchant and the son of a thoroughbred handicapper got into the “Conservative Movement” is a different story. But Michael Pack and I have begun to talk about possible documentary based on the lives of ten conservative leaders.
That story titled Ennobling Encounters has been written and will be published by En Route Books.
I met Michael and Gina Pack in Santa Barbara, CA about thirty-eight years ago. I would stay with a friend from my days at Arlington House Publishers who was working for a wealthy businessman and I was seeking donations for a TV news venture I started called World News Institute.
My friend, Paul Weyrich, had started Empowerment Television about ten years after I met Michael Pack and I remember discussing that venture with Michael.
Among Michael’s many documentary credits are a documentary about the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and RICKOVER: The Birth of Nuclear Power
Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton
Rediscovering George Washington
The Rodney King Incident: Race and Justice in America
Inside the Republican Revolution:
The First Hundred Days
Campus Culture Wars: Five Stories About Political Correctness
America’s Political Parties:
Power and Principle
Part One: The Democrats, 1960 to 1992
Part Two: The Republicans, 1960 to 1992
Fire From the Sun:
The Search for Fusion Energy
Dick Bishirjian 