Even at 94, there are always new horizons. As his old boss liked to say: “Everything is ahead of us: the best play has not been written, the best song has not been sung, the best building has not been built.” And, of course, the best horse not been bred. So far as his own program is concerned, however, perhaps Leverett Miller has now cracked that one.His boss was the architect Wallace Harrison, who made a lasting impact on the urban topography of the 20th Century, designing the United Nations Headquarters, for instance, while Miller himself worked under Harrison on the Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Opera House.“I went to the last Beaux Arts school in the United States, at Columbia University, so I was trained in the old-fashioned style,” Miller recalls. “But I ended up practicing modern architecture and was lucky enough to be involved in some pretty amazing projects with Harrison. I actually worked in his house with him. It was a great experience.”But if that was how Miller found professional stimulation, his passion for horses would yield a productive crossover. One of his polo buddies was Jim Binger, head of Tartan Farms, and Miller was hired to design a house for the farm's celebrated manager John Nerud.“John was tough, but we got along really well,” Miller recalls. “His wife was even tougher! So doing a house for them was quite a job, let me tell you. But John taught me a lot about breeding. I was in the room when he would put these eight-by-10 pictures of all the sires on the floor, and then place pictures of all their mares alongside, to see how they stacked up.”Nerud also insisted on soundness. He told Miller it was better to breed a mare that ran 50 times to a lesser level than one that ran well twice. But Miller was privileged to receive other valued insights, too, notably from his uncle C.V. “Sonny” Whitney, from whom he inherited his famous racing silks: Eton blue, brown cap.“I was honored to get the colors, but he didn't leave me the money!” Miller says with a chuckle. “We got along very well, but he was another tough man. A hard man to know well, but I respected him. He loved that I was in racing, I used to go up to Saratoga and stay with him sometimes and we talked about it quite a bit.”Horses, conversely, were at first rather a stumbling block when Miller's departure from architecture produced an unexpected, life-changing dividend in the early 1970s, in the shape of his late wife, Linda.“Somehow I got into the restaurant business, which was rather insane,” Miller recalls. “And one winter she came to me through her aunt and asked for a job. I said, 'Sure.' So she learned to be a waitress in my restaurant, and one thing led to another.”If Linda got more than she bargained for when taking that job in Palm Beach, the same would prove true of her wedding present.“Well, she did not like horses,” Miller explains. “She went to school with Dell Hancock, which is how I met Dell, but did not like riding and was kind of scared of horses. So when we got married, I decided to give her a present, to get her interested. I said, 'Linda, I've got something for you and we're going to go take a little trip.' She had visions of a nice bracelet or necklace or something. So we set off to Miami and I took her to the racetrack and out comes a little gray colt. I said, 'There's your wedding present.' She was horrified, of course. But the little colt promptly won and she started to get hooked. Then the restaurant had a fire and I had to sell the lease. And I said, 'How about we move to a farm?' She said, 'What kind of a farm?' 'A horse farm.' 'Oh, well, I'm game.'”The one thing they didn't need was an architect, and Miller built a place from scratch near Ocala. They lived on T-Square Stud 25 years and Linda was so transformed by her new life that she ended up foaling out 60 mares every spring.One of the first fillies they bought, at OBS in 1980, was a $2,700 short yearling by Staff Writer.“He was a pretty obscure stallion,” Miller recalls. “That was one of the reasons I got her so cheap. He was standing on a very remote farm in Florida, but he was a good-looking, well-bred Northern Dancer. But the main thing was that this filly was a twin. It was a theory back then. A lot of top broodmares had been twins, like the dam of Spectacular Bid. You never read about it now, because basically twins don't exist anymore. The idea was that they had to fight for their space, so they needed courage. And I think that was true of this filly. She survived her twin and overcame quite a tough upbringing.”Linda named her So Divine, for a catchphrase of her mother. So Divine won only a maiden claimer, but later bred three stakes winners including one at graded level. All the foals that Lev and Linda retained were named with the “So” prefix, including So Ritzy (Darn That Alarm), dam of dual Grade I winner Silver Wagon (Wagon Limit), plus a couple of other graded stakes performers. One of those, So Glitzy (Gilded Time), was bred to Blame and produced So Cunning, winner of two from three starts.Soon after losing his beloved Linda to cancer in 2021, Miller visited their mares at Claiborne and wondered about So Cunning's next cover. Dell Hancock suggested that he consider Runhappy, who had given them some nice foals out of other Blame mares.The resulting colt realized only $12,000 as a weanling at the 2023 Keeneland November Sale, but ended up making $150,000 from Mark Glatt as an OBS 2-year-old. His name of course, is So Happy, winner of the GI Santa Anita Derby, and now among the favorites for the first Saturday in May.“It's so nice that the owners named him with the 'So,' because we don't know them,” Miller says. “As you can tell from the price, he wasn't a very impressive weanling, but we always sold all the colts.“So much of it is luck. I used to do a lot of chef-de-race, inbreeding back to the great mares. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't! So Cunning is a lovely looking mare. She was having a little trouble getting in foal, and was barren two years in a row. But then they found out she had a cyst. Once they got rid of that, she got in foal to Annapolis on one cover.”Though Miller is now down to just three mares, the other two will not be meekly overshadowed. Quaver, also by Blame, was alertly bought as a 9-year-old for $140,000 at the 2021 Keeneland November Sale, immediately after her daughter Kathleen O. (Upstart) won on debut. The following spring Kathleen O. won a couple of Grade IIs and ran fifth in the GI Kentucky Oaks. The other mare is Warm (Flatter), whose daughter Sunna (Dominus) impressed in a turf sprint at Gulfstream earlier this month.“My wife and I bred Warm, but she got claimed at Saratoga,” Miller explains. “And after that she went right down the ladder, to $5,000, and we both said, 'Oh gosh, we got to get her back, poor thing.' So we claimed her back and sent her to Claiborne, and now she's dam of this very fast filly. I was very proud to see her win in those colors, and hope she might go into stakes next.”That Miller was prepared to buy Quaver, when approaching 90 and so soon after the loss of Linda, is instructive of his ageless enthusiasm.Yes, he acknowledges the sport's problems: the declining foal crop, storied racetracks under threat, the flooding of the gene pool. And he also misses the old school horsemanship that set apart trainers like his friend Allen Jerkens.“He would sometimes run a horse back three days later and win,” Miller recalls. “Horses are tougher than we give them credit for. I do think we've bred a lot of it out of them, but not totally. I think the trainers had the judgment you needed to do that. I was brought up around a lot of those guys. I went to school in Aiken, South Carolina, where a lot of horses spent the winter: great owners, like Greentree, and trainers like Elliott Burch and John Gaver [Sr.].”The latter was a particularly kind mentor. And, in the end, the enchantment abides. Miller is delighted that his 12-year-old grandson Royal Douglass has inherited the racing gene, and also to see his other sport–he played polo for 32 years–providing fresh options for the Thoroughbred.“It's really good to see the polo people more and more into them,” he says. “The leading [polo] sire in Argentina was a Thoroughbred that Mary Lou Whitney and I bred together, a magnificent horse by Irish River. That's a whole new thing because in the old days, they were crosses, and it feels promising for the Thoroughbred. They love it, I'm sure. One that I rode, I swear she was smarter than me, knew just where to put herself, how to protect me.”Many years ago another polo friend, “Jerry” Shields, sought his help in launching on the Turf. Just about the last mating Miller did for him produced Country House, though sadly Shields died shortly before he won the GI Kentucky Derby.If So Happy can now add his name to the same roll of honor, seven years on, it will again be bittersweet. The race is virtually under the shadow of the PNC (previously First National) Tower, Harrison's contribution to the Louisville skyline. But it will only ever cast that shadow on a sunny day, when its steel and glass are sparkling. The first toast, then, would be to Linda, because grief is but the shadow thrown by 48 years of gleaming joy together.“She was 19 years younger than me,” Miller laments. “I was supposed to go first. But seeing this horse brings so much to me, going back to that mare I bought her when we were first married. So Divine went from being bred to the teaser to being bred to Mr. Prospector, and So Happy is the fourth generation we bred. It's quite amazing. I was very, very lucky to have had such a great partner in all this. So it's all about her, and really very special.”The post Miller So Happy with Divine Legacy appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.