User:Etccerc/James P Wilmot

James P. Wilmot (1916-1980) was a pioneer aviation executive, landowner, philanthropist and horse breeder who served as Finance Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The James P. Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester is named in his honor.

Jim Wilmot was raised in Rochester, New York, the son of James Butler Wilmot and Josephine O'Leary. His father owned a small chain of clothing stores. Beginning his career as an employee of Rochester Municipal Airport, he started a pilot-training company called Paige Airways. The company would grow to become an international aviation sales corporation that was the exclusive agent for Grumman Corp.'s Gulfstream G2 jets.

Mr. Wilmot served as a Corporate Director of Columbia Pictures and the Irving Trust in addition to running Wilmorite Properties, the family's real estate development enterprise. He was a major fundraiser for the Democratic Party, and a good friend of such figures as House Speaker Thomas P.Tip O'Neill Senator Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson and Hubert Humphrey, who relaxed at Wilmot's estate after the 1968 Presidential Election campaign.

Along with his brother William, Wilmot was a noted horsebreeder through the family's Stepwise Farm, in Saratoga Springs, NY; at one time the Wilmots owned historic Freehold Raceway in New Jersey.

O'Leary Links
Jim Wilmot was the son of an O'Leary, and his only sister Betty was married to Dr. John O'Leary. One of the legendary tales of the O'Leary clan was the story of Art O'Leary, a victim of the Irish Penal Laws of the Eighteenth Century, when no Irish Catholic was allowed to own a horse worth more than £5. Jim Wilmot's horses in the 20th Century were worth considerably more than that, but of course British rule was long gone from America. Still, it is interesting to wonder what he may have been thinking in 1974, when one of his horses, Gold and Myrrh, ran in the 100th Kentucky Derby, and he met special guest Princess Margaret, sister of the Queen of England ! Probably happy to be an Irish-American in a free and independent United States of America.