Fred Agabashian

from the Bay Area to Indianapolis glory

Part three -1958 and a busy retirement 

 

Fred's 1958 IMS portrait in his

Champion Spark Plug 100 MPH club leather jacket

courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection

in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

Bignotti-Bowes Racing Associates entered their pair of Kurtis-Kraft 500G chassis for the 1958 Indianapolis '500' with Fred Agabashian and Johnnie Parsons set to return as the drivers, but in early April, they had to quickly find a driver. Agabashian resigned from the Bowes team in mid-April and accepted a large retainer from trucking magnate Pat Clancy to drive the "City of Memphis Special" another Kurtis Kraft 500G with Danny Quella as chief mechanic.  As Agabashian’s replacement Bowes and Bignotti chose his teammate from the 1956 Federal Engineering team, Bob Veith.

Agabashian came to Indianapolis in May 1958 fully expecting to start his 12th consecutive Indianapolis ‘500’ but the month proved to be a painful experience. Fred made an aborted qualifying attempt on May 17 the first day of qualifying. During a “test hop” in the “Helse Special” during practice on Wednesday May 21 he turned a lap at 143.9 MPH then spun and crashed in turn two.

This accident marked the first time in his twelve-year career that the 44-year old Agabashian crashed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Fred suffered minor injuries to his left leg and hand in the crash and he also complained of pain in his mid-section. Fred took a private car, not an ambulance, to Methodist Hospital where he stayed overnight. 

The new Helse Kuzma chassis was one of three built for 1958 with independent front suspension and was originally assigned to second-year team driver Jimmy Daywalt who left the team in frustration after suitable speed could not be found.  Apparently the handling problems were not traced to the front suspension, but rather the new one-piece fuel tank design. In retrospect, it appears as though the frame was too flexible.  

An article in the May 21 1958 issue of the Indianapolis Star revealed that “just about everything has been tried by builder Eddie Kuzma and the mechanics, even stuffing inner tubes in the fuel tanks and inflating them to keep the fuel from swishing around too much and finally even cutting off some of the fuel tanks,” In addition to cutting off the fuel tank, prior to Agajanian’s crash crew chief Bruce Crower and his crew “rebuilt the Helse car virtually from the ground up” according to the Star. 

Fred's 1958 '500' qualifying photo

Author's collection

 

Three days after the crash on May 24 the third day of time trials Fred spun in the southeast turn on the second lap of his second qualifying attempt and brushed the wall which damaged the car’s front axle. After repairs Fred qualified the ‘City of Memphis’ Kurtis Kraft 500G at a relatively slow 142.135 MPH which bumped Dempsey Wilson from the field and placed Fred at the tail of the field.

On the windy final day of time trials, Wilson climbed into the ‘Sorenson Special’ and bumped Agabashian from the starting field.  Fred completed a four-lap run into the Racing Associates “D-A Lubricants Special” Kuzma backup car but his four-lap average was not fast enough to bump back in and Agabashian’s string of consecutive Indianapolis ‘500’ starts ended at eleven.  

Agabashian and the "City of Memphis Special" wound up as the 34th fastest qualifier and won $500 from the Speedway as the first alternate. In the third turn of the first lap of the 1958 ‘500’ Ed Elisian and Jim Rathmann tangled as they foolishly fought to lead the first lap.

Bob Veith who had replaced Agabashian in the second Bowes KK 500G was run over by Pat O’Connor’s 'Sumar Special' which flipped and O’Connor was killed instantly. In reaction to this accident, for the 1959 season USAC required that all cars have roll bars behind the driver.  In an interview after the race, Freddie told news reporters that "he wasn't too upset to have been bumped" as he had had a premonition of disaster. 

Fred never officially announced his retirement as a race car driver, he simply moved on to the phase of his life for which he had preparing for years.  According to automobile racing historian Chris Economkai, “Agabashian was one of the first racers to realize the value of public relations” and Fred began making public speeches about racing around 1950.

Fred's image appeared in Champion Spark Plug ads like this one for years

 early in his racing career Fred worked in sales at Bob Phillipi’s Lincoln Mercury dealership in Oakland but at the time of his retirement from driving in 1958, Fred was the senior member of the Champion Spark Plug Highway Safety Team, a group of 100 MPH club members who toured the country to speak to high school students about driving safety.  Fred worked for the Champion Spark Plug Company until he retired 1978 and was succeeded by Jerry Grant.  

In 1959, Fred joined the Indianapolis Motor Speedway radio network as the driver expert on the annual 500-mile race broadcast hosted by Sid Collins, and Agabashian’s gravelly voice was heard nationwide providing expert insight on the Memorial Day broadcast through 1965, and again from 1973 to 1977.

Agabashian worked as an USAC observer and later the chief steward of the Mobilgas Economy Run in 1967 and 1968. In the final  Run held in 1968, Fred dropped the checkered flag on contestants as they crossed the finish line at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after the original finish in New York City was abandoned after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.  

Fred remained active and regularly visited local Bay Area tracks and was an annual visitor to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until he passed away in October 1989 at his home in Alamo California.  His daughter reportedly still lives in the home and his office  remains just as it was when Fred was alive.  
 

For his career accomplishments Fred Agabashian is an inductee into the Bay Cities Racing  Association (BCRA) Hall of Fame, the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame, the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AARWBA) Hall of Fame and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Auto Racing Hall of Fame. 

 

Fred Agabashian

from the Bay Area to Indianapolis glory

Part two from 1952 to 1957 

Fred with his wife Mabel daughter Joanne and son Fred Junior posed in front of the 1949 Indianapolis 500 pace car. Photo appears courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

In 1952, Fred Agabashian took on his ultimate “research and development” project as his drove the “Cummins Diesel Special.”  Rumors about the car began in November 1951 as news reports claimed that the Cummins Engine Company had invested over $150,000 (nearly $1-1/2 million today) on their entry which some reporters predicted “could revolutionize racing.” Don Cummins formally announced the entry in a press conference at company headquarters in Columbus Indiana on January 19. Later in the month, photographs emerged which showed Agabashian seated in the cockpit of the still-unpainted low-slung Kurtis chassis that was less than two feet high at the cowl.

Cummins press photo from the authors' collection

The Cummins entry powered by an Elliott turbocharged fuel-injected 6-cylinder 400-cubic inch ‘JBS’ diesel engine that was laid on its right side 5 degrees off horizontal in the chassis made its first practice laps at the Speedway on April 19 1952. While the ground-breaking engine configuration lowered the car’s center of gravity and provided less drag through the air, even with extensive use of aluminum and magnesium the car was heavy at over 2100 pounds, but with a factory claimed 380 horsepower on tap it proved fast. The Cummins machine featured dual shock absorbers and two brakes per wheel.

Agabashian admitted later that he “sandbagged” during practice runs early in the month of May, and on Pole Day, May 17, Fred shocked the crowd with a one–lap track record of 139.104 MPH and a four-lap average speed of 138.01 MPH.  Agabashian and the Cummins Diesel grabbed the pole position and the track record away from Andy Linden who had set a new four-lap record of 137.002 MPH earlier in the day.

By the end of the time trial run the Cummins’ overheated Firestone tires were beginning to shred their tread, which raised concerns about the race, but Fred’s startling record run and pole starting position made him and the Cummins Diesel nationally recognized names overnight. The following weekend, first Bill Vukovich in Howard Keck’s new Kurtis 500A roadster and then veteran Chet Miller in the front-wheel drive Novi supercharged V-8 eclipsed the Cummins’ record speed, as Miller finally set the new one-lap standard of 139.6 MPH.

The mighty Cummins Diesel on display inside the company museum

Author's photo

On race day, the slow pace of the start allowed the field to get away from Agabashian before the diesel’s turbocharger built up boost pressure to allow maximum power. While running in fifth place the car began to trail black smoke, and a couple of long pit stops, the Cummins was retired with 71 laps completed without explanation, but company officials later claimed the car suffered a clogged turbocharger inlet which caused the engine to overheat. The following day Cummins officials announced that the car would not return for the 1953 ‘500’ but the attendant publicity paid dividends, as Cummins introduced the diesel fuel injection system tested on the race car in production models on July 1, 1954.  

Although the Cummins Diesel Special only held the Speedway track record for a week, and had a less-than stellar race performance in its only race, the unlikely story of a diesel engine car that won the pole at Indianapolis made the car (and its driver) an iconic part of Speedway history.   In January 1953, Fred Agabashian now nearly 40 years old was named by Chicago speed shop owner Anthony “Andy” Granatelli as the drive of a “special new” $25,000 Kurtis-Kraft 500B chassis.

Granatelli, one of Fred’s 1951 AAA season car owners, went the conventional route, as  the car sponsored by Martin Skok’s Elgin Piston Pin Company of Elgin Illinois was powered by a 270-cubic inch Offenhauser engine. The blue and red-trimmed #59 roadster was one of the fastest cars on track during practice early in the month, and Fred posted the second fastest average speed in qualifying, 137.546 MPH, and earned his third straight front row start in the Memorial Day Classic.   

The 1953 Indianapolis 500-mile race is frequently remembered for its intense heat, with the air temperature that reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit (at the time it tied with 1919 as the second hottest race on record) and the track temperature which reportedly topped 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The intense heat and humidity caused many drivers to request a relief driver. Six drivers required medical treatment but driver Carl Scarborough waited too long, collapsed after he climbed out of the ‘McNamara Special’ on lap 70 and later died in the infield hospital.

Fred Agabashian led his first lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when leader Bill Vukovich pitted on lap 49, but Vukovich retook the lead when Fred pitted the next lap. Agabashian requested relief during his pit stop on lap 105 and veteran midget driver Paul Russo whose own entry fell out earlier drove the #59 entry the rest of the way to the finish.  

At the drop of the checkered flag, the Elgin/Grancor Special was initially reported to have finished in second place behind winner Vukovich one of only two drivers who finished the race without relief. Reporter Harold McClelland wrote that late in the race the Granatelli crew believed their car was a lap ahead of Art Cross and ordered Russo to slow. The team later realized that Cross’ “Springfield Welding Special” was on the same lap as Russo apparently finished just a car length ahead of Cross.

Initial news reports stated that the Agabashian/Russo combination completed the 500-mile distance in 3:56:32.25 at an average speed of 126.830 MPH while Art Cross finished with an elapsed time of 3:56:32.56 to average 126.827 MPH. When the official results were posted by AAA officials the next day, after a “electric time recheck” by Clifford Rigsbee the director of timing and scoring the Elgin/Grancor Special dropped to fourth behind Cross and Sam Hanks.  Granatelli immediately protested the finish and this initial protest was denied.

The two-position change cost car owner Granatelli $14,350 who continued to contend that his car finished second, and he was granted an appeal hearing by “500-mile motor speedway officials” on June 11 with “a decision to announced later” according to a United Press (UP) wire report.   There was “no indication when a final decision would be reached” according to a report from the Associated Press (AP) which noted that “the mix-up resulted from the complicated system used in checking the number of laps made by each car.  During the 200 turns of the 2-1/2 mile track, a lap is sometimes missed by the checkers.” The author did not find any follow-up stories on the Granatelli protest, and the AAA historical records list Agabashian and Russo as the fourth place finishers.   

In the meantime Agabashian took part in a ten-week tour with the “Irish Horan Hell Drivers” automobile thrill show which began June 2. Fred performed primarily public relations work, although he also reportedly put on several “precision driving exhibitions.” 

For the 1954 Indianapolis ‘500’ Agabashian was nominated to drive the ‘Merz Engineering Special’ a brand new Kurtis Kraft 500C roadster with 270-cubic inches of Offenhauser power that was “tilted 36 degrees.” The car was owned by Indianapolis businessman and Democratic Party political boss Miklos Sperling. Several years earlier, Sperling purchased Merz Engineering from founder Fred Merz who drove at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the earliest day including four of the first six International 500-mile sweepstakes races.  The new maroon and white car arrived at Indianapolis late, only a few days before the first weekend of time trials, but while he waited Fred test-drove the Chinetti Ferrari V-12 assigned to Danny Oakes.

The Kurtis cars assigned to Fred and defending ‘500’ champion Bill Vukovich were not ready to qualify the first weekend, and after it arrived Agabashian called and asked his friend and former car owner George Bignotti to come to Indianapolis and help out the short-handed Sperling crew. This marked the beginning of Bignotti’s magical 29-year career at the Speedway that earned him seven ‘500’ wins.

Fred qualified the “Merz Engineering Special” on Sunday May 23rd with the fourth slowest average speed of 137.746 MPH and started from the 24th positon. Fred drove a smart race on Memorial Day and finished in sixth position, completing the 500 miles distance three and half minutes behind repeat winner Bill Vukovich. As he completed the entire 500-mile distance without relief with an average speed of 128.771 MPH, Fred Agabashian earned his membership in the exclusive Champion Spark Plug Company 100-MPH hour club and its treasured leather jacket.   After the race, mechanic Frankie DelRoy found the Kurtis chassis cracked in two places.

Once again the Indianapolis Motor Speedway suffered timing and scoring problems during the 500-mile race.  At the Victory banquet the night following the race Tony Hulman was unable to present the check for $500 to the driver with the fastest lap during the race because the “timing crew had not figured that one out in time.”

A Champion Spark Plug matchbook from the author's collection

shows Agabashian's 1955 entry

Agabashian drove in the 1955 and 1956 Indianapolis 500-mile races for car owner Dan Levine of Detroit in the ‘Federal Engineering Special’ named after the Levine family’s Detroit-based fixture and die-making company. The team was managed by Indianapolis Motor Speedway legend Russell Snowberger who been at the Speedway since 1927 as a driver, car builder, and mechanic, assisted by veteran mechanic and car builder Francis “Frank” Bardazon.

In 1955 Agabashian was the replacement for Larry “Crash” Crockett was killed in an AAA Eastern Division ‘big car’ crash in March 1955 at Langhorne Pennsylvania.  Agabashian was assigned to drive the team’s new Kurtis 500D chassis while rookie Chuck Weyant drew the Kurtis 3000 upright chassis which had been driven to Stark-Wetzel Rookie-of-the-Year honors the previous year by former track roadster racer Crockett. At Snowberger’s direction, Kurtis-Kraft Inc. had built the 500D with a wheelbase four inches longer in the cockpit area to accommodate Crockett’s height.

On the second day of the 1955 time trials, Agabashian put the #14 yellow with blue trim Kurtis into the starting field on the inside of the second row. 1955 was the year that “Pole Day” was windy and the drivers allegedly agreed that no one would make a qualifying run, until Jerry Hoyt went out near closing time in the “Jim Robbins Special.” Tony Bettenhausen was the only other driver to complete his timed run on the first day.

With his own car in the field Fred turned to help his teammate. Fred was helpful to rookie drivers, as remembered by Rodger Ward in 1989. "He wouldn't force things on you, but if you asked him, he would always help you. His philosophy was: If you make a mistake on the race track, I might be behind you. He recognized it was a dangerous sport, and there was quite a transition in those days between what we normally raced and going to Indianapolis."

Rookie Weyant made his first qualifying attempt in the yellow and blue #41 on the third day of time trials and the second-year 32-year old rookie spun in the fourth turn on his fourth and final lap. The car spun several times but did not hit anything and came to a stop pointed the right direction, so Weyant drove into the pits, the crew changed the tires and he want back out and qualified 25th.  On Race Day 1955, Freddie spun two full revolutions and into the infield off the two turn in the oil dropped by the surprise pole siting car, the “Jim Robbins Special.” 

Fred's 1956 '500 qualifying photo  appears courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

In 1956, the environment was different at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as the AAA Contest Board announced it would quit sanctioning races in August 1955 and had been replaced by a new organization, the United States Auto Club (USAC). Agabashian was joined on the 1956 Federal Engineering team by a driver he knew well; Speedway rookie and future BCRA champion Bob Veith, who had committed to drive the entire season for Federal Engineering and thus was assigned Levine’s newest car, a Kurtis 500E, the only one ever built by Kurtis-Kraft.

Fred easily qualified for the 1956 ‘500’ and started from the seventh position. Qualifying the first day freed Agabashian’s time so he could help Snowberger and Veith sort out the handling problems with the new car and Veith eventually qualified 23rd.  Freddie was in eighth place when he had to pit for the first time on lap 15, and he continued to make a number of pit stops for various mechanical problems and Agabashian lost four laps and he finished the 1956 ‘500 in twelfth place.     

For the 1957 Indianapolis 500-mile race Agabashian was reunited with his old midget car owner and friend George Bignotti with fellow Californian Johnny Boyd in a pair of new Kurtis-Kraft 500G models powered by 270-cubic inch Offenhauser engines sponsored by the Bowes Seal Fast Company of Indianapolis.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway facility much changed from the 1956 running of the ‘500,’ with a new concrete pit lane separated from the racing surface by a concrete wall, a new eight-story control tower that replaced the ancient Pagoda, and new grandstands. The track was completed paved with asphalt except for 650 yards of the main straightaway. With this new configuration the cars could be lighter as they did not have to be built as ruggedly as years past to withstand the pounding of the uneven track surfaces.

There was a new car at the Speedway in 1957 the Belond Exhaust Special built and owned by long-time crew chiefs George Salih and Howard Gilbert, who gambled everything they had on their new car, as they mortgaged their homes to get the money to complete the car and pay Quinn Epperly to build the aluminum body. Their new car used a design concept with which Agabashian was intimately familiar - its four-cylinder Offenhauser engine was laid nearly on its side only 18 degrees from horizontal.

Salih and Gilbert had closely studied the 1952 Cummins Diesel Special and together they worked out a way to get the oil to properly circulate in the Offenhauser engine in the nearly flat positon. Like the Cummins Diesel, the “laydown” engine lowered the car’s center of gravity and allowed a smaller profile to face the wind, but unlike the diesel, the “Belond sidewinder” was lightweight. 

After practically ruling the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the middle of the decade of the nineteen fifties, by 1957 Frank Kurtis’ latest designs faced competition from new lighter cars built by AJ Watson. The 500G was designed by Frank Kurtis as a “dual purpose” roadster that could be raced on the 2-1/2-mile oval in Indianapolis as well as the shorter one-mile paved and dirt ovals. As with most compromise designs the Kurtis 500G fell short of expectations. With the opening of practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the design proved to be handful to drive and worse yet, not immediately fast. 

The Bowes Seal Fast team worked together and solved the Kurtis 500G’s handling quirks in time to qualify well on the first day of time trials   Freddie qualified fourth with a four-lap average of 142.557 MPH, while Johnny Boyd was just a tick slower at 142.102 MPH to start alongside Agabashian in the second row of the eleven rows of three.

On race day, apparently in an effort to focus attention on the new pit lane, the field started single file from pit lane, which created chaos. In the confusion, as Elmer George, the track owner’s son-in-law maneuvered through the field to reach his ninth starting sport, he rear-ended Eddie Russo’s car and knocked both cars from the race before the green flag flew. Once the race started, both the “Bowes Seal Fast Specials” ran near the front of the field until they both suffered problems in the pit area. 

Johnny Boyd ran in third place as he made his first pit stop, but the stop took over two minutes, which dropped him far back in the running order, although he was able to recover to sixth place by the time the checkered flag fell.  Freddie Agabashian likewise was scored in third place when he made a pit stop on lap 100 and a fire erupted.

The fire was extinguished, but the fuel tank had split from the sudden internal pressure and Fred’s car was eventually retired on lap 107. Veteran Sam Hanks in the radical “Belond Exhaust Special” took the race lead the first time on lap 36 and led a total of 136 laps including the last 65 to win the 1957 ‘500’ in dominant fashion.

Coming up in the final installment we will take a look at the last year of Fred Agabashian’s Indianapolis career and his busy retirement.

Stories behind the early Indianapolis ‘500’ radio broadcasts

 

The basic facts concerning the early history of radio broadcasts of the Indianapolis 500-mile race are well-known- the first broadcasts of the race took place on local area radio stations in 1922. The two stations were WLK, Indianapolis’ first radio station, run by Purdue electrical engineering graduate Francis Hamilton from his parent’s barn, and WHO, Indianapolis’ second radio station, which was owned by electric equipment and radio manufacturer, Hatfield Electric Company.

Chances are that those brief radio updates in 1922 were not very clear or the signals carried very far considering the low power of the stations’ transmitters.  Throughout the middle nineteen twenties, Indianapolis station WFBM, owned by the Merchants Heating and Light Company, and Chicago radio station WGN carried updates during those races.

The major step forward came in 1928 when the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) provided a nationwide radio broadcast of the last hour the 16^th annual International 500-mile Sweepstakes. NBC’s ‘Red’ network only covered the United States as far west as Denver, Colorado, so NBC added in their year-old ‘Orange’ network, comprised of seven stations up and down the West Coast, which received the broadcast via shortwave relay from Denver.  

The broadcast on May 30 1928 was sponsored by the John Warren Watson Company of Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The purpose of the company’s sponsorship, stated in the May 26 1928 issue of Automotive Industries magazine was to “honor the race drivers and bring home to Americans a higher appreciation of the work of the drivers in contributing to the advancement of the modern automobile.” There was of course another motive in sponsoring the broadcast – to sell more of the company’s main product, the Watson “Stabilator.” We’ll get into the details of the broadcast later, but first let’s learn about John Warren Watson and learn about “Stabilators.”

The Watson ”Stabilator” is simply described an automatic friction brake which acted to limit an automobile’s suspension spring recoil. Early shock absorbers, which were being developed, worked well on large bumps, but were not very effective in controlling minor motions.  Watson claimed that the “Stabilator” checked the spring’s recoil in proportion to the recoil force and prevented the car’s wheel from unloading and coming off the road which made for an uncomfortable ride, tire slippage and increased tire and brake wear.

The manufacturer, the John Warren Watson Company advertised that “Stabilators” were for everyone; “the poor man insists on Stabilators because of the hundreds of dollars they will save him,” and “the rich man insists on Stabilators because of the luxurious comfort and safety which they provide.”  Watson’s literature stated that without “Stabilators,” wheel unloading occurred 20% of the time, while with “Stabilators” installed on all four corners, the uncontrolled bouncing happened less than 2% of the time.

The Watson device was relatively simple with just four parts – weatherproof front cover, shoe and strap assembly, spring assembly and the brake attached to the weatherproof back cover.  The John Warren Watson Company held sixteen patents, all which related to the basic design of their device, which was tailored to each particular automobile manufacturer and model.

To install on each corner of their customer’s car, a Watson licensed dealer followed a detailed 14-step installation procedure followed by a 6-step adjustment process that used a special “Stabilator” wrench.  Once their cars were outfitted, car owners were instructed to never grease or oil the “Stabilators” and to carefully monitor their tire pressures for best performance.  

John Warren Watson stock certificates had a precise drawing of the factory

  

The John Warren Watson Company’s manufacturing factory, built in 1927 by William Steele & Sons Co., engineers & constructors alongside the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks near the intersection of Harrison Street and Tulip Avenue in Philadelphia stretched over six city blocks, with its own powerhouse and 125-foot high red brick smokestack.

The company’s namesake and President, John Warren Watson, started his business career around 1906 as the chief investor and President the American Bronze Company which produced non-granular bronze bushings and bearings for leading automotive manufacturers which included Packard, Locomobile, Maxwell, and later Stutz and Duesenberg, as well truck manufacturers Case and Mack. During World War One, American Bronze cast bearings and bushings which used an alloy of 86 ½ % copper, 11 % tin and 2 ½ % zinc were used in Curtiss and Duesenberg airplane engines.

Mr. Watson left the presidency of American Bronze to form his eponymous company in 1919, although he remained on the Board of Directors of the American Bronze Corporation. John Warren Watson was considered by automakers as an authority on the engineering required for a smooth ride in an automobile. For the 1927 model year, Watson “Stabilators” were standard factory equipment on Cadillac, Chrysler, Duesenberg, DuPont, Franklin, Hudson, Isotta-Fraschini, Jordan, LaSalle, Locomobile, McFarlan, Nash, Packard, Peerless, Studebaker, Stutz, and Willys Knight automobiles.

John Warren Watson's Duesenberg Convertible Victoria

Watson and his wife Mary had a large home in Wayne Pennsylvania, 30 miles west of Philadelphia, and a 776-acre estate near Pinehurst North Carolina that included a 70-acre artificial lake that Watson had created by building a dam. Watson owned several exclusive luxury cars which included a 1931 Duesenberg Model J long-wheelbase Rollston-bodied Convertible Victoria and a custom bodied 1927 Chrysler Imperial Sportif (sport) Convertible built by Locke & Company of Rochester, New York. Both the Duesenberg and the Chrysler were donated to the Henry Ford Museum after John Warren Watson’s death.   

John Warren Watson, described in the press as 'movie-star handsome,' counted most of the leaders of the automotive industry as his personal friends, including Edsel Ford and Fred Duesenberg. In a 1989 interview conducted 
for the Edsel B. Ford Design History Center, Gordon Buehrig, the chief body designer for Duesenberg Motor Company, related Watson’s role in the preventable death of Fred Duesenberg.

Duesenberg was headed home to Indianapolis from New York and stayed overnight at Watson’s Pennsylvania home. Before Fred left the next morning, July 2, 1932, in a Murphy-bodied Duesenberg, Watson went out to the car with Fred and Watson observed that the car’s tires had a lot of miles on them. Watson later related to Buehrig that he told Fred, "You shouldn't drive that car with those slick tires.” 

Fred did anyway and later that day Duesenberg lost control of the car and crashed on the Lincoln Highway in the mountains outside of Jennerstown, Pennsylvania. Fred Duesenberg but while he hospitalized for his injuries following the accident he contracted pneumonia and died on July 26 1932.  

The John Warren Watson Company advertised heavily in the automotive trade magazines and the highly popular Saturday Evening Post. In 1926, golfer Grantland Rice and race driver Harry Hartz appeared in a series of print advertisements endorsing Watson “Stabilators.” The text of the Hartz advertisement that appeared in the August 16, 1928 issue of the Saturday Evening Post entitled "RELAX" read in part:

“The smart race car drivers - those who win and last - seize every opportunity to relax - momentary pauses at the pit or even during the whirl of the race itself to soften the tension of over-tensed nerves. There must be relaxation in the wild whirl of race driving to insure rested steady nerves for the final effort. Either they relax of something cracks.

Harry Hartz stands out as probably the most consistent and dependable driver of the automotive race track. In more than four-fifth of all the championship events in which he has competed, he has been among the first three to finish.

Hartz attributes no small part of his success in his ability to relax. After having experienced the value of relaxed motoring in six other Stabilated cars, he recently refused to accept delivery of a new car for his personal use until it was equipped with Watson Stabilators.”

In 1928, Watson introduced Type AA “Stabilators” for ‘light’ cars which sold for $28 for a set of four ($388 today) plus installation. ‘Light cars’ were defined by Watson as including those made by Chevrolet, Dodge, Pontiac, Nash and Whippets. The advertisements claimed that with Watson “Stabilators” installed, “light cars can ride the roughest roads at forty.”   

The NBC broadcast of the 1928 Indianapolis 500-mile was anchored by legendary announcer Graham McNamee. McNamee, who always opened his broadcasts with his tagline "good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience," was voted America’s most popular announcer in 1925.

During his career, Graham McNamee’s name was synonymous with radio coverage of such major sporting events as the World Series, the Rose Bowl, and the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney 1927 boxing match (which earned him an appearance on the cover of the October 3, 1927 Time magazine) as well as national political conventions and presidential inaugurations.

Articles published in newspapers in the days before the race on Decoration Day 1928 explained that “continuous broadcasting from the historic track will be conducted during the last hour of the race.  Graham McNamee will be stationed at the microphone high above the track to describe the final hour of the famous race for the first time over a national network.” The program’s start time was advertised as 2 PM on the East Coast, with the provision that “the exact beginning will be governed by the speed of the racing machines.”

Assuming that the broadcast began on time, listeners would have tuned in around lap 160 and heard McNamee describe the action with Louisiana native Tony Gulotta in the race lead with the supercharged and intercooled 91-cubic inch Miller “Stutz Blackhawk Special” over rookie Jimmy Gleason in a factory Duesenberg entry, with fellow rookie Louis Meyer’s gold Miller in third place. On lap 181, Gulotta, whose Miller entry was owned by Frank Lockhart’s widow, was forced to pit with a clogged fuel filter, while at the same time the radiator in Gleason’s Duesenberg began leaking water onto the magneto.

The misfortunes that befell Gulotta and Gleason handed the lead to Louis Meyer who went on to lead the final nineteen laps to post his first of three 500-mile race victories.  Donald Davidson relates that Graham McNamee later stated quite emphatically that the start of the Indianapolis “500” was the most spectacular sight he had ever witnessed.

McNamee and the NBC network returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway through 1931 with similar “last hour” coverage. In 1931, the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company sponsored the program with Raymond Firestone as a guest during the broadcast.   

There was no radio coverage of the Indianapolis 500-mile race in 1932. In an article published in the Indianapolis News two days before the race, General Manager T.E. “Pop” Myers stated “radio in competition with newspapers….is unwilling to compensate financially for entertaining its listeners. It has been decided to permit the newspapers of the world to tell the complete and exclusive story of the race.”   NBC Radio returned the following year, 1933, and NBC coverage continued until 1938, in some years in addition to the finish, the network carried live segments at the start with updates during the course of the race.  

After 1932, NBC returned but did not hold an exclusive, as the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network also covered the Indianapolis ‘500’ in the late 1930’s. The CBS programs were anchored by Ted Husing, who like McNamee, had covered political events, World Series games, track and field events and horse races. Later in his career, Ted Husing briefly appeared in the MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer) automobile racing film “To Please a Lady” which starred Clark Gable and Barbra Stanwyck as the Speedway public address and radio announcer.

From 1939 to 1950, the Mutual Broadcasting System transmitted coverage of the Indianapolis ‘500’ nationwide.   This was a monumental achievement because before December 1936, the Mutual network consisted of just four stations - WGN in Chicago, WLW in Cincinnati, WXYZ in Detroit and WOR in Newark New Jersey but that changed when the twelve-station Don Lee Broadcasting System, the leading regional network on the West Coast, changed its affiliation from CBS to Mutual, and Mutual became a nationwide network.

Don Lee, with 46 General Motors Corporation dealerships up and down the West Coast, had expanded into radio in 1926. Lee’s dealerships took orders for custom-bodied Cadillacs which were built by Don Lee Coach & Body Works which employed a promising young metalworker named Frank Kurtis. Don Lee died in 1934, at age 53 and his estimated $9 ½ million business empire was inherited by his 28-year old bachelor son Thomas Stewart Lee. “Tommy” inherited but only after an extended 14-year legal battle with Don Lee’s 24-year old wife, Geraldine, to whom Don had been married three months and had omitted from his will.

 

Under Tommy Lee's leadership, the Don Lee brand sponsored a pair of United Racing Association (URA) midget racing cars with bodies built by Frank Kurtis and was an entrant in four Indianapolis 500-mile races.  Tommy Lee entered his 1932 Alfa Romeo P3 ‘monoposto’ (single seat) in the 1946 Indianapolis 500 as the “Don Lee Special.” 

The Alfa Romeo, which had earlier competed in the 1939 and 1940 Indianapolis 500-mile races, was driven by ‘big car’ veteran Hal Cole. Cole qualified the screaming supercharged red car for the fourth starting position, but early in the ‘1946 500’ the Alfa Romeo lost a wheel and later retired with just 16 laps completed with a terminal oil leak and finished 32th.

The ‘Don Lee’ Alfa returned for the 1947 running Indianapolis ‘500 ‘with 40-year-old driver Ken Fowler whose only previous start at Indianapolis had come ten years earlier. Fowler’s teammate was Dennis 'Duke' Nalon behind the wheel of the mighty pre-war 1939 two-stage supercharged V-12 powered Mercedes W154.  Nalon posted the second fastest average speed in qualifying, over 128 MPH, but the Mercedes fell out on lap 119 when a replacement piston in the Mercedes engine broke and then two laps later, the Alfa retired with a broken axle.

The ‘Don Lee’ 450-horsepower Mercedes W154 returned for the 1948 Indianapolis ‘500,’ driven by 46-year old veteran of 14 ‘500s’ Chet Miller, while midget “hot shoe” and Indianapolis rookie Mack Hellings drove Lee’s new Kurtis Kraft 2000, chassis number 319 powered by a 270-cubic inch displacement 4-cylinder Offenhauser engine. Miller’s Mercedes retired on lap 108 with a terminal oil leak, but Hellings and the KK 2000 finished the ‘500’ in fifth place.

During the early nineteen forties, Tommy Lee suffered serious head, neck and back injuries in a passenger car accident and afterwards, either due to possible brain damage in the accident or the side effects of powerful pain medications, Tommy’s behavior became erratic. On August 28, 1948, less than a month after final settlement of his father’s will, Tommy Lee was declared mentally incompetent, with control of his financial affairs given to an uncle by marriage, and Tommy was placed under the personal guardianship of his aunt, Nora Patee. Tommy was institutionalized first in Pasadena, then later in Palm Springs.

Photo of Clark Gable in the "Mike Brannan Special" appears courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies 

The ‘Don Lee Special’ Kurtis Kraft entry was driven in 1949 ‘500’ again by Mack Hellings, but the Offenhauser engine broke a valve on lap 172.  During the 1949 filming of “To Please a Lady,” the MGM studio purchased the car from Tommy Lee and had it re-numbered to became the red #77 “Mike Brannan Special” driven in the film by Clark Gable’s character.   

On Friday January 13 1950 Tommy Lee was temporarily released from a Palm Springs hospital and flown by pricate plane to Los Angeles an appointment with his dentist, Dr. E.J. Thee. Tommy was dropped off in front of the Pellissier Building on Wilshire Boulevard, but instead of taking the elevator to the dentist’s office, he went to the twelfth floor, took a few puffs off a cigarette and leapt to his death through a fire escape window. Lee’s body was found on the roof of the adjacent Wiltern Theatre nine floors below moments later by his nurse Jeanne Shiffler. Tommy’s $8 million estate, spelled out in a 24-word will, was finally settled 18 months after his death.  

The Mutual System broadcasted the ‘500’ from 1939 to 1941 and from 1946 to 1950, all with anchor Bill Slater and sponsorship from the Perfect Circle Piston Ring Company of Hagerstown Indiana.  In 1951 Mutual wanted to increase their advertising rates, but after extended negotiations, Perfect Circle pulled out as the sponsor, and Mutual dropped the ‘500’ broadcast from their schedule.

Just days before the ‘500,’ Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials including President Wilbur Shaw scrambled to arrange coverage with the Indianapolis Mutual affiliate, WIBC-AM. The 1951 race updates were delivered by WIBC announcer Sid Collins with the feed then sent from the WIBC studios to 25 other Mutual affiliates. These 25 stations later formed the nucleus of the IMS Radio Network which debuted in 1952, which broadcast the first ‘500’ heard from start to finish in 1953, a tradition which continues through the present day.