The Wally Stokes story 

part two

In January 1941, journeyman race car driver Wallace “Wally’ Stokes joined many of the stars of midget auto racing at the San Antonio Midget Speedway.  On Sunday the 5^th Stokes finished in second place in his heat race and third in the feature behind the reigning AAA (American Automobile Association) Eastern midget series champion Charlie Miller and one-armed driver Wes Saegesser. Miller who drove an Elto outboard engine powered car, lapped all but the top three finishers by the end of the 25-lap feature.

On January 12th, Wally finished third in his heat race and fourth in the 30-lap feature behind Cecil Zent who took over the Southwestern midget series points lead. Three weeks later, on Sunday January 26th, Stokes who hailed from Willoughby Ohio avoided disaster during the feature race when his car bicycled onto two wheels after contact with two other cars.  Wally brought his car back under control in one piece and finished the race in third place behind repeat winner Zent. The next several weeks of scheduled Sunday night races in early and mid-February were lost due to rain and/or unseasonably cold weather.

On the afternoon of March 2 at San Antonio, Stokes qualified ninth in time trials with a best lap of 18.60 seconds compared to Jay Booth’s pole winning time of 17.73 seconds.  Later in the program Wally won the Australian Pursuit race, an event wherein all the racers started the race spaced equally around the track, with the object for each racer to catch and pass the car ahead and therefore eliminate it from the race. The winner of the pursuit race was the last remaining racer to cross the finish line.

Later during the Summer of 1941, on June 11, Wally was one of the racers that participated in the inaugural night of midget auto racing held at the year-old Rubber Bowl stadium in Akron, Ohio. The entry list included Wes Saegesser, Carl Forberg, Perry Grim, along with Al Bonnell and Duane Carter as teammates in Carter’s pair of Offenhauser powered midgets.  Midget racing continued weekly through the summer on the Don Zeiter circuit with Sunday night races on the ¼-mile dirt Sportsman’s Park Speedway in Bedford Ohio, Wednesday nights at the 1/5-mile Rubber Bowl track and Thursday night programs held on the ¼-mile cinder track inside Buffalo’s Civic Stadium.  

Stokes also raced a ‘big car’ at the Genesee County Fairgrounds oval in Batavia New York in mid-August 1941 in a race which marked the end of a 13-year hiatus of auto racing at the track. In addition to the 29-year old Stokes, the entry list featured Indianapolis ‘500’ veterans Ted Horn, Tommy Hinnershitz and Bob Sall.  

A few days before the Genesee ‘big car’ race, Californian Duane Carter broke his left arm (reported in some sources as his left leg) in a traffic accident near Monroeville Ohio and the injury kept Duane off track until mid-September. Carter recovered and returned to racing on Sunday afternoon September 14 as the Zeiter circuit midgets raced at the Huron County Fairgrounds in Norwalk Ohio after a two-year absence of racing at that facility.

Despite the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, that plunged America into World War II, the annual series of wintertime midget auto races continued as scheduled in San Antonio, Texas, with the first race held December 14 with racing scheduled through the month of February 1942. A highlight for Wally Stokes during this series came during the January 25, 1942 program when he won his heat race and later the same evening later he raced in a special five-lap head-to-head match race with Wes Saegesser although Stokes lost to Saegesser who later won that night’s feature race.

Wally Stokes raced in the July 4^th, 1942 midget program at the half-mile Ashland County (Ohio) Fairgrounds, one day after the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) issued an order that prohibited all automobile racing in the United States, to conserve rubber tires. The ODT order, originally due to become effective July 10, applied to all motor vehicle racing meets, including midget cars and motorcycles. Racers received a brief reprieve on July 7, 1942 when without explanation, the ODT announced postponement of the commencement of the motor racing ban until midnight, July 31, 1942.  

During World War II, Wally Stokes was classified with a Class III-B draft status which denoted him as a man with dependents who was engaged in work essential to national defense. Wally and his wife had a young son Norman born in 1937, and Wally was employed a tool and die maker at Jack & Heintz Company, which made airplane parts for the war effort which included engine starters and early autopilot devices.

The wartime auto racing ban was lifted by the ODT office on August 16, 1945, two days after the Empire of Japan formally surrendered.  Stokes was entered for the midget races scheduled on Labor Day 1945 on the half-mile oval at the Berea Fairgrounds in Berea Ohio and was joined on the entry list by the man billed as the “world’s only one-armed race car driver,” Wes Saegesser. 

Other Berea entries included Johnny Wohlfeil, identified as the "defending 1942 Ohio midget champion," and Steubenville Ohio’s “Wild Bill” Boyd, the 1941 Ohio midget champion based on October 12, 1941 victory in the 100-lap Ohio Banked Track Championship held at Sportsman's Park in Bedford Ohio.  Incidentally Wohlfeil and Boyd were pre-war teammates in a pair of midgets owned by Wohlfeil.

During 1946, racing as well as civilian life in the United States began to return to normal, as Stokes appeared in the midget races held on Sundays at the Sportsman’s Park Speedway “the nation’s fastest quarter-mile banked track,” along with Wohlfeil. Carl Forberg, Bill Spears and Ralph Pratt.  On April 28 Wohlfeil made a clean sweep of the program as he set quick time, won his heat race and the 25-lap feature over Deb Snyder with all the races completed in record times for the track.  

Two nights later, many of the same cars and drivers were in action for the second week of post-war racing at the Akron Rubber Bowl stop on the Zeiter Speedways Michigan-Ohio Midget racing circuit. Al Bonnell, from Erie Pennsylvania identified as the 1939 Ohio state midget champion set a new track record of 16.68 seconds which broke his own week-old track record of 16.77 seconds. Bonnell then notched his second consecutive 25-lap Rubber Bowl feature victory that was completed in the record time of 7 minutes and 13 seconds before a crowd of 8,717 fans.

On May 15, 1946 Wally Stokes broke through for his first win both at the Rubber Bowl and on the Zeiter Michigan-Ohio midget circuit, as he won the feature by five car lengths over Akron’s Clarence LaRue. A record crowd of 9,443 fans watched as Stokes completed the 25 laps in seven minutes and 28 seconds.

Three days later, Stokes and the Michigan-Ohio Midget circuit racers for their initial visit to the ¼-mile track at the Canfield Fairgrounds.  In addition to the regular twenty cars and stars due to be in action at Canfield, the East Liverpool Review reported that “Wild Bill” Boyd would fly back from “the Indianapolis speed trials” to compete. That newspaper story took some liberties with the facts as AAA records indicate that Boyd did not appear as a driver at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 1951. 

Four of the first five scheduled early season races at Canfield were rained out, and during that period the Zeiter circuit visited another new venue on Tuesday night May 21, 1946, as the Zeiter Michigan-Ohio midget circuit racers made their inaugural appearance at the Ohio State Fairgrounds half-mile track in Columbus which had been “completely rebuilt after the War Department took over the fairgrounds during the war and made into one of the fastest half-mile tracks in the country.”  Between 1942 and 1945 the Fairgrounds had been rented out for $1 a year and the Army Air Corps used the 360-acre fairgrounds as an aircraft repair depot and equipment storage yard.

Stokes’s midget racer had a spate of mechanical problems during the last two weeks of May, as the engine blew up during the races at Sportsman’s Park in Bedford, then on the last day of May in the race at the Rubber Bowl, Wally was forced out of the race with a broken radius rod while he was in the lead.   

Later in the season Wally reunited with Andy Dunlop to drive Dunlop’s new 255-cubic inch Miller powered big car, and the pair won back to back races at Jackson Michigan on September 9 and 13 as recalled by Dunlop in his book written with Thomas Saal, Damn Few Died in Bed.   

The ‘big cars’ were scheduled at the Ohio State Fairgrounds in a very late 1946 season appearance on November 10 for a race promoted by pre-war driver Harry Robtoy. Stokes was scheduled to appear along with several prominent ‘big car’ racers – 1946 CSRA champion Carl Scarborough, Mike Salay and Clay Corbitt but not surprisingly, the races were cancelled due to wet track conditions.

Wally Stokes opened his 1947 season in a midget at the Canfield Fairgrounds in a AAA sanctioned Michigan-Ohio circuit race held on April 26. By stepping up to AAA competition, Stokes now raced against such midget stars as Scarborough, Bob Harner and Al Bonnell.  Stokes and Clarence LaRue were teammates on the Ray Leo racing team, while Harner and Bonnell in the Coy Kurtis-Kraft Offenhauser.  

At the Canfield Fairgrounds on May 10, Stokes was one of the day’s top four qualifiers and won the helmet dash which prevented George Witzman from scoring a clean sweep of the evening, as Witzman the fast qualifier from Detroit won his heat race, the Australian Pursuit race, and the feature. During the season the East Liverpool Review newspaper wrote glowingly about Wally Stokes, who was concentrating that season on midget auto racing as the writer called him “one of most likeable persons in the business, and one of the shrewdest drivers.”  

Wally Stokes was scheduled to make his first season appearance in Andy Dunlop’s Offenhauser-powered ‘big car’ June 22, 1947 at the ¼-mile oval on the Mercer County Fairgrounds near Celina Ohio. The race carried Central States Racing Association (CSRA) sanction and was promoted by Art Zimmer’s Valli Enterprises, which also promoted tracks at the Van Wert, Carthage and Lucas County fairgrounds in Ohio. Other entries advertised for the Celina race with a guaranteed $2140 purse, or 40% of the gate receipts included Witzman, Jimmy Wilburn, Ralph Pratt, Les Adair, Joie Ray and Jackie Holmes. 

Wally was listed as one of the drivers for the Ray Leo team for the July 5 midget race held at Canfield and he faced competition from several other Kurtis-Kraft Offenhauser powered cars, with drivers that included his former teammate Clarence LaRue, Bob Harner and Harner’s Pollock racing teammate, Jack Kabat. 

In 1947, midget auto racing was the fastest growing form of motorsports in the nation, and many new venues opened to host the tiny cars. An example of this growth was the re-opening of the Ebensburg Speedway, a ¼-mile track located on the Cambria County fairgrounds 75 miles east of Pittsburgh. Weekly midget racing at Ebensburg started on Monday night June 2, 1947, after a twelve-year absence of auto racing at the facility.    

Entries for the Ebensburg races which supported the local American Legion post charities, included many of the same drivers Wally Stokes had raced against since after the war. The Ebensburg races promoted by Don Zeiter with AAA sanction featured timing via the M. H. Rhodes Electric Timer, a system which used three synchronized clocks to provide lap times accurate to 1/100 of a second.  During the season, Ebensburg became known as “the State’s fastest quarter-mile track” with “Little” Mike Little in his ‘Coal Miners Special’ the dominant midget car and driver.

While midget racing was skyrocketing in popularity and drivers could race almost every night of the week if they were willing to travel, racing in this era was indeed a dangerous occupation.  On August 11 while racing at Ebensburg, Akron midget racer George “Joe” Selzer crashed after his midget hooked wheels with Eddie Johnson’s machine on the 18th lap of the 25-lap main event. Selzer’s car flipped high in the air, and Selzer’s midget flipped four times with the 1946 “Ohio midget champion” thrown onto the track surface the married father of two was killed instantly.

Another example of the hazards of midget auto racing is Clarence “Jack” Walkup a veteran racer from Stow, Ohio. On the night of May 24, 1947 during the fourth race of the evening at Akron’s Rubber Bowl, Walkup’s car brushed the outer wooden wall. After the impact, the right front wheel of Walkup’s machine broke off, and as 10,000 horrified fans watched, the wheel bounced into the stands and struck 26-year old spectator George V. Chupek in the head. Chupek an unmarried Goodyear factory employee and former paratrooper who had survived five campaigns in the European theater during World War II was killed instantly, but miraculously his date for the evening, Mary Ellison, seated in the box seat next to Chupek escaped miraculously unharmed. Walkup managed to bring his three-wheeled racer to a stop without further incident.   

Less than two months later, on the afternoon of July 20, 1947, while qualifying at the ½-mile Dover Speedway on the Tuscarawas County Fairgrounds, Walkup’s car rolled over three times down the backstretch and came to rest upside down. Rescuers righted the car released Walkup’s seat belt and carefully loaded him in the ambulance. Walkup was taken to the nearby Union Hospital but the injured driver who had turned 33 years old on July 4, died a few hours later at 5:30 PM from a fractured skull and internal injuries.  

Through late July and through August, Stokes began to rack up a string of consistent top three finishes, with a third place recorded on July 23 at the Rubber Bowl, followed by another third-place finish on August 20 in a race held on the 1/5-mile Erie Stadium track in Erie Pennsylvania. August 23 found him back in a ‘big car’ in Sedalia Missouri for the final day at the Missouri State Fair and Stokes finished second in the 30-lap feature on the ½-mile dirt oval behind Jimmy Wilburn in a race viewed by 10,000 spectators.       

As the 1947 season wore on, Stokes raced Dunlop’s ‘big car’ more frequently - Dunlop recalled two races the pair competed in were in St. Paul Minnesota over the 1947 Labor Day holiday which was followed by three races in Topeka Kansas.   Dunlop recalled that Stokes had committed to run a mid-September 100-lap midget race at Bainbridge Ohio, and offered to fly back to Hutchinson Kansas for three races on September 16, 18 and 19, followed by an event in Oklahoma City on September 22. Wally won two big car races for Dunlop during October 1947 – on the 5^th on the 1/5-mile track at Muskogee Oklahoma and the ½-mile Inter-State Fairgrounds in Coffeyville Kansas on October 11.

Dunlop recalled in his book a conversation with John Sloan that occurred near the end of the 1947 season.  John, the son of famed promoter and IMCA (International Motor Contest Association) founder J. Alex Sloan, had assumed the operation of the American Booking Agency but not the IMCA after the death of his father. Sloan reportedly told Dunlop that he wanted to make Wally Stokes in Andy Dunlop’s ‘big car’ the main attraction at fairgrounds races during the 1948 season.

Late in the 1947 season, Wally was one of more than 70 drivers from across the nation entered for the 100-lap ARDC (American Race Drivers Club) championship midget race at Langhorne (Pennsylvania) Speedway. Langhorne’s owner and operator John Babcock was in the second full season of his operation of the high banked circular one-mile dirt oval with a wicked reputation. Opened in 1926, the lightning fast track had claimed nine lives, a total that included three spectators that were killed in a single accident in 1937.

Qualifying to winnow down the entries to the 33-car starting field was held on Saturday afternoon October 11, with the race scheduled for the following afternoon. We do not know whether Wally Stokes was in the starting field for the poorly-documented Langhorne race, but the day’s fastest qualifier Don Brennan lapped around the mile track in 35.048 seconds which equaled an average speed of 102.716 miles per hour.  Scheduled to start alongside Brennan for the Sunday afternoon Langhorne feature was young (19 years old) Californian Troy Ruttman with Illinois’ Mike O’Halloran slotted third in the 33-car field which was arranged for the start in eleven rows of three cars each. After qualifications were complete, most of the ARDC midget regulars loaded up their cars and towed 150 miles east from Langhorne Pennsylvania to Danbury Connecticut for a race that evening. 

On Sunday, before an enormous crowd of 39,722 fans, Troy’s car failed to fire, and once the field got rolling with an alternate car tagging the field O’Halloran jumped into the lead on the first lap and led until lap 25 when he was called to the pit area for tires and fuel by his wily car owner, Midwest Kurtis-Kraft chassis and Offenhauser engine distributor Johnny Pawl. With O’Halloran momentarily stationary, George Rice, who had clinched the 1947 ARDC drivers title after the race in Danbury Connecticut the night before, picked up the lead of the race which he held until he pitted at lap 50.

After a flurry of pit stops by the series of new race leaders who in turn each suffered right rear tire troubles, O’Halloran and Rice regained the top two positions. The front pair raced away and built up a lead of four laps over the third-place driver Al Bonnell and Johnny Mantz in fourth place. With three laps to go, Bonnell’s Offenhauser engine expired and then on the following lap Rice’s charge for victory ended as his car ran out of fuel. The race winner Mike O’Halloran cut two minutes off 1946 race winner Bonnell’s time and won by four laps over Mantz and ARDC regular front-runner Chet Gibbons.  

In our next installment we will review Wally Stokes’ sterling 1948 racing season.