Sunday, April 23, 2017

Tim Capps: A Great Man to be Missed

Because I owe it to this man, I will try to put the words together in the right order. However, there’s a lot to say and I’m on an emotional roller coaster right now between tears and disbelief, as many of us are.

Tim Capps was the ultimate mentor. He was the director of the University of Louisville’s Equine Industry Program and a professor, but more importantly he became a second father to all the students that passed through. All who knew him know that signature Capps smirk, that look over his glasses that makes you think you’re in trouble, and the sarcasm that made Capps, well, Capps.

For me personally, he helped me find what I really wanted to do in life, and encouraged me to pursue it to the fullest. In summer 2015 I made a stop by the equine suite in the afternoon to say hi to everyone there. It was that visit Capps asked me about my master’s degree. As an Equine Business student, I assumed the next step meant getting my M.B.A., an idea I wasn’t crazy about. Capps asked me if I was going after an M.BA. because I wanted to or I felt like I was supposed to. The answer, of course, was the latter.

Capps then suggested I look into communications for my master’s degree. The idea stuck around in my head and I later began to research the best communications and journalism schools in the country. The next summer, before my senior year of college started, Capps took the time to meet with me and discuss a list of schools I had come up with. I was really interested in the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, to which his response was, “Do you know how much it snows there? Don’t go to Syracuse.” This was always followed by a laugh and “No, it’s a good program.”

Capps had attended the University of Tennessee for journalism back in his days, and a group of us in the equine lab one day were teasing him about having to wear orange. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to apologize for that and tell him that I’m going to be wearing Syracuse orange starting this summer, something I was really looking forward to.

It wasn’t just my master’s degree he helped me with, he also helped me realize what I wanted to do when I finished school, and that is journalism in the equine industry. I still remember being in his office one day, him looking me straight in the eye and saying, “You need to believe in yourself.” No sarcasm or jokes that time, all seriousness. He knew us all too well.

The grading scale Capps gave us in our capstone class.

We talked about our cats (that’s actually what our very first conversation was ever about). I told him the ridiculous things my horse did while he said Saddlebreds were crazy. We talked Thoroughbred racing, we talked issues in the equine industry, and we talked grad school. He always had stories to share from working in the Maryland racing industry, working on Wall Street, serving in the Vietnam War, or messing with radio stations and giving each of them different picks for the Kentucky Derby. And if you wore “UK blue” to class he was certain to call you out on it, because UofL was the better school (even though he taught at both). My favorite idea he came up with was his solution for the wild horse population and land problem: fence off Wyoming and make it the wild horse park of the west.

I feel like there is so much more to share, but I can’t really find the words right now. It really hurts knowing we will not see him again and there will be a very special person missing at graduation. Capps, thank you for helping me find my passion, thank you for being a great professor and director, but most of all, thank you for being the best mentor to us and telling us to “do it” when it came to our dreams. We love you and will miss you dearly.




















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