By Jessica Schley

Om El Erodite, born in June at Om El Arab in Rancho Estates, is one of the most expensive female Arabians – of any age – ever sold at auction.

The most expensive Arabian yearling filly ever sold at auction was bred, foaled and raised on a farm in the Santa Ynez Valley. At eight months old, unshown and unproven, the petite rose-gray bombshell sold for $1.550 million on Feb. 24 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Om El Erodite, born in June at Om El Arab in Rancho Estates, is one of the most expensive female Arabians – of any age – ever sold at auction.

“We are thrilled about the record-breaking sale, yet naturally it was really hard to see her go. We knew without a doubt she was incredible the moment she was born,” said Janina Merz, daughter of Sigi Siller, the famed breeder and founder of Om El Arab. Siller died of cancer in May, just six weeks before the filly was born.

Merz knows the farm’s matriarch would have been extremely proud of the filly, and she wishes that their lives would have overlapped, if only just briefly.

“Erodite is the culmination of our program’s entire focus and vision from day one. She is fourth-generation Om El Arab,”  Merz said, not to mention the product of three generations of work within her own family, beginning with her grandfather, who purchased Siller’s first breeding mare for her in 1969.

“This filly is everything that we have ever strived to produce, in one package. She is a vision. She looks like a painting,” Merz gushed, with pride in her voice and emotion in her eyes.

“What makes me the most thrilled is the fact that her sale was a boost for the entire Arabian industry. This is a pivotal moment for us. There hasn’t been an auction sale like this since at least the 1980s.”

The new Marquise Invitational Arabian Horse Auction, where Om El Erodite was sold, also has ties to the Santa Ynez Valley.

Local residents Greg and Nancy Gallun of Gallun Farms assisted Jeff Sloan of Sahara Farm near Scottsdale, along with two other partners, in creating the auction.

The annual sale is expected to become an international standard for the industry, with this filly’s sale marking just the beginning of what is speculated as a new era for Arabian horses.

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Wolcott Tuckerman Schley died Jan. 9 at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after a 10-month battle with esophageal and stomach cancer. He was 79.

Schley was born April 20, 1937, at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to Viola Tuckerman Schley and Grant Barney Schley, the second oldest of their four sons. Their father served in the Army Air Force Ferry Command during World War II and died in a plane crash in 1943. Viola later married Sigvard Hansen and gave birth to a fifth son.

Schley and his brothers, Bryant Turner, Grant Barney II, Kenneth Chaloner, and Sig Jr. grew up together on horseback on their home ranch in Happy Canyon in the Santa Ynez Valley. They ranched as a family on self-owned ranches as well as leases in multiple Western states.

Schley honed his skills in horsemanship throughout his life, under the care of his mother, already an accomplished horsewoman and a polo player before her marriage, as well as under the watchful eyes of the family’s ranch hand, Juan Festero, and family friends like Ray Cornelius and Walt Lozier.

Later on, his stepdad, Sig Hansen, passed on a range of knowledge in rodeo bronc riding and Hollywood stunt riding, among many other interesting skills. Schley later wrote stories recounting misadventures from his wild, free-ranging childhood. Some are being prepared for publication by his family in 2017.

Schley attended College Elementary School in Santa Ynez, followed by St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., from 1950 to 1955. He was a member of the varsity crew that represented St. Paul’s at the Worcester Regatta in his sixth-form year, as well as rowing on the first crew for the Halcyon Boating Club intramural competition. Schley also played offensive end on the football team and occasional pickup ice hockey.

Schley entered Stanford University in 1955. He and his brother, Turner, stabled a ranch horse at Stanford’s Red Barn, which is where they both began to learn how to ride in English tack. One of Wolcott’s dorm mates was Charles Schwab, whom he recalled pranking once by bedding down his dorm room with straw from the stable.

Schley spent two years between his second and third years at Stanford serving in the U.S. Army’s 72nd Tank Battalion at Camp Irwin. Like his father, he was a volunteer. He was a celebrated marksman, winning numerous long-rifle and sniper competitions, attaining his Army Marksmanship Qualification badge of “Expert with a Rifle,” the second-highest attainable marksmanship award in the Army.

Returning to Stanford after his service, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in English literature. Memorable courses included writing seminars with Wallace Stegner and Wendell Berry.

His uncle, author William Wister Haines (“Command Decision,” “High Tension,” “Slim”) encouraged Schley’s interest in writing; after graduating, he spent three years bumping around Europe, seeing the sights, hitting jazz clubs, sipping wine and smoking cigarettes in local cafes while writing short stories, poetry, essays and love letters. He experienced the beatnik era from the Continental stage. Although he never published any of this work, he filed it all away and kept writing all his life, though rarely sharing anything from this period.

Schley was most himself when outdoors, on horseback, working cattle, fixing fence, or driving around in a ranch truck checking on things.

After his adventures across the Atlantic, he returned to the Santa Ynez Valley to pick back up on his ranch-honed craft of horsemanship. With a base in the values and traditions of the old Californio vaquero way of horsemanship that were developed in this region over centuries, Schley spent the rest of his professional riding career expanding that knowledge into a plethora of disciplines: dressage, hunter-jumpers, polo, foxhunting, reined cowhorse, team penning, endurance, ring spearing, and polocrosse.

He ran a riding school and training stable with his first wife, Nancy Carter, from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s in Fredensborg Canyon near Solvang, where many local children learned to ride. He trained with Olympic coach Erich Bubbel and was a charter member of the California Dressage Society’s original chapter, founded by the late Susan Davidge.

Schley loved to read about and discuss the “philosophy of horsemanship” with friends, and he is remembered for his soft and patient approach to training horses and riders.

With a group of friends in 1972, Schley co-founded the Santa Ynez Valley Hunt and registered the pack as the Founding MFH with the Masters of Foxhounds Association of the United States in 1975. He rode to hounds with his beloved club and friends over the course of the next 45 seasons.

Other equestrian accomplishments include co-founding the Santa Ynez Valley Polocrosse Club, winning the Stock Horse Class at the Santa Barbara Fiesta Stock Horse Show & Rodeo, competing in a steeplechase at Pebble Beach, and accidentally hunting a pack of hounds through a fairway at a well-known Monterey golf course.

In 1990, Schley and his wife, Teona, became the editors of the Los Padres Sun newspaper. They ran the paper together until 1995. During this time, locals who had known Schley his entire life exclaimed that they had “no idea he was so smart” or that he could write. He found his writing voice through the many editorials he published on valley politics. After the paper sadly folded, he and Teona took over the Santa Ynez Valley Guest magazine, which they owned and published together until they retired in 2014.

Schley lived much of his life on the ranch where he grew up. Together with Teona, he raised his daughter and son there, and cared for his mother and the family’s herd of Charolais cattle until Viola’s passing in 2012 at the age of 99.

Schley is survived by his wife Teona, daughter Jessica, son Daniel, stepson Kent Sidney and daughter-in-law Christy, granddaughter Meiya, brothers Grant Barney, Kenneth and Sig Jr., and many nieces and nephews, all of whom he loved dearly. He was predeceased by his parents and brother Turner.

A public memorial was held Saturday, Jan. 28, at St. Mark’s Church in Los Olivos.

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