"Unbridled Greed"

The King of Calumet

John T. Lundy

J.T. Lundy's legal relationship with Cindy Wright didn't draw him any closer to the family matriarch. He wasn't part of the inner circle. He wasn't even part of the outer circle. Mrs. Markey refused let her grandson-in-law have anything to do with Calumet. She even tried to keep him off the property. So Lundy borrowed money, bought a small farm nearby and started raising his own horses. It wasn't Calumet, but it was a start. Lundy was biding his time.

"He married Cindy to get in a position, waiting for Mrs. Markey to die, so that he would become the man of Calumet Farm," said Maggie Glass, a former Calumet secretary.

It took 20 years, but Lundy's patience paid off. In 1982, Mrs. Markey died. She was 93. Since none of the heirs knew anything about running a horse farm, day-to-day control of Calumet Farm fell, by family agreement, to J.T. Lundy. He couldn't have been more pleased. He had an emphatic way of showing it.

"J.T. harbored great, great resentment against his wife's grandmother," said James D. Lyon, a Wright family trustee. "The story was that after Mrs. Markey's funeral, he stayed around to urinate on her grave."

Suddenly, Lundy's rough manners, slovenly dress, and lack of sophistication—Journalist Carol Flake later wrote that Lundy's idea of fun was "sitting in front of the TV with a bucket of buffalo wings watching reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard"—didn't matter anymore. He was king of Calumet.