Tommy Alden Wise – racer

Tommy Alden Wise – racer

Today we review the life and career of Tommy Alden Wise a California competitor in the dangerous pre-and post-World War Two period of automobile racing. Tommy never won a championship or the Indianapolis 500, but his life serves as a strak reminder how far safety has come in our sport.  

Born in the southern Arizona mining town of Lowell Arizona on September 5 1908, Tommy and his family, that included two younger sisters Frances and Murial, relocated to Los Angeles after the death of his father in 1929.

It is unclear when Tommy started his racing career but an October 1932 Los Angeles Times newspaper article described 24-year old Tommy as one of the “well-known drivers” scheduled to appear at the “new” Culver City Speedway, located one block south of the intersection of Washington and West Adams Boulevards northeast of downtown Culver City. Other drivers scheduled to appear included Herb Kelly, Jack Gardner, Ted Harvey and Howard Gunn. 

  

This 5/8-mile dirt track shared its name with another track, used primarily for motorcycle racing, adjacent to the Culver City Kennel Club dog track, located at the west end of Washington Boulevard at Lincoln Boulevard near Venice.

The oiled-dirt Culver City track, owned by R E “Dick” Weatherly Sr. and managed by his son, opened on Sunday August 21 1932 as an outlaw (not an AAA - American Automobile Association sanctioned) track that operated under the auspices of the California Auto Racing Association (CARA).  

The crowd was still filing in when tragedy struck during time trials and young Oliver Burton lost his life. As Burton entered a turn, a pin apparently fell out of the steering linkage of the “Hoover Special” and it veered out of control.

Burton’s car smashed through the wooden fence, rolled over three times and came to rest with Oliver pinned under the wreckage. Once extricated, the mortally wounded 20-year old driver died as the ambulance sped towards the Culver City Community Hospital. The crowd of 2500 fans watched as Clarence “Tex” Peterson won his heat race and the 20-lap main event, chased to the finish line by Herb Balmer in the “Covina Special.”

Two weeks later, on September 4, Peterson himself was critically injured in a crash at Culver City Speedway that provided a stark reminder of the dangers of auto racing.  On the 15^th lap of the day’s feature event, “Tex” came upon a slower car as the pair entered turn one.  As “Tex” moved to lap the slower car, the steering on his car failed and crashed through the fence.

According to the next day’s article in the Los Angeles Times, the ambulance first took Peterson to an unnamed hospital where he was treated and released. “Tex” returned to the speedway grounds but a short time later he collapsed and he was taken to the Queen of Angels hospital and admitted with a fractured skull. Loren “Red” Clark won the feature race completed after Peterson’s accident.    

Newspaper advertisements called the October 23 1932 Culver City event “one of the greatest gatherings of racing drivers ever assembled in the West,” with an entry list, that in addition to Tommy Wise, included Balmer, Peterson, Earl Mansell, Chris Vest, Al Reinke, and L M “Red” Clark in a  scheduled 40-lap main event.  

Tommy Newton won the two-lap dash, ten-lap dash, and the 25-lap main event (reduced from 40 laps) over Clark and Jack Gardner. Art Hungerford and Bob Hahn each won a five-lap consolation race.

In late February 1933 Tommy appeared at the Tri-City Speedway (also known as San Bernardino Speedway) a half-mile dirt track located near the Tri-City airport east of Colton in San Bernardino County. Wise finished third in the 25-lap feature race behind Foster Hall and Floyd Douglas in a Sunday afternoon combined automobile and motorcycle racing show promoted by Sid Wood and sanctioned by the CARA.

On May 7 1933 during qualifying at Culver City Speedway, Tommy’s car overturned in the north turn and rolled over him. Wise suffered unspecified internal injuries “which are expected to prove fatal” according to The Pasadena Post, and the following day he was transferred from the Culver City Hospital to the Hollywood Hospital. Earl Mansell won the May 7^th 50-lap feature ahead of “Red” Clark after front-runners Frank Wearne and Floyd Roberts both retired with mechanical failures.

After his accident, there is no record of Tommy’s racing activities for several years, but Tommy married Clarice Haney in Los Angeles March 25 1935 and together they had a daughter Joanna born in 1937. Sadly, Clarice died in January 1939 and left Tommy a widower with his young daughter to raise.

Tommy took part in the rapidly growing sport of midget auto racing in an afternoon race at the grand opening of the “dustless” San Bernardino County Sports Stadium on Easter Sunday 1939. The ¼-mile track, located not far from the Tri-City Speedway and built at reported cost of $35,000, featured 10-foot high 43-degree banked corners. The track promoter hosted two free practice days before the event which gave the drivers a chance to familiarize themselves with the track and the free entry increased local fan interest.  

The seven–race program boasted entries from Gib Lilly, Bill Zaring and Clyde Goss as they raced cars powered by a variety of Continental outboard motors, Ford V8-60s, and George Wright’s “Cragar Junior” engine. Tommy Wise piloted the #18 midget but did not transfer to start the 40-lap feature which a crowd estimated to be between 3000 and 4000 fans watched and saw “Speed” Baker take the checkered flag just as his midget car burst in the flames.

Tommy and crew before a "big car" race at Southern Ascot Speedway 

Sunday May 21 1939 saw Tommy Wise in action at “Southern Ascot Speedway” in Southgate California for the 75-lap “Indianapolis Cup” “big car” race. This track located at the intersection of Atlantic and Tweedy Boulevards was the third of four Southern California race tracks to carry the “Ascot” name. The original, a one-mile former horse track on Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles ran from 1904 to 1919, was followed in 1924 by the notorious 5/8-mile high-banked oiled-dirt Legion Ascot Speedway near Alhambra that claimed 24 lives before it closed in 1936.

The half-mile dirt “Southern Ascot,” located in a gritty neighborhood, opened in 1937 as the “Southgate Speedway” an “outlaw” track primarily remembered for the long railroad trestle bridge over the Los Angeles River visible beyond the track’s backstretch. Historic racer Barney Oldfield acted as the referee for the May 21^st afternoon program that also featured a 25-lap “Grand National Sweepstakes” for cross-country motorcycles led by “Suicide” Dockstiler proclaimed the “King of the Midwestern tracks.” 

Tommy and his riding mechanic pose at Southern Ascot Speedway

Bud Rose, the “Pasadena Bad Boy,” whose birth name was Harry Eisele, won the 3-lap helmet dash and the five-lap dash and was pressured early in the feature by Southgate standout “Shorty” Ellyson until “Shorty’s” car suffered engine trouble on lap 26. From there Rose, who later doubled for Clark Gable in films, was in control and took the checkered flag in 35 minutes and 36 seconds ahead of Bed Sennett with Tommy Wise in third place.   

Tommy finished fifth in the “Eighth Annual Fast Car Race,” which was the final auto race held on the Coconino County Fairgrounds (Arizona) ½-mile dirt track on August 20 1939. Tommy finished behind winner Bud Rose, Wally Schock, Earl Mansell, and Ken Palmer in the 25-lap feature sponsored by the Mark A. Moore American Legion Post #3.  After the race was over, the teams made the perilous 450-mile tow home to Los Angeles to start the Southern Ascot night racing season on Wednesday August 30 1939, with the race won by Bud Rose.

For 1940, there were changes at Ascot Speedway as in February Charlie Curryer signed a one-year lease and took over promotion and sanction of the facility with his American Racing Association (ARA).  Bud Rose started the season behind the wheel of a new 255-cubic inch Miller powered “big car” and easily won the 40-lap season-opener at the renovated facility.

Tommy in action in the Southern Ascot "Irish Derby" race  March 17 1940

The next “big car” race at Ascot in 1940 was the 35-lap ‘Irish Derby’ held on St. Patrick’s Day Sunday March 17^th and featured some unusual twists. First was the inverted start for the feature so the fastest qualifiers started at the rear of starting field. The other unusual twist dealt with the cars themselves – instead of numbers, the cars carried names on their tail tanks. Tommy Wise’s car owner I.W. Holland, owner of the Holland Auto Parts, chose to name his car “Juliana” after the Dutch Princess.

 Sennett set fast time and a new track record at 27.50 seconds and Negro driver Rajo Jack (birth name Dewey Gatson), Bud Rose and Ray Bray each won their 5-lap heat races. Unlike the AAA, Curryer’s ARA allowed black drivers to compete.  Twelve starters took the green flag for the feature - Bud Rose quickly maneuvered his way forward and took the lead on the 11^th lap and from that point on was never challenged to the checkered flag.

On lap 20 of the feature, Negro driver Mel Leighton’s car blew a tire and the car flipped twice. Leighton was later reported “out of danger” at a Lakewood hospital.  Rose took the checkered flag ahead of Sennett, Rajo Jack and Van Edwards with Tommy Wise in fifth place.

The following week, on Easter Sunday March 24th the results seemed to be headed to be a repeat of the past Sunday. First Sennett lowered the track record to 26.8 seconds and later Bud Rose handily led the feature until disaster struck. The Miller engine in Rose’s car quit on lap 26 which handed the lead to Wally Schock.

Wally, the manager of the Santa Rosa Montgomery Ward store held on to win in his DO HAL “Riverside Tire Special” (the brand of tires sold at Montgomery Ward) with Sennett second and Rajo Jack third for the second straight week and Tommy Wise repeated his fifth place finish.  The DO (Double Overhead camshaft) HAL engine built by Howard Hosterman of Akron Ohio could be competitive with a top-line Miller engine at a far lower cost.  

After the race, Sennett was scored as the ARA point leader, ahead of Rose by two points, with Rajo Jack third and Tommy in fourth 28 points behind the leader. On May 12, the ARA racers visited Curryer’s primary racing facility, the one-mile dirt Oakland Speedway for a 100-lap feature.

6200 fans saw a thrilling feature won by Schock by two laps over Rajo Jack and Rose who drove a borrowed car. Mel Leighton, recovered from his Ascot spill on March 17 was not so lucky this time as his car left the track in the third turn, went through the fence then tumbled down the embankment and Mel suffered broken ribs and a broken right foot. Tommy Wise finished twelfth and last at Oakland on May 12^th after his car suffered an early mechanical failure.   

On June 2 1940 the ARA racers visited the “newly reconditioned” 5/8-mile Goshen Speedway in the San Joaquin Valley. Veteran Ed Barnett set quick time, then won the helmet dash won and the first heat race.  Tommy Wise won the second heat race as he passed Butch Devore in the last 500 feet before the finish line.

Early in the 25-lap feature, Tommy pressed Barnett for the lead before he retired with mechanical troubles. Barnett won easily over Van Edwards as Devore finished fourth.  Wise and the rest of the ARA drivers returned to Goshen on Sunday June 23 and Rajo Jack claimed the feature win over Barnett.      

In July Tommy returned to the midget race cars. On the 9^th he raced at the ¼ mile paved Atlantic Stadium near the intersection of Atlantic Boulevard and Olive Avenue in Lakewood and finished second in the 15-lap B main. On the 26^th he returned to San Bernardino’s Orange Show Speedway and finished third in his heat race. 

Tommy was entered as the driver of the #17 ‘Lehamann Special’ for the third annual Labor Day  500-mile “Little Indianapolis” ARA “big car” race held at Oakland Speedway but apparently was not fast enough to qualify for the 33-car starting field. Tommy wound up sixth in the 1940 American Racing Association points behind champion repeat champion Wally Schock, Slim Mathis, Rajo Jack, Van Edwards and Tex Peterson.  

The 1941 schedule at Southern Ascot Speedway in Southgate changed radically from previous years as the ARA “big cars” were not emphasized. In fact with a weekly slate of Sunday afternoon racing programs that started on January 5, the “big cars” did not race there until May 11. The ARA big cars opened their season at Oakland Speedway and Tommy scored a tenth place finish behind winner Hal Cole.

During the Winter and Spring, fans at the half-mile Ascot track saw a variety of stock car, jalopy, motorcycle, midget car and stock roadster races and “Captain Bob Ward’s Daredevil Aces Death Circus,” a motorcycle, automobile and airplane thrill show.

Tommy Wise qualified among the fastest eight cars at Ascot on May 11 and thus did not have to run the 10-lap race that advanced six non-qualifiers to the rear of the 14-car starting field for the 100-lap race.  “Tex” Petersen grabbed the lead on the first lap and remained out front until Kenny Palmer passed Tex for the lead on lap 85. A couple of laps later Palmer began to slow as the gasket on his car’s fuel pump began to leak and Petersen recaptured the lead.

Late in the race Buck Whitmer, a racer who had been declared dead after a crash the previous year in Hammond Indiana, passed the faltering Palmer machine on the last lap to claim second place, while Wise settled for a fifth place finish.   Tommy in tenth place in the ARA season points returned to Ascot on June 7^th and Petersen won his second straight “big car" 100-lap feature. 

Wise appeared in the #6 big car at Oakland for a 200-mile race on July 4^th that boasted a total purse of $5000 and then qualified the #53 car 29^th in a field of 30 starters for the 500-mile Labor Day race at Oakland, but we do not have Tommy’s results from either race. 

In August and again in October, Tommy and the ARA drivers christened the “new” ¼-mile dirt Santa Rosa Speedway sponsored by the VFW Post #1844. Previously known at the DiGrazia Motordrome when it opened in 1939, the track was now managed by Charles Curryer.  Hometown hero Wally Schock easily won both races at the facility.

Tommy took part in the “Western Association Championship”150-lap “big car” race on November 9 1941. Less than a month later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor which shelved the 1942 American Racing Association schedule.  Ascot Speedway closed forever after a final “jamboree” on Sunday July 26^th, 1942 that featured roadster and motorcycle racing and two thrills shows. The official Office of Defense Transportation ban on auto racing went into effect at midnight on July 31 1942. 

Tommy Wise lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Seventh Street in Boyle Heights when he had registered for the Selective Service on October 16 1940. Some sources indicate Tommy served in the United States Navy during World War Two, but his family is unaware of his wartime service. Tommy might have received deferment status given his age (32) and his status as a widower with a dependent child.

Tommy met and married Martha Akre, and they settled into a small apartment on Siskiyou Street in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. During the summer of 1947 at the age 39 Tommy returned to race a “big car” with the Western Racing Association (WRA) at Carrell Speedway in Gardena.  Joshua James “JC” Agajanian, the President of the WRA was heir to a San Pedro-based Armenian trash collection and hog farming business and yielded to family pressures as he chose to become a car owner and promoter instead of a race car driver.  

The WRA an “outlaw” (non-AAA) club, sanctioned and promoted races at Carrell, built by excavation contractor Emmett Malloy in 1946 as the “Gardena Bowl” on land owned by Inglewood Judge Frank R. Carrell at 182nd Street and South Vermont Avenue in Gardena. Advertised as “the world’s fastest ½-mile track” that featured 10-foot high banked turns it steadily hosted midget, hot rod roadster, stock car, big car, jalopy and motorcycle racing.

“Veteran driver” Tommy Wise entered the “big car” races held on Sunday afternoon August 10, along WRA point leader Bayless Levrett, “”Slim” Mathis, Fred Luce, Bud Rose, Buck Whitmer, Hal Cole, newcomers Roy Prosser, Andy Linden and Jack McGrath and negro racer Leroy Nooks.  

Art George, Lenny Lowe, Joe Gemsa and 17 year old Troy Ruttman each won the 6-lap heat races, as Legion Ascot veteran Arvol Brunmeier crashed in his heat race but escaped with cuts and bruises.  Marine veteran Andy Linden led the majority of the 30-lap feature but was passed on the 27th lap by Jack McGrath who sped away to victory.

Ed Korgan won the August 16th 300-lap “National Championship Gold Cup” stock car races for 1946 and 1947 model cars complete with fenders, bumpers, starters and other factory parts, less mufflers under the track’s new lighting system. Korgan turned the tables on his competitors as he drove a Willys Jeep to victory ahead of Johnny Mantz in a full-size Mercury at an average speed of 54 miles per hour for the 150 miles before a reported crowd of 30,000 fans. 

After McGrath repeated his winning ways in the August 23rd 30-lap WRA “big car” main event, on Wednesday August 27, Carrell hosted the “rambunctious” California Roadster Association (CRA) “hot rod roadster” races that starred many familiar names –   Ruttman the CRA points leader, McGrath, Linden, Nooks and Manny Ayulo, the son of a Peruvian diplomat. During the night’s first race, the 3-lap trophy dash, Troy Ruttman’s car spun, hit the wall and lost its right rear wheel.

The loose wheel bounded over the retaining wall and chain link fence and struck a young Glendale girl, Carole Waldbillig, seated with her family in the third row of the grandstands. Seven-year-old Young Carole was rushed to Southwest General Hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.  When the program resumed, Archie Tipton, Pat Flaherty, Leroy Nooks and Jack McGrath each won their five-lap heat races and Flaherty won the 10-lap semi-main.  McGrath won the 20-lap feature over Ayulo.

On September 3 a Los Angeles County coroner’s jury held an inquest to review the facts of Carole Waldbillig’s death. After hearing testimony from several witness, the jury delivered the decision that the seven year old’s death was an accident and found no one criminally liable.  The jury held that the track “was equipped with adequate safety devices” and that Ruttman “exercised maximum precautions.”   

There were 40 cars entered Saturday night August 30^th WRA “Trophy Cup” “big car” race with a driver lineup that included Tommy Wise, 1935 Indianapolis 500-mile race winner Cavino “Kelly” Petillo, Hal Cole, McGrath, Ruttman, and ‘Tex’ Peterson. The WRA championship was up for grabs as the 1946 WRA champion Bayliss Levrett had temporarily switched his focus to racing in the Midwest.  

Frank McGurk won the three-lap trophy dash, then during the formation of first heat race another car failed to start and officials sent Tommy out to join the field. During the race, Pinky Hill’s car spun and as he tried to avoid Hill, Tommy collided with the machine driven by Ed Korgan.

Tommy’s car rolled over three times and he was thrown out, while Korgan was slightly injured. Tommy was admitted to Southwest General Hospital unconscious suffering from a compound fracture of the left ankle and a severe head injury. He passed away shortly before midnight on Saturday night

Tommy’s body was taken to Utter-McKinley Mortuary and he was interred in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles. Tommy was survived by his mother, two sisters, his daughter and his pregnant wife Martha who gave birth to Tommy’s second daughter, Sherry Lynn Wise, on January 4, 1948.

Tommy Wise was one of many victims of the dangerous years of auto racing in the nineteen forties on poorly prepared tracks with wooden guardrails before the acceptance of seat belts and other rudimentary equipment such as roll bars.   Sadly many of the drivers Tommy competed with at Carrell were later seriously injured such as Bayliss Everett and Tex Peterson and several, that included as “Slim” Mathias and Fred Luce, lost their lives there.

Thanks to Tommy Wise’s family members, Joanna Palooza and Hal Richey, for their research assistance and providing the family photos of Tommy.  

An excerpt from The Brown Bullet 

Today, we are proud to share an excerpt from the forthcoming book written by Bill Poehler which is due out on May 5 entitled The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack's Drive to Integrate Auto Racing, that explores the life and career of  the African-American auto racing pioneer.

This excerpt from The Brown Bullet shares a story from 1937. 

"The rained‑out three‑hundred‑lap stock car race for the mile oval at Oakland Speedway was rescheduled for May 30, and Rajo had a better idea than putting his wife in his race car this time. Originally entered in a Dodge passenger car, Rajo managed to procure a Ford sedan delivery truck. The truck’s engine didn’t have the horsepower of the passenger cars entered, but it had another advantage.

Where most passenger cars of the day had a hard time surviving rutted and difficult dirt tracks like Oakland, a truck was one of the few vehicles capable of withstanding the pounding. Rajo removed the fenders and windshield of the truck—modifications allowed in the rules and common for the stock car class. 

The truck was nearly unrecognizable by the time he was done stripping it of its extraneous parts. And he painted the number 33 on the side. It was the first time in his career he used the number—the traditional number of starters in the Indianapolis 500—and it would become his trademark.

Oakland Speedway had a set of bathrooms for men and women in the infield. Though there were no signs the bathrooms were specifically for white people, it was assumed. But there were also no specific bath‑ rooms for black people. 

If Rajo or Herman Giles—who frequently traveled as Rajo’s mechanic—wanted to use the bathroom, they had to wait until the race was underway so it would be empty, and no one would see them use it. If there was a line for the bathroom, they would have to wait.

The Oakland race was minor in the racing world, but it was being billed as a national championship as Curryer was apt to do, and ten thousand fans arrived to bear witness. Joe Wilber led the other twenty‑ six drivers briefly from the pole position, but Duane Carter quickly passed him. 

On the fiftieth lap, a horse in the infield threw his rider and wandered onto the track through a gate mistakenly left open on the backstretch. The horse galloped along with cars down the backstretch for two hundred yards before being corralled and exiting uninjured.

On the fifty‑second lap, Ernie Criss—driving a Ford truck like Rajo’s—took over the lead, but Rajo passed him on the ninety‑third lap. Criss went back into the lead laps later and stayed there, though Rajo was never far behind. Criss pitted for fuel on lap 246, surrendering the lead to Rajo. 

Criss caught up to Rajo’s truck but blew a tire with twelve laps left, and Rajo’s lead extended to two laps in front of Les Dreisbach. Rajo slowed his pace greatly in the final laps and won after four hours and sixteen minutes.

“It should be called the Altamont Pass Sweepstakes. The trucks wouldn’t let the autos by,” purported IRS examiner John V. Lewis said.

The win was popular with Rajo’s fellow competitors, especially after his previous hard‑luck results at the track. And he took over the ARA lead with 730 points, ten more than Bay Area upstart Duane Carter.

Rajo’s win made headlines across the nation again, spreading throughout California and into places like Oregon, Montana, Nebraska, Hawaii, and Washington. Some in the press proclaimed it to be a victory for the working man over the idle rich. All Rajo cared about was that it put him closer to winning the ARA championship." 

Buy your copy of the The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack's Drive to Integrate Auto Racing  at your favorite bookseller. 

A pair of races at the Oakland Speedway and the death of Fred J Wagner

Part Two

Ironically, the next race for the AAA Pacific Coast big cars after famed racing starter Fred J Wagner’s death reportedly from the injuries he sustained at Oakland on New Year's Day 1932 was scheduled for Sunday November 12, 1933 at the Oakland Speedway.  Besides Wagner’s death (actually from heart disease), the face of big car racing on the West Coast had changed dramatically since January 1 1932.

Bryan Saulpaugh, who had set multiple world’s records at Oakland Speedway on New Year’s Day 1932 before his car swerved out of control and struck the judge’s stand, perished in a practice accident at Oakland Speedway on April 22, 1933.


Saulpaugh was practicing when he lost control of Danny De Paolo’s ‘Red Lion Special.’  Witnesses reported that Saulpaugh’s car appeared to clip the outside guardrail as Bryan exited turn four then overturned three times with Saulpaugh crushed beneath the car during the accident. 

April 1933 was a particularly deadly month in West Coast big car racing, as in addition to Saulpaugh, on April 2 Class B racer Tom Forsyth died in an accident at Legion Ascot Speedway, and the 1932 AAA National Champion Bob Carey was killed in a practice crash at Legion Ascot just six days before Saulpaugh’s fatality.

‘Babe’ Stapp, the winner of the 1932 Oakland New Year’s Day race, on the comeback trail after he suffered critical injuries in an April 27 1932 crash at Legion Ascot and missed much of the 1932 racing season, crashed in the October 22 1933 ‘big car’ race at Oakland after a tire blew out and his car hit the inside railing and rolled over.

‘Babe’ was thrown out of the car and fractured his right leg. Although he was only confined to the Fairmount Hospital overnight, ‘Babe’ was again out of racing action for several months but returned in time to race in the 1934 Indianapolis 500-mile race.       

As the AAA Pacific Coast big car championship competitors arrived in Oakland for the 100-mile race on November 12, 1933 there were three men at the top contending for the championship - Ernie Triplett, Rex Mays and Al Gordon.


Ernie Triplett, the 1931 and 1932 Pacific Coast champion had started the 1933 season strong and in the early stages appeared to be headed for his third title in a row, but in the latter part of the 1933 season, Triplett’s usually reliable car suffered a succession of mechanical failures, which opened the door for a young up-and-coming racer from Riverside California named Rex Mays.

After several troubled early 1933 season outings after he graduated from the Class B ranks, the 20-year old Mays served notice that he was for real when he scored a third-place finish at Oakland on April 23. At the next race at Legion Ascot on May 1, Mays qualified well but fell out of the 100-mile feature on the race’s 23rd lap with a broken axle.  On lap 40 Mays took over for veteran Art Boyce in the Sparks & Weirick "Poison Lil"  after Boyce lost the feeling in his left arm after he was hit by a rock and pitted.   Mays rejoined the race in seventh place but stormed back through the field to win in a time of 48 minutes and 14 seconds for his first big car win.

Mays continued to score wins, and before the October 22 Oakland race, Mays led the AAA Pacific Coast championship over Triplett by six points. During that race, both Mays and Triplett dropped out - Mays’ machine with a broken crankshaft and Triplett’s car with carburetor trouble. 

Their retirements opened the door for third place points man Edgar “Al” Gordon to grab the win and make it a three-man race for the 1933 Pacific Coast title. By the time they returned to Oakland in November, Mays led Gordon by 39 markers and Triplett by 74 points. A win at Oakland would reward the winner with 83 ½ points while the second-place finisher would earn 41 points.

During Saturday’s practice session, 18-year-old Oakland resident Lowell Lamoureux presented Ernie Triplett with a hand-built pine scale model of Triplett’s red Miller-powered machine owned by Bill White.  

Al Gordon was the day’s fastest qualifier and he re-set the world’s one-mile dirt track record, as he circled the one-mile oval in 33.86 seconds, with an average speed of 106.32 miles per hour.  Also spicing up time trials were incidents that involved Mac McCulley whose car lost a right rear wheel, and Bob Valla who spun but did not hit anything and finished his run.


Time trials were followed by a series of five-mile Class B races, with wins scored by George “Swede” Smith and Jim Wilkerson. Louis Tomei won the 15-mile semi-main event over Art Boyce and Ray Gardner.

In the 100-mile feature, Cavino “Kelly” Petillo jumped into the lead from his outside front row starting position and led the first eight laps before Gordon steamed by into the lead.  Triplett then got past Petillo, whose machine retired on lap 66 and surrendered third place to another newcomer Harris Insinger who earlier in the week had been named the pilot of the De Paolo ‘Lion Head Special’ formerly driven by Saulpaugh, as a replacement for George Connors.

Al Gordon who lived in Long Beach clinched the 1933 AAA Pacific Coast Championship after he won the postponed 150-lap (92 mile) race at Legion Ascot on December 10 an event during which he re-set the track record at 25.71 seconds. Gordon won again at Legion Ascot the following week, then the final race of the 1933 season a 200-lap race scheduled for December 31, 1933 was postponed by rain for one week to January 7, 1934.

Waldo Stein the acting AAA Western Zone supervisor announced that the points from the rescheduled race would count towards the 1934 tally, but controversy quickly erupted. The decision was reversed, and in an odd situation, the points earned in the first race of 1934 were awarded for 1933.

After all the buildup, Al Gordon breezed to his eighth consecutive victory in the Art Sparks & Paul Weirick owned "Poison Lil" Gilmore Blue-Green Gasoline-sponsored #5 machine.  Despite running out of fuel on the last lap, Rex Mays coasted across the finish line in second place ahead of Kelly Petillo and thus claimed second place in the 1933 AAA Pacific Coast Championship over Ernie Triplett who finished the 200-lap grind in fourth place.  

On January 18, 1934 Ernie Triplett announced that he was retired from ‘big car’ racing events and would restrict his racing activities to Indianapolis and road “stock car” races.  However, early March found Triplett back in a ‘big car’ on the one-mile Imperial Speedway in El Centro California, and he died in an accident that involved "Swede” Smith and Al Gordon that also claimed the lives of Smith and a mechanic Cambern “Hap” Hafley.

Al Gordon would later figure into another accident that claimed the life of another of the racers mentioned in this article. On the third lap of the 50-mile Sunday September 8, 1935 AAA Pacific Coast ‘big car’ race, Gordon’s car hooked wheels with the machine driven by Harris Insinger. Insinger’s ‘Garant Special’ cartwheeled down the back straightaway and Harris just 26 years old, suffered a fatal skull fracture with Gordon cast as the villain in the accident in newspaper reports.     

Al Gordon himself would lose his life in an accident four months later during the January 1936 ‘Ascot 150’ the second AAA championship car race at Legion Ascot Speedway. The grinding crash of Bill White’s cream and blue “Cocktail Hour Cigarette Special” also claimed the life of the riding mechanic William “Spider” Matlock. 

The unfortunate pair of Gordon and Matlock were last two racers to lose their lives at the dangerous oiled-dirt 5/8-mile high-banked oval,  as the track closed days later which brought a particularly dangerous era of West Coast racing to a close.

Prior to the 1938 Indianapolis 500-mile race,  Pearl, the widow of William “Spider” Matlock,  married race driver Al Putnam who had been married previously with two sons. Tragically, Pearl was widowed a second time as a result of an auto racing crash on Sunday September 15 1946 as Putnam perished in qualifying crash at the 'Indianapolis 100' held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
        

   

   

A pair of races at the Oakland Speedway and the death of Fred J Wagner

Part One

In time trials for the twice-postponed scheduled 100-mile 1932 New Year’s Day race at Oakland Speedway, a new one-lap, one-mile qualifying world record was set by Bryan Saulpaugh in the Gilmore Lion #19 at 101.95 miles per hour (MPH). The Oakland Speedway, which opened in 1931  was a fast one-mile dirt oval actually closer to Hayward California, the site of which is now the Bayfair Mall.


Ernie Triplett, the defending American Automobile Association (AAA) Pacific Coast ‘big car’ champion grabbed the lead at the start of the feature and proceeded to set new AAA race records at the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10-mile distances. Bryan Saulpaugh grabbed the lead from Triplett and set a new 25-mile race record at 94.163 MPH.

Back in the pack, Ralph Hepburn’s car crashed after the right front tire of his car blew out and the car plunged through the upper guardrail. Hepburn a former champion motorcycle racer who had finished third in the1931 Indianapolis ‘500’ was thrown from the machine in the accident and suffered a broken jaw and a broken kneecap.


Hepburn’s injuries kept him confined to the Hayward General Hospital through the end of March and sidelined him for the 1932 season.  

During the clean-up of the Ralph Hepburn accident it began to sprinkle rain,  but the AAA officials elected to let the race continue. As he neared the completion of his fiftieth lap, race leader Bryan Saulpaugh lost control of his DePaolo/Miller machine and in the crash, the struck and collapsed the judge’s stand.

Saulpaugh suffered serious injuries as his car veered into a guard rail and rolled over after it struck the judge’s stand. Saulpaugh was thrown from the cockpit and suffered a fractured skull and a dislocated shoulder.

Five AAA officials– referee Bert Dingley, assistant starters George Theobald and Les Manning, AAA zone supervisor Hal F Weller and starter Fred J. Wagner - were inside in the 14-foot high wooden stand when it collapsed onto the track surface. The two assistant starters were reported to have suffered “cuts and scratches” while the other three officials were said to only suffered a “mild shaking up.”  

     

Elbert ‘Babe’ Stapp miraculously steered his car through the wreckage of the judge’s stand to complete his 51^st lap and was declared the race winner. The car piloted by Stapp, formerly was driven by Francis Quinn who was killed by a drunk driver on December 13, 1931 in a highway accident just north of Fresno, California. Quinn nicknamed “the Bald Eagle” was on his way home to Southern California after the original Oakland Speedway race date was postponed due to rain. 

Hal Weller, an automotive advertising executive and a resident of nearby Berkeley, had been a member of the AAA Contest Board since 1924 served as the AAA Western zone supervisor and was on hand to oversee the day’s timing and scoring activities.   

Bert Dingley was a retired pioneer-era West Coast race car driver who drove in his first race in 1904 at the Del Monte race track near Monterey California. In 1909 Dingley drove for Chalmers-Detroit and scored two race wins and four top five finishes and for many years, the AAA recognized Dingley as the 1909 National Champion until the AAA Contest Board retroactively made revision to the standings in 1951. 

Bert’s promising racing career ended with an accident on July 4, 1914 as he fought for the lead on the penultimate lap of the 250-mile Montamarathon Trophy Race held on the 2-mile Pacific Coast Speedway dirt track in Tacoma Washington.

Initial news reports following the 1914 accident stated that Bert and his riding mechanic Edward “Swede” Swanson were “probably fatally injured.” They were thrown from their bright green Ono (a chain drive Fiat retrofitted with a Pope Toledo engine) after it ran into ditch and overturned. 

Dingley recovered from his severe injuries, which included a fractured skull, broken shoulder and a compound leg fracture but he never raced again. Dingley worked in the automotive industry and at the time of the 1932 New Year’s Day accident was a vice-president of the Stutz Motor Company and served as a referee at AAA races across the nation. 

The role of starter was an important one in those days before radio communications - the starter controlled the action on the course with knowledgeable assistant starters to help keep track of the action.  Assistant starter George Theobald was the flagman at the original San Jose Speedway while Les Manning, an Oakland police corporal, was the regular starter at Oakland Speedway.

Fred J. Wagner was born in Covington Kentucky in June 1869 and began his sporting career as a track and field star, then became a bicycle racer after which he served as a starter for bicycle races for a dozen years. Wagner claimed to have flagged his first automobile race in the fall of 1899 in Chicago Illinois.

Away from the track, Fred was a shrewd businessman with deep ties to the automotive industry and was at one time was the president of Horseless Age magazine.  He increased his notoriety by publishing his memoirs in serial fashion with the title “Roaming through Speed Mad Years” in the AAA’s American Motorist magazine. Wagner’s historical stories, while entertaining, contained many factual errors. 

“Wags,” as he was known in his younger years, then a resident of Long Island New York was the starter for all but the first of the Vanderbilt Cup races, at the time the most prestigious auto racing events in the United States. There is substantial evidence to support the contention that it was Wagner who pioneered the use of a black-and-white checkered flag to signal the end of an automobile race.

Wagner, served as the starter at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning in 1909 and Fred started the first 1911 International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race. Wagner’s reign as the starter at Indianapolis ended after the 1912 500-mile race when he and track president Carl Fisher got into an argument.

Their dispute was over whether to flag off the final car still running on the track long after the winner had taken the flag and fans had left. In the early days of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, to collect the prize money, a car and driver had to complete the full race distance.  

Hours after winner Joe Dawson had taken the checkered flag of victory, the Knox of Ralph Mulford continued to circulate around the 2-1/2-mile brick oval, and the sun began to set. Wagner was ready to flag Mulford off the track, but Fisher insisted that Mulford be allowed to finish.

After he lost the argument, Wagner stormed off and never served in any official capacity at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway again. Mulford eventually completed the 500-mile distance but it took nearly nine hours and he finished with an average speed of just 56 miles per hour which makes him the slowest finisher in Indianapolis 500-mile race history.   

As the years passed, Wagner became nationally famous as the pre-eminent starter of automobile races across the United States except of course at Indianapolis. In addition to working the flags at the races, Wagner also shepherded teams from race to race, oversaw track preparations, worked with the local race promoters to ensure a smooth event principally that the competitors got paid and that the AAA received its sanctioning fee.

By the nineteen twenties, as he entered his sixth decade, Wagner became known affectionately as “Pops.” Competitors admired and respected Wagner so much that prior to the 1925 season-ending ending AAA national championship race at the Culver City board track, Wagner was given the keys to a new 1926 Buick sedan, paid for through by a collection from nineteen of the country’s leading race drivers.

After the New Year’s Day 1932 Oakland race, the AAA Pacific Coast ‘big car’ racers moved on to the ½-mile dirt Bakersfield Speedway on January 3, 1932 for a 50-mile feature. The race, aired live on the National Broadcasting Company’s Orange (Pacific Coast) network in a broadcast sponsored by the Richfield Oil Company, was won by Ernie Triplett in Bill White’s car powered by a 151-cubic inch Miller Marine 4-cylinder engine with oval side draft intake ports. 


According to published Bakersfield news reports Fred Wagner served as the race’s starts assisted by Fresno pioneer-era race car driver turned car dealer Eddie Waterman as the referee.

The report about Wagner at Bakersfield seems curious in retrospect, as ten days later, his hometown newspaper described Wagner as recovering from the injuries received on New Year’s Day at his ranch in the orange groves of Covina California.


In early February, Wagner, 66 years old, was reported in critical condition in a Covina hospital from the injuries he had suffered in the New Year’s Day accident. A few days later, a follow-up article stated that doctors had been forced to relocate Fred to a sanitarium for privacy as he had been unable to rest due to the constant stream of visitors in the hospital.

Wagner had sufficiently recovered from his injuries in November 1932 and he returned to his roots as he acted as the starter of a six-day bicycle race held on the temporary velodrome built inside the Winter Garden ice skating rink in the heart of Hollywood.


In late December 1932, Wagner visited the Legion Ascot Speedway and watched the races from a private box.  During a break in the racing action, Wagner was escorted to the track surface where he presented several awards and addressed the crowd for few moments.

In April 1933, Wagner and his friend, former driver and car owner Frank Allen, hosted a dinner for Los Angeles area ‘big car’ drivers that included Louis Schneider, Bill Cummings, Howard “Howdy” Wilcox II, Bob Carey and Ernie Triplett and ‘big car’ owners Art Sparks and Clyde Jones.


The group met to discuss the recent cut of purses by the board that controlled Legion Ascot Speedway (remember the country was the depths of the Great Depression) and Wagner and Allen proposed to act as intermediaries to mediate the dispute which had seen the top drivers refuse to enter events at Legion Ascot.

During the Summer of 1933, Fred J. Wagner’s health took a turn for the worse and he was hospitalized again in Covina in late October 1933, where he passed away on November 5 reportedly at 67 years of age.


The injuries that Wagner suffered in Oakland on January 1 1932 were blamed in newspaper articles as the cause of his death.  Fred was survived by his wife Nancy also known as “Mother Wagner,” he was interred in the Forest Lawn Cemetery Mausoleum in Glendale California.

 A few years ago, fellow racing historian James Thurman researched the circumstances of Fred Wagner's death and found Wagner's official death certificate in the Los Angeles County Records office. The official causes of death listed included chronic myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), chronic aortitis (inflammation of the aorta) and acute bronchitis. The former two conditions were noted as having existed for several years. Thurman's research refutes the period newspaper claims that Wagner died from complications from  the injuries he suffered at the race in Oakland. 

In 1938, five years after his death, Wagner’s memoirs, entitled The Saga of the Roaring Road, (the genesis of which had been published in American Motorist in 1926) were published in hardbound format by Meador Publishing, a small firm based in Boston.  Wagner’s racing stories combined with his memories of working in the early automotive industry written by author John M. Mitchell, were later revised and published in 1949 by Floyd Clymer in both hardbound and softbound editions.  

In 1952, Fred J. Wagner became one of the inaugural ten inductees in the AAA Auto Racing Hall of Fame (now known as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum Hall of Fame) and was a member of the second class of inductees into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1991.

Indoor hardtop racing in San Francisco

Part three

Following the success of the North California Indoor Hardtop Championship (NCIHTC) races indoors at the Cow Palace, the Oakland Racing Association (ORA) scheduled a second series of races, the Cow Palace Stock Hardtop Championship, set to begin May 7, 1955 and run through the month of May for four weeks.

The outdoor racing season had already opened in Northern California, so the Saturday night indoor races were paired with Sunday afternoon outdoor races on the ¼-mile dirt Vallejo Speedway. In an interesting promotion, the indoor races were scheduled head-to-head against the NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Racing) hard tops which raced Saturday nights at San Jose Speedway.

Before the races could begin, the Cow Palace hosted the Grand National Junior Livestock Exposition from April 2nd to the 6^th, then the 10-round non-title boxing match between world middleweight champion Carl “Bobo” Olson and middleweight Joey Maxim. In a match that was broadcasted nationally on television and radio on April 13, Olson was awarded the unanimous decision.

In early May, ORA General Manager Marc Mott and Race Director Jack Smith announced a partial list of competitors for the Spring series; the winter indoor champion Henry “Cowboy” Alves would defend his crown, while runner-up Max McCord entered with his sights set to win the title this time.

Other winter indoor racers who filed their entries included Chet “Johnny Comet” Thomson, Walt Moniz, George Hanson and Lou Phillips who was scheduled to race a new Hudson coupe. Alves and Thomson competitors on the track were partners in an Oakland used auto sales lot, “Chet & Cowboy’s Car Corral,” on East 14^th Street.  

Also on the Cow Palace entry list were names which were familiar to many Bay Area racing fans - Bob Anderson and Carmel Fernandez, both Junior and Senior joined by ex-Oakland traffic officer Dick Marcell, Joe Guisti from Stockton, veteran Jack Perrin from San Leandro and Phillip Wong, a racer from Oakland billed as the “only Chinese driver on the West Coast” whose 1954 racing season at Oakland Speedway featured four flips and four destroyed race cars.     

Dick Seyler, who hailed from San Carlos, won the first night’s 20-lap main event on May 7^th which was interrupted by the crash of Max McCord’s car, with McCord, who won two races in the Winter indoor series, transported to Kaiser Hospital in South San Francisco. McCord’s injuries were variously described as “minor” and “not serious” and he was released after several hours.  

The following day a group of Bay Area high schoolers took part in the Junior Chamber of Commerce “Road-E-O” in the Cow Palace parking lot. All the young drivers drove identical 1955 Chevrolets in four events set up in the parking lot: parallel parking, a serpentine course, a smooth stopping test and a straight-line course.

Stephen Reiden from San Mateo High School scored 250 points out of a possible 300, won a trophy and the opportunity to compete in the state finals in June in Fresno with a chance to advance to the third annual national contest to compete for a $1500 college scholarship. 

Before action got started for the Cow Palace indoor race on the evening of May 14, Jerry Hoyt shocked the world as he won the pole position for the 1955 Indianapolis 500-mile race. On a windy Hoosier day, Hoyt in the Jim Robbins Special edged out Tony Bettenhausen in the only other car to make a qualifying attempt. That evening on the 1/5-mile track inside the cavernous Cow Palace, Phillip Wong beat Fernandez Sr to win the trophy dash for the four fastest qualifiers then also won his heat race.

Other May 14 heat race winners included Fernandez Sr, Oakland’s Joe Ratto, and Dick Selen, while McCord, recovered from his previous week’s accident, won the 8-lap semi-main event over Joe Nelson. Joe Diaz, who earlier in the evening had lowered the track record to 11.33 seconds during qualifying, won the 20-lap main event over Johnny Comet with Fernandez Sr in third place.

The following day, May 15, the ORA regulars were in action on the ¼-mile dirt Vallejo Speedway as George Tietjen, a tow truck driver during the week took the honors over Henry Alves and Johnny Comet. Midweek before the next race, Tietjen and the May 15 Vallejo trophy dash winner Chuck Minshell announced their entries for the May 21 Cow Palace races under the flag of starter Charles “Chuck” Ray.

Prior to the May 21 Cow Place event, Alves led the ORA points over Chet Thomson and Walt Moniz with Minshell and McCord tied for fourth place.  Chet Thomson won the May 21 trophy dash and his heat race, with other heat race victories to Bob Abaddie, Smokey Slocum and Joe Diaz. Alves won the semi-main event trailed by Bob Anderson and Jack Perrin, but “Cowboy” had to settle for third place in the 25-lap main event behind winner Joe Diaz and runner-up Walt Moniz. 

The next day at Vallejo Speedway, Thomson set a new track record of 22.24 seconds for one lap in qualifying, with the heat race wins grabbed by Abaddie, Diaz, Don Berrins Jack Perrin and Dick Atkins. Tietjen won the semi-main by a hair over “Cowboy” Alves, while Lou Phillips won the 30-lap feature over Perrin and Diaz. 

The finale of the Spring indoor series was set for Saturday May 28^th with qualifying at 7:15 PM followed with races at 8:15 PM with Alves leading the points chase trailed by Diaz on the strength of his two victories.  However, that is where the mystery begins, as the Saturday pre-race newspaper article is the last mention in the local press that the author has found for the Cow Palace indoor races or the Oakland Racing Association for that matter. The Oakland Racing Association, formed in late 1953 to sanction racing at the Oakland Speedway (Stadium) appeared to have simply disappeared early in the 1955 season.

The author welcomes any additional information or photographs of the indoor stock car racing held during 1955 in the Cow Palace near San Francisco from our dedicated readers.