Business leaders come and go, but very few had the influence of John Brunetti.
Long-time Hialeah Park track announcer Tom Durkin likely phrased it best: “His legacy is prodigious,” said Durkin, who hosted a memorial service at the casino racetrack Monday for Brunetti, who died March 2.
“When it comes to legacy you need not look further than where you are sitting,” Durkin said. “If not for Mr. Brunetti, you likely would be seated in the parking lot of some soulless strip mall. For that, we thank you, John.”
Durkin was referring to Brunetti’s decisions in the past two decades. Brunetti, who died at age 87, bought the track in 1977, and during an eight-year closure he weighed options on the 200-acre property, options that included building condos and doing other development.
Monday’s service was conducted near the racetrack finish line, with a 25-foot pink floral horseshoe in the background. (Pink is the color for Hialeah Park, an homage to the flocks of flamingos settled on the track infield.) A bugler opened the service with what Durkin said was Brunetti’s favorite song, the ubiquitous “Call to Post” that is played before a horse race starts.
The estimated 1,000 attendees, who overflowed into the second story of the racing clubhouse, laughed audibly.
It’s a stretch to say Brunetti was a casino guy. Of the 131 photos in the funeral program, perhaps a half-dozen showed him near the casino.
And, in fact, on Monday I didn’t spot a single casino executive from his South Florida competitors, for what that’s worth. But his story is worth re-telling, even for an audience primarily interested in gaming.
Brunetti’s father, Joe, immigrated to Brooklyn from Bari, Italy, worked “every possible job,” and raised his family in a one-room apartment, Brunetti said in an interview late last year.
Brunetti attended New York Military Academy and transferred from Rutgers to the University of Miami, graduating with a business administration degree in 1952. He flourished in the construction industry, building a business whose projects included 5,000 apartments in New Jersey and 3,000 in South Florida.
Brunetti, who fell in love with horse racing while a college student, played up the historic nature of Hialeah Park, with flamingos – present since 1932 — taking flight at each session and marketers trumpeting the fact that the track was listed in 1979 in the U.S. Register of Historic Places. Brunetti closed the track for two years in 1989 and then, for what looked like for good, again in 2001 after the state decided to deregulate horse racing, meaning Gulfstream Park, Calder, and Hialeah could have races at the same time.
Because it was closed at the time, Hialeah Park was not part of the consortium of South Florida pari-mutuels that campaigned on behalf of the 2004 state slot referendum, which narrowly passed with 50.8 percent in favor. But Brunetti argued that his track also had the right to offer slots, and the Florida legislature, rather than voters, agreed. That spurred a series of court cases that went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.
Brunetti won. He began thoroughbred racing in 2009; slots started spinning in 2013.
Hialeah Park’s clientele is different from those who frequented it decades ago – announcements on the slot floor alternate between Spanish and English, for example. But the casino property is still seen as the city’s gathering place, with concerts and social events dotting the schedule. Brunetti was smart enough to know what he didn’t know: he brought in executives with extensive casino experience and pretty much deferred to their expertise, which gave him time to concentrate on taking a view from the top.
As Monday’s service concluded, Durkin coaxed visitors to leave their seats and walk to the track’s rail. A recording of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” emanated from the track’s speakers, and the flamingoes, motivated by a few track workers, took their majestic flight.
In most cases, such a send-off would be construed as over-the-top. But not in this case. John Brunetti was one of a kind.
