John J. Brunetti Sr., the colorful and sometime controversial owner of Hialeah Park and three Florida-based Thoroughbred racing and breeding farms, died peacefully at his Boca Raton home on March 2. Brunetti, 87, had been in tenuous health since undergoing the removal of a cancerous lung last year.

The Bronx-born son of an Italian immigrant who instilled a tenacious work ethic in his children as they grew up in New Jersey, the younger Brunetti’s first exposure to horse racing was a visit to South Florida tracks, including Hialeah, with college buddies in the early 1950s. Brunetti first got involved in the sport by splitting shares in a racehorse with his father a few years later, and in 1977, the younger Brunetti secured a longshot deal to buy Hialeah, outbidding a number of better-connected Thoroughbred insiders to do so.