LOS ALAMITOS : Making Hall of Fame Thrills Ackerman

Trainer-driver Doug Ackerman sipped coffee in the drivers’ lounge at Los Alamitos Saturday night and savored the most significant accomplishment of his long career.

“I’m so proud I can hardly stand myself,” he said after learning of his recent election to the Living Hall of Fame of harness racing in Goshen, N.Y.

Ackerman, 67, as unpretentious as the gray and light-blue silks he wears, was asked his formula for success.

The Indiana native said, “Work. Be lucky. Have a good wife and family and good owners, and work at it.”

Ackerman and his son, D.R., 36, are training 37 standardbreds at Del Mar and are alone there for the first time.

Ackerman, who has turned over most of the stable’s driving duties to D.R., won four races on one program during the current Los Alamitos meet.

Harness racing apparently runs in the family’s blood. Doug’s father and grandfather were harness trainers. His wife, Ada Jean, whom he met at Hollywood Park in 1950, is the daughter of driver Foy Funderburk. Their daughter, Connie, a Chicago harness official, is married to driver Homer Hochstetler.

And there may be fifth-generation horsemen in D.R.’s sons, Doug Jr., 9, and Kevin, 6; and Connie’s son, Jay, 2. Ackerman, though, is not pushing for that.

“They’re good little boys,” he said. “Let them grow up to be whatever they want.”

Ackerman is one of only three horsemen with California connections elected since the Hall of Fame began in 1961. The others are trainer-driver Joe O’Brien and Ores Jenuine, another Indiana native who became a track executive.

Ackerman and the other 1995 inductees--Anthony Abbatiello, Eldridge Gerry Jr. and Ted Leonard--will be recognized at the U.S. Harness Writers Assn.’s annual awards dinner in Atlantic City on Feb. 26 before formal introductions in Goshen in early July.

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Harness Racing Notes

A horsemen’s group is seeking to run a four-month meeting at Sacramento beginning March 31, the weekend after the conclusion of the Los Alamitos season. . . . Premier Harness II, which runs the Los Alamitos meeting, did a yeoman job Saturday to substitute three simulcast races from Pompano Park, Fla., after learning the originally scheduled Meadowlands simulcasts had been snowed out.