| Notes |
- Newsletter of the Haskell Family Society
Vol 5 No 1 March 1996
Melville H. Haskell, aged 83, died at Sedona, Arizona, USA, 5 September 1984. Born in Cleveland, he graduated from Yale University and moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1924, where he operated a cattle ranch in the Ricon Mountains. He and other local residents staged quarter-mile horse races as a speed test for their working cow ponies, first at Rancho del Rio but after 1942 at the site which became the
Rillito Downs Race Track.
In the next two decades Haskell put the races on a professional basis and was one of the leaders in the formation of the American Quarter Horse Association. From 1937 to 1955 he operated Ricon Stock Farm, famous for breeding top quality quarter horses, and early in 1984 he was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame in Texas as "father of modern quarter horse racing."
He was on the board of directors of Tucson Medical Center for 27 years and board member of the Tucson Boys' Club and American Red Cross. On moving to Sedona in 1969 he was named to the board of directors of the Verde Valley Guidance Clinic.
Survivors include his wife Betty, four sons: Coburn of Yuba City, California; Schuyler of Pasadena, California; Melville Jr. of Santa Barbara, California; and Mark of Pistol River, Oregon; daughter Mary Haywood of Southern Pines, North Carolina; sister, Gertrude Britton of Blue Hill, Maine; eight grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
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1901 - 1984 (83 years)
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