Jeanne Mirabito, the founder and president of Our Mims Retirement Haven, died Aug. 5 after a long battle with cancer, according to the farm.
Mirabito, a resident of Paris, Ky., created the retirement farm in March 2007 in honor of 1977 champion 3-year-old filly Our Mims, who she found pensioned and forgotten on a Central Kentucky farm in 1997.
The native of a small village in New York near Lake Ontario, Mirabito told BloodHorse in 2014 that she was consumed as a young girl by what her family referred to as "horse disease."
"My mom always said it is genetic, it is addictive, and I had it bad," Mirabito recalled. One day when she was 17, she came upon the TV while her brothers were watching "ABC Wide World of Sports" and spied a segment on Our Mims, the Calumet Farm homebred who became champion 3-year-old filly after winning four graded stakes, three of them grade 1, in 1977.
"I thought she was the most beautiful horse I'd ever seen," Mirabito said. "At the time I didn't say I wanted to own a horse like her some day; I told my family, 'I want to own her some day.'"
Mirabito followed a winding road to Kentucky. On a farm from which she was renting a house and would later get a job, she met a big mare who one day took a vicious kick in the direction of Mirabito's head.
"I ducked, and she connected with the fence post behind me and split it," Mirabito recalled. "She is standing over me snorting and pounding her front hooves into the ground. I needed to know who was getting ready to kill me, so I asked my co-worker, and he says: 'That's Our Mims.' He had a lot of cuss words for her. She was not a farm favorite."
Mirabito was stunned to see her teenage equine idol standing before her. The mare had been pensioned and left to live out her days sharing round bales with cattle. No vet care. No farrier care, according to Mirabito. She adopted the mare and restored the champion to health.
"I don't think the people who had her were cruel. I think they thought they were doing the best for her. But she was angry," Mirabito recalled. Our Mims lived with Mirabito until she died of colic at the age of 29 and was buried in Calumet Farm's equine cemetery.
In the champion's honor, Mirabito started Our Mims Retirement Haven to be a refuge for many famous and not-so-famous mares once their broodmare careers were done. Once a "lady" is accepted at Our Mims, she has a home for the rest of her life, according to the farm's website. After a mare has died, she is buried at the haven's cemetery.
"Our hearts are broken, but her spirit will be our guiding light as we continue on with her dream," Laura Fallis, the vice president of Our Mims Retirement Haven, said of Mirabito's passing.
"My heart breaks," said Ann Cheek, Our Mims' director of barn operations. "Jeanne was my dear friend, and I miss her. I'll do everything I can to keep her heart in the Haven barn so everyone, including me, never forgets her mission."
A celebration of life will be held at a date and time soon to be announced.
