Muriel "Mimi" Wheeler Connery Obituary
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Mimi Connery and Tradewinds
Muriel "Mimi" Wheeler Connery, passed away suddenly at sixty-seven years of age on Friday, December 7th, 2007 to cardiac arrest. Mimi was the daughter of the late J.P. Wheeler and his wife Margaret. The Wheelers owned Tanglewood Farm in St. Anne, IL (Kankakee). They raised the great three-gaited champion, WGC CH Bellisima (foaled in 1962 and sold by the Wheelers as a four-year-old), amongst others. Mimi was the maternal aunt of MBA Equestrians owner, Margo Baird-Valentine.
As a young girl and early into her adult riding career, Mimi showed such horses as the five-gaited Tradewinds, the five-gaited Mary Jo Stonewall, the three-gaited Majestic Monarch, and many others, and more recently showed the Hackney pony In a Heartbeat ("Chevy") for Margo's MBA Equestrians in the pleasure driving division at the 2004 Wisconsin Futurity and Mane Event Horse Shows.
Mimi lost her husband, Michael, in 1997 to cancer. She was a 40-year resident of the Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, IL area. She is survived by her sons, Michael and Jack (Ally), daughter Kara Grant (William) and three granddaughters. Margo's mother, Mary Wheeler Fraser, passed away in early 2002, thus the only surviving members of the Wheeler family are brothers, Donald (Sally) and John, a/k/a "Jack", (Polly). During Mimi's riding years, she rode with such trainers as Don Brockman, Everett & Art Ledbetter, Eugene & Delores Oder, and Lloyd Teater.
(Obituary courtesy of Brendan Heintz)
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