A Life Remembered: Retired City Firefighter Loved Horses, Building

Summary

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Veteran New Haven Firefighter Robert John Zacks Sr. loved animals, especially horses. Zacks loved horses so much that, in retirement, he ran a riding stable and boarding facility for 10 years, the former BZ Ranch, on property he owned in the Foxon section. As a young man, Zacks had helped deliver milk in New Haven with a horse and buggy. "That's when he developed his interest in horses," said a daughter, Sharon Willard of East Haven.

"On Labor Day weekends, we would to go Northampton, Mass., to see the annual county fair and horse races," she said. "He would also go to horse auctions in upstate New York, and one day he stopped on his way home at a favorite spot to get a beer. The patrons there all knew him and asked what he had bought that trip, and he said a donkey. They told him to bring the donkey in, and he did. They brought that donkey right up to the bar, and the donkey drank a glass of beer at the bar."

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A Life Remembered: Retired City Firefighter Loved Horses, Building

Zacks died April 7 at age 86.

Born Aug. 2, 1919, in New Haven, a son of the late John Sr. and Dorothy Zacks, he left sc...

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