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.

The Johnny Shackleford story


part two

Johnny Shackleford's 1948 official driver photograph

courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in

the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

Unlike our modern era of racing where drivers travel between racing dates either in a motorhome, transporter or private airplane, post-war race car drivers often traveled together in groups. Before the creation of the modern system of highways, travel to the race tracks on unlighted two-lane roads could prove just as dangerous and adventurous as the races themselves. During their travels, race car drivers formed strong friendships and John H. "Johnny" Shackleford grew particularly close to fellow dirt track drivers Joie Chitwood, Duke Dinsmore and Travis “Spider” Webb.

Drivers struggled for their shot at glory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, because simply qualifying for the Indianapolis starting field provided a sizeable payday, but unless they had a ride set up in advance, most drivers eschewed the Speedway.


Those drivers believed they could earn more money by racing on the dirt tracks against depleted fields of competitors during the month of May instead of spending their days trying to convince car owner to give them a shot in a competitive car on the big 2-1/2 mile brick-paved oval.

Rather than head to Indianapolis for the 1947 ‘500,’ Johnny Shackleford from Dayton Ohio took part in the 30-lap big car race at Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania on May 4 1947, and finished fourth behind Horn, Dinsmore, and Tommy Hinnershitz.


A week later, Shackleford stopped off in his hometown and handily won the 20-lap AAA Midwestern big car season opener at Dayton Speedway. Driving the ‘Iddings Special’ he finished in a time of eight minutes and 17.2 seconds ahead of a pair of Detroit drivers, Eddie Zalucki and Carl Scarborough.

The ‘Iddings Special,’ sponsored by a pair of brothers, John and Howard who ran an eponymous auto parts store in Greenville Ohio, had been built by Henry Meyer, his father and brother Bob in the basement of Henry’s house on Shakespeare Avenue in Dayton over the winter of 1937-8. Originally equipped with a double overhead camshaft ‘Hal’ four-cylinder racing engine, in the post-war period it was equipped with an Offenhauser engine. 

The next race on the 1947 AAA Midwestern big car schedule was held on May 25 at Funk’s Speedway in Winchester Indiana, a track very similar to Dayton Speedway, as it was high-banked and wickedly fast.  The race was won by Detroit’s Carl Scarborough trailed by Shackleford.

The next round for the 1947 AAA Midwest series came on Sunday June 15 at Dayton Speedway.  Duke Dinsmore took the win on a tragic day as 45-year old racer Elbert “Pappy” Booker perished when his car drifted into the wall and overturned. As his wife and daughter watched from the grandstand, Booker was thrown from his car suffered a skull fracture and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Dayton. 

The following Saturday the AAA Midwest big cars raced at Salem Speedway, in Southern Indiana the third of four similar high-banked oval tracks on the circuit and Pennsylvania Dutch farmer Tommy Hinnershitz picked up the win.


During the afternoon’s first preliminary heat race, the wheels of the cars of Clay Corbitt and Jack Schultz interlocked and both cars flipped wildly up the embankment and out of the track.  Corbitt died on the scene and Schultz was critically injured and died in 1952 never having recovered from his spinal cord injuries. 

On Saturday June 29 the 15-race AAA Midwestern series paid a visit to the Ohio State Fairgrounds track in a race which was won by AAA Eastern “big car “division points leader Bill Holland, who just a month earlier had finished second in his rookie appearance in the 1947 Indianapolis 500-mile race. 


The AAA series returned to Salem Speedway for the race on July 4  and Hinnershitz broke the old record track by six seconds during qualifying, then went on to win the 20-lap feature in record time of eight minutes and four seconds ahead of Harold “Hal” Robson, Jackie Holmes, and Johnny Shackleford. 

29 days later at Salem Speedway, Hinnershitz won again, and then the series moved to the Milwaukee Mile on the grounds of the State Fairgrounds for a rare back to back Thursday-Friday program during the Wisconsin State Fair on August 21 and 22nd. Rex Mays the two-time pre-war AAA National Champion in a rare appearance in a “big car” set fast time on the wide dirt oval both days and won both programs in clean sweeps.


On Wednesday night August 27, Johnny, while still in the lead for the AAA Midwest "big car" championship took advantage of an open date in the Midwestern schedule and raced with the AAA Eastern big cars where he was in the top five in points.

Shackleford’s Midwestern points lead was endangered as on three consecutive Sundays - September, the 7th, 14th and 21st, ‘Spider’ Webb in the Leach Cracraft Offenhauser won the feature races at Dayton, Salem and Winchester respectively.  Ted Horn won the October 12 1947 feature at Dayton Speedway and Webb won for the fourth time during the 1947 season as he won the Midwestern season finale at Salem Speedway. Despite Webb’s late season heroics, Johnny Shackleford was crowned the 1947 AAA Midwest division big car champion with just one victory to his credit. 

Late in the 1947 season, Duke Dinsmore arranged a ride in an Indianapolis car for his friend Shackleford, an Offenhauser-powered car built in 1934 by Clyde Adams. The car was Duke’s “500’ entry from the previous year which was without a driver owned by Fred W Johnston a service station owner in Hamilton Ohio.


Period newspapers identified the car as the 1936 Indianapolis ‘500’ winning car, but in actuality the Adams chassis was the one that Louis Meyer had driven in the 1934 ‘500.’ Mutual friend Spider Webb occasionally drove Johnston’s “big car” and had driven the Johnston-owned Adams chassis in two races during the 1946 season.




Shackleford qualified the Johnston entry for the 1947 Springfield 100 held on September 28 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds mile oval to start from the 15th positon in the 18-car starting field, but the car retired at the halfway point which earned Johnny $258 and 10 AAA championship points.  

On November 2, the newly crowned AAA Midwest champion appeared in the AAA championship race at the Arlington Downs in Texas, but the ‘Johnston Special’ broke a connecting rod inside the four-cylinder engine and Shackleford was unable to complete his qualifying run.  With the points he earned at Springfield, Johnny wound up tied with Hal Robson for 45th place in the 1947 AAA Championship chase.



Prior to heading to Indianapolis, Shackleford appeared in the 1948 AAA Eastern "big car" series opening race at Trenton New Jersey on April 18 and he finished fifth in a race won by Ted Horn.   

While his 1947 championship car results had disappointed, at least Johnny had set his ride for the 1948 Indianapolis 500-mile race with the Johnston #48 machine.  As a rookie driver at the big track, Shackleford was in good company as many of the drivers he had raced with on the dirt tracks - Spider Webb, Lee Wallard, Walt Ader, George Metzler and Jackie Holmes - were Speedway rookies as well.


Early on the final day of 1948 '500' qualifications on Saturday May 29th, Johnny Shackelford was the day's first qualifier in the Johnston Offenhauser posted an average speed of 121.745 miles per hour for his four-lap ten-mile qualifying run.

After Louis Durant qualified the #29 Auto Shippers Special, the field was filled with 33 starters, and the “bumping” process began. One of the drivers ready to try to bump his way into field was Lee Wallard in the “Iddings Special.” Wallard, from upstate New York had passed his Indianapolis Motor Speedway rookie test early in the month in the ancient G&M Duesenberg-powered entry, then on the final day of qualifying May 28, he was behind the wheel of the ‘Iddings Special.’ 





The Iddings entry was the same Henry Meyer-built car Shackleford had driven to the 1947 Midwestern “big car” title, with its wheelbase stretched to be eligible to race at Indianapolis as a “championship car.” Wallard startlingly posted the fifth fastest run of the month with an average speed of 128.420 MPH. 

Spider Webb who had qualified the Anderson Offenhauser the previous weekend at 121.421 MPH had been bumped from the starting field, but came back late in the day behind the wheel of the Louis Bromme-wrenched “Fowler Offenhauser.”


Webb started his run just before the 6 PM deadline, but he pulled into the pit area at the end of his third lap after the yellow caution light had inadvertently flashed on. Officials claimed that they had seen debris on the track, although none was found, and an uproar ensued as Chief Steward Jack Mehan ruled that qualifying was closed for the 1948 Indianapolis 500-mile race.

After lengthy discussions Mehan finally relented and allowed Webb and the #51 car to return to the track and complete his qualifying run. Rather than a complete re-run, Speedway officials counted Webb’s first two laps, and combined that time with the time from his final two laps to record a composite four-lap average speed of 125.454 MPH that displaced his friend Johnny Shackleford from the starting field.

Lee Wallard shown in 1951 wearing his

Champion Spark Plug 100-MPH club jacket earned in 1948

courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in

the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital studies

 

Wallard at 35 years old was the fastest rookie in the 33-car starting field behind the wheel of Henry Meyers’ stretched wheelbase sprint car fitted with a 232 cubic inch Offenhauser engine. Wallard started the 1948 Indianapolis 500-mile race from the 28th position and finished in seventh place. As Wallard completed the full race distance at 109.77 MPH, he earned admittance into the revered Champion Spark Plug 100-mile per hour club.

Although his “Johnston Special” did not make the starting field, Johnny did compete in the 1948 Indianapolis 500-mile race albeit as a relief driver. Joie Chitwood started the Ted Nyquist-owned car originally built by Wilbur Shaw as his “Pay Car” in the 1948 '500,' but Joie needed replacement behind the wheel by lap 54.

Veteran racer Paul Russo climbed in and drove until lap 74, when Chitwood returned, but Joie once again needed relief after he completed his 105th lap.  Johnny Shackleford took over driving duties of the Nyquist Special until lap 137 when he pitted with a leaking fuel tank - the car was retired from the race and placed in 17th position.  

The week after Indianapolis on June 6 1948 Johnny Shackleford took the wheel the #91 ‘Iddings Special’ for the Milwaukee 100 at the dirt Milwaukee Mile in place of Lee Wallard who was worn out after his Indianapolis adventure. Johnny easily qualified for the 18-car starting field, as the seventh fastest car of the 31 cars that posted qualifying times. 

Pole position starter Johnny Mantz led the first 71 circuits until the Offenhauser engine in the J C Agajanian #98 broke a piston and Mantz dropped out of the race. The third place starter Emil Andres picked up the lead in Carmine Tuffanelli’s “Tuffy’s Offy” and held on to win the race as Shackleford finished in seventh one lap behind Andres at the finish. For his efforts in the hour and fifteen minute race, Johnny earned $840 and 60 championship points.

A week later Shackleford and the “Iddings Special,” reconfigured as a “big car” were entered for the Sunday June 13th AAA Midwestern “big car” series race booked at the high-banked oiled dirt half-mile Dayton Speedway.  On the third lap of the day’s 20-lap feature, Shackleford ran in second place behind Ted Horn when he lost control of the car and the Iddings Special swerved into the fence. 

Johnny Shackleford's final moments shown in a

photograph scanned from the June 16 1948

edition of the Middletown Journal newspaper

 

The crowd of 11,000 fans watched in horror as the car began to roll over as it tore out a long section of the upper wooden guard railing at the top of banking.  The blue #91 car disappeared over the embankment then rolled and crashed to ground approximately 40 feet below. Johnny, 34 years old was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Dayton where he died four hours later. John H. Shackelford Junior was laid to rest in the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.

 

The “Iddings Special” was rebuilt following Shackleford’s fatal accident and entered at the 1949 Indianapolis 500-mile race for rookie Johnny McDowell who qualified 27th and finished 18th. Mark Light failed to qualify the Iddings Special for the 1950 Indianapolis 500, then in practice at Indianapolis on Thursday May 24, 1951 rookie driver Jimmy Daywalt spun and hit the fourth turn wall in the “Iddings Special.”


The crash bent the frame and the car could not be repaired in time to make a qualifying attempt. In 1952 Texas rookie driver Jud Larson passed his rookie test in the John Zink Kurtis-Kraft 3000, then stepped out of that car in favor of the ”Iddings Special” but failed to make a qualifying attempt in the Henry Meyer-built machine’s final Indianapolis appearance.

Johnny Shackleford–part one

Johnny Shackleford in a photograph scanned

from the November 17 1945

edition of the Wilson Daily Times in

Wilson North Carolina

John H. “Johnny” Shackleford, Junior was born on November 24 1913 in the northeast Ohio town of Jefferson, but during his racing career he always listed his hometown as Dayton Ohio, which in that era was one of the “hot beds” of Midwestern auto racing.  This author has been unable to find any records of Shackleford’s early racing efforts, but in an article in the May 1 1941 edition of the Van Wert Times Bulletin provides a clue, as it stated that Johnny “will break into the limelight after riding in the shadows the past few seasons.”

That optimism was warranted as for the 1941 season-opening race at the Greenville Motor Speedway Johnny was scheduled to be behind the wheel of a “big car” (today known as a sprint car) owned by Carl Keppler of Springfield Ohio powered by a "copy of the four-cylinder Offenhauser engine built by Keppler himself."  Keppler, a former racer had his driving career cut short with a September 1929 crash at the New Bremen (Ohio) Speedway which shattered his pelvis and left him hospitalized for months afterward.

Photo courtesy of Kem Robertson

Subsequent research with assistance from fellow historian Kem Robertson indicates that the Keppler engine may have started as an Offenhauser copy, but it wound up quite a bit different. The Keppler 16-valve engine photographed when it was apart of Bob McConnell's collection, appears to be considerably different than an Offenhauser engine.  The author is anxious to learn more about Carl Keppler and his engine.

Photo courtesy of Kem Robertson

  

The race scheduled for May 4 1941 sanctioned by the Central States Racing Association (CSRA) on the high-banked dirt ½- mile track located southeast of the town of Greenville Ohio on Eidson Road attracted entries from many famous drivers that included Elbert “Pappy” Booker, Travis “Spider” Webb and Ed Zulacki. The CSRA was founded in February 1936 by a group of track promoters that included Frank Funk with high-banked tracks in Winchester, and Fort Wayne Indiana, Dr. J. K. Bailey of Dayton Speedway and Foster (Oscar) Schultz who promoted the Greenville oval. 

The CSRA was considered an “outlaw” club by the larger and more powerful AAA (American Automobile Association) and drivers that competed in “outlaw” events were not allowed to race in AAA events. Despite the threat of being banned by AAA, many drivers built reputations racing with the CSRA which offered larger purses than AAA races. The CSRA operation, which east of the state of Ohio was known as the Consolidated Racing Association, was run day to day by Norm Witte from an office next door to Dr. Bailey’s ear nose and practice on Clay Street in Dayton.    

Contemporary belief is that racing at Greenville ended at the end of the 1941 season, but in fact Greenville like many tracks continued to race until the Office of Defense Transportation banned automobile racing effective July 31 1942.  Sadly the ban came too late for two drivers Earl “Zook” Harton and Eugene “Woodie” Woodford who died together in a grinding crash at Greenville on May 10 1942.  

Shackleford must have experienced some decent success with the CSRA in the Keppler machine as later in the 1941 season when the CSRA returned to race Greenville, the Piqua Daily Call newspaper noted that the “world speed record holder” Emory Collins was “anxious to tangle with CSRA stars such as Jimmy Wilburn, Ben Musick and Johnny Shackelford who have been burning up the CSRA courses in early season races.” 

During World War II, Shackleford enlisted in the United States Army in February 1944 at Fort Thomas Kentucky and he listed his occupation as auto mechanic with two years of high school education, with his marital status listed as divorced with no dependents. It’s unclear what unit Johnny was assigned to during his brief service stint in the United States Army.

He was back in action in a race car less than a month after the official end of World War II.  Interestingly, the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) allowed the resumption of midget auto racing on January 9 1945, prior to Germany’s surrender in May 1945, with the provision that the cars “operate on non-rationed fuels - industrial alcohol or petroleum distillates, and the tires used must be pre-war stock.” The general auto racing ban was lifted by ODT on August 17, 1945, days after the atomic bomb attacks on Japan but prior to Japan’s formal surrender.   

The 20-lap AAA-sanctioned feature race was held on Sunday September 30 1945 on the one-mile Trenton New Jersey Fairgrounds dirt track.  By joining the AAA ranks, Johnny was now on the pathway to eventually race at auto racing’s crown jewel, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Sadly on the eighteenth lap on the race, Harry Hutchinson lost control of his car entering the first turn crashed through the fence hit several parked cars and was “instantly killed.”

Bill Holland the 1940 and 1941 AAA Eastern champion who would later win the 1949 Indianapolis 500-mile race, tried to avoid the debris from Hutchinson crash and lost control of his car in the second turn, crashed through the wooden fence overturned and injured his left shoulder. The race was halted after the accident with veteran racer Joie Chitwood was declared the winner and Shackleford scored in second place.     

Chitwood, Shackleford and a list of well-known Eastern AAA drivers that included Frank Luptow of Detroit, Carlyle “Duke” Dinsmore of Dayton, “Pappy” Booker, Bill Holland, New Jersey’s Bob Sall, George “Dutch” Culp from Pennsylvania and Milt Marion of Long Island New York were scheduled to participate in a series of AAA sanctioned races in the Carolinas promoted by Sam Nunis. The first race on the tour was scheduled for October 7 1945 at the Greensboro Fairgrounds in north central North Carolina, and then two weeks later those same drivers were in action in another Nunis promotion at the Southern States Fairgrounds in Charlotte North Carolina.

The advertised highlights of these races were the entry of “five $10,000 Millers,” a reference to exotic pre-war dirt track racing cars built by the Harry A. Miller Company of Los Angeles, California. As a point of reference the average family income in 1945 was $2,400, and $10,000 in 1945 would be equivalent to $137,000 today. The North Carolina racing tour also included races at the Rocky Mount Fairgrounds on November 11 (postponed from November 4 by rain) and the finale at the Wilson Fairgrounds on November 18 1945.  

Shackleford opened his 1946 racing season at the end of March on the one-mile dirt track at Lakewood Park in Atlanta Georgia for the AAA-sanctioned “Mike Benton Sweepstakes,” named for the late President of the Southeastern Fair Board.  Before a reported crowd of 34,000 fans, Jimmy Wilburn won the “big car” race in record time as he covered the 20 mile distance in 14 minutes and 28.11 seconds, breaking Billy Winn’s standard set eight years earlier by 16 seconds. Indianapolis ‘500’ veteran Ted Horn finished second, with Chitwood third, Holland fourth and Shackleford in fifth position.

Johnny hadn’t yet been offered a ride at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so Memorial Day 1946 found him racing an AAA “Big Car” at the one-mile oval in Trenton New Jersey. Shackleford drove Joie Chitwood’s Offenhauser-powered machine while Chitwood raced at the big Indianapolis oval. Shackleford won one of the preliminary heat races, and then won the 20-lap feature event over Bill Holland.

Johnny continued to race with the AAA “Back East” during June 1946 with appearances at Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania on June 9, then at the Fairgrounds in Greensboro North Carolina on June 23, where he was billed in promoter Nunis’ pre-race advertising as the ‘Indiana State Champion.”  Thursday July 4th 1946 found Shackleford far to the west as he drove the “Christy Offenhauser” in the “National Championship Auto Races” at Des Moines Iowa.

Johnny, billed as the “western racing champion” scored a “clean sweep” in the July 7 1946 races at Williams Grove Speedway, as he notched the fastest qualifying time, won the “fast” heat race, and then won the feature event, which was called complete after 26 laps following the crash which injured Billy Devore. Johnny was one of the entries for the July 15 races in at Municipal Park in DuBois Pennsylvania which were sponsored by the local DuBois Brewery as part of a program of events billed as the “GI Homecoming Celebration.”  

Shackleford closed out the month of July 1946 with a repeat appearance at Langhorne on the 21st where he won his preliminary heat race and finished second in the feature behind George Robson, then again a week later at Williams Grove Speedway where he won the semi-main event then drove through the field to finish second behind Ted Horn after 1946 Indianapolis ‘500’ winner George Robson’s car broke an oil line on the 19th lap of the 30-lap feature event.

August 1946 found Shackleford on the Nunis Speedways Pennsylvania tour with stops in Bedford on August 10 where he was billed as the “1941 Indiana State Champion” behind the wheel of the Ted Nyquist Offenhauser-powered big car, and Johnny took part in an unusual “match race” pitting the Nyquist car against a midget race car for 10 laps around the Allentown Fair Grounds oval. 

Two weeks later, at Uniontown Speedway Johnny and the other touring “Indianapolis stars” were entered against a field of local drivers that included Otis Stine, Mark Light, and Walt Ader. Johnny, along with Horn, Stine, Ader, Chitwood and many other stars were scheduled to race at Williams Grove on October 20 in the heavily advertised 50-lap added purse “Championship Trophy Race” but the race was cancelled due to rain which ended Shackleford’s 1946 season.   

They called him “Lucky”

Part one- the 1935 & 1936 seasons

William Lloyd Logan was born in Oakland California in 1912 and by 1932 he raced a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in 1/5-mile flat track races. In November 1935 Logan raced a midget car in a series of Sunday afternoon races at San Francisco Stadium located near Bayshore Boulevard at the end of Jerrold Avenue in the city’s Butchertown neighborhood.

Many of the other drivers that raced at the Stadium became Bay Area midget racing legends, a list that included Fred Agabashian, Lynn Deister, Neil Grady, Al Stein, ‘Skeet’ Jones, Newell ‘Dutch’ Van Tassel, and Dave Oliver, and they raced under Charlie Baker’s Midget Auto Racing Association (MARA) banner.  

 

 

The 1/5-mile Stadium flat dirt track introduced midget auto racing to San Francisco with an 11-race program on Saturday evening September 21 also hosted motorcycle races on Thursday nights.  Charley Baker advertised as the “1934 champion”  won the first three evening 30-lap features held on September 21, 28, and October 5 behind the wheel of the #21 Ted Brenneman Special.

A slate of Sunday afternoon races began on November 2; we were unable to find results from the earliest races, but the races on November 17 at the Stadium featured “spinning and crashing almost every other minute” according to an article in the San Mateo Times. Stadium General Manager Sterling Price, told the Times he had been “connected with auto racing for many years, and I’ve never seen so many crashes. Those boys drive like mad.”

During the November 17 30-lap feature won by Skeet Jones, Logan was eliminated when his #74 car ran into the side of Art Armstrong’s #99 and both were eliminated.  November 17 also marked the debut at the Stadium of 17-year old Berkeley driver “Sonny” Rogers billed as the youngest driver on the Pacific Coast.  

A new season of racing began at San Francisco Stadium on Saturday night April 18 1936 and by late April a three-track touring schedule had emerged which already included tracks in Emeryville and Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, and after an April 23 meeting possibly a track in Fresno. Two drivers, Dave Oliver and Bill Larzalere had obtained “screaming new outboard motors” from Wisconsin and Oliver claimed to have “spurned” an offer to race at Indianapolis and chose instead to race the new midget circuit.   

 

On Saturday night May 2, Price’s crew which had been “building over the track to create the fastest 1/5 mile flat track in the world” had their efforts were rewarded as Lynn Deister set a new track record of one minute and 25 ½ seconds during his 5-lap heat race.  Deister than watched as his record was broken in the next race by Al Stein, the 1935 champion, who covered the same distance 1/10 of a second faster. “Bad boy” Van Tassel, who reportedly weighed just 116 pounds, won his second consecutive 30-lap feature in the Ernie Lauck midget.

 

 

The restored Lauck midget

 

The next week it was announced in the San Mateo Times that “in response to popular demand from followers of the sport” the midget race shifted to Friday nights as midget fans found it “impossible to take weekend trips and attend the races.” A tragedy was averted during the season’s first Friday night race on May 8 when 10-year old Allen Berlin jumped over the inside railing and attempted to run across the track and was struck by Lynn Deister’s machine but fortunately suffered only a broken leg.

 

The evening’s 30-lap feature was highlighted by a duel for the lead between Stein and Van Tassel. As reported in the San Mateo Times, Stein repeatedly bumped the tail of Van Tassel’s machine over the last seven laps but could not get past and the Fresno ‘bad boy’ posted his third consecutive win at San Francisco Stadium.

The following week’s races at San Francisco Stadium boasted a 44-car entry list with the late addition of an entry by Art Armstrong who came off recent ‘big car’ wins at Oakland and San Jose Speedways. Lloyd Logan recorded a 5-lap heat race victory, but  Les Dreisbach of Berkeley won the feature over Stein with Van Tassel third with the 30 laps completed in eight minutes and 47 ½ seconds.   

On May 29, a crowd of 3000 fans watched as track records fell at the Stadium. First Van Tassel broke the 8-lap track record only to see Deister reset the record at 2 minutes and 13 ½ seconds, while Al Stein lowered the five-lap track record to one minute and 25 seconds.

 

Dave Oliver, who earlier passed on his chance to race at Indianapolis, found victory lane for the first time in 1936 as he won by feature race by ten feet over Dreisbach, followed by Van Tassel, Agabashian, and Armstrong. The following day at Fresno, the 1936 champion Al Stein broke through for his first feature win of the season.  

On Thursday evening July 25 1936 the San Francisco Stadium added a 25-lap “old timer” race limited to cars built before 1910 with drivers at least 50 years old, to the regular midget racing program.  The fourteen entries included a 1901 Oldsmobile, a 1905 Reo, a 1907 Maxwell, a 1909 Hupmobile, a 1906 Ford, a 1907 Packard and a 1910 Buick.  65-year old George Hoadley in his 1904 Buick was installed as the pre-race favorite as he won a similar race held during the Golden Gate Citizen’s Celebration the year before.  

The most unusual entry in the July “old timers’ derby” was the 1895 Crestomobile, built by the Crest Motor Company in Cambridge Massachusetts, powered by a single-cylinder 3-1/2 horsepower air-cooled engine that drove the front wheels. The spindly 400 pound carriage-style machine was driven by Ed Shapiro of San Francisco, who according to the Oakland Tribune was “the only man living who knows how to run it.”

The “old timer” race driver lineup included an actual veteran race car driver, Eddie Hearne, the winner of 20- and 40-lap races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in September 1910 and a participant in the first International 500-mile Sweepstakes in 1911. Hearne who had retired from open wheel racing in 1927 with eleven AAA race wins to his credit, but still drove a Studebaker factory entry  in stock car races drove a 1908 Hupmobile despite being technically ineligible as he had turned 49 years old five months earlier.          

The August 2 1936 issue of the Oakland Tribune

featured this photograph of George Hoadley

As expected, Hoadley an employee of the Oakland Buick dealer, the Howard Automobile Company and his riding mechanic Bill Reichert romped to victory at an average speed of 30 miles per hour and won by half a lap over the Ford and the Packard. Later in the evening, Van Tassel won his fourth consecutive midget car feature at the Stadium over Deister.

Lloyd Logan was entered in the Sunday August 16 1936 40-lap ‘big car’ race at the one-mile oiled dirt Oakland Speedway sanctioned by the American Racing Association, a group run by Oakland track owner Charlie Curryer. Other notable drivers entered at Oakland Speedway that day  a track actually located in an unincorporated section of Alameda County south of the City of Oakland included Fred Agabashian, ‘Bud’ Rose, Jack McNamara, ‘Herk’ Edwards, Ed Haddad, and Duane Carter. Logan’s #26 “Fitoil Special”  ‘big car’ was fitted with a pair of very unusual features for the day; a roll bar above the nose of the car and a taller roll bar behind the driver.

During pre-race practice on Saturday evening Jack McNamara of San Francisco a racer since 1933, crashed to his death in the red #18 machine.  Around sunset at 7 PM as he exited the unlit fourth turn, McNamara’s car got into the outer wooden guardrail and cartwheeled down the straightaway and came to rest in front of the grandstand. McNamara, 28, was pronounced dead upon arrival at Fairmount Hospital which led Alameda County Deputy Coroner Walter Flierl to recommend that night driving at the unlighted Oakland Speedway be discontinued.  

On Sunday Art Armstrong equaled his lap record in qualifying with a lap of 28.2 seconds and then won the “fast heat” while Logan won the other 10-lap heat race.  Before the start of the feature, Lloyd Logan was selected by his fellow drivers to carry the checkered flag during a tribute lap in McNamara’s memory.

Moments later, at the start of the nine-car feature as the field entered turn one, Carter’s #15 car got into the back of Logan’s machine which sent Logan’s #26 car flipping wildly. During the series of end-over-end flips, Logan was thrown from his machine and Lloyd unconscious landed face down on the track. Carter narrowly avoided the prone Logan, crashed his car through the outer fence and ran to Logan’s aid. 

 

The Oakland Tribune carried these photos of the 1936 Logan-Carter crash

 

Logan was loaded into an ambulance headed to the Fairmount Hospital, and unbelievably while enroute the ambulance was involved in a traffic accident. The driver of the car was cited and both a passenger in the other car and Logan were transported to the hospital. Upon arrival Logan was found to be bruised and scraped but miraculously otherwise uninjured and was transferred to the East Oakland Hospital where he remained overnight.   Once the battered ambulance returned to the Speedway, the seven remaining cars re-started the feature race which was won in dominant fashion by Art Armstrong.   

McNamara a single man who lived with his mother was laid to rest on Tuesday August 18, and the August 20 issue of the Oakland Tribune carried an emotional article written by Alan Ward. He wrote that “McNamara raced for fun, he didn’t need the money. He had a job that paid more than $300 a month” (equal to $5000 today) and noted sadly that “in a little while McNamara will be forgotten by the great majority like Bryan Saulpaugh, Bob Carey, Stubby Stubblefield, Ernie Triplett and a lot more.” Ward closed his article with a personal note - “there is a reason we don’t get pally any more with these fool kids who race around Oakland or any other Speedway. It’s a hard job writing the obituary of a friend.”

With a new nickname “Lucky” Lloyd Logan returned to race at Oakland Speedway two weeks later though Alan Ward wrote in the Tribune that Logan “still walked with a limp and can’t travel faster than a slow walk.” Logan drove the same car which had been in the August 16 accident which looked a little worse for wear and missing the hood, but no longer did fans and other driver mock Logan’s “safety car” as the sturdy roll hoop stood up through the multiple flips and likely saved Logan’s life.

In the next chapter we will examine Lloyd “Lucky” Logan’s increasingly successful racing career.