| Sportsfans Landspeed Historian Sports # 3 070913 | ||
|
BLOG/POBB
Home
|
Editor's notes: Welcome to a new member, Al Teague.
Teague's streamliner set a record of over 400 and with
the Summers Brothers, had the fastest piston driven car in the world for
years. The cars were in different classes.
For years those were the two records that Bonneville racers were after.
Records that last so long become mythic
and even when they are broken, people refer back in reverence to the old
marks. In February, Allen Welch died.
He was Jane Teague's brother and Al's brother-in-law. There are a few men
who have been everywhere, seen
everybody and influenced everyone, and Allen Welch was one of those
persons. I was always amazed at how
many different people from all types of racing would make an effort to go
over and speak to Allen. He was a
quiet man and no one would guess at how important he was until you heard
people speak about him. He was a
man who was there in the beginning, who knew people and you could count on
him to find parts, get in touch with
someone or give you an answer to your question. Another one of those been
everywhere, knew everybody and
could give you an answer sort of guys was Barney Navarro. I called him
periodically and he was always the same,
fighting health concerns but always at his shop working on an order. They
seem to leave us faster than we can get
to them, in order to finish our story or interview.
1) From: Vic Enyart
vicenyart@verizon.net, Date: 22 Aug 2007, Subject: Barney Navarro
Just found out that Barney Navarro passed away. Vic Vic: Do you have any details of what
happened and if there will be a memorial? Does anyone want to send in
their memories of one of the original dry
lakes and speed equipment manufacturers.
2) Please send me Ugo Fadini's e-mail address. I have
tried to e-mail him several times over the past year,
but could never get any reply. We used to be in contact. Of
course, I got to know him and Mariatheresa
in Gerlach. Charley Shaffer, Seattle
Charley and the readers: I keep about 2500 email addresses on
record and will be glad to search my records for addresses for you.
Some historians prefer privacy and do not
want their email or other addresses divulged, while other people don't
mind. It may be a benefit for some of our
members, like Ugo to make his address known to the general public
because he is a master model maker of vint-
age landspeed racing cars. Ugo is not a mass marketer like Mattel and
therefore needs to reach as many people
as possible. Some of our members write books or do other things that
necessitate putting their email addresses
or phone numbers out into the general public. If you would like your
name, business, phone number, email add-
ress, home or business address or other pertinent data made available
in the newsletter, let me know and I'll start
a section called "What Our Members Are Up To." Perhaps something like
this.
What Our Members Are Up To:
Richard Parks....Rnparks2@juno.com,
714-963-3557, no home address given. Writes articles
on landspeed racing for www.hotrodhotline.com,
www.oilstick.com, DRIVE Magazine.
Editor's notes: The newsletter welcomes comments,
suggestions, news, articles and stories relating to landspeed
racing. It is the forum by which we communicate with each other and a
source of news concerning our projects.
The group intends to gather monthly in order to see the local museums,
shops and other facilities that exhibit land
speed cars and memorabilia and to seek sponsorship for a landspeed
museum. Since many of our members live
too far away to participate, the newsletter is our way of conveying the
news of what we have done so far.
3) You asked for a story on the rescue device. About 30 years ago, during a USAC Safety Committee meet-
ing at USAC Headquarters at Indianapolis, a fellow member asked me
for some help. At that time Dave
Brown was working as a member of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
(IMS) Trackside Fire and Safety
Crew. Dan Brickey, now Safety Director of NHRA, was also working
as a paramedic on that crew. At
that time I served a Secretary of the committee, which was the
world leader in auto racing safety innova-
tion. During an informal discussion, Dave told me of the
difficulty they were having removing injured
drivers from the tight confines of the Indy Cars. He told me of a
couple backboard devices he and Brickey
had fabricated from plywood, but they did not work. They had tried
several other rescue extrication dev-
ices and they were not successful, and the cars continued hitting
the concrete wall with great force. He
asked me to give the problem some thought. By the time I returned
to LAX I had a sketch of a potential
answer to the problem. We fashioned some from aluminum sheet and
shipped them to Dave for a test.
They worked! For several years we continued to fabricate the devices, making modifications as the cock-
pit configurations changed. When the Indy Racing League (IRL) was
formed a trackside team was formed
that supplemented the IMS crew, but also traveled to the other
venues. IRL then began a process wherein
they would send a skeleton crew to new tracks where they had races
scheduled and they trained the local
trackside crew plus a group of paramedics the track would hire as
"free lance" EMTs to supplant the cap-
tive crew. We then started supplying these other crews with hand
made product. The device is quite com-
plex to fabricate and each was taking several hours to complete.
We were really getting discouraged and
ready to quit making them. We had a luncheon meeting with one of
the IRL paramedics when he was in
LA to work on an Indy Car test at California Speedway. I
professed to him my discouragement with fab-
ricating the Shoehorns. He had just completed one of the first
Rapid Extrication training sessions when
the science was in it's early stages. When he heard my
disappointment he urged me not to quit because,
and I remember the words vividly, "The Shoehorn is the worlds only
Rapid Extrication Tool..." I went
back home and took a long, hard look at the design and figured a
way to simplify the manufacturing pro-
cess. We then found a local high production shop that wanted to
become involved. Due to the IRL training
program we have sold a limited number of units to race track crews
all around the country...by word of
mouth. One of the sales was to Rocky Mountain Raceway (RMR), a
multiple use facility located in Salt
Lake City. Dave Brown of IRL, called me one day and stated I
should call the paramedic at RMR because
he had some exciting news about a rescue they performed. It
turned out that they had rescued a Sprint
Car driver who was diagnosed to have a "hangman's fracture" of C2,
which usually results in instant
death. He left the hospital a few days later under his own
power. The doctor told him he was very lucky
to be alive and that the back board the paramedics used saved his
life. That is when myself and Jeff
Midgley at RMR decided we should join forces and embark on making
the Shoehorn available to local fire
departments. So far we continue to supply several trackside
rescue and contract ambulance services
across the US. Recently the FIA purchased two units for use in
their Formula One World Championship
Circuit. We should have our first municipal fire department order
in our hands. Our biggest problem right
now is locating the financial support we need to get our
world-wide manufacturing and distribution intro-
duced and running up to speed. We have started a representative
team consisting of off-duty paramedics
and EMTs. We have yet to hear a negative comment about the device
from any rescue professional in our
30+ year existence. We have been honored by the award of the very
first IRL/Delphi Safety Award in
2005. We also were presented with the American Auto Racing
Writers and Broadcasters Association
(AARWBA) Pioneer in Racing Award in 2006. Both are honors
presented to a single individual each year,
in recognition for their contribution to Motorsports. Hey!
Richard, you are going to need to do a lot of
editing! Bob Falcon
Bob: It's worth doing the editing to learn more about the
Shoehorn.
Editor's notes: If you send me a letter and it
looks like it might be of interest to the general readership, I will
print
it. So if it is personal, please mark your intentions in the
subject box or in the email to let me know that you do not
want your letter published. I use letters to generate public
discourse on matters of interest to our group. One such
question is what do we do with the huge volume of memorabilia and
photos that are offered to us each year by
people who want their life's work kept for posterity. We can only
store so much and then what happens to this
collection when we pass on.
4) Try as I might, I cannot get a readable print
version of the .rtf that you sent. I tried it in a text editor
and in Word, and one way gets about 4-print type, which requires a
magnifying glass, and the other loses
stuff on the right margin. So, if you can please send it to me as
regular e-mail, please do. I also knew Stan
Goldstein in 1996 and 1997, and kept in touch for a while but the
old e-mail address I had for him does
not work any more. If you could send me his e-mail address as well
as Ugo's, I'd appreciate it. Thanks for
putting me into the group. I'm sure I'll enjoy learning lots of
history. Charley Shaffer Charley: I use
.rtf (rich text format) rather than Word Document. Someone told me
that when I do my articles that it takes up
less space to do .rtf than Word Document formatting. I tried it out
and the size of the folder dropped from 30
KB in Word formatting to 8 for .rtf. It could be that I am creating
more problems than I'm solving by using .rtf to
format things, if no one can read .rtf. Or it could be that .rtf is
not the problem after all. Computers experts out
there who know what the problem is and why Charley and a few others
cannot open and read my .rtf attachments,
please let us know. It could be on your end or mine. There is a way
to make smaller type larger and larger type
smaller. I think you left click on the mouse, hit select all, then
when the screen is darkened, you hold down the ctrl
(control) key and rotate the wheel on the mouse up or down. Seems to
work only on incoming messages. When
you are finished you have to put it back in your normal size type or
ALL incoming messages will appear larger or
smaller. I've transferred you and one other person to the NO
ATTACHMENTS email list until we've figured this
out. I will send out two separate newsletters, one with attachments
and one without. If the newsletter stays small
for that week, then everyone will get the 'no attachments' regular
emailed version of the newsletter. If the news
goes over 3 pages, then most of you will get the attachment version
and the rest will get the 'regular email' version.
Stan was with Craig Breedlove in the mid-1995's as team manager. I
saw him at Black Rock in 1997 and he
graciously let us use his motorhome. Since we were there 7 weeks, any
relief from the sun, wind, heat or cold
was most welcome. I have a ton of notes from that time and envision
trying to do something with it, but since I
was stationed far from the action, it might end up being more of a
novel than a historical work.
5) A very extensive report. I have a suggestion: I
believe that many on your list will attend the "Gas Up"
on the 29th of September in Buellton. Why don't you make that our
first get together? Dick Martin Dick:
Good idea. Jim Miller, our group's acting President will be at the
Gas-Up and so will many of us. Jim is also
working on the Getty Museum in the SF Valley. I didn't know that
there were two Getty's. We are asking the
members to give us ideas where to hold our meetings. Someplace
interesting where we can learn and network.
This brings up another issue. Why should we meet at all? Is it just to
schmooze and bench race or is there a more
serious side to our efforts? The answer, from Jim, is that our
meetings should have a definite purpose and that is
to judge which group in Southern California will support our efforts
to see a long term committment by a museum
dedicated to car racing, specifically dry lakes racing, in the area.
We have many fine museums and foundations
that give us space in their facilities to exhibit landspeed racing
cars and memorabilia. But they have little space for
a large archive of material and people are approaching us to ask where
they can donate their priceless hot rodding
and landspeed racing objects. Then there is the problem of having
curators who restore and protect priceless
objects and historians to write on the culture. Perhaps we are
spoiled by the Smithsonian in Washington DC, in
that we want some building like that for landspeed racing and the hot
rod culture.
6) Mr. Parks; I am somewhat interested in the
Society. While I am not a Historian by any standard, I do
know that the roadster I currently run set the B/FR record at
Bonneville in 1958. I also have a Half Moon
Bay program from Oct. '58 in which it is pictured. Naturally I am
interested in my cars history. Perhaps
the Society will be of some help in the future? Rich Fox
Rich: Everyone is welcome. Maybe our name
is confusing to the normal hot rodder?
7) Would you kindly add me to the distribution list
for the News Letter. I heard about it from Bill Hoddinott
today. As Chairman of the Speed Record Club, I will make sure the
word gets out to our members. Many
thanks. Mike Stanton Mike: I
added you to the list. Welcome. Tell us about the Speed Record Club.
8) Your LSR historical newsletter sounds
interesting and I would like to be added to the list of subscribers
if I may. Coming from Ohio, our contact with the sport depends
mostly on the LSR list, what can be glean-
ed from the news media, and various other articles
in magazines and books. We do make that annual trek
to the salt in August to race, but my appetite for LSR related
material just isn't isn't satisfied with that.
Thanks, Don McMeekin, McMeekin Bros LSR Dear Don: Welcome. I'm enclosing an attachment with
newsletters #1 and #2. They should tell you more about what we
are trying to accomplish.
9) Barney Navarro note. In 1963 I was part
of the crew for a car that was going to race at Bonneville. The
car was a '63 426 Plymouth provided by Yeakel Chrysler
Plymouth. It was prepared and driven by Bill
Likes. The original intake manifold had two 4 barrel
carburetors mounted on two diagonally opposed
plenums. Barney Navarro modified the manifold by removing
the tops of the intake plenums and rebuild-
ing it to accept four 4 barrel carburetors. The car ran
great, but we were about 4 mph short of the record.
Roger Rohrdanz
Editor's notes: The editor's brother,
David, suggested that the name Society of Landspeed Racing
Historians is
too pretentious. In a way he has a valid point, for few of
us are trained historians. A historian is usually someone
who is trained to record and preserve history and the text
and artifacts. Historians are sometimes preservationists
and curators as well. But someone could also be called a
historian if his passion is history and conserving it. We
don't have to be professionals that are paid to record
history to be a historian and many of the members have very
extensive private collections. Jim Miller and I left the
issue alone until we had a large enough group to start a
dis-
cussion about the proper title of our group. We don't want
to drive people away from us because they think of us
as pretentious and snobby, but on the other hand our goals
are the preservation of landspeed history and we are
historians, amateur as well as a few professionals in the
group. Is there a better name for us?
10) Landspeed Louise asked a question about the
Honorees at the up-coming Gas-Up Party on September 29, in
Buellton, California. She wanted to know which of the honorees
had passed away within the LAST 12 months. I
misunderstood her and sent out a list to you all asking who
was deceased. Someone said they thought Joaquin
Arnett of the Bean Bandits had died. I called and spoke to
Jim Jensen who is the vice president of the Bean
Bandits and Joaquin is fine. He's suffering from dementia or
Alzheimer's and is in a nursing home. Jim says that
Joaquin is fit and healthy and can remember the past, though
he can't remember the present. Jim owned the
engine that was in the streamliner that Sonny Arnett was
driving the day he died at El Mirage.
11) Glad to see you have so much
distinguished participation on the Society already! Some
very famous
names. It does me good to see Wally Parks on the
list, because he has had an influence for the better on
my whole life; since the time about 55 years ago when
I was in junior high school and I first noticed a
copy of Hot Rod Magazine (WP then editor) had hit the
magazine racks in the school library. I flipped
through it idly and that was the beginning of
something that has brought me (along with millions of other
kids) endless enjoyment ever since. For several years
after that the best time each month was when the
new HRM appeared in the library, and I devoured it
along with Model Airplane News, which had already
been a favorite. I never had the money or time to
delve far into hotrods until about 16 years ago when I
scored an early retirement, but I could follow them
all down through the years, and read all the literature.
I could and did, however, enjoy every sort of
motorcycle in existence and continue same to this day. I'm
sure Wally has heard every kind of praise and flattery
there is at a thousand banquets, since he founded
the NHRA which has been a tremendous sporting and
commercial success ever since. But here I want to
document a little something that my late friend Clem
TeBow said about Wally a few years ago. It was
my good fortune to meet Clem in 1999 through an intro
by Ardun Doug King, and enjoy Clem's friendship
for a few years up to his passing. Everyone here
knows that Clem and Don Clark were pioneer racers
and speedshop operators as C.T. Automotive beginning
around 1950. Starting with a teensy-weensy ad
for mail-order Flathead stroker kits in HRM and
becoming one of the leading shops in a very short time.
Anyway, here's what Clem had to say, in his inimitable
wit and delivery, when there was some mention of
the life and career of Wally and NHRA: "Bill, the
world would be a better place if Wally Parks would live
FOREVER!" Clem said it all that time! Bill
Hoddinott
12) Arnett is in a rest home with
Alzheimer's. E. Rick (Rickman)
13) I had the honor of writing
Barney's story in the April 2001 issue of R&C. I found
Barney and his wife
Donna a joy. In fact, Donna and my wife Bev went
shopping while I interviewed Barney. He, like so
many hot rodders that competed in the Indy 500
made it exciting. No Offy for him. Barney turned the
mundane Rambler six-cylinder into a 700 horsepower
sequentially turbocharger monster. I will miss him.
Too many of our legends are leaving us. Listen to
their every word while you can. Dick Martin
14) Please add me to the list.
Glen Barrett
Glen: Welcome. You're added to the
list.
Editor's notes: The Newsletter will be
a weekly one and will be published on Wednesdays. Check
with your
internet provider and make sure that the newsletter is
not stopped by spam filters.
15) You might (or not) be
interested in this for the Newsletter. Or you might
already have received it.
Regards, Bill Hoddinott From: Benn Karne, Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007, Subject: New! Bonneville: Wide Open Bonus Edition Hello Bonneville: Wide Open Aficionados (and Friends): Many who have purchased our award-winning docum- entary about the hundreds of people who annually attempt land speed records on the salt flats have asked us to come up with more about Bonneville, Speed Week, and those who participate. Finally able to answer that call, we've professionally manufactured a Bonus Edition of Bonneville: Wide Open that doubles the total footage over the original film. The Bonus Features include extended interviews with racers, complete rod cam runs, interesting and fun Bonneville stories, and more. The film itself incorporates technical improvements, including full chapterizing and a selection menu to enable one to go straight to favorite parts of the film. The new DVD is now packaged in a full-color cover and full-sized DVD case. Now you can get 1 hour and 45 minutes of Bonneville drama for the same low price of $25 postpaid in the USA ($27.19 in CA with tax; $29.00 to international destinations). Just go to www.BonnevilleWideOpen.com and follow the links to the BuyNow button. We'll ship your Bonus Edition of the DVD normally within 2 business days of receiving your order, via USPS first class mail. best regards, Benn Karne p.s. Give your old version to a friend, or better yet, maybe you can get a tax deduction by donating it to your local library. p.p.s. If you run a retail operation, we'd be happy to quote quantity discounts.
16) Kimberly Kelly set Two
New GoldWing Bonneville World Land Speed
Records. Watch us on TV. 8
September, 2007, 2-3 pm ET on NBC Jeep
World of Adverture Sports. Thanks. And thanks
for helping
Dave Koehler on Prostrate Cancer. Kenny
Lyon 310-637-6094. See
www.worldofadventuresports.com,
www.goldwingracingproject.info and www.projectgoldwing.org. Kenny: Thank you for the report, and
let us know what Kimberly does in the future.
17) Thanks for the fast
reply. This is a great thing and we need to
keep it going. There is much history out
there and we need to show the new
people where LSR came from. I wish I could
make the monthly meet-
ings but they are something over 350
miles each way. Guess I will depend on the
news letters. Thanks
Again for what you do. Glen Barrett
Glen: The group is young
and the first order of business is to
establish a newsletter. We are not sure
what will happen next, but Jim Miller is
working on a schedule for us. He
is trying to get a tour going of the Getty
Museum near Universal Studios. We need a
museum, or a repository of
some sorts for the collections of
memorabilia, photos and other relics of hot
rodding and landspeed racing before
they are lost to time, fire, decay and
neglect. Then it will be up to future
historians to sort it all out and write on
what happened. We can help the future
historians along by recording the past and
saving the artifacts. But we
can't do that unless each of us writes and
helps us to find a place where we can store
artifacts indefinitely. Our
members are expected to at least write
their own biographies. It doesn't matter
whether it is short or long, as long
as each of us has recorded what we know
and what we experienced. Then talk to
someone else and record their
life story in landspeed racing. Someone
said, "but his story has already been
written." Not true. It might have
been recorded from one writer's
perspective, but there is always something
that can be gleaned from another
writer's questioning of the subject a
second time. Don't worry about the
meetings, we might even hold one in St
George, Utah, one of these days. We are
not just a Southern California group. We
follow landspeed racing
wherever it occured.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Members: Henry Astor, Glen Barrett, Warren Bullis, Jack
Dolan, Ugo Fadini, Robert Falcon, Rich Fox, Glenn
Freudenberger, Bruce Geisler, Stan Goldstein, William Hoddinott, Walt
James, Wendy Jeffries, Dick Martin, Ron
Martinez, Tom McIntyre, Don McMeekin, Tom Medley, Jim Miller, Don
Montgomery, Mark Morton, Louise
Ann Noeth, David Parks, Richard Parks, Wally Parks, Eric Rickman, Roger
Rohrdanz, Evelyn Roth, Charles
Shaffer, Mike Stanton, Doug Stokes, Al Teague, JD Tone and Jack Underwood.
|