The People of Anna House

Belmont Park, in Elmont, is home to many of the country’s most prized racehorses, which are often worth millions of dollars. They are cared for by an army of backstretch workers –– grooms, walkers, exercise riders and assistant trainers — who typically earn $16,500 to $20,000 a year.

The hours are long and the work is hard for backstretch workers. They have a very hard time making ends meet. Once upon a time, preschool was not an option for their children. They simply did not have the money to afford what many Nassau County families consider an educational necessity.

Instead, many backstretch workers locked their young children in offices and in their cars while they were on the job. They had no choice. They had to work to provide for their families.

The nonprofit Belmont Childcare Association was founded in 1998 to raise funds for a proposed preschool at Belmont Park, which would serve the children of backstretch workers. Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey, a two-time winner of each of the Triple Crown races, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, and Michael Dubb, the principal owner and founder of the Beechwood Organization, Long Island’s largest real-estate developer, hit upon the idea for a backstretch preschool during a dinner-party conversation with Bailey’s wife, Suzee, in 1990.

Eugene Melynyk, a Canadian billionaire and renowned thoroughbred racehorse owner, and his wife, Laura, pledged $1 million to the preschool, which was named for their daughter, Anna.

Without Anna House, a one-story, yellow-clapboard structure squeezed onto one acre at Belmont Park, the 63 children who attend the preschool might otherwise spend their earliest days alone, bored, even frightened, as they once did.

For all of the good work that the staff and benefactors of Anna House have done since the school opened in 2003, we proudly name them the Elmont-Franklin Square Herald’s People of the Year.