Horseman in the race of his life

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Horseman in the race of his life

How do you get out of this disease? 'You die'

Wednesday, April 12, 2000

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Bill Mahaney, 82, looks as fit as a jockey at his morning post in the Quarter Chute Cafe at Emerald Downs racetrack. But a hidden killer keeps him from riding the way he once did.

Mahaney, a longtime horse owner, was diagnosed with asbestosis in 1988 from decades of working in shipyards and as a lumber-mill supervisor.

Asbestosis patient Bill Mahaney watches the horses every day at Emerald Downs. He says they help keep him alive.
Phil H. Webber/P-I

He still has the heart for horses, but he does not have the lungs to train them any more.

He watches from the sidelines, giving his hired trainers advice from decades of equine experience. He cannot even walk the horses himself any more, something he has done since he was 16 and would "hot-walk" horses for a nickel to cool them down when Longacres first opened.

"You lose your air, and a horse will pull you around," he said. "You can't lead him. He'll try to stomp on you."

Horses are Mahaney's first love and second career. A lifelong sheet-metal worker and later supervisor, Mahaney started 60 years ago at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, where he helped remodel destroyers.

"I covered the boilers with asbestos all over those tin cans," he said.

There was killer dust everywhere. Only he did not know it then.

"You couldn't see that chair over there for the white dust," he said, waving to the seat across from him at the regular table in the track cafe where he has his breakfast every day.

"They never gave us breathers (respirators) or told us anything about it. This was the late '30s, and you didn't dare say much, anyway. You were lucky you had a job."

After Bremerton, he spent several decades doing sheet-metal work in lumber mills. He wrapped steam pipes at the mills in asbestos insulation, working as a mill superintendent all over the world.

Today, medication to help ease his breathing runs about $300 a month, he said. He uses a pump-driven inhaler morning and night, and a hand-held inhaler throughout the day whenever his chest constricts and he has to gasp for air. He takes several different types of pills, including the powerful steroid prednisone, and is constantly battling side effects from the drugs.

"Makes me mad, because they (the defense contractors) knew it would kill us," he said. "But you can't sue the government. I think the government should have to pay."

The asbestos companies have paid some, but the amount that eventually trickled down to Mahaney wasn't much.

His last settlement was $1,000 from Celotex, an asbestos company. After attorneys, court fees, and reimbursing the state industrial board for money it paid him for his illness, he netted $116.40.

Altogether, he figures he's netted less than $15,000 from total payments of nearly $25,000.

"The lawyers are the only ones making any money from it," he said.

And he's running out of money.

When he could still train horses, he could clear $17,000 a year above the $15,000 per year it costs to run a horse.

Now he has one horse left, Krystey's Colleen, a 3-year-old he plans to run this year.

He lost another couple of horses to broken legs. One had a hairline fracture, and after a few seasons tried to make a comeback. "A split won't heal," he said. "She was never the same."

It's that way with asbestos, too.

"I asked my doctor how I get out of this," he said. "He says, 'You die.'"

Krystey's Colleen is likely to be his last horse. But he plans to keep coming down to the track as long as he is able.

"If it wasn't for those horses, I'd be dead. They keep me breathing."