Midwest-based horse owner Clifford Grum dies at 82
Clifford J. Grum, a banking executive who owned a sizable string of Thoroughbreds based primarily in the Midwest over the last two decades, died Monday while in hospice care in Lufkin, Texas. He was 82.
Grum campaigned horses mostly in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky under his familiar green-and-blue silks with his late wife, Janelle, and then with his second wife, Mary, who survives him. Cecil Borel served as his primary trainer until his retirement in 2014, after which Helen Pitts became his trainer.
Grum’s top horses included the stakes winners Watchem Smokey, Relic Reward, Quixote’s Luck, Cosmic, Expensive Slew, and Golly Greeley. His final stakes win came this past June when Athena upset the ungraded Roxelana at Churchill Downs.
A funeral service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the First Presbyterian Church in Lufkin, followed by a private burial.