Word: griffin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...bleak, chilly day last week, as Samuel Marvin Griffin was inaugurated as the 72nd governor of Georgia, the Capitol flags flew at half-staff, in mourning for Georgia's 60th governor, John M. Slaton, who had died in the fullness of his 89th year just nine hours before the inauguration. Slaton's death recalled a story of rare political courage...
...onetime shoeshine boy died in Brooklyn last week and, by way of mourning, a $2,500 plater named Sunny Al was scratched in the eighth race at Tropical Park that afternoon. The former bootblack was Anthony Aste, 88, founder of the Griffin Manufacturing Co. (the world's largest makers of shoe polish) and owner of the old Ascot Stable. In six decades on the American turf, Sportsman Aste, "the King of the Bootblacks," had made his mark with a colorful personality and many a better horse than Sunny...
...aboard ferryboats, hiring other bootblacks. Dissatisfied with existing shoe polish, he hired a chemist to develop a new formula, and made his own-first for his stands and then for sale. He chose his trademark carefully. "I got the name out of a book," said Aste proudly. "A griffin is half-lion and half-eagle-king of the beasts and the birds...
...developed Griffin partly with the profits from another beast, named Nasturtium. Bought by Aste as a yearling for $4,300, Nasturtium bloomed into the best two-year-old race horse of 1901. "The bluebloods must have got worried," Aste related with relish, decades later: "A bootblack with a champion!" William C. Whitney, one of that period's great turfmen, wanted to buy Nasturtium. Aste demanded a price then considered outrageous-$50,000-and set a deadline of noon the next Saturday when this offer would be withdrawn...
...Aste home and continued to argue about the price until Aste, looking at his watch, said coldly, "You have two minutes to make up your mind, Mr. Whitney." At noon sharp, Whitney bought the horse, paying $50,000 in crisp new $1,000 bills, which helped to build the Griffin Co. Shipped to England for the Derby, Nasturtium failed...