The Wally Stokes story

Part three

For the 1948 racing season, Wally Stokes who now lived in the suburb of Gates Mill east of Cleveland Ohio, concentrated on ‘big car’ (today known as a sprint car) racing with his car owner fellow Northeastern Ohioan Andy Dunlop’s blue #2 255-cubic inch Offenhauser powered machine. Stokes became the featured performer in John Sloan’s American Booking Agency promoted 1948 racing programs, and Stokes and Dunlop competed in both IMCA (International Motor Contest Association), the CSRA (Central States Racing Association) and a handful of independent events. 

Throughout the 1948 season, pre-race press reports continued to identify Stokes’ hometown as Honolulu, and stories frequently referred to him as “the rim riding Hawaiian.” Some stories such as the one in the Burlington Iowa Hawkeye Gazette went so far as to call Wally “the Hawaiian pineapple king” and related that he “takes time off from his Honolulu pineapple canning factory for 3 months of racing.” While it made a good story, in truth Stokes was born and raised in the Cleveland area, never visited Hawaii and certainly did not own a pineapple cannery.  

The CSRA season opened on April 18 with a race at the half-mile Celina Speedway on the Mercer County Ohio Fairgrounds with another race a week later at the high banked half-mile south of Greenville Ohio. Both of those tracks were promoted by Arthur Zimmer’s Valli Enterprises which was based in Dayton Ohio as was the CSRA. Stokes was mentioned as an entrant at Celina along with Jimmy Daywalt who drove Franklin Merkler’s “404” ‘big car’ powered by a “Hisso” engine, a 359-cubic inch, single overhead cam, 4-cylinder power plant created from one half of a World War era 718-cubic inch Hispano Suiza aluminum block V-8 aircraft engine.

The April 18 Celina race was won by Bobby Grim as he drove what was described in press reports as a “brand new Offenhauser.” It seems entirely possible that Stokes although listed as an entrant, did not appear at Celina, as Andy Dunlop in his book, Damn Few Died in Bed, written with Thomas Saal, recalled that the team’s first race for the 1948 season was at Greenville “in late April.” Stokes won the 20-lap feature April 25 at Greenville over Cliff Griffith, Red Bales and Carl Hooper.   A month later, when the CSRA ‘big car’ circuit visited Greenville Speedway Stokes again won the 20-lap feature.   

During the 1948 season, in the days before the interstate highway system, the Dunlop team sometimes traveled long distances between races. They took part in the first annual Shrine Memorial Day races held on May 30 the Iowa State Fair track in Des Moines promoted by the Za-Ga-Zig Shrine temple of Altoona Iowa. In front of a crowd of 7,500 fans, Stokes, in the Dunlop Offenhauser powered blue #2 ‘big car’ grabbed three victories during the five-race program – his heat race, the trophy dash and the day’s 10-lap finale on the half-mile dirt track.

The next night. May 31, Stokes was entered in the ‘big car’ race at Heidelberg Raceway, a new 5/8-mile dirt track located a few miles southwest of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania which was more than 800 miles east of Des Moines. The Dunlop team members made the trek to the inaugural event at Heidelberg by driving in shifts but they arrived at the track late.


The Heidelberg track manager Henry P Miller certain got his money’s worth for the $800 he paid Dunlop in appearance money, as during qualifying Stokes recorded a best lap of 23.92 seconds, which reportedly broke the standing “world’s 5/8-mile one-lap record which had stood since 1938." Stokes’ fast lap was more than a second faster than Everett Saylor’s old record.  According to Dunlop’s book, Stokes once again won his heat, the trophy dash and the feature which was shortened from 30 to 20 laps by dusty track conditions.    

Stokes stayed on his winning streak as the CSRA circuit headed back to Greenville Ohio for a special Father’s Day race, and before the race it was reported that Wally led the CSRA standings over Daywalt, Grim and George Tichenor. 


On June 27, the teams revisited Heidelberg Raceway with much the same results as earlier in the season, as Stokes won over Daywalt and Tichenor as Wally completed the 20-lap feature in eight minutes and 17.71 seconds. Back in Iowa for races over the July 4^th holiday, Stokes scored his eleventh and twelfth wins of the season in back-to-back races at Burlington and Des Moines.

The September 19 MDTRA (Midwest Dirt Track Racing Association) program at the Johnson County Fairgrounds in Franklin Indiana serves to remind historians just how dangerous dirt track racing during this era. In one tragic afternoon, James “Chick” Smith and 40-year-old Indianapolis veteran racer Les Adair were struck down in separate accidents.   

During an early heat race, two cars driven by Adair and Webb Reed locked wheels, crashed through the outer fence and flipped with Reed's car coming to rest on top of Adair’s machine.   Reed was hurt in the crash but Les received fatal head injuries.


On the first lap of the feature event Smith from Louisville Kentucky crashed when his car’s throttle stuck open, then the car crashed through the wooden fence and overturned. Smith was taken to the Johnson County Hospital in Franklin in critical condition, where he succumbed to his head injuries the following day.  Stokes won the feature race that sad day at Franklin.

Stokes and Dunlop traveled to Hagerstown Maryland to race on Sunday afternoon October 3^rd at the year-old ½-mile banked clay Conococheague Speedway. During time trials, Stokes’ CSRA rival Bobby Grim toured the track in 24.67 seconds which broke the “world’s half mile record.” Later when Stokes had his chance to qualify the blue Dunlop #2, Wally was even faster, and completed his lap in just 24.15 seconds which broke the old mark set at Williams Grove Speedway by .63 seconds.

Later in the afternoon program, Stokes won the 20-lap feature at Conococheague as he bested Grim, Paul Becker, Woody Hill and Bob O’Neil. The October 4^th edition of the Hagerstown Morning Herald newspaper reported that as a bonus for the 3,800 fans, after the feature was completed, Stokes and Grim ran a match race of indeterminate laps which finished in what fans described as a ‘dead heat.’

Over the course of the 1948 racing season, Wally Stokes won 13 of 14 CSRA races and was crowned the 1948 CSRA champion over Jimmy Daywalt, George Tichenor, Bobby Grim and Carl Scarborough. In IMCA competition, Wally also won 11 of 13 IMCA sanctioned races he competed in during 1948, but because he ran so few IMCA races, he was only scored 13^th in the season-ending points totals. Overall, Wally Stokes’ documented record for 1948, recounted in the Dunlop book, was 27 wins in 30 races, truly a “dream season.”     

Wally Stokes wanted to move up to AAA (American Automobile Association) championship racing, but Dunlop did not have a sponsor to financially support that effort so Stokes left the team.  During the 1949 season, without a steady ride, Stokes made occasional midget racing starts at familiar tracks namely Sportsman’s Park in Ohio and Ebensburg and Heidelberg Speedways in Pennsylvania.   

In April, Wally was nominated as the driver for the 33^rd running of the famed Indianapolis 500-mile race in a “new car” powered by a 270-cubic inch 4-cylinder Offenhauser engine owned by Thomas Kupiec of Hamtramck Michigan.


Nothing is known about this car or car owner beyond what was learned from a May 27, 1949 Associated Press report that identified the Kupiec car as one of four cars that never reached the 2-1/2-mile brick paved oval. The author was unable to discover any other details of the construction or ownership of the Kupiec machine.   

Wally’s next appearance on the 1949 AAA championship trail came on July 31 for the non-points "Indianapolis Sweepstakes" held at the ½-mile Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. According to the Somerset Daily American newspaper James Lamb, the Secretary of the AAA told Williams Grove Park owner Roy Richwine that ‘the sanctioning of this type of program on the Williams Grove Speedway is an experiment and does not establish a precedent.“


The article stated many of the the big stars of the AAA were expected and specifically named the 1949 Indianapolis ‘500’ winner Bill Holland, Rex Mays, Johnny Mantz, the 1949 ‘500’ second place finisher  as a rookie, Johnnie Parsons, and fellow ‘500’ rookie Troy Ruttman as entries.  

Advertisements in local newspaper printed the week before the “Indianapolis Sweepstakes” stated that “this race is definitely limited to all Indianapolis drivers and championship cars only. Open only to cars with a maximum displacement limit of 183-cubic inches supercharged and 274-cubic inches supercharged that meet national championship specifications.”

Parsons and Ruttman were not among the twelve drivers that appeared for the race, and Holland’s ‘Marion Special’ and Stokes’ ‘Lutes Truck Parts Special’ suffered mechanical troubles and did not start the 50-lap (25 mile) feature. Witnessed by a massive crowd of 38,156 fans, Johnny Mantz won the feature which took only 24 ½ minutes to run as he finished ahead of Duane Carter and Rex Mays.

AAA officials and promoter Richwine must have considered the experimental race on the half-mile at Williams Grove a success, as Indianapolis cars and stars continued to appear at the non-championship “Indianapolis Sweepstakes” at Williams Grove until 1955, then it continued under USAC (United States Auto Club) sanction through 1959. The 1959 running of the “Indianapolis Sweepstakes” attracted 12,000 fans who saw the fatal crash of Pennsylvania’s Van Johnson who died in the same car owned by Jake Vargo that had claimed the life of Dick Linder at Trenton Speedway in April 1959.   

Wally Stokes entered an Offenhauser powered ‘big car’ (not Dunlop’s) for the races held on August 14 at Hawkeye Downs in association with the All-Iowa Fair. In an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette newspaper, Hawkeye Downs track superintendent R K “Doc” Hunter said that Stokes told him that “it was doubtful if he could pilot the machine personally, that the driver would probably be Gene Aldrich. “

On Saturday afternoon August 20 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds mile dirt track in Springfield, Stokes made his first AAA championship start in the ‘Springfield 100.” Wally qualified the Offenhauser powered car owned by WJ Lutes of Detroit for the ninth starting position in the eighteen-car field, then was credited with a thirteenth-place finish in a poorly documented race won by Mel Hanson.  After the race was completed, Wally and his wife Grace left immediately, headed East so Stokes could compete in a midget race scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Bainbridge Ohio.

In the early hours of Sunday morning August 21, west of Springfield Ohio with Wally asleep in the passenger’s seat as his wife drove, the right front tire on their car blew out, the car went out of control and struck a tree. Grace Stokes was injured but Wally, who had just hours earlier had completed his first championship race, was killed in the accident. Wallace E Stokes was interred a few days later in the village cemetery of his hometown of Willoughby Ohio.

In his book Damn Few Died in Bed written with Thomas Saal, Andy Dunlop remembered that “Wally was a great driver and fierce competitor, not only one of the most talented race drivers I ever knew but he was also good with mechanical design and fabrication.”  We are proud to research and publish the Wally Stokes story as a remembrance of a great racer who fell victim to the hazards faced by racers as they traveled the roads before the interstate highway system.