The notorious ‘Tiny’ Wainwright

Part four – his sad final years

Former midget auto racer Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright lost 85 pounds he was while incarcerated in the Missouri State Penitentiary.  When he was released from prison on the morning of December 5, 1951, ‘Tiny’ had served just over thirteen months, with time credited for good behavior which included blood donations earmarked for the military. 

Wainwright left the Jefferson City prison angry because he had recently learned that his former girlfriend had gotten married.  ‘Tiny’ headed west for Kansas City and stopped along the way to purchase a knife with a 5-inch long blade. Once in Kansas City, ‘Tiny’ went directly to his former girlfriend’s residence with her new husband, a man named Harold McCroskey and pushed his way into their apartment.

As fate would have it three police officers were already in the apartment, questioning Mr. and Mrs. McCroskey about five stolen ladies’ coats, including Mrs. McCroskey’s fur coat. Once inside the apartment, the enraged ‘Tiny’ blindly charged at McCroskey, kicked him and swung his knife.  Police Lieutenant Lester Haupt lunged to grab the knife and was stabbed.

According to a report published in the Daily Capitol News, Wainwright then exclaimed “Hell, Lester I didn’t know you were in here. I’m sorry.” While Haupt went to the hospital to get eight stitches in his wounded hand, the other police officers arrested McCroskey on an outstanding robbery arrest warrant from Beverly Hills California and also took ‘Tiny’ to headquarters for further investigation.      

One would assume that with an assault on a police officer, ‘Tiny’ Wainwright had assured himself a quick return trip to the penitentiary, but somehow, he was not charged in the bizarre incident. 

Weeks later in early 1952, Wainwright was hired as the assistant business agent of the Greene County Teamsters Local 245 union with offices at Springfield, Missouri. By 1954, Wainwright had risen through the ranks to become the union local 245 president and  in that role, was questioned by Joplin Missouri police officers about violence that occurred during the Teamsters union’s attempt to unionize workers at a local Coca Cola bottling plant.

On Thursday June 25, 1958 Wainwright made a disastrous appearance in Washington DC before the United Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (known to generally to the public as the “McClellan Rackets Committee”). 

The purpose of the hearing that day according to Committee chairman Arkansas Senator John McClellan was that “we shall inquire into the effect that the type of leadership in this international union now being provided by Mr. Hoffa and a number of disreputable and questionable characters who are his associates is having on the membership of the union.”

After he was sworn in, ‘Tiny’ who was accompanied by the Teamster union's Washington attorney H. Clifford Allder, was asked several basic innocuous questions by Senator McClellan. The questions included what he did for a living, and the name of his employer, but for each of McClellan’s questions, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as he stated, “I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.”

McClellan was incredulous at ‘Tiny’s’ responses to such basic questions, then he turned the questioning over to Robert Kennedy, the Committee Chief Counsel. Kennedy asked ‘Tiny’ to confirm his criminal conviction history which included a previous publicly unknown one-year probation for a 1934 burglary and payment of a fine for a burglary conviction in 1948. Wainwright again cited his Fifth Amendment rights.

Kennedy then read verbatim testimony given in 1956, to a United States House of Representatives committee, wherein Mr. Ray L. Smith, owner of Ray L. Smith & Son, stated that “he had to pay $650.80 for the period from September 7 to September 28, 1952, as an extortion payment to Mr. Branch Wainwright.”

‘Tiny’ was asked by Committee Chairman Senator McClellan “Do you want to deny the testimony that Mr. Ray L. Smith gave against you as to your extorting money from him?” 

Once again, Wainwright invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, a common tactic used by Allder’s clients. Kennedy then asked if the Missouri-Kansas Conference of Teamsters, headed by Harold Gibbons had hired him in 1952 just a few days after being released from prison. After ‘Tiny’ again refused to answer Kennedy’s last question, the Committee members dismissed him.   

With the bad local publicity generated by his Senate testimony, ‘Tiny’s’ days with the union were numbered and on July 30, 1959 Teamsters Union President James R. Hoffa announced that “Branch Wainwright is no longer with the local union," he said, “I immediately notified the local union officials to remove him from the payroll and from any authority in the local."

In September 1961, Wainwright whose weight had ballooned back up to 250 pounds as he lived in Independence Missouri, was arrested again and charged with the theft of $972 worth of women’s clothing after a Shawnee Kansas couple, the Georges, were arrested with stolen clothing which they claimed that “Tiny” had sold them.  

Before the start of his clothing theft trial, ‘Tiny’ and another man Ernest “Ernie” Anderson were charged with the theft of $5,000 worth of furniture from a display home in Overland Park Kansas. Anderson, a former Teamsters official, was the salesman for the builder and allegedly gave ‘Tiny’ the key to the home. “Tiny’ was also charged with the bombing of a $37,500 home under construction in Leawood Kansas that was being built with non-union labor. 

Both his daughter and his former wife were among seven witnesses who testified against ‘Tiny’ in the trial on the charge of grand larceny that began on March 28, 1962 in the Johnson County District Court in Olathe Kansas, but the key witness for the state was Doyle Howard Mace, of Springfield Missouri.

Mace, described as “a former friend of Wainwright,” was brought to the court in Olathe from the jail in Springfield Missouri to testify. Mace testified that he and Wainwright, stole the clothing from an Oldsmobile station wagon owned by salesman J. Gordon Campbell while it was parked in front of Campbell’s home at 7634 Nall Avenue in Prairie Village Kansas. 

Mace testified that on May 4, 1961 he and the ‘Tiny’ each took two bags of the stolen clothing and went to Mace’s home and the clothing was stored in his basement. The net day Mace said that several people, including Mrs. George, whom ‘Tiny’ introduced to Mace as his ex-wife, came to his home to look at the clothing.  

Mrs. George bought $175 worth of the clothing, which she paid for by check, and after Tiny cashed the check, he split the money with Mace. Mrs. George and ‘Tiny’s’ daughter both testified that he told them that Mace was a salesman for the women’s clothing company.

With his cross-examination, ‘Tiny’s’ lawyer attacked Mace’s credibility and claimed that Mace was angry with the ‘Tiny’ and had agreed to testify against him just to get even. Mace admitted that he was upset that Tiny failed to pay him $1,000 that Mace claimed he was owed for his part in Wainwright’s fraudulent $4,500 fire insurance claim for which ‘Tiny’ had already been charged. 

Mace also testified that he had been short changed after other robberies that the pair had allegedly committed, which included the safe robbery at a candy store, theft of two adding machines and a typewriter from an office, and the theft of a $650 refrigerator-freezer from an Overland Park Kansas home.  

On Friday March 31, 1962 the jury convicted Wainwright of grand larceny for the theft of the $972 worth of women’s clothing samples and in accordance with the terms of the Kansas Habitual Criminal Act, ‘Tiny’ was sentenced to a term not to exceed 10 years of hard labor at the Kansas State Penitentiary located in Lansing Kansas. 

With Wainwright free on bond, less than a month later, Wainwright’s attorney filed an appeal of the conviction on several grounds, among them the fact that a juror in the trial was not a resident of the county. 

On December 8, 1962, the Kansas Supreme Court released a ruling that rejected all three points of ‘Tiny’s’ appeal. When it came time to surrender to begin his prison term, on February 8, 1963, 49-year old ‘Tiny’ failed to appear and he forfeited his $8,000 bond.

Six months later he was arrested by FBI agents in Kansas City, Kansas on August 9, 1963 after the agents were tipped that Wainwright would be walking on Minnesota Avenue at 7 AM. Four armed agents surrounded the rotund former race driver and he was whisked to Olathe Kansas where Judge Clayton Brenner imposed sentence and ‘Tiny’ was confined at the Kansas State Penitentiary the following day. 

After serving only 2-1/2 years of his ten-year term, ‘Tiny’ was paroled in March 1966 but he was soon arrested for petty larceny in April 1966 after a patrolman saw him stuff $7.79 worth of steaks in his pockets in a supermarket.  

‘Tiny’ returned to prison on August 11, 1967 after another alleged parole violation in St Louis and he died in prison at 12:15 AM on September 12, 1967, at the age of 55, on the eve of his parole revocation hearing before the Kansas State Parole Board. 

Warden Sherman Crouse said that ‘Tiny,’ aged 55, suffered a fatal heart attack in the prison hospital where he had been confined for several days. The brief obituary in the Kansas City Times noted that “before his conviction for assault in 1949, Wainwright was a well-known midget racing car driver.” 

Branch Milton ‘Tiny’ Wainwright, a decent midget auto racer but a lousy criminal, is interred in Green Lawn Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.

The notorious ‘Tiny’ Wainwright

Part one - 1946 racing season

Since its beginnings at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento California on June 4, 1933 there have been some nefarious characters Involved the sport of midget auto racing, such as Diego ‘Dee’ Toran, but none the author is familiar with came close to approaching the level of criminal activities conducted by racer Branch Milton “Tiny” Wainwright.

Wainwright, born August 31, 1912 in the small town of Delmar Maryland, came of age in the Kansas City area as a stout young man of less than average height - feet five inches tall.  His nickname of “Tiny” was ironic, as he weighed at least 250 pounds though period press reports varied; some articles stated that he weighed 275 pounds, while some pieces listed his weight as high as 300 pounds.  

When Wainwright enlisted in the United States Army at Fort Leavenworth Kansas on March 24, 1944 he claimed that he was married and listed his occupation as an “actor.” Military records reviewed by the author have not provided any answers as to Wainwright’s duties in the Army or the length of his service.

Fellow historian Bob Lawrence found the earliest record of Tiny Wainwright’s racing career via a photograph that showed him as the driver of Carl Oliver’s #3 Ford V8-60 powered rail-frame midget at CeJay Stadium in Wichita, Kansas on Sunday September 16, 1945. That date was less than a month after the Office of Defense Transportation lifted the wartime ban on automobile racing. CeJay, which took its name from the initials of the track promoter Carl Johnson, was a 1/4-mile dirt oval track that was located on the southeast side of Wichita that operated until 1949.

‘Tiny” was not related to the famed Texas pioneer midget racer and later Texas-Oklahoma Racing Association business agent and promoter Mel Wainwright but both competed in some of the same events in early 1946.  In a promotional article prior to that start of racing San Antonio Texas Pan American Midget Speedway, ‘Tiny’ was billed in the San Antonio Light newspaper with “a weight of 275 pounds, the biggest midget race car driver in the world.”

Wainwright is credited with a second-place finish in the February 24 “B” feature ahead of ‘Dee’ Toran, then he earned a fourth-place finish in the “B” feature on Sunday March 10 in a program that also featured California drivers Jerry Piper, Cal Niday, and Bill Vukovich.

The following week, in the Sunday afternoon show on March 17 on Pan American’s 1/5-mile clay surface, ‘Tiny’ scored another third-place finish in the ‘B’ feature. On March 31, which was the final scheduled Sunday program for the 1946 racing season, “hard luck” Wainwright was unable to compete due to what the San Antonio Light reported as “a lack of parts for his red midget.”

In the debut of Friday night racing under the lights at Pan American on April 5, 1946, ‘Tiny’ was the fastest qualifier with a lap of 16.36 seconds but his car “threw a shoe” in the third heat, and the San Antonio Light reported that “his masterful driving brought cheers from the crowd as he steered into the pits on three wheels without injury to himself or other drivers in the race.”  After the incident, Wainwright’s car was done for the night, so he did not appear in the evening’s 20-lap feature which was won by Californian Johnnie Parsons in an elapsed time of five minutes and six seconds.

While there is a bit of confusion as some reports of his early racing exploits identified him as ‘Tony,” a week later, on April 12, at Pan-American Speedway, Wainwright finished sixth in the ‘A’ feature as Parsons won again. During the April 19 racing program ‘Tiny’ ran into trouble twice in the same evening.  Just after the start of the consolation race, ‘Tiny’s’ car tangled with those of Jimmy Hicks and ‘Red’ Dowdy.

All three cars restarted after their spins and ‘Tiny’ transferred to the night’s feature race. On the ninth lap of the feature, Dowdy spun in front of ‘Tiny’ and 'Tiny's' car crashed into Dowdy’s then rolled over, with both drivers taken to the hospital where they were checked and released.

Tiny was listed as a competitor in the Sunday afternoon midget racing programs on May 12 and the Tuesday night races on May 14 held on the 1/4-mile clay oval Wichita Falls (Texas) Speedrome along with ‘Red’ Dowdy, Emmett ‘Buzz’ Barton, Dick Sharp, Elmer ‘Rabbit’ Musick (one of five Texas racing brothers), Ted Parker and a pair of local brothers, Tommy and Dale Mendenhall.  

‘Tiny’ also was entered in the AAA (American Automobile Association) sanctioned midget auto races held at the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds track in West Allis. These races were held on the big one-mile flat dirt track, not the smaller track in the infield that was used for weekly midget races. A series of AAA races on the Milwaukee Mile were held as part of the ‘Milwaukee Centurama’ celebration, a thirty-day event that marked the city’s centennial which ran from July 12 to August 12, 1946.

Wainwright, described in a pre-race article in the Hammond Times as a “newcomer“ and “a Kansas City star” joined such legendary midget racers as Tony Bettenhausen, Dennis ‘Duke’ Nalon, Frank Burany, and Henry Banks in a two-day program that saw time trials and heat races completed on Saturday and the 100-mile feature on Sunday June 23, 1946 which was won by two-time pre-war badger Midget Auto Racing Association (BMARA) champion Ray Richards.

Fall 1946 found ‘Tiny’ Wainwright in Lubbock Texas for the Southwest Racing Championship races held on the 1/5-mile dirt Panhandle-South Plans Fairgrounds track along with Dowdy, Parker, Kansas’ Leonard ‘Cotton’ Musick (who was not related to the Texas Musick brothers), Oklahoman Jay Booth and Amarillo’s Lloyd Ruby.

The series of midget auto races, promoted by local garage owner JT Wolfe and sanctioned by the Texas-Oklahoma Racing Association, were slated to start on July 18 but it was July 27 before the first seven-race program began on Saturday night with Parker the red-headed driver from Dallas the initial winner.

Parker repeated with a second victory on August 3, then scored his third win in a row on August 10 in an evening in which he also won the helmet dash before 2,500 fans. Bud Camden won the 25-lap feature on August 17^th and Jay Booth won on August 24.  Parker claimed his fourth series feature victory on August 31, which was the final Saturday night program, after which the races were switched to Thursday nights to avoid conflicts with football games (even in those days in Texas, football was King).  

Wainwright was not listed as one of the original drivers announced for the Southwest Racing Championship series, but he was mentioned in press reports as an entrant prior to the September 5 races. That evening Clarence Brooks of Dallas won the 8-lap “Championship race,” then finished second in the first 10-lap semi-main to transfer to feature which he won over Kansan Bud Camden and Tulsa’s Junior Howerton. On the morning of September 12 race promoter Wolfe announced via an article published in the Lubbock Morning Avalanche newspaper that that night’s races were cancelled for unspecified reasons.

The next week’s midget auto racing program, scheduled for the evening of September 19^th was postponed due to rain.  When racing resumed on Thursday September 26, Corky Benson won the feature, and ‘Tiny’ won his heat race.  The following week was packed with racing, with the midgets scheduled to race four consecutive days during the six-day run of the Panhandle-South Plans Fair which was being held for the first time since 1941.

On Tuesday afternoon October 8, ‘Tiny’ Wainwright led the feature with Benson in second when their cars tangled and they both spun out. Third place driver “Count” Walter Von Tilius of Denver Colorado in the Frank Hingley owned Kurtis-Kraft Offenhauser powered midget avoided the melee and went on to win the feature as ‘Red’ Dowdy finished in second place. The race program the following day, Wednesday the 9^th was rained out, rescheduled for Sunday afternoon, the final day of the fair.  

The Panhandle-South Plains Fairgrounds 1/5-mile dirt track dried sufficiently for the midget races to resume on Thursday October 10, with Eddie Carmichael of Oklahoma City was declared the feature winner as his midget crossed the finish line in a near “dead heat” with the machine of Corky Benson with ‘Tiny’ Wainwright in fourth place.  

On Friday afternoon October 11, Texans swept 3 of the top 4 finishing spots as 18-year-old Lloyd Ruby won the feature, followed by Houston’s Bill Marshall in second place, and local driver Corky Benson in fourth place.

The Sunday afternoon midget finale, the make-up date from the 9^th, was a barn-burner. Corky Benson set quick time in time trials, then spun out on the second lap of the feature and had to restart from the tail of the field. Benson carved his way up through the field in dramatic fashion and claimed his second series feature victory.

In our next installment we will trace ‘Tiny’ Wainwright’s exploits through the 1947 and 1948 racing seasons.