Member Spotlight . . .
A Conversation With
1. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Middle Tennessee in Hickman County, Centerville, Tennessee.
2. When and how were you introduced to the Tennessee walking horse? My grandfather loved horses
and my earliest memories as a child involve riding
in front of him on his horse. He bought a Tennessee
walking Horse that had been trained by a young man
that was in the navy. He asked the young man to come
by and tell him about the horse. This was 1960 and
he did. After he got out of the navy he came back and
later married my aunt and this was the beginning of
Harber & Cherry stables. I grew up in the stable and
going to horse shows all over southeast. I remember
my grandfather and Bob took me to a stable in Middle
Tennessee and they wanted me to sit on a horse while
they made my picture. The old horse had dust across
his back from rolling and I really didn’t want to do
it. Afterwards, I was asked what I thought and I told
them my preferred my pony. My uncle uses this to
illustrate my not so good judgment of horse flesh, “that
old horse was Midnight Sun.” I was probably five years
old at the time. I grew up working in the stables and
showing horses and later trained horses as a professional in Tennessee and in Wisconsin. I can’t say I was
very good as a performance horse trainer and this was
way before the flat shod show horse was as popular as
it is today.
6 • Walking On
J.D. Harber
3. When did you first get involved in Mounted patrol?
In 1981 I joined the Metro Nashville Police department
and since I had horse experience, they asked me to put
together a proposal for a mounted patrol unit which I
did. Well it didn’t fly that time but I made that proposal
again and again over the next 15 years until 1996 when
then Mayor Phil Bredesen thought it was time the city
of Nashville had a mounted patrol. Chief Turner put
me on assignment under the command of deputy chief
Charlie Smith to work on putting together a mounted
patrol unit. For the next year I traveled around to different mounted patrol units stealing/copying ideas and
coming up with a proposal. Chief Turner, Chief Smith,
and Mayor Bredesen were very supportive and pushed
it through council. Although we had the approval we
had very little money and no stable. Since I had deep
family ties and friends in the Walking Horse industry
I went to them fo r help. It was with their help and the
donation of many outstanding Walking Horses that we
were able to start our unit in April of 1998. Mayor Bredesen was now Governor Bedesen and I was able to secure the old Ellington Agriculture stable for our home.
In return we agreed to assist other mounted patrols
across the state with training. The City was growing
by leaps and bounds, especially our tourist and event
industries. Never before had the city seen crowds like
they were at this time. The Titans were here and numerous music events had arrived bringing hundreds of
thousands of people. After 9/11 we were a very necessary part of the homeland security plan and worked
every event to protect against any terrorist threat.
4. What were you doing before Mounted Patrol? I was
a sergeant in command of a crime suppression unit
mainly doing street level drug enforcement. (I was undercover buying dope and I looked like a refugee from
ZZ TOP).
5. What are some of the Names of some of your most
memorable mounts? Wow there are so many. I guess
I’ll keep it to two of my favorites. My first horse was
a 15.3 black gelding named Solidarity’s Smoking Joe.
When we got our first six horses we had six mounted
riders. I let the officers pick their mounts by seniority
and I would take the last horse. Well Joe wasn’t too sure
he wanted to be a mounted patrol horse and would
take the opportunity to unload his rider at a moment’s