GOOD NEWS FRIDAY sponsored by Liberation Farm: MARY JO PONS AND THE RADIO READING NETWORK
Do you know an individual or organization who you think we should consider for an upcoming “Good News Friday” feature? Then please e-mail
info@paulickreport.com with the name of the individual or organization and a brief description of why you think they should be featured. Additionally, we’d like to thank Rob Whiteley and Liberation Farm for encouraging us to bring to light some of the industry’s positive stories and for sponsoring this exclusive Paulick Report feature.The Country Life Farm Preakness Party has been a staple of the Triple Crown season since the victories in the 1961 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes by Carry Back, a blue-collar colt sired by the Country Life Farm stallion Saggy. Country Life Farm, based about 45 minutes north of Baltimore in Fallston, Md., is the state’s oldest continuously run Thoroughbred farm. It’s under the direction today of Mike and Josh Pons, grandsons of the founder, Adolphe Pons, who was an adviser to August Belmont during the years when the latter bred and raised the great Man o’ War.
This year’s Preakness Party, held on the lawn of the farm’s main residence as usual on Thursday night, was much more than a celebration of the Triple Crown’s middle jewel or of Maryland’s Thoroughbred industry, one that is currently in a fight for its life. The 2009 Country Life Party was a belated 80th birthday party for family matriarch Mary Jo Pons and a gathering of some of the people who have been part of her life for the last 30 years at the
Mary Jo Pons was a longtime volunteer for the 501(c)3 charity that operates a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station that has volunteers reading from local and national newspapers, magazines, and books. She now serves as Radio Reading Network of Maryland’s executive director.
“If we had more people like Mary Jo and Joe Pons (her late husband), our industry would be a lot better industry than it is today,” said Herb Moelis, who with his wife, Ellen, and the late Allaire DuPont a fellow resident of Delaware, founded Thoroughbred Charities of America.
“I can’t tell you how much Mary Jo and Joe Pons did to make my life more fulfilling,” said Robert Lewis, a self-professed technical whiz who has been involved with the Radio Reading Network since 1980 and is its program manager today. Lewis (pictured, right, at the radio network’s controls) also has been blind since birth. “They’ve taken me places and described in great detail what exactly it is they see. That means so much to someone like me who can’t see.”
Mary Jo lost her husband of 55 years, who she said was her “number one volunteer at the reading network, in 2005.
“We would drive into the city together and he’d take me to the network (whose studio is based at the Baltimore City Community College just north of downtown),” Mary Jo said. “He’d have a nap until post time and then go off to Pimlico.”
“Dad said, ‘I would go to any lengths to help Mary Jo, especially if it it’s only a few lengths from Pimlico,’” Josh Pons recalled with a smile about his father.
“We would also do speaking engagements at various service clubs,” Mary Jo said of Joe (the couple is pictured to the left). “He would drive me, because they usually had a pretty good meal, especially if it was out in the country where the meals were always better. But he truly recognized the need for the network and thoroughly enjoyed the volunteers and helping me.”
Joe Pons was involved in his own service to the community. A recovering alcoholic, he helped organize 12-Step recovery meetings at a local prison. At the
memorial service held in his honor, many of the people he helped recover from alcoholism and drug addiction came to Country Life to pay their respects.Mary Jo Pons began her work in radio at the age of 18, when she had her own show five days a week to talk about women’s issues like fashion and cooking. “I worked for a department store and I was their fashion personality, Betty Howard,” she said. “The store was on Howard Street. They used that name on some of their merchandise.”
Later on, she hosted a classical music show on Sundays in Baltimore. When she felt a calling to do volunteer work, the Radio Reading Network seemed like a natural to her.
Today, the organization has more than 75 volunteers reading on a
tightly run programming schedule that can be heard on a special radio signal throughout the state and on Maryland Public Television’s Second Audio Program. Thousands of sight impaired or paralyzed individuals who are unable to read tune in daily.“Horse people have been very generous,” added Pons. “We’ve had volunteers from the industry who come to read and also many of them contribute financially.”
Radio Reading Network readers even go through the shopping and food ads to alert listeners of sale prices. They also read the obituaries, which Pons said “is kind of tough. You might know about a movie star that died, but unless you can read the paper you probably wouldn’t have heard about your neighbor or someone down the street that’s passed away. It’s very important, especially when you consider the age of so many of our listeners.”
Pons said she finds the work extremely fulfilling. “We had this one listener, the wife of a local sportswriter. She had cancer, but had been such a voracious reader she earlier took a job in a book store to feed her habit. The medication required to treat her cancer blurred her vision and prevented her from being able to read. In radio, you always want to avoid the sounds of shuffling papers and you have a cough button if you have to clear your throat. But this woman said those were the sounds she liked the most. She often couldn’t sleep, and would get up at all hours and tune in to the network. ‘I love to hear the sounds of those people in the middle of the night,’ she would tell us. ‘I know there was someone reading just for me, and I felt as if I wasn’t alone.’”
If you’d like to become a volunteer for the Radio Reading Network or to make a donation to this organization, please click
here or call (410) 462-8580.Liberation Farm celebrates the many horsemen and horsewomen who strive each day to make things better for horses and those who work with them. To learn more about Liberation Farm, click here.
Previous Good News Friday subjects: Father Chris Clay, The Race for Education, Military Appreciation Day at Keeneland, Kentucky Oaks Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy.
Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report Visit the Paulick Report for all the latest news throughout the racing world.
Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick
Tags: Adolphe Pons, Carry Back, Country Life Farm, Good News Friday, Herb and Ellen Moelis, Horse Racing, Joseph Pons, Josh Pons, Mary Jo Pons, Maryland Horse Industry, Mike Pons, Paulick Report, preakness, Radio Reading Network, Radio Reading Network of Maryland, Ray Paulick, Robert Lewis, Saggy, Triple Crown, vision impaired
May 15th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Wonderful family the Pons’.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I really enjoy this series you are doing Ray. I wish there were more people commenting on these Good News pieces though. It seems to me that while the fans of the industry are critical of the bad news, they seem to ignore the good news. Just my 2 and a half cents…
May 15th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
What a Preakness-perfect tribute to the lovely and indomintable Mary Jo Pons! Surely Joe is looking down with a smile….. a Pepsi in one hand and the DRF in the other
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 am
[...] Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy, Mary Jo Pons and the Radio Reading Network Copyright © 2009, The Paulick [...]
May 29th, 2009 at 6:15 am
[...] Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy, Mary Jo Pons and the Radio Reading Network, TV Ratings Are Up. Copyright © 2009, The Paulick Report Visit the Paulick Report for all [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 8:04 am
[...] Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy, Mary Jo Pons and the Radio Reading Network, TV Ratings Are Up, Permanently Disabled Jockeys [...]
June 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] Pink Out for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Mary Lee-Butte and the Blue Grass Farms Chaplaincy, Mary Jo Pons and the Radio Reading Network, TV Ratings Are Up, Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund, Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
[...] this process, we’ve learned and shared stories about individuals like Mary Jo Pons, the tireless matriarch of Maryland’s Country Life Farm who for the past 30 years has [...]