Better late than never

93-year old becomes Catholic

All my Catholic friends had been getting after me. They said, `Delbert, you've got to make up your mind,'" he said at his confirmation reception.

Baptized Methodist as a child, Clements started attending Mass with his close horse-racing friends and decided to just keep going.

"There was no Methodist church around any race track but there always was a Catholic church around," said Clements, who shuttled between the Midwest, the Northeast and Florida before retiring to Broward County.

He thought he might have to be baptized again. The staff at the Hamilton House, where he lives, had a seashell-shaped basin and water ready. But it turned out the Methodist baptism would suffice.

Sixteen friends and well-wishers watched the ceremony, many of them horse people in town for Florida's winter racing season. Jockey Javier Castellano, who is riding at Gulfstream Park, and his wife, Abby, were Clements' sponsors in the ceremony.

A retired priest from Louisville, Ky., Gray first met Clements at the Chicago tracks 62 years ago.

Wow. So how old is the priest?