Monday, November 27, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 27, 2006
Lancaster County, PA

His story was told in the novel "Fate of the Stallion" and he was known by
millions of horse lovers everywhere. He stood for following your heart and
never giving up. In the end, it was his own heart that gave out on him.

"Nahgua," the fiery Arabian stallion that went from bad luck to victory
was laid to rest at his home in LancasterCounty, Pennsylvania
over the weekend.

Born and raised in Michigan, the bay colt made his mark in the show ring.
Spotted by investors as a hot prospect for the budding sport of
Arabian horse racing in the 1980s, he was syndicated for a
great sum of money at that time, and went on to become
Michigan's Race Colt of the Year. After that, he raced in Florida
and went on to a struggling Delaware Park, which is, today,
the premier center of Arabian racing in the United States.

By the end of the 80s, the stallion fell on hard times and landed
at a horse auction where he was sold for slaughter. As Fate would have it,
the manager
of the auction stepped in and arranged for him to be
to be sold to the horse lover who told his story to the world.

"He showed me how to follow my dreams,"
said Author/Artist Ron Hevener, from his home Sunday night.
"It was the greatest adventure of my life. He was my friend, my inspiration.
I was lucky to know him ... I miss him."

Nahgua was 23 years old.

"The Luckiest Racehorse Alive"

This story appeared in the Lancaster Sunday News, written by Pat Johnson

The day Ron Hevener called to

announce the birth of Naja, he was as excited as any new father.
To Hevener, Naja's birth was evidence of just one more miracle in the unfolding
events of Nahgua -a horse that Hevener says he saved "in the nick of time."

Hevener has told his story often. He loves to tell it and
has had it published in many horse magazines.

"All I did was follow a hunch," Hevener, says.
On an impulse, he attended the Monday horse sale at the
New Holland Sales Stables several years ago.
"I grew up with horses, but had been living in the city
and had no time for a horse. I can't tell you why, but
I remembered the horse sale and just decided to go to it."

He describes the sale as "A place where hundreds
of horse traders gather on Mondays in a bizarre mixture of
cowboy hats, English riding boots
and Amish suspenders, buying and selling horses
and horse paraphernalia of all kinds."

As these things happen, Hevener didn'tget there
in time for the sale. When he arrived it was raining and the place
was nearly deserted. But... "From somewhere in the back,
isolated from all the other horses, I heard a ruckus. I saw this
Bay Arabian Stallion, fiery and furious, pacing
in his stall."The singer was hooked. "I was falling
in love again," Hevener,who is single, admits."Only this time
I was falling in love with a horse."

He looked over the horse, from his long, elegant, arched
neck to his flaring nostrils, from his shoulders to his tail. Then he
saw it- a red slash of crayon through a sales tag on the stallion's
rump. "My heart sank," he says."He'd already been sold."
But Hevener, not one to give up on love so easily,
looked for someone to question about this horse.

In the dusty sales arena, Hevener found only one man,
but he was the right man. "He knew which horse I meant
and took me into the office, checked the day's sales records
and told me that the magnificent Bay had been sold to the
horsekillers."Do you want to save him?"
the man asked Hevener.

Without stopping to think of cost, convenience or
any practical matters, Hevener said yes."It was one of
those times when feelings overcome logic,
and the heart makes up the mind."

When told the price, Hevener discovered that
"What it took to save this fascinating stallion was exactly
the amount I had with me. It's all just like it was meant
to be,"he says with an engaging smile. "
There was a connection between us.
I feel that connection even more today."

As Hevener finalized the transaction and
turned back to his horse, he saw someone leading
the stallion away and loading him into the
slaughterhouse truck.

In less than a minute, Hevener and the sales
barn representative had the stallion in another stall.
"They let me keep him at the sales stable for about a week,"
Hevener says. "They couldn't have been more helpful.
At that time I was living in a major city (Philadelphia)
and had no place to keep a horse, no tack, nothing."
After a week, the stallion - now called Nahgua -
was moved to a stall at the Quentin Riding Club
in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Hevener realized that this was not your ordinary horse.
While still living in Philadelphia, he enlisted the efforts of
Jim Benedict of the Arabian Horse Registry Special
Investigations Division in Colorado.

It took two years of searching, but it was worth it, he says.
"Unknowingly, I had found one of the few Arabians who are
not only successful race winners, but halter champions
(show horses) as well."

Nahgua raced under the name "Nugui El Khamsin"
and as a 3 year old was Michigan's Arab Colt of the Year.
As the owner of a prized racehorse, Hevener was suddenly part
of Arabian racing. "It was time to start a new lifestyle
away from the city."

And, in a sense, he said, perhaps Nahgua was looking out
for him."The night I moved, I avoided a random shooting and
double murder outside my apartment.

Nahgua is now registered as an Arabian Race Cup sire.

"Nahgua" Registered Name: Nagui El Khamsin in his paddock at
Hevener Farms.

"The Arabian racing scene fills my life with expectation and healthy,
competitive activity. At a time when many of my peers are melting
away into dull and boring couch potatoes, I look forward to
Nahgua's sons and daughters building
an American horse
racing dynasty."

"FATE OF THE STALLION" ...
THE MAKING OF A TV DOCUMENTARY
by Ron Hevener

Have you ever noticed how Fate has a way of stepping in and taking
over your life? That's how it felt when I hung up the phone.

We were in the middle of production plans for the TV documentary
of my novel, "Fate of the Stallion," and things were falling apart.

It wasn't like everybody had just folded their tents and walked
away. Not like that at all. What happened, is that my great friend,
Bolden Abrams, Jr., had just died and I was counting on him for
the music.

It had been a few years since Bolden and I had collaborated on
anything. But, we had always said we would make a movie together-
and this was going to be it. Some of Philadelphia's finest and most
talented people were set to work on this project. People like John
Roberts, the camera man, Mike Lemon and his talent agency,
Maxine Bochnia for editing, Russ Diamond and his company for
DVD production, Axiom WebWorks and Todd Burgard for graphic
design ... the list goes on.

It isn't easy pulling together such a team. And, when you're
working in television, where the stakes are high, any changes in the
creative team can collapse a project like a house of cards. What was
I going to do?

Without the right musical genius beside me, how could I hold the
feeling and tone of this film together? Scared, I decided to go back
to the place where it all began . . . back to the horse that started
it all.

It was 1984, and the Michigan horse community was in a period of
growth. Hunter-Jumper stables were starting up, Arabian horse racing
was stirring, Jim Andreson, of Selket Arabians fame, was just a few
years away from finding his World Champion stallion, Furno Khamal,
and some people by the name of Ellis were admiring a bay colt just born.
"What do you think of the new guy?"

I wasn't anywhere near Michigan in those days, so I didn't see the
colt or know some of the people who would later play an important
part in my life. I was in Philadelphia, recording songs with my producer
and friend, Bolden, on his independent label, Coffee And Cream Music.
As anyone could tell you, though, I was thinking about horses and how
much I missed having one. Maybe I thought about having a farm some
day and all the horses I'd have, after I won a few Grammies. Funny,
how things work out.

Remember the name Jim Andreson and Selket Arabians.
The bay colt in Michigan would grow to be a beautiful winner in
the show ring. Because of his European bloodlines and racing
ancestry, a group of investors pooled their money and decided to back
him. Arabian horse racing was really taking off in this country and it
was a great time to get in on the ground floor. Anyone who could
establish a successful breeding program of Arabian racehorses could
put their farm on the map.

The key to such an enviable and potentially lucrative position was
having a successful racing stallion. The colt was not only beautiful
and classy, he was a born athlete. His racing career started off well.
Third, second and first, in that order at Michigan's Mt. Pleasant
racetrack. The racing ability rang true and he was shipped to Florida,
where Arabian horses were racing at Tampa. Delaware Park was
next on the circuit and as the Florida racing meet came to a close,
he was shipped North to become one of the stallions racing for glory
at what would (eventually) become the premier Arabian racetrack
in the country. Things were looking good. They were looking very good.

Anyone who frequents the Delaware Park Racetrack knows that
Philadelphia isn't very far away. As fate would have it, I wasn't the
only horse lover in Philadelphia back then. Just a few blocks away
from my place was a tall, lanky man named Jim Andreson who kept a
breeding herd of Arabian mares on a farm across the Jersey line, and
he was on the verge of a discovery that would shift the direction of
his whole life. Mine too, as it turned out. Each of us was about to
meet a horse that would change our lives forever.

Jim had started his herd, known as Selket Arabians, as a young man
all the way back in North Dakota. By the early 90's, he was living the
high life, starting successful nightclubs around the country and he
could afford some pretty good horses. Being a tall man, over 6 foot-
three, Jim needed a taller-than-average horse to ride and Arabians of
that size weren't easy to come by.

It was on a trip to a Florida racing stable, where he was searching for
athletic horses, that he saw a young bay stallion that blew him away.
Not only was the horse athletic, but he was exotic and expressive like
the Arabian horses of Jim's greatest dreams. He was exactly the kind
of horse Jim wanted to breed for, and he was over 16 Hands tall. Jim
didn't know it, but he was facing the most recent World Champion Jr.
Stallion of the famed Salon du Cheval, exported from Holland to the
United States with plans to conquer the booming Arabian racing scene
here.

This horse was the great and, in some circles, legendary Furno
Khamal. And Jim booked every one of his mares to Khamal right
on the spot. I didn't know about grand horses like Khamal back
then because my own eyes were filled with the sight of another bay
stallion who came into my life -- or smashed into it -- with a force
so strong that it yanked me right out of my recording career in
Philadelphia and into the country life of rural Lancaster County,
where I had grown up.

That horse, as many readers have come to know, was the beautiful,
Michigan- born stallion I came to call Nahgua, and was being whisked
off into the night from Delaware Park racetrack to the place where I
would see him. Unlike Jim, who found the cornerstone of his breeding
program at a racing farm in Florida, I came face-to-face with mine at
a country horse sale where he had been sold for slaughter.

How he came to that sale, and what happened for some of the people
who loved him, is what brought about my novel, "Fate of the Stallion."
As anyone who loves horses can tell you, though, horses aren't just
something you own. If you go with the flow, they can transform your
love for them into a lifestyle.

It shouldn't be surprising that -- sooner or later -- I would hear
about Furno Khamal. By now, Jim had left Philly, moved his horse
breeding operation to a farm near Hickory Corners, Michigan, and
the international Arabian horse world was at his feet. Million-dollar
offers were coming in, and he was turning them down. He had found
the stallion that would put Selket Arabians on the map and Khamal
would live with him forever. Like many others, I was hoping for mares
good enough to breed to this world-class stallion and I hoped they
would be daughters of my own, magical Nahgua.

Funny, how things turn out when it comes to "horse magic."
It was somewhere around 2005 and Nahgua was near the end of his
life. His story had been circulated in over sixty countries and I had
been lucky enough to purchase some good racing mares for him from a
sheikh. It has been a few years since Nahgua had sired any foals and,
somehow, I knew these would be the last mares for him. One of them, a
grey mare named ELD Bee Arin, was unusually tall for an Arabian and my
thoughts went immediately to Furno Khamal. Naturally, I had kept in
touch with Jim over the years, and it's interesting that we were both
working to create the same kind of Arabian horse -- tall, exotic and
powerful. Finally, I had a mare big enough to breed to Khamal and I
called right away!

Although Khamal was gone by now, I was sure Jim
had frozen semen in storage . . . To my disappointment, the last,
precious straws of Khamal's life stored for the future of Selket
Arabians had been lost when the nitrogen tank in which they were
stored, failed.

However... there was a bay grandson of Khamal; just a three-
year old. Would I consider breeding the mare to him, instead?
His name was Selket Louchiano and he was out of a 16.1 hand
mare whose dam had produced seven National champions around
the world. Would he be good enough for my mare?

As the breeding season went on, Nahgua covered three mares and I
was happy. I also became very curious about this young stallion,
Louchiano, and Jim offered him to me right around the time when plans
were being made for a TV documentary about Nahgua's story.
Louchiano had just won Supreme Champion Sport Horse in Hand at the
Michigan Futurity and he was competing in the Sweepstakes Stallion
class at the Arabian Horse Nationals, in Kentucky.

It was a glamorous, stimulating event featuring some of the best
Arabian horses in the country, but I only had eyes for the big,
bay horse in front of me that night. Watching Louchiano in that
arena, towering calmly over more than twenty other stallions
under bright lights, to the sound of loud music and applause,
I knew that if I had been asked by a movie studio to find a horse
to play the part of Nahgua in "Fate of the Stallion," there would
be no doubt in my mind that I had found him.

Who can explain the mystery of Life and how things work out?

Some time around the Nationals, it made sense for Selket Arabians
and the racing stable of Hevener Farms to merge our horse breeding
operations. Louchiano entered training for filming and promotion
of "Fate of the Stallion" and Jim and I announced our merger to the
international Arabian horse community via Arabhorse.com, on our
web sites and in many other publications. Along the way, Naghua left
this world and joined forces with Khamal. Somewhere in the great
beyond, I know it isn't the raucous music of the show ring they're
dancing to, but a shimmering symphony played by my friend, Bolden.

What's ahead for the rest of us? That's up to Selket Louchiano now,
and some bright new foals scampering around the farm that look an
awfully lot like their daddy.

You came back to me, Nahgua. You came back in spades . . . .
nahguaheadthumb

Photos of Furno Khamal, Nahgua and Selket Louchiano
http://www.ronhevener.com/horses/horses.html

SELKET ARABIANS

Contact James A. Andreson
e-mail: selket@tds.net
Hickory Corners, Michigan
269.671.4113
www.SelketArabians.com

RON HEVENER & NAHGUA 1

Ron Hevener
Manheim, Pennsylvania
717.664.5089