Remembering Harry Aleo (1919-2008)

Commemorating the life of one of San Francisco's and horse racing's most interesting characters

Harry Aleo in his office on May 23, 2008

Proud San Francisco native and resident, minor league baseball player, World War II combat veteran, realtor and landlord, outspoken and unapologetic Republican, sponsor of homeless individuals, hater of laptops and lattes, packrat, and thoroughbred horse owner are all words and phrases that can be used to describe Harry Aleo.

June 21 marks the 13th anniversary of the death of Harry Aleo at the age of 88. Aleo, who spoke in a gruff baritone voice and whose Stetson hat, wool jacket, and blue jeans made him look like he had been airdropped into modern San Francisco from a cattle ranch in Wyoming, was one of the most fascinating characters I met during my time in the horse racing industry.

Victorina, Harry Aleo, jockey Glen Corbett, and trainer Greg Gilchrist in the winner's circle following the 2006 Ahwatukee Express Stakes at Turf Paradise
Coady Photography

Racing fans in North America knew him best as the owner of the 2005 Champion Sprinter Lost in the Fog and graded stakes winners Minutes Away, Victorina, and Smokey Stover. Outside of racing, he was known in the San Francisco neighborhood of Noe Valley as the owner of the infamous office featuring posters, signs, and memorabilia that ranged from generically patriotic (flags and an Uncle Sam statue) to partisan (photos of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon) to cheeky (a Weekly World News front page with the headline ALIENS SETTLE IN SAN FRANCISCO which Aleo had captioned “WE NOW KNOW WHERE YOU LEFT WING LOONIES CAME FROM”). Over the years, Aleo’s displays inspired ire, laughter, eye rolls, and vandalism. 

It was Aleo’s office, not his racehorses, that was the main angle of stories in the Noe Valley Voice and Wall Street Journal. Like Bay Meadows, Aleo and his Twin Peaks Properties office were anachronisms that had been slowly surrounded and eventually enveloped by elements of the modern bourgeoisie, and he eagerly expressed his displeasure with these trends. A musical instrument shop, Russo Music, now occupies the storefront. “Harry's problem is that he has survived long enough to become a minority in his own neighborhood,” wrote Larry Gallagher about Aleo in 2006 for SFGate.com.

Harry Aleo's business card

I had the fortune of interviewing Aleo at his office on May 23, 2008, approximately one month before his death. I had graduated from the University of Arizona’s Racetrack Industry Program in December 2007, and while I was waiting for a full-time job in racing media I worked a customer service position at Bay Meadows during its final commercial meet (the San Mateo County Fair conducted the track’s final 10 days of racing that August). I had brief conversations with Aleo when he would pass by my booth in the Bay Meadows grandstand. What I really wanted to do, however, was have a longer conversation with him and see his office with my own eyes. I received that opportunity when the Thoroughbred Owners of California asked me to write a short article about the imminent closure of Bay Meadows and the track’s history for its Owners’ Circle magazine. Who better to interview for the story than somebody who had been attending the races at Bay Meadows since the track's first days in the 1930s?

I rode BART to the 24th Street/Mission station and then walked four-fifths of a mile to Aleo’s office. TWIN PEAKS PROPERTIES/HARRY J. ALEO/REALTOR/EST. 1947 read the sign above the front door and windows in a font that looked like it had been taken off an Old West wanted poster. 

The exterior of Twin Peaks Properties on May 23, 2008

Before going in, I took a moment to look at everything on display in the front windows. In addition to the aforementioned photos of Reagan and Nixon, flags, and Uncle Sam statue, there was a “LIBERALS MAKE ME SICK” bumper sticker and a sign reading "IT WILL ALWAYS BE ARMY STREET," an annoyed reference to how the street had been renamed in honor of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. There were also three additional hand-written signs. One simply stated "ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE." Another one read (complete with a smiley face at the end):

WELCOME TO

LOONEY VALLEY, THE

HEART OF KOOK CITY!

THE HOME OF LAP TOP 

LEFT WING LIBERALS.

THIS IS AN ISLAND OF

TRADITIONAL CONSERVATIVE

VALUES IN A SEA OF 

THE LATTE SIPPING LIBERAL

LOONIES.

☺

And then there was this sign:

SEPT. 7TH WAS THE

60TH ANNIVERSARY

OF TWIN PEAKS PROPERTIES! 

THE OLDEST ORIGINAL OWNER

BUSINESS IN LOONEY VALLEY.

WHEN WE OPENED CABLE CARS

RAN OVER CASTRO ST. THE 

FOX AND NOE THEATERS WERE IN 

THEIR PRIME. THE GOLDEN GATE 

AND BAY BRIDGES WERE ONLY

9 YRS. OLD. HARRY TRUMAN WAS

PRESIDENT. NO STARBUCKS,

NO CELL PHONES, NO LAPTOPS,

NO LATTES. NO LEFT WING 

LIBERAL LOONIES! IT WAS

A GREAT CITY!

CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER!

DON'T ALL RUSH IN AT ONCE!

Due to the passage of time, I do not remember any specifics about the inside, but I do remember that the combination of patriotic and political memorabilia and old random items made Twin Peaks Properties feel like a cross between a conservative political action committee office and an antiques store. 

Aleo’s secretary took me to the office in the back where Aleo was at his desk. I had already known a lot about his life due to all of the coverage he received when he was campaigning Lost in the Fog and I needed only a brief quote for my article, but I decided to ask him questions covering his entire life. After all, how often do you get to talk to somebody with connections to Seabiscuit, Joe DiMaggio, Branch Rickey, and General George S. Patton?

I asked Aleo, who had been born in San Francisco in 1919, about his childhood. Aleo said he was born to “a couple of dagoes from Old Italy” before describing what Noe Valley was like back then and how it had changed over the decades.

“It was a much nicer time,” Aleo said of the 1930s. “There was a five-and-ten-cent store across the street. A clothing store, a little grocery store. There were three drug stores in this five-block area. We had two theaters on this block. Five gas stations on five blocks. Figure that one out. And of course, Walgreens comes in, RiteAid comes in, Radio Shack comes in, and they pay a lot more money and out go the little mom and pop stores. They got all the chains because they’re the only ones that can afford to pay the money.”

During his adolescence Aleo attended the races for the first time when he visited Tanforan, which was located in San Bruno approximately 10 miles south of San Francisco and nine miles north of where Bay Meadows would be built later that decade. 

“It was exciting as hell,” he recalled. “Crowds of people. Horses come thundering down the stretch and all of that screaming and cheering.”

Aleo was in attendance when Seabiscuit won the 1938 Bay Meadows Handicap in his last of four victorious appearances at the San Mateo track.

“[Seabiscuit] beat a horse named Gosum by about five lengths,” Aleo said of Seabiscuit’s 1938 Bay Meadows Handicap win, exaggerating the actual margin by two lengths. “I’ll never forget that. It was exciting. Thousands of people there, unlike today.”

Racing, however, was not his passion. Baseball was. Aleo played for San Francisco Junior College (now San Francisco City College) and signed a minor-league contract to play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers organization. 

I had read that Aleo pitched to Joe DiMaggio at one point, and I asked Aleo to tell me the story in his own words. “Oh, come on now!” he protested while giving me a dismissive hand wave. “It’s no big deal!” Following a short pause, he cracked a grin and told me that when he was in college he played a pick-up game against professionals who were spending time in San Francisco before their season started. Aleo got DiMaggio, who was already putting up big numbers for the New York Yankees, to pop out on a curveball. 

Aleo had his 22nd birthday ruined by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Patton’s Third Army, seeing combat in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium and participating in the relief of the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. 

He returned to San Francisco after the war and began working part-time for a real estate firm. But Harry had greater ambitions. Six months later, he started his own real estate and insurance brokerage. Sixty years later, Aleo still showed up at the Twin Peaks Properties five days a week.

Aleo and his wife had three daughters before the couple was divorced in the late 1970s. It was around that time when Aleo made his foray into thoroughbred ownership.

“I got an article from a son-in-law—ex-son-in-law, probably the only good thing he ever did— called ‘How to Make Money When Your Horse Loses.’ It’s all about owning horses. How to depreciate them and all of the deductions. That got me into the game. That’s when I bought my first horse. Sonny Shy, right there," Aleo said as he pointed to the winner's circle photo on the wall next to his desk.

From the beginning Aleo teamed with trainer Greg Gilchrist, a third-generation horseman whose training career was delayed by two years spent in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. The tandem of veterans had their first stakes success on the local racing scene in 1985 when Minutes Away won the Grade 3 Bay Meadows Derby by seven lengths. In the early 2000s they campaigned minor stakes winners Beyond Brilliant, Taraval, and Frisco Belle.

It was Lost in the Fog, a speedy bay colt with an off-center blaze, who brought national recognition to Aleo and allowed him to tour the country as the sprinter won major races at many of the country’s best tracks. 

The saga of Lost in the Fog could warrant its own blog post, but I will provide a brief-ish version. Aleo purchased Lost in the Fog privately after bidding on the Florida-bred son of Lost Soldier when he did not meet his reserve at the 2004 OBS March sale of 2-year-olds in training. Lost in the Fog broke his maiden by 7 ½ lengths in his debut in November 2004 at Golden Gate Fields, then set a Turf Paradise 6 ½-furlong track record of 1:13.55 (a record which still stands) when crushing the competition in the Arizona Juvenile in December. To begin his 3-year-old campaign, he rattled off wins in the Ocala Stud Dash and Grade 2 Swale at Gulfstream Park and Grade 3 Bay Shore on Wood Memorial day at Aqueduct Racetrack. He set a six-furlong track record of 1:07.32 when defeating two opponents in the Golden Bear at Golden Gate, displayed his mettle when turning back the promising but ultimately ill-fated Egg Head in the Grade 2 Riva Ridge on the Belmont Stakes undercard, and registered easy victories in the Grade 2 Carry Back at Calder Race Course and Grade 1 King’s Bishop at Saratoga Race Course on Travers day.

Lost in the Fog and Russell Baze winning the 2005 Grade 1 King's Bishop at Saratoga
Coglianese Photos

When shooting his documentary about Aleo and Lost in the Fog, filmmaker John Corey caught Aleo as he walked into the paddock, saw the statue of the 1993 Kentucky Derby and Travers winner Sea Hero, and scoffed, “Sea Hero? He wasn’t that great.” Moments before the horses entered the gate for the King’s Bishop, ESPN’s Quint Kessenich stuck a microphone in Aleo’s face, leading to a memorable exchange:

KESSENICH: Harry, what is the price tag on this horse?

ALEO: There is no price tag.

KESSENICH: Why wouldn’t you sell?

ALEO: What?

KESSENICH: Why wouldn’t you sell this horse?

ALEO: Why wouldn’t I sell‽ If I sold him, then I wouldn’t have the horse, now would I?

KESSENICH: What kind of impact has he had on your life?

ALEO: It’s exciting. Thrilling. One of the most important things ever in my life.

KESSENICH: You played minor league baseball. You battled in World War II, the Battle of the Bulge. How does this compare to those lifetime moments?

ALEO: How am I going to compare this great horse, winning eight in a row, with the Battle of the goddamn Bulge? Forget it.

Bay Meadows added a sprint stakes, the Bay Meadows Speed Handicap, to its stakes calendar, to attract Lost in the Fog, who proceeded to extend his winning streak to 10 with a dominating win over four overmatched opponents. The alternative newspaper SF Weekly published a feature story about Lost in the Fog and his appearance at Bay Meadows. In the article, Aleo offered the following explanation for why he steadfastly refused to sell Lost in the Fog, despite the lucrative offers he had received.

“The horse is not for sale. All this excitement and fun I'm having, just to get some money? Then what? Then I've got to start looking for a good horse again? These don't come around once in a million. So I'll run the horse. After a couple years, I'll retire him to stud.

“A lot of people sell 'em right away. Like Smarty Jones. They sold him for $38 million. The guy is older than I am — he's in a goddamn wheelchair. What's he going to do with $38 million that he can't do now, you know what I mean?”

Lost in the Fog disappointed when he finished seventh in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint in October at Belmont, pressing the pace and leading briefly on the turn before fading in midstretch. Despite the off-the-board performance in his first graded stakes start versus older horses, Lost in the Fog was later awarded the 2005 Eclipse Award for Champion Sprinter.

Following a layoff, Lost in the Fog began his 4-year-old season in April in the Golden Gate Fields Sprint, finishing second by three lengths after being outdueled by Carthage, a solid-but-unspectacular local horse from the barn of Art Sherman. Lost in the Fog seemed to be rounding back into form when he defeated eventual Dubai Golden Shaheen winner Kelly’s Landing with a 1 ¼-length victory in the Grade 3 Aristides in June at Churchill Downs, but something appeared to be wrong when Lost in the Fog was uncharacteristically dull when seventh a month later in the Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder. Aleo and Gilchrist soon learned the reason why the colt had lost his brilliance. Lost in the Fog had two large, inoperable tumors and he was euthanized September 17, 2006, a little less than 12 months after approximately 10,000 spectators had packed Bay Meadows when he won the Bay Meadows Speed Handicap.

For whatever reason, I do not have quotes from my interview with Aleo about Lost in the Fog, other than the quote I used in my Owners’ Circle article: “I know I saw Seabiscuit run [at Bay Meadows]. Noor. Citation. I saw John Henry. Cigar. And my Lost in the Fog was one of the greatest.” I did not use the other quote he gave me: “We don’t need another goddamn development!”

At some point, Aleo’s secretary came into the room carrying a bottle of pomegranate juice. She said, “Harry, I want you to drink some of this.” “Ahh, I don’t want to drink any of that crap!” Aleo protested. Aleo then took a sip, grimaced as if he had tasted rancid milk, and pushed the bottle away.

Despite the death of Lost in the Fog, Aleo’s racing operation remained strong. Smokey Stover won four stakes in 2007, including the Grade 2 Potrero Grande and Grade 3 Bay Meadows Sprint. At the recently concluded Bay Meadows meet, two of Aleo’s fillies had bookended the stakes schedule as the promising 3-year-old sprinter High Resolve won the Princess on opening weekend and the late-blooming 4-year-old Wild Promises won the Mother’s Day Handicap on closing day. Victorina, who had won the 2006 Grade 3 Azalea, was about to make her 5-year-old debut. It seemed as if Aleo was poised to find himself in the winner’s circle following stakes races well into the future, but it was not meant to be. He casually mentioned during the interview that he was ill, and I asked him what the matter was. Pancreatic cancer, he said. I muttered something like, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that” before I awkwardly continued with my questions.

Sixteen days following my visit to Twin Peaks Properties, Victorina won the Washington State Legislators Handicap at Emerald Downs. Thirteen days after that, I was visiting the Golden Gate Fields press box on closing day for the spring meet when I discovered that the track’s publicist, Tom Farrell, was writing Harry Aleo’s obituary, having learned that morning that Aleo had succumbed to the disease that had claimed Lost in the Fog 19 months earlier. I will always be grateful for how Aleo took two hours of his little remaining time to talk to me, a young and green wannabe turf writer. 

Aleo’s horses continued to compete through 2009, but he was not there to enjoy their successes. Wild Promises won the 2008 Grade 3 My Charmer in December at Calder and Aleo’s estate won two races at Gulfstream on Sunshine Millions Day one month later, with Wild Promises taking the Filly & Mare Turf and High Resolve capturing the Filly & Mare Sprint. The Aleo colors were carried to victory twice during the final meet at Bay Meadows, with Victorina defeating her younger stablemate High Resolve in an allowance and the otherwise undistinguished Gherig breaking his maiden on the final day of racing at the Peninsula track. Victorina added wins in minor stakes at Golden Gate, Fresno, and Santa Anita to her catalogue page and on December 26, 2009 she became the last horse to carry Aleo’s flame orange silks when she finished fourth in Turf Paradise’s Kachina Handicap.

Aleo’s death was covered by racing trade publications and Bay Area newspapers, with the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com and the Noe Valley Voice running lengthy obituaries. The Voice obituary included numerous tributes from neighbors, a few of which I will share here.

Carol Yenne, who owned the children’s clothing store next to Aleo’s office, talked about how Aleo would sponsor local homeless individuals and one time bought a panhandler a bus ticket to his family’s home. The man reconciled with his family and sent Aleo a postcard to thank him. “Outwardly, [Aleo] could appear to be a hard shell, a curmudgeonly conservative,” Yenne told the Voice. "But he was really an authentic, caring, personable individual.”

Bevan Dufty, the Democratic supervisor of Noe Valley, talked about how he and Aleo worked together, “even though I was gay and there were some things about me that Harry didn't get.” Aleo supported 2002 Dufty’s campaign, going as far as placing one of Dufty’s campaign posters in his window next to a picture of Ronald Reagan. “I was momentarily agasp," Dufty told the Voice. “‘People are going to think I’m a Republican!’”

Others talked about how Aleo would give books and candy to children at local events and how he purchased an abandoned movie theatre and donated the property to the city so they could turn it into a much-needed parking lot. 

The article also included quotes from Joel Panzer, who also rented properties in the area. Panzer said he offered to manage Aleo’s properties and mentioned that he could make more money by raising the rents, but Aleo refused to relinquish control or change his rents.

The 2009 Wall Street Journal (paywall) article about Aleo and his office included quotes from Panzer about his desire to create a Noe Valley history museum, which would include a Harry Aleo exhibit. After reading that article as part of my research for this story, I decided to track down Panzer and ask him about the fate of Aleo’s office decorations and if he had any additional anecdotes about Aleo that he would be willing to share. 

Panzer, who described himself as a “neighbor, competitor, and friend” of Aleo’s, told me that the museum never came to fruition but he found a different way to share some of the San Francisco history Aleo had squirreled away in his office. 

“I saved a lot of his stuff and I had entertained thoughts that I would [put everything together for an exhibit], but I don’t see it happening now,” said Panzer. “Harry’s office was like a little slice of time. For a while I had all of his real estate records for years and years, but it became too cumbersome to keep in my house. So, eventually, I had to get rid of them. If I found a few that were in my immediate neighborhood, I pulled them out and gave them to the people who owned the property now. ‘Do you want to see what your house sold for in 1953?’”

One historical gem of Aleo’s that stood out to Panzer was a newspaper from when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

“He had a bunch of detritus and old papers, and one day he came out and he gave me this folder and said, ‘Look at this.’ It was a copy of the New York Herald that was published on the day Lincoln was assassinated,” said Panzer. “I love history and the front page of the paper was talking about the end of the Civil War and the surrender of the [the Confederacy]. Papers were set with individual pieces of type, and they had the entire front page set and the next thing they know as they are about to run the paper is that Lincoln has been assassinated and the secretary of war has been wounded terribly. So, they strike it and flip it over and print ‘LINCOLN ASSASSINATED.’ He had this in a manila folder in one of his file drawers. So I said, ‘Can I read this?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’ It was fascinating and I did not want anything bad to happen to it, so I took it to a frame store, which was one of his tenants, and I had it framed and I brought it back to him. It disappeared, but it was like, ‘Harry, you got this kind of stuff? What else is in here?’”

Aleo had lived through significant history himself, but Panzer did not know much about Aleo’s participation in World War II until one evening when he hosted Aleo and let his guest thumb through various history books, including a book that compiled British newspaper front pages during the World War I era. 

“[The book] had pictures of soldiers in a trench and it’s wintertime,” said Panzer. “You can see the cold and the pain in their faces. Harry was looking through the pages as I was looking for other things to share with him. He stopped and he stared at the page and he said, ‘Now, I can relate to this.’ And he had this look on his face like he was there. I looked at him and said, ‘You were at Bastogne, weren’t you?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, with General Patton.’ So, that was an epiphany for me. Then he told me a story which showed how he looked at life. He was on patrol with a few other guys. They had spent the night in this bombed out farmhouse. They got up and left and they were going down the road, and Harry said, ‘I gotta go back’ because there was a crucifix he had seen on the wall. He went back to get the crucifix and when he got back to his buds, they were dead.”

Panzer said Aleo’s life experiences when he was younger shaped the person who became the outspoken Noe Valley conservative and the thoroughbred owner who refused to sell his brilliantly fast sprinter.

“Harry was a Republican who was [financially] tight, but he believed in paying it forward,” said Panzer. “I told Harry I could get him more rent, but his response was surprising. He said, ‘After I got out of the Army, my wife and I had a damned tough time finding a place to live. If somebody hadn’t cut us a little slack, we never would have gotten a place. So, I’m just trying to do the same thing.’

“He survives poverty, growing up during the Depression. He plays baseball and then the war breaks out. He survives the war and comes home probably penniless. He has a wife and a child and has to find a place to live and build a whole new life. All of his dreams of playing baseball and doing things that are fun and exciting are gone. He starts a business, which is a success. [He gets Lost in the Fog], and then what happens? At the very pinnacle he gets knocked off again.”

Aleo, however, was not one to lament his misfortune. He described himself as “lucky” when speaking to Mary Forney for a 2005 profile in Owners’ Circle during the height of Lost in the Fog mania. “I got to Paris after the war when they drew two names out of a hat, out of our whole regiment, for a three-day pass,” said Aleo. “Then, when we were in England they drew two names for 48 hours in London, and I was one of them… I win all the time – it’s so funny!”

And I would say Noe Valley and the sport of horse racing were lucky to have had a colorful character like Harry Aleo.

The crowded winner's circle following Lost in the Fog's victory in the 2005 Bay Meadows Speed Handicap, with Lost in the Fog and groom Pascual Garcia in the background
Vassar Photography