Allen Nixon “Nick” Rodday died on July 26, 2011 at his home in Brewster, Massachusetts on Cape Cod at the age of ninety. He’d retired there after giving up his horse farm, Elm Brook Farm, in Concord, Massachusetts about thirty years ago. He bought himself a lobster boat and for the next fifteen years fulfilled a longtime ambition. But he still couldn’t resist stabling horses, and before long he was once again leading rides and driving his carriage.
Nick Rodday ran a riding stable, Victory Lee and later Elm Brook Farm, through most of the latter half of the twentieth century. He gave lessons, rented hirelings, and took his clients hunting. He was a charismatic guy with a beautiful tenor singing voice to boot. He taught me to ride and took me hunting. I met my wife-to-be Joan and many others who became good friends in his riding ring. He stood up for me at our wedding. Without question, he changed my life profoundly.
He was a Pied Piper to the after-school kids and to a big adult clientele to whom he offered evening group classes twice a week. After the experience of Nick’s group lessons I’ve always believed that those who take individual lessons are missing out. Every level of rider was in the ring. The better riders provided models that dragged the performances of the lesser riders to loftier levels. And mistakes made by any rider were learning experiences for all.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I see now that the goal of all of Nick’s lessons—for the rider as well as the school horse—was the hunting field. The drills in the ring—keeping a distance, trotting past a line of walking horses, cantering past a line of trotting horses, jumping both individually and continuously—were all aimed at schooling horse and rider for the hunting field. I had no clue of Nick’s grand design. I came there every Tuesday and Thursday evening to learn to ride, and Nick started me on a new life’s path.
Those who progressed far enough in their riding were invited to join the Sunday Morning Rides—mock hunts, really. And when he judged us ready for the real thing, he took us hunting on Saturdays. And then to Ireland for the greatest foxhunting adventures we had yet experienced.
There is a pond in Concord that Thoreau made famous—Walden Pond. On our Sunday morning mock hunts, Nick would often take us around Walden Pond and through the surrounding woods. A train track ran by the pond. Nick would stop at the tracks before crossing, turn in his saddle, and call out to the string of riders behind him, “Watch out for your own train.” At first I thought it was a funny line: my own train—the one that was going to hit me—was my responsibility, not his. Later, I came to decide that was a pretty good philosophy for life in a more general sense.
Former three-day rider Rick Sullivan grew up with Nick’s sons, Willie and John, at Victory Lee. He reminisced about the Sunday morning rides.
“Every horse in the barn was under saddle,” Rick recalled. “Nick was always the last one out of the barn. He’d make a grand entrance in his Sunday dress, singing a song at the top of his voice, taking the lead, like a military march, out the drive, onto the road, past the houses, across Route 2, into the wood and trails, still singing! Everyone was in a good mood. Nothing could have made us happier.”
During the 1960s and 70s Nick helped to populate the hunting fields for the newly-formed Nashoba Valley Hunt in Pepperell and Old North Bridge Hounds in Concord with his riders and horses. During my period at Elm Brook, he introduced me and countless others to the hunting field.
Take Kerry Glass for example. She is a former MFH and huntsman at the venerable Norfolk Hunt in Dover, Massachusetts and has been a mentor to numerous young huntsmen among the New England hunts. Her husband is John Glass who headed up the MFHA office in Boston and after its move to Virginia. None of that would have happened were it not for Nick Rodday.
“I was a housewife in suburbia arranging flowers,” recalled Kerry. “I was a member of the Belmont Garden Club. My husband was a scholar at Harvard. Everything was perfectly fine. Then I got a call from a friend.
“‘You used to ride,’ my friend said. ‘You must come out to Concord on a Sunday. There’s a great guy out there that rents horses and takes us riding.’”
Kerry joined her friend on a Sunday morning ride, and before long Nick introduced her to the hunting field.
“Then John wanted a dog,” continued Kerry. “I wanted a poodle, and he wanted a boxer, so we settled on two foxhounds.”
So NIck had planted the seed that blossomed into John’s long career with the Masters of Foxhounds Association.
Nick Rodday was an intelligent, capable individual who could have chosen a much easier path through life. But he had to work with horses, and in so doing he influenced the lives of countless followers. I will never forget his handsome smile, his sense of humor and adventure, his energetic step, his calm but firm way with horses, his straight back in the saddle, our sing-a-longs after a good ride.
Joan and I will always remember you, Nick, for enriching our lives.
Posted July 29, 2011
Nick Rodday with his horse and carriage at the Chatham Bars Inn. He gave hay rides, too!
