The Pete Kreis story
Part five
1932 to his death and beyond
Following the 1931 Indianapolis 500-mile race, at Cliff
Durant’s direction, Tommy Milton sold the ‘Detroit Special’ (last raced by
Kreis in 1929) to Harry Hartz, who had metalsmith Phil Summers build a two-man
body. Hartz installed a 182- cubic inch straight-8 Miller engine in the chassis
and entered ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ in the 1932 International 500-Mile Sweepstakes.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker’s dream of automaker involvement under the “junk formula” came true in 1932 with the Studebaker factory’s five entries. A year earlier, prolific Indianapolis race car builder Herman Rigling built one car for Ab Jenkins and Studebaker chief engineer George Hunt that used a Studebaker Commander straight-eight engine, transmission and axles.
Although it crashed out on lap 167, the car performed
well enough in the 1931 ‘500,’ that the Studebaker Corporation hired Rigling to
build four copies for the 1932 ‘500.’
The factory supplied the 336 cubic-inch, L-head, 8-cylinder Studebaker President engines, 3-speed manual transmissions, front and rear axles, brakes and steering components. Rigling built the chassis and Pop Dreyer built the two-man bodies.
Hunt designed an intake manifold fitted with four Studebaker single-throat
carburetors, supplemented with an aftermarket exhaust manifold and magneto which
boosted engine output from 110 to 175 horsepower.
The driver lineup for the Studebaker team included Tony Gulotta, the 1931 driver, Luther Johnson, Zeke Myer, Cliff Bergere and Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis. The cars were each painted in a different Studebaker President passenger car color – silver, black, blue, red and green.
Even before the big track opened for practice, on Sunday May 1 the team ran a test led by manager and Chief Engineer George Hunt. Gulotta and Johnson drove a combined 660 miles in one of the team cars reportedly at an average speed of 102.6 MPH “exclusive of the pit stops” per the Indianapolis News.
Four of the Studebaker team cars qualified on the first day
of time trials, Saturday May 21 and Bergere led the team in qualifying as the
#22 averaged 111.503 MPH to start tenth. Cliff just edged his teammate Luther
Johnson’s four-lap run of 111.218 MPH which placed the #46 Studebaker
eleventh. Kreis in the #18 wound up
seventeenth fastest at 110.270 MPH while Gulotta posted a 108.896 MPH average and
would start twentieth.
Zeke Meyer in the final Studebaker Corporation entry,
qualified on the eighth and final day of times trials, on Saturday May 28th and
ran ten laps at an average speed of 110.745 MPH to start 38th in the 40-car
starting field.
On Decoration Day Monday May 30 1932, it initially appeared that it would be another runaway by Billy Arnold and Matlock in ‘Miller-Hartz 1’ as they took the lead of lap 2 and proceeded to lap the field.
However, in an eerie repeat of the previous year, Arnold and Matlock crashed in turn three on their 59th lap after the car slid in oil while they lapped Pete Kreis’ car and hit the wall injuring both driver and mechanic for the second year in a row. This time Matlock suffered a broken pelvis while Arnold broke his collar bone, but Arnold never raced again, reportedly at the urging of his wife.
After a mid-race
36-lap duel with Wilbur Shaw, Fred Frame in ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ took command on
the 153rd lap and led the rest of the way.
Frame, with riding mechanic Jerry Houck
won the 1932 ‘500’ by a lap over Howdy Wilcox II with a new record average
speed of 104.144 MPH despite the necessity for six pit stops to add water to
the radiator for the overheated Miller engine.
Three of the Studebaker entries finished the 1932 ‘500’. Bergere and his riding mechanic Vern Lake led the Studebaker team with a third place finish in the red #22 only four minutes behind winner Frame.
Meyer (unrelated to fellow driver Louis) and
Walter Mitchell finished sixth in their green #37 with an average speed of 98.476
MPH, and Gulotta and his mechanic Carl Riscigno scored a 13th place finish in
the silver #25 flagged with 184 laps completed; they were positioned for a good
finish but lost considerable time when a tire blew in turn one late in the
race.
The two Studebaker entries that failed to finish were both
the victims of crashes. On lap 164, Luther Johnson’s black #46 Studebaker with
Billy Mallar alongside lost a wheel on the main straightaway. Kreis lost
control of the blue Studebaker #18 on the main straightaway on lap 178 and
crashed in turn one in front of the ‘E’ grandstand. Pete and his riding
mechanic Aaron B. Vance, an Indianapolis resident, finished 15th, one spot better
than Johnson.
Four nights later, all the Studebaker team members,
including the pit crew, were honored in a testimonial dinner held in the
Studebaker Corporation Administration Building in South Bend Indiana. Prize monies were awarded and top Studebaker
officials took turns praising the team. The South Bend Tribune reported the
comments of Paul Hoffman vice president of sales “the biggest tribute I can pay
them is to say that they performed even more credibly than expected.”
On June 22nd, Kreis and Vance were back at the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway “making an experimental run,” (Firestone tire
tests) when a tire blew out and the car reportedly “went over the retaining
wall” in the third turn. Details were
sketchy, just that Kreis’ injuries “are not serious,” as reported by the Knoxville
News-Sentinel while the Indianapolis Star reported both men suffered
broken ribs, cuts and bruises.
Later in the summer of 1932, Pete took part in the Studebaker traveling auto show that stopped at Studebaker dealerships across the state of Pennsylvania. Pete appeared with one of the Studebaker Indianapolis cars and gave a brief talk about his racing experiences.
In one appearance in
Altoona, newspaper advertisements claimed Pete would drive the race car through
noon day traffic while he wore a blindfold and black hood.
One night after Christmas 1932, Pete had another close call
when his Chrysler coupe plunged off Topside Road near Knoxville, caught fire
and burned to the ground but Pete received no injuries.
For the 1933 race, the AAA Contest Board instituted a new rule that limited fuel tanks to 15 gallons and a limit of six gallons of oil used during the race.
Following his success in the 1932 ‘500,’ winning driver Fred Frame went on a spending spree. Frame
bought the “Miller-Hartz 1” (crashed by Arnold in 1931 and 1932) and
rechristened it as the “Frame-Miller.”
Frame also bought a four-cylinder Miller 220-cubic inch
powered Duesenberg 122 chassis built in 1930 and entered in the 1933 Indianapolis
‘500,’ while he continued to drive “Miller-Hartz 2” for Harry Hartz in 1933.
Hartz nominated 1932 AAA Pacific Southwest Big Car
championship runner-up mustachioed rookie driver Lester “Les” Spangler for his second
entry, a rear-drive four-cylinder Miller 255 cubic inch-powered Miller chassis.
Hartz purchased this car, the 303-cubic inch DOHC Miller V-16 powered machine
from Bill White, shortened the chassis and in place of the V-16 installed one
of the first Miller 255 cubic inch engines.
When the official Indianapolis entry list closed on May 1, 1933 Frame had nominated Pete Kreis as the driver of the front-drive Frame-Miller, while Paul Bost would pilot the Duesenberg. On May 3 the Knoxville New-Sentinel reported that Pete Kreis left Knoxville for Indianapolis.
As he departed Knoxville
Kreis told the reporter “I believe I will have my best chance to win this
time.” Upon arrival in Indianapolis Kreis found that his car had not arrived,
and Pete, a scratch golfer wiled away his time with Bill Heinlein on the
Speedway golf course according to the Indianapolis News.
On Saturday May 20 1933, Pete Kreis, on his second attempt,
qualified the gray and blue trimmed #2 machine at an average speed 114.370 MPH
for his 10-lap 25-mile time trial run which slotted him eleventh in the 42-car
starting field on Decoration Day. Pete
had aborted his first attempt earlier in the day after nine laps were completed
due to a tire problem.
A driver protest delayed the start of the 1933 International
500-mile Sweepstakes. Speedway physician DR.
H R Allen disqualified sixth-fastest qualifier Howdy Wilcox II due his
diabetic condition (reported as epilepsy). The other 41 drivers protested and refused
to start the race and presented a petition signed by all 41 drivers that
demanded that Wilcox be allowed to race.
Dr. Allen refused to allow Wilcox to compete, and the
drivers remained unmoved even after AAA steward Eddie Edenburn’s impassioned
speech. Finally, after more than an
hour’s delay, Speedway officials pushed Wilcox’s ‘Gilmore Special’ off the grid
and Edenburn ordered Mauri Rose to start the car from the tail of the field.
With the first thirty laps completed, Kreis with mechanic Charles
Marant rode in seventh place in ‘Miller Hartz 1’, one lap behind leader Bill
Cummings, but Pete retired on lap 63 with a broken universal joint in the left
front wheel. 22 laps later, his car owner Frame joined Pete on the sidelines as
his Miller-Hartz broke a timing gear.
On lap 132, the Hartz second car, the cream and red #14
tangled with Malcom Fox’s semi-stock Studebaker and rolled onto the wall in
turn two. Several hours later both driver Spangler and riding mechanic Glenn "Monk"
Jordan died of their injuries, the fifth and sixth victims of crashes at the
Speedway in May 1933. Louis Meyer led 71
laps to win his second Indianapolis 500-mile race.
Eighteen days later, on June 17th 1933, Kreis and
his friend and instructor Charles “Sonny” Rising took off from Island Airport
near downtown Knoxville, but the engine in Kreis’ Waco biplane quit on takeoff.
The plane stalled from a height of 300 feet, grazed a tree and crashed into the
Tennessee River upside down.
Kreis, despite his injured right eye, arm and shoulder and the
loss of the tip of the middle finger on his right hand, pulled the unconscious
Rising from the wreckage and saved “Sonny” from drowning. After their rescue, both
men were admitted to Howard-Henderson Hospital, with Pete released a week after
the accident to convalesce at home.
After five deaths at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in
1933, for the 1934 International 500-mile Sweepstakes, the AAA instituted a
limit of 45 gallons of fuel and six gallons of oil per car for the 500 miles to
slow the cars down. The teams were allotted three gallons of gasoline to
qualify, estimated at 12 laps for a time trial run; one lap to get up to speed,
the ten timed laps and one cool-off lap.
Just before he left for Indianapolis, Pete took delivery of
his new car, a 1934 Ford Model 40 (V8-powered) 3-window coupe from the Vester
Motor Company located on Main Street in Knoxville.
Hartz entered his car number 14 without a driver named and when
Harry and the front drive Miller- Hartz 2 (the 1932 ‘500’ winner) arrived at
the Speedway on Sunday May 13 Indianapolis Star reporter W F Sturm
quizzed Hartz as to possible drivers. Hartz
mentioned rumors of Billy Arnold, and Sturm reported that when asked about
Pete’s desire to drive the car, Hartz stated that Kreis had not a said anything
to him about it.
Three days later, Hartz had still not named a driver but on
Wednesday May 23 Sturm reported that Kreis will “probably drive the Hartz car.”
On Thursday May 24th Hartz announced that Kreis would take his first
laps on the morning Friday May 25 and qualify later that day. Lengthy practice
would not be needed as the reader will recall that Pete a veteran at the
Speedway, drove the ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ chassis in 1926 powered by a supercharged
91-cubic inch Miller-powered engine and in 1929 as the two-stage supercharged “Detroit
Special.”
It was later reported that at 7:40 AM on Friday May 25, Kreis
and fellow driver Cliff Bergere stopped at the corner of Michigan Street and
White River Parkway while they were enroute to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and
lent aid in a fatal passenger car accident until the ambulance arrived.
Just after 9 AM, the 34-year veteran Tennessee racer headed
onto the track to take his first practice laps for 1934. Reportedly, Kreis and
his riding mechanic Bob Hahn turned several slow warm-up laps, then ran several
laps at approximately 90 MPH before Pete picked up the throttle for a flat-out
lap. In the Garage Area, car owner Hartz
supervised a photography session with Frame and no one in the pit area seemed
to pay much attention until the #14 car did not appear.
Patrolman J R McCormick of the Indiana State Police, on duty
on 16th Street, later provided the only eyewitness report. McCormick
stated that he heard the car hit the wall at the exit of turn one then he watched
it slide along the wall for approximately 80 feet before the car climbed the
3-foot high wall and slid along the top of the short chute wall for
approximately 75 feet.
The ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ fell off the south wall and tumbled
down the 16-foot banking and hit a tree. After the car hit the tree it broke in
half. The front of the car from the cowl forward including the engine and front
drive traveled another 40 feet while the crushed tail of the car rested against
the tree.
Officer McCormick rushed to the scene and removed Hahn from
the wreckage of the car but he died before the ambulance arrived. McCormick
reported Kreis’ body landed 20 feet from the wreckage and that Pete had been
killed instantly.
Doctor John Slab, the Marion County deputy coroner who
investigated reported that Kreis suffered a fractured skull, crushed chest and partial
amputation trauma to both his legs. Hahn, the riding mechanic, suffered a
fractured skull, broken leg and arm and crushed chest.
The #14 Miller-Hartz reportedly struck the same tree George
W. “Benny” Benefiel hit in the crash of the Jones & Maley Special in
qualifying two years earlier that killed riding mechanic Harry Cox. Officials
never determined the cause of the Kreis fatal accident but speculation focused
on mechanical or tire failure.
A later unidentified witness described as a track guard by
the Indidapolis News claimed that he saw the #14 car’s wheels shimmying
before it hit the wall. Based on that observation, experts surmised that either
a steering knuckle or tie rod connection broke.
The afternoon of the Kreis/Hahn fatality, Indianapolis Motor
Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker gave what in retrospect seems to be a rather callous statement to the Indianapolis
News “a serious accident happened at the race track this forenoon and I
deeply regret it. However, it is a thing that happens in every walk of life.
Men are willing to take a chance in pioneering for progress and glory.”
21-year-old riding mechanic Williams Robert “Bob” or “Howdy”
Hahn, raised on a turkey ranch in Chino (often erroneously reported as Chico) California
had raced on the West Coast in some CARA (California Auto Racing Association)
dirt track events in 1932.
Hahn raced “back east” in 1933 at tracks in Lewistown Pennsylvania,
Woodbridge and Flemington New Jersey and the Harford County fairground in Maryland. In 1934 he returned to California, lived in
Manhattan Beach and worked as a mechanic for Harry Hartz. Bob, divorced with a
son William Hahn Junior was buried May 29 1934 in Forest Park Cemetery in
Glendale California.
With Pete’s mother at home convalescing after an appendectomy,
Kreis family friend Dr. Herbert Craig and Pete’s brother-in-law Herbert Clark left
Knoxville on Friday for Indianapolis to retrieve and return Pete’s remains to Knoxville, with
his funeral held on Sunday afternoon May 27.
Several hundred people attended the ceremony at Mann’s
Chapel with more than a hundred floral offerings that included a 12-foot diameter floral steering wheel. The funeral procession to Asbury Cemetery in Knox County included
more than 100 cars where Pete Kreis, a bachelor survived by grandparents,
parents, 2 brothers and 3 married sisters was interred.
One brother, John, died in a car accident two years later and
the other, Roy, with whom Pete worked with at the construction firm, died of a
heart attack in 1937. His mother died in 1938 at age 65 and his father fell to
his death in a barn on his turkey farm at age 72 in 1945.
After being torn in half in the crash Louis “Curly” Wetteroth
rebuilt the ‘Miller Hartz 2’ for Harry Hartz who entered the car at Indianapolis
in 1936. Sophomore driver Eylard Theodore ‘Ted’ Horn started
eleventh, led 16 laps and finished in second place at Indianapolis in 1936.
Horn returned in the same car the following year, fitted with
a supercharger, and finished in third place in the 1937 Indianapolis 500-mile
race. In 1938, after the end of the “junk formula” rules package, fitted with a
new body and rear suspension, Horn qualified sixth and finished fourth in the
‘Miller-Hartz 2’
After Ted Horn left Hartz for the Boyle Valve racing team for
1939, veteran Herb Ardinger drove the Miller-Hartz in 1939 followed by midget
racer Mel Hansen in 1940. Hartz did not enter the car for the 1941 running of the 500-mile race.
After the war, new car owner Robert J McManus entered it for rookie Tony Bettenhausen in 1946 and Tony made his first '500' start in the machine and finished 20th. In 1947, motorcycle racer Roland Free returned after a 17-year absence and finsihed 17th after he spun out on lap 87.
Acquired by Indianapolis Motor Speedway
owner Anton “Tony” Hulman after its racing days, today the ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ is
part of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum collection restored and
displayed as the 1932 ‘500’ winner.
Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis’ cemetery monument, erected in
September 1935, measures 11 feet wide and 5 feet high and weighs an estimated
eight tons including the concrete foundation. On the face of the monument is a
replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway race track, complete with a detailed
marble replica of the #14 Miller-Hartz car jumping the wall at the location of Pete’s
fatal crash. The inscription on the monument reads “The Last Lap.”
The center of the marble monument is a detailed relief portrait
of Pete in his racing helmet while the left side of the monument shows the
outline of a race starter that strongly resembles AAA steward Eddie Edenburn as he
displays the checkered flag.
The huge block of grey Tennessee marble came from the Kreis
family’s Appalachian Marble Quarry Company.
The sculptor of the monument, Italian emigre Albert Milani of the Day
Marble & Granite Company, worked non-stop for nine weeks to complete the
monument placed in the Asbury cemetery located two miles from Pete’s childhood
home. Readers of The New York Times
Magazine recognized Milani’s work on the Pete Kreis monument as the most outstanding
of 1935.
In July 1948, the new Broadway Speedway in Fountain City,
north of Knoxville presented “The Pete Kreis Memorial” midget racing program on
its ¼-mile dirt oval sanctioned by the short-lived Indiana-based Consolidated
Midget Auto Racing Association.
The CMARA racers mainly drove V8-60 Ford powered midgets,
but boasted two stars in Offenhauser-powered midgets – Woody Campbell and Gene
Force, but Walter “Leadfoot” Geis won the race and received the trophy from
Hazen Kreis, Pete’s first cousin. Although the track existed through the 1958 season
it never repeated the “Pete Kreis Memorial Race.”
A sportsman that competed purely for the love of sport, Pete
Kreis never won any AAA races but his driving skills were highly regarded by
fellow competitors (and later car owners) Harry Hartz, Earl Cooper, and Tommy
Milton. Kreis competed in a very dangerous era of automobile racing with
cloth helmets wound up giving his life for the sport, and his sacrifice is
honored with a magnificent monument.
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