AIR HEADS Part One

I suppose it seemed like a good idea in the beginning. There were three serious contestants, and a $50,000 first place prize.  But in retrospect, it should have been obvious that nobody was going to collect a dime of that money.  It was 1911; flying was still brand new and the world’s first two pilots were still flying - Wilbur and Orville Wright - and still learning to fly.

The world's third pilot was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. He died on 17 September, 1908. 

In that same crash Orville Wright was also badly injured. He would never fly again.

The second famous pilot to die in that first generation of pilots, was Charles Stewart Rolls (of Rolls-Royce fame) (above),  in a 1910 crash.  Considering there were only about 100 men (and one woman) with flying licenses in America in 1911, two percent was an appalling death  rate, bad enough to make you wonder why anybody would have wanted to even try flying, let alone try flying across America, from coast to coast.

The world’s 49th licensed pilot was a shy, cocky, 6’4” thirty-something, cigar smoking, playboy and adrenaline junkie with a hearing loss and a speech impediment named Calbraith Perry Rogers (above -right). He was a romantic who favored action over words, as proven by the way he met his wife, 20 something Mabel Groves (above, left).  He saw her slip off a dock and fall into the water.  So assuming she was drowning,  he jumped in and pulled her to safety. Within a few months he married her, despite the hat.   Cal approached flying with the same spontaneity as his love life,  but it was a passion which quickly developed into a mission..

Having seen his first airplane on a visit to Dayton, Ohio, in June of 1911,  Cal took the full Wright Brother’s flight course (above),  all 90 minutes of it.  Mabel explained that flying filled the hole in his life left by his deafness which had excluded a military career.  It was, she said "the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle". 

Then Cal talked his mother, Maria, into loaning him $5,000 so he could buy a Wright Model B Flyer “E-X”. The "X" was for experimental – which was a joke because in 1911 every “airplane” was experimental.  But Cal may also have been the origin of the phrase to “take a flyer”,  because just two months later, in August, he entered his new Wright Flyer in an air show in Chicago and took home third prize, worth $11, 285.   Not bad: Cal had been a pilot for 60 days and already he had made six grand profit.  He suspected there might be money in this flying thing.

And this was confirmed in October of 1910 when the Hearst newspaper chain had offered $50,000 to the first pilot to make it across the continent in 30 days or less.  The offer was set to expire on 10 October.  So with his self supplied confidence,  Cal decided to go for it. Orville Wright tried to warn him. "There isn't a machine in existence that can be relied upon for 1,000 miles,  and here you want to go over 4,000.  It will vibrate itself to death before you get to Chicago."   But Cal refused to give up the idea.  He explained, "It's important because everything else I've done was unimportant."  Faced with that level of stubbornness,  Orville tried to look at the bright side. At least the Wright B Flyer was so light, said Orville "six good men could carry it across the country."

 What Cal needed, as any NASCAR driver can tell you, was a sponsor.  He found his ‘sticker sucker’ in  Mr. J. Odgen Armour, owner of Armour Meat Packing Company, and his new soft drink called “VIN FIZ”.   Allegedly it was grape favored soda water, but one critic thought it tasted more like  “a fine blend of river sludge and horse slop”   With a product like that Mr. Amour was going to need a heck of an advertising campaign. Enter Cal and his flying bill board.

With a guarantee of $23,000 from Amour, and a bonus of $5 per mile east of the Mississippi River, and $4 per mile to the west of the "big muddy",  and a corporate three rail car support train complete with a reservoir of spare parts, fuel and mechanics, and sleeping car accommodations for Mable, Cal’s mother Maria,  his cousin, his head mechanic Charlie Taylor, two other mechanics, two general assistants and assorted reporters from the Hearst news service, the flight was starting to look possible.

Armour even threw in an automobile (above) to track down Cal whenever he crash landed . With that much corporate funding behind him, Cal figured he had it all figured out. The first problem was that, before Cal even got airborne, his "Vin Fiz" was already in third place.

First off, from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, was motorcycle racer Bob Fowler (above). 

There were 10,000 cheering people there at 1:35 P.M., on Monday, 11 September,  1911 to see Bob takeoff.  Like Cal, Bob was piloting a Wright “B” Flyer, except his sponsor was Joseph J. Cole (above, middle) , founder and owner of the Cole Motor Company, of Indianapolis, Indiana.  Cole supplied Bob with one of their engines and $7,500.  

The Cole engine was more powerful than the Wright engine, but it was also 200 lbs heavier. J.J. also gave Bob a support train, with spare parts. His mother, Ethel Fowler, went along and repaired the fabric of his plane. But "The Cole Flyer" lacked the publicity Hearst supplied to support the "Vin Fizz  Flyer".

Making an average speed of about 55 miles an hour, Bob reached Sacramento in just under 2 hours, and after schmoozing with California Governor Hiram Johnson, Bob flew on to the foothill town of Auburn, for a total distance on the first day of 126 miles. Impressive. And on a Monday.

On Tuesday, 12 September,  Bob had reached Alta, California, where he crashed into some trees.  Bob was now out of the race until repairs could be made.

Second to start was James J. (Jimmy) Ward (above),  pilot's license #52, and previously a jockey, and a motorcycle racer.

Jimmy was flying a Curtis Model D. and he had the full support of designer Glenn Curtiss, including the derigur train with a hanger car, 

Traveling with Jimmy was his second wife, Maude May Mauger - seen here taking her first (and only) flight, with her husband at the controls. 

 Jimmy took off from Governor’s Island in New York harbor on Wednesday, 13 September, 1911. He preformed a loop around the Statue of Liberty (above left, BG) and then immediately got lost over New Jersey.  

He made only twenty miles before crash landing (above). Then he too had to wait for repairs. The basic tempo of the race had thus been set right from the start; take off, crash, wait for repairs, take off, crash, wait for repairs, and repeat as necessary for 4,000 miles. It was going to be very hard to finish this race, let alone win it.

Before starting himself, Cal Rogers tied a bottle Vin Fiz to one of his wing struts (white circle on the left), “for luck”.  For reality, he tied a pair of crutches to another strut, in case he needed them later. He would.

Before a paying crowd of 2,000, a chorus girl poured a bottle of grape soda over the landing skids and proclaimed, “I dub thee “Vin Fiz Flyer””. Cal actually called his plane “Betsy” but he recognized the value of naming fees even back then.

Cal took off from the race course at Sheepshead Bay, Long Island at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, 17 September. And if anybody noticed that it was the third anniversary of the crash that had killed Lieutenant Selfridge, they were polite enough to keep it to themselves.

After take off, Cal buzzed Coney Island and dropped coupons for free Vin Fiz soda (above). Then he flew across Manhattan as the breathless reporters breathlessly reported, “…with its death-trap of tall buildings, ragged roofs and narrow streets”.  Cal landed safely in Middleton, New York that night to a cheering crowd reported as 10,000 – not to be bettered by San Francisco. He had made all of 84 miles that first day. His plan was to average 250 miles a day.

That night the reporters wrote that Cal claimed he would be in Chicago in four days. But Cal  rarely talked to reporters because he barely heard their questions, the byproduct of a scarlet fever attack in his childhood.  And he spoke in the clumsy monotone of someone who never heard a human voice, clearly.   So it was easier if the the reporters just made up heroic quotes for Cal. And they did.

They invented more heroic quotes for him the next morning when, on take off,  the "Vin Fiz" hit a tree and ended up in a chicken coop (above).  The bottle of Vin Fiz was "miraculously" undamaged, as proved because it would have been impossible to find another bottle of Vin Fizz aboard a train car named "The Vin Fiz Special".   But now it was Cal’s turn to wait for repairs.  The race was on!  It just wasn't going anywhere very quickly.

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DADDY DEAREST - Sperm Donors

I don't much like what genetics has to say about being a male. My growing disappointment sharpened when I read a 2003 paper in the “American Journal of Human Genetics”, which uncovered an “unusual linkage” on the MSY (the Male-Specific region of the Y chromosome) of some 400 million current male residents of Asia. They all share a distinct thousand year old chemical inheritance from an ambitious, foul tempered, cut throat, sex crazed Mongol named Temujin, AKA Genghis Kahn. Among the Great Ruler's favorite past times was killing his enemies and then “to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.” Through serial rape, Temujin scattered more sperm around than Secretariat. Genghis Kahn's successful evolutionary strategy was to treat women as if they were horses, and to treat horses as disposable breeding stock 

About 5,000 years ago, when traders first appeared in ancient Mesopotamia selling equines, the Sumerians had to borrow words from the Hittites to describe the beasts - calling them “akk asca”, literally “mountain asses ”. And as anybody who keeps horses can tell you, horses ain't cheap. They eat a lot and require a lot of land to run around on. By about 2,100 B.C.E., rich and royal Sumerian speakers were breeding horses to pull their war chariots. Horses were worth their weight in bronze for men like 20- something Shulgi, who became King of the Kingdom of Ur,  in 2069 B.C.E.

The first bronze weapons were developed by the Elam people, Shulgi's southern neighbors, who lived on the Iranian plateau. Elam was lucky because their copper ore was naturally contaminated with arsenic, and it was the contamination which turned soft copper into harder bronze. But bronze also ain't cheap. Melting copper requires almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees C), which means burning a lot of wood. And trying to make the best bronze required technicians, and experimentation. When the Sumerians replaced the arsenic with tin, they produced an even harder weapon, with which Shulgi could boast he “broke the weapons of the highlands over my knees, and in the south placed a yoke on the neck of Elam.”

Like a bronze age Donald Trump, the narcissist Shugli (above) described himself as “a horse of the highway that swishes its tail”. “Let me boast of what I have done!” And then he did. He claimed to be able to run a hundred miles, out fight, out quote, out cook and even out math everybody. “None of the nobles could write on clay as I could.” After he was dead his critics accused him of being “untruthful”. His claim to have defeated the Elam is instructive. Early in his reign, in 2065 B.C., he married his daughter to the governor of the Elam border town of Awan. Then when the locals overthrew his son-in-law in 2061 B.C., Shulgi crossed the border and sacked the town. But he did not linger, as Elam sent their own army to escort Shulgi home - thanks for the help, but really, Shulgi, don't do it again. And he did not, concentrating over the next forty years on expanding and defending his northern border. We read of no more boasts about beating the Elam. 

Curiously, our Temujin-want-a-be left no record of his sexual conquests. It was almost the only thing he didn't boast about. Maybe he was gay, or just sexually repressed, but Shulgi would not be a candidate for one of the three “fathers” of 64% of all living males in Europe. According to a 2015 study in the journal “Nature Communications”, a similar MSY mutation to the Asian G. Kahn one, indicates the first Euro Daddy Dearest was probably pater to the Vikings. About the same time a second Papa progenitor was spreading his sperm around the southern Atlantic coast of Europe, just before the last but not least forefather breeder-in-chief appeared in north-central Europe. And all four of these guys throwing their sperm around correspond to the local arrival of bronze, and the use of war horses.

The latter study co-author, Dr. Chiara Batini, from the University of Leicester, explained the social-genetic implications. “We think that a social structure in which resources and power are more easily accessible to only some men may allow for a few paternal lineages to become very frequent in a short amount of time.” In other words, converging technologies created a few rich bronze age sires who controlled the sperm receptacles, i.e. women. Or, to the put this “jus primae noctis” in capitalistic terms, corporate management used unlimited secret political donations to create and protect tax loop holes for their bonuses, while preventing a raise in the minimum wage for the under classes. Do you detect that my Irish is up?

In truth the rise of Genghis Kahn had nothing to do with his sexual productivity, that was just a by product of his personal indecency. But you can't argue with success. And the name “Temumin” means “iron worker”, which was the next great technological advance after the invention of bronze. It was iron weapons that were the strength of “Harold Tangled Hair”, who, not long after the founding of the Mongol Empire, swore not to cut his own ginger locks until he had conquered all of Norway - which “Harold Fair Hair” then did, followed by the large scale forced impregnation of many of the females living in in Norway.

Those Nordic tribes not wanting to carry Harold's genes around, scattered across the North Sea, looking for a safe haven, freedom, and easy loot and rape victims of their own. Their Celtic victims called them Vikings, or “Sea Rovers”, and they reached as far west as Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and as far south as Normandy, Scotland and northern Ireland, where Niall Noigialallach (above) - in English “Neal of the Nine Hostages” - carved out his Kingdom of Tara.

For centuries scholars insisted King Neal was mythological. Then, in 2006, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin found yet another MSY marker in 21% of males from north west Ireland - the core of Neal's “mythical” kingdom - and in 8% of Scottish males, just across the 20 mile wide North Channel of the Irish Sea, where Neal liked to do a little raping, er, raiding. Some 3 million Irish and Scottish men with two dozen family names are members of the “Ui Neil”, descendents of the clearly non-mythical “most fecund man in Irish history”, Neal of the Nine Hostages.

An Irish bishop would later describe pre-Viking Ireland as “Rich in goods, in silver, jewels, cloth and gold”, which may explain in part the island's attractiveness to the randy pagan, who could claim 12 “legitimate” children. And then there are what Irish schoolchildren are taught were the offspring of Neal's “romantic conquests”. Odd how rape becomes less vile when described by the rapists. Consider the treaty Neal reached with the Airgialla tribe, ( literally the "hostage-givers"). Rather than fight a bloody protracted conquest of the Airgialla's Sperrin Mountains, known for their dreary weather, Neal agreed to respect the borders in exchange for one hostage from each of their nine clans.  And it seems likely to me that many of those hostages were women.

During one of his Scottish raids, legend says Neal captured a 16 year old Celtic boy of Roman heritage, and after transporting him back to Ireland, sold the young man into slavery. It was the kind of business the Vikings were famous for.  It seems Neal was just participating in Celtic and Viking tradition. For six years the captive labored as a stable boy, until finally escaping and stowing away on a ship back to Scotland. The young man returned to Ireland 10 years later as missionary, now named  Bishop Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  Or so says the Catholic legend, which is at least as believable as the pagan ones. Legend also says that Neal, first High King of Ireland, died on one of his Scottish raids, murdered by his own son. Such was the barbarous tradition among the pagans (see Macbeth) , and the following Christian English Kings, (see Henry II and Richard I, Edward II, Richard III, etc, etc - basically anything by Shakespeare.)

But nowhere in any of these legends and history, does anyone get an opinion from the women. For that we are reduced to the next best thing – investigating the lives of living women. Sometime during their life time, 20% of all women will be raped, 1,300,000 American women during 2010 according to the Centers for Disease Control. According to the F.B.I., 90% of all American murderers are male. And of all those murders/rapists, how many carry the MSY markers from a Daddy Dearest? Genetics is not only who we were and are, it is who we want to be. And I don't want to be that. Do you?

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The Greatest Spectacle in Racing

I know you think that 200 laps after the clinking, clanking cacophony of 40 iron behemoths, 5 to a row, roared under the red start flag of the first Indianapolis 500, Ray Harroun flew across the finish line first (above), collected his $12,000 check and became the most famous race car driver of all time, the wellspring from whom three quarters of a billion tourist dollars flow into Indiana every year. But the real winner of that first race was the promotional manic-depressive who had designed and built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However Carl Fisher was held in such disapproval by the straight laced devout denizens of Indiana, that more than a century later they still hold their noses when singing his praises.

Carl Fisher's first wife, Jane, (he lost most Hoosier Catholics, right there) described living with Carl as “a circus. There was something going on,” she said, “something exciting going on, every minute of the day. Sometimes it was very good. Sometimes it was very bad.” His friends called him “Crip”, short for cripple because the 6^th grade drop out kept falling off his bicycle. 

Carl owned the best bicycle shop in Indiana, and was half owner of the “Prest-O-Lite” company, making headlamps for those huge, loud, clumsy, leaky, foul smelling cloud generating contraptions that had a tendency to break down, fall over, catch fire, or just turn into a one ton paper weight in the middle of the road.

As the first 500 began a huge cheer rose from the 40,000 spectators when “Happy” Johnny Aitken, drove his dark blue “National” into the lead at the first turn. Both driver and car were local productions. 

But one lap later Aitkens was passed by a “Richie Rich” racer, silk shirt wearing 21 year old Spencer Wishart (above).

Spencer was driving his personal $62,000 “Silver Arrow” Mercedes (it was actually gray. Above). It would be a triple play newspaper year for the “charismatic” Spencer. In January his millionaire father George would be on the front page, indicted for stock fraud in Canada. All spring and summer Spencer was in the sports pages as a contender in auto races. And just after the Indy 500, he would announce his engagement on the society pages.

The 41 year old Carl Fisher and his four partners had spent $250,000 building the 2 ½ mile dirt oval Speedway. The first weekend of racing in August of 1909, produced a “Roman holiday of destruction” that killed five people, two of them paying customers. Rail birds labeled the track “Fisher's Folly”, and the Detroit News observed, “The blood of the Indianapolis Speedway has probably rung the death knell on track racing in the United States.” “No good”, an Ohio paper sermonized, “can come from making a mile in 40 seconds.” 

 But auto maker and Fisher friend Howard Marmon (above) argued in a letter to the newspapers, “It was not the track or the drivers who were not ready, but the majority of the cars.” 

Except,  Carl and his partners then spent another $180,000 resurfacing the track with 3,200,000 bricks. The dozen races held during 1910 at the Speedway were safer, but ticket sales plummeted as the track's novelty wore off.  Carl decided to gamble everything on a single 500 mile race on Tuesday, 30 May, 1911 - Memorial Day.

Thirteen laps into the first race, as 27 year old millionaire “man about town” driver Arthur Greiner and his 24 year old riding mechanic Sam Dickson (above), were approaching turn three at the north end of the backstretch, a balloon tire blew on their Number 44 “Amplex” car. The wooden rim skidded on the bricks, throwing the big machine hard left, into the infield. Hitting a drainage ditch, the race car slammed to a stop and for a second stood vertically on its square radiator, the tail lifted high into the air. 

 

Since none of the drivers or mechanics were restrained in any way, Greiner flew out of the cockpit “like a shucked oyster”, taking the steering wheel with him. He claimed later, “I was perfectly conscious when we whirled through the air,” except he was the only one flying. According to the Indianapolis News, Greiner landed 25 feet away, with a fractured skull and a broken arm. Mechanic Sam Dickson (above) stayed in the car, uninjured...until, after teetering for a second or two, the car fell forward, driving Sam into the ground head first, “like a tent peg”.  He died instantly

The $50,000 prize money for the first Indy 500 attracted auto makers from all over. There were two cars in the field built by the Case Threshing Machine Company of Racine, Wisconsin. Springfield, Massachusetts sent one car from Harry Knox's factory, and two “Pope-Hartford” cars driven to the Speedway from Colonel Pope's factory. Indianapolis sent a 2 car team from the “National Motor Company” and 2  “Marmon Wasp”s,  a single seater and the other a standard two seat version,  and a “Stutz” from the Ideal Motor Company.

 There was also a pair of “Interstate” cars, manufactured in Muncie, a pair of smoke emitting 2 stroke “Amplex” cars from Mishawaka, Indiana, and a Westcott car built in Richmond, Indiana.  Detroit sent 2 “Buick” racers - one driven by Arthur Chevrolet – and 2 cars from Harry “Loizer”'s new factory.  Columbus, Ohio provided a “Firestone”,  driven by Eddie Rickenbacker.  Germany backed a “Benz” team and a “Mercedes” team. 

And Italy sent “The Beast of Turn”, a Fiat s76 (above), built to capture the land speed record and weighing in at 3,600 pounds.  All cars were required to carry a driver and a riding mechanic  to watch the oil gauge, tire wear and overtaking traffic.  However one team was an allowed an exception to the rules.

During the race the flimsy balloon tires were blowing all over the place. It took anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes to change a tire, depending on the design and the skill of the pit crew. The skills of the scoring judges was even dicier. Popular sports columnist Crittenden Marriot noted, “The workers at the great score boards...keep very bad tally on the laps.” At about lap 30 the timing wire across the front straight broke (above-right) . It was fixed but kept breaking. Said the New York Times, “It was acknowledged that the timing device was out of repair...for an hour during the race.” 

The positions of the remaining 39 cars was now determined by the 100 local nabobs named as judges. Most saw their appointments as free tickets, and showed little dedication. The manual chalk scoring boards around the track quickly diverged from each other and reality. “Motor Age” magazine was downright disgusted, saying, “There are too many cars on the track. The spectator could not follow the race.” They added the race had become a mere spectacle. Ignoring the insult, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway took to calling it's race “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” .

About the only person who seemed to know what was going on was 29 year old Ray “The Little Professor” Harroun, designer, builder and driver of the number 32, “Marmon Wasp”. Ray was a mechanical engineer by trade and temperament, in fact the primary engineer for the Marmon Motor Company and perhaps the greatest innovator in the auto industry before Henry Ford. 

Enticed back into the driver's seat by a large paycheck and a hectoring Howard Marmon, his boss, Ray recognized he did not have the fastest car, but determined to save time by saving his tires with a steady 75 miles per hour.  He carried no riding mechanic, instead borrowing an innovation used in urban horse drawn wagons – a rear view mirror (above).  Pit row denizens called it his “dumb mechanic”, but Carl Fisher allowed it over numerous protests. Marmon. after all, had defended him. 

As the race approached the midway point, (100 laps, 250 miles, 3 ½ hours) Ray had climbed up to 7^th place on some scoring boards, third on others and 10^th on a few. Then at lap 150 (approximately) he handed the yellow Wasp to his 25 year old relief driver, Cyrus Patschke (above). And Patschke hit the throttle. Said the Wasp's chief mechanic, Harry "Billy" Goetz,  “Ray paced around the pit area muttering to himself, watching every move the Wasp made.” 

Some time around lap 170 a suspension member on the Number 8 Case car, driven by 28 year old Austrian immigrant Joe Jagersberger, snapped. Somehow Jagersberger kept the car under control, but at 80 miles an hour it violently wobbled down the main stretch. Mechanic Charlie Anderson either “fell or perhaps jumped in panic” to the bricks, where his own rear wheel ran over him. Charlie started to get up when he saw another car coming at him and did the smart thing – he stayed put. 

According to the Indianapolis News, “Harry Knight (above- the number 7 car)...to avoid striking the prostrate (mechanic) skidded sideways at great speed” Knight slammed broadside into two cars being serviced at the end of pit row - which had no barrier separating it from the track. . “That several people were not killed was a mystery to the great crowd in the grand stands” said the News.

The stands in this case were the judges' stands, and almost all 100 of the spectator/jurists dropped everything they were supposed to be doing (scoring) and raced to the wreck to gawk, rubberneck and get a better view, offer useless advice, or (a few) to actually help. By the most generous judgment of the New York Times, “no one was keeping track of the timing and running order for at least (another) ten minutes.”

There seems to be general agreement that Ralph Mulford (above) was first to take the green flag, indicating a finished race. The Loizer team signaled Mulford to take an extra “insurance” lap, just in case the judges had miscounted. They had. Probably. But just which way and by how much it is impossible to say. After his insurance lap, when Mulford's Lozier tried to pull into victory circle, they found it was occupied by the Number 32, Marmon Wasp, of Ray Harroun.

The Speedway quashed all debate by immediately by declaring that Ray Harroun had won the first Indianapolis 500, while all other positions would be “under scrutiny” until morning. In the victory circle where speedway officials had directed him to park, the stoic "Little Professor" would say only“I’m tired—may I have some water, and perhaps a sandwich, please?” Then when reporters continued to shout questions at the engineer, he rasped, "It's too long a distance. It should not be repeated. This is my last race. It is too dangerous. That was the worst race I was ever in, see? Gimme something to eat.” Then he climbed out of his Wasp and wisely refused to discuss any details of the scoring until his death in 1968. His official time to cover the 500 miles was declared to be 6 hours and 46 minutes and 46 seconds. It was as good a number as any other.

Carl Fisher (above)  spent most of the 1920's promoting and building Miami Beach. He sold the Speedway to Eddie Rickenbacker in 1927. Then in October of 1929 Carl lost his fortune in the stock market crash. After decades of alcoholism, he died in Miami of a gastric hemorrhage, in July of 1939.

Ralph Mulford, was the national driving champion in 1911. He competed in the Indy 500 a total of 10 times, and never won. In fact, he never claimed to have won. At the age of 85, he eulogized the man who was awarded the race he likely won. "Mr. Harroun was a fine gentleman,”  said Ralph, “a champion driver and a very great development engineer, and I wouldn't want him to suffer any embarrassment.” Ralph pointed out that each year the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, “...send me something as a remembrance and to let me know I have not been forgotten." Ralph died in 1973.

The forgotten man of the first 500 was Cyrus Patschke (above), who “put the sting in the Wasp”   It was Cyrus who put the Number 32 in the lead. But after 7 years as one of the best “relief” drivers in America, with 3 wins, 1 second place finish and 2 thirds, he retired in 1915, to open a auto repair shop at 10^th and Cumberland streets in his home town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, half way between Harrisburg and Reading. In 1948, a young driver stopped him coming out of a diner in Lebanon, and asked, “Say, didn't you used to be Cy Patschke?” Cy grinned and replied, “I used to be Cy Patschke, son. I used to be.” He died of a heart attack on 6 May, 1951.

Silent Film of First Indy 500

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