Notes for Dan Cyrus Armstrong: Dan Cyrus Armstrong Jr., or D.C.A. as he has been known most of his life, is my Father. He was born in 1915 and began to follow in his Father's footsteps at a very early age. Horses and racing was much more important than school, so he decided to finish his education in the eighth grade and move on to faster and better things. D.C. joined his father with the racing and rode many of the races that Dan Sr. matched. He rode Billy Van, when Dan Sr. matched him at Sieling, Okla. and outran Little Brownie, who was one of the fastest horses around. D.C. was small in stature which made him a natural rider. He continued to ride for his father until he met my Mother Joyce Blanche Cupp. They were married May 25, 1935, and she did not like for him to ride for fear that he might be injured, and now that he had a wife to look after he should be more careful. The Armstrong's were soon blessed with a son, Sherman D., born Dec. 7, 1937 and D.C. had to find something less risky. He began working for his brother- in- law, Harlan Ward, building houses and working at a small fruit market that Harlan owned in Elk City. Times were tuff and you started the day early and ended it late to make a living, back then. It was the Dirty Thirties and people were moving away from Okla. in droves. Those that stayed and survived were a breed all of their own. Tragedy struck my father and mother in 1939. Sherman took Pneumonia and died suddenly on Jan 15. It seemed their whole world ended. It was not uncommon to loose a child back then because of the lack of medical care, but it was extremely hard on this young family. The loss was lightened somewhat when my sister Darla Jean was born in1940. It was now time to move on and D.C. returned to what he did best, working with horses. Now it would be as a trainer like his father and not so much as a rider, not to say that D.C.Armstrong would not ever ride another horse race, but that he would now concentrate on what would be his life long occupation. D.C. and Joyce moved to Scott City, Kansas along with some friends of theirs, Clyde and Ruby Neely. They all shared a small house East of Scott City and soon I was born. I was born in 1943 and from here on I can tell you first hand that this story is true. My Dad, or D.C. as I will call him for the rest of this writing, went to work for a wheat farmer named Cliff Ware. Cliff was a well to do farmer and soon took an interest in the horses. He liked to gamble, and his wife, Birtie, had an almost uncanny knack of picking out winners, so they soon began buying and raising horses on his farm near Dighton, Kansas. The matched races soon ended for lack of another fast horse to race against, so the Armstrong's and Ware's set off for the " Races". D.C. trained for the Wares for most of my childhood, eventually buying a small farm near Scott City, Kansas and developing it in to a Thoroughbred training center where my Father prepared their horses before setting off to many of the racetracks in the neighboring states. We were farmers, and bought and sold cattle or "traded cattle" as it was called,buying them in Okla. and hauling them back to Kansas and selling them for wheat pasture cattle in the winter and when spring came and school was out we loaded up the Buick and headed off to Nebraska for the horse races. We took along a small house trailer and that was home for the summer. As soon as one" meet" would end, we would move it and the horses to another track. A small camp ground was provided at each meet and after the trailer was set up we would help my father bed the stalls and get things ready for the next day of training and races. When the day ended it was back to the trailer, where it was a hot meal of fried steak, gravy, and fried potatoes, and some of the best watermelon or cantaloupe you could ever imagine. My Mother was an unbelievable cook, and now that I understand the circumstances that she cooked under, she was even more unbelievable. She would help at the barn in the morning, cleaning stalls and dumping and refilling all the water buckets and still find time to slip away awhile before we knew she was gone, and prepare us a breakfast of bacon, eggs, homemade biscuits and the best gravy you could ever believe. Add a little Karo syrup, or "lick" as my father called it and you had heaven on earth. Life was really a joy, growing up around the track as it was called back then. Each summer we could hardly wait to go and see our summer friends. D.C. was a good trainer and we always won our share of the races, and managed to put back some money to help through the long winter school months. In the fall, we returned to Scott City, and we would start the cattle trading between Scott City and Elk City Okla. again. In 1957 my Father and Mr. Ware parted company. We loaded up the Buick one last time in Kansas and headed back to Elk City Okla. where it all began years ago. We left my Sister with her new husband, Jerry Unruh, to start a family of their own there in Scott City. It was really a sad day for all my family. My mother cried, and my Father cussed Scott City for all the wiped out crops we had suffered from the hail and floods, but none of it made it any easier to leave. It was home and no place was ever going to take it's place. We arrived in Elk City and soon rented a small house on Country Club Blvd. I started school, expecting the worse and finding instead that it was much more to my style of horses and racing than Kansas and we were soon running horses and eating those great homemade meals and Scott City seemed far away. We started going to Pownal Vermont, to a small track called Green Mountain Park to race and my father soon became the perennial leading trainer. With the help of a horse walking machine that he had invented when he was with Ware in Kansas in the 40s, we were able to train more horses with less help, and our stable soon grew to over thirty head. We looked like a carnival in the spring when we loaded up the horses and left Okla. for the races back East. We were joined by many Elk City horse trainers in our annual trip to the tracks, including my fathers friends the Maxwell's, Pete, O.C., A.D., and Amon. Carl Cooper, and T.J. Sims and the Brinkley boys, to mention a few. These were our friends, my Father and I and our lives would intermingle at every small track from Okla. to Mass., and Canada. D.C. Armstrong raced until 1974 when he injured his back, shoeing a racehorse a Pocono Downs Racetrack in Wilkes Berry Pa. During that time he won many leading trainer awards. He owned and trained a horse named Beckham Black who was the winningest horse in the U.S.A. and one named Sugar Plumb Fairy who went on the next year to be the second winningest horse in the U.S.A., not to mention a little bay mare he raised in Kansas, called Scott City Girl, who outran everything you could throw at her from the girls to the boys, and won thirty six Allowance and Handicap races and set three track records. D.C. Armstrong was as good as it gets when it comes to training racehorses or picking out a springer cow. He could move a bad horse up and make a good horse a champion. He could set side by side with cow men and pick out springer cows that were missed by the other buyers, and sell them back to them after the sale when they were checked, and found to have a big old calf in them, and they had just gone up a hundred dollars, cause he was in there. I followed my father's every footstep. He taught me how to look at a horse and how to shoe him so he could run faster, and lots of those old tricks to move one up. They all worked and lots of those things he did that I thought I could surely do better, I soon found that I was just lucky he let me know how he did it. You know, now that I look back at my life, and his, I think he taught me most everything I know about horses and training and all those things I have done in my life, except He never taught me how to look at twenty head of cattle passing through a sale barn, and to tell how much they weighed, within a few pounds, which ones would have calves in the next few days, and how to recognize one of them that he lost two years ago down on the river bottom, or what she cost when he bought her without going back through his sale papers. My Father tried to teach me what I needed to make a living in a world that is sometimes hard, but most often a great place to be. Some of it I learned early and some of it it took me a long time to learn. The horses came easy, it was a labor of love. Loving someone the way he loved my Mother,came much harder to me, it took a redhead from Ohio and Grandchildren to teach me the most important thing that my Father shared with my Mother. My Mom is gone now, she died this year in Sept. 2000. I miss her so, and I know my Father does too. He lives with my sister in Okla., and his life is again full of Grandchildren and home cooked meals { brother in law is good cook}. My son Zack runs the horses now, and my Father relives his racing days through him and his family. We have a couple of new would be trainers in Zack's children Emma and Amy. Soon all those old training secrets will be passed down another generation, and all will be well in the Armstrong family.
Taken from notes I made in my life. Dannie Armstrong
More About Dan Cyrus Armstrong and Joyce Blanche Cupp: Marriage: May 25, 1935, Sayre Okla..
Children of Dan Cyrus Armstrong and Joyce Blanche Cupp are:
Sherman Dan Armstrong, b. December 07, 1937, Elk City Okla.39, d. January 14, 1939, Elk City Okla.39.
Dan Cyrus Armstrong (b. June 10, 1915, d. date unknown)
Notes for Dan Cyrus Armstrong: