Written By: Steve Eubanks jseubanks
Steve Eubanks is a New York Times bestselling author and managing editor for the LPGA.
She was a consummate entertainer. Everybody had a good day when Patty Berg gave a clinic. The “Patty Hit Parade” as it was called included jokes that would leave Bob Hope holding his sides, along with some gags, like tilting the bill of her visor to the right to hit a fade and to the left to hit a draw. And there were golf shots galore – high, low, left, right, straight and oh so incredibly long. Berg packed a powerful punch, one that impressed all who saw her. By the end of her career, Berg estimated that she had introduced over half a million new golfers to the game.
Longtime horseman Howard Okusko Sr., who not only was part of the construction team that built Vernon Downs in the early 1950s but also trained his stable of horses at the New York harness racetrack since it opened in 1954, passed away Thursday afternoon, May 20, in St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica, N.Y. after a brief illness. He was 86.
Mr. Okusko was born in Utica, N.Y. on Jan. 9, 1935. He attended St. Francis De Sales School and resided in the area his entire life.
“My dad never left Vernon Downs, when he always could have,” said Mr. Okusko’s son, Howard Jr., also one of Vernon Downs’ leading trainers and drivers through the years. “He always stayed at Vernon.”