Sigur Whitaker Book Review, "The Indianapolis Motor Speedway 1928-1945, The Eddie Rickenbacker Era" by Denny Miller

In the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there have only been four ownership groups. The first was Carl Fisher, James Allison, Arthur Newby, and Frank Wheeler who founded the Speedway. In 1927, the Speedway was sold to a consortium led by Eddie Rickenbacker. Tony Hulman bought the Speedway after it was closed during World War II. After Hulman’s death in 1977, his family took control of the Speedway. In 2020, the Hulman-George family sold the Speedway to Roger Penske.
 
At one point in time, I thought about writing a book about Eddie Rickenbacker and his time at the Speedway. I even started researching but quickly discovered that there wasn't enough for a book of 75,000 plus words. So, I was amazed to discover a book on Eddie Rickenbacker’s time at the Speedway and wondered how the author, Denny Miller, a lover of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway history, had uncovered enough for 500 plus pages.
 
Rickenbacker was uniquely qualified to head a consortium to purchase the Speedway. Early in his life, he had been an auto racer, including briefly for the Prest-O-Lite team owned by Fisher and Allison. He went on to become a national hero during World War I as an ace pilot with 26 kills. Returning to the United States, Rickenbacker became closely associated with General Motors as the assistant manager for sales for their LaSalle and Cadillac divisions. In the 1930s, Rickenbacker became president of Eastern Airlines.
 
Having been affiliated with General Motors, Rickenbacker wanted to return racing at the Speedway to cars which were commercially available rather than specialty racers. This resulted in what people called the “junk formula” and required the racers to have a driver and a mechanic in the car.
 
The 1930s were a particularly dangerous time in auto racing and faced backlash from politicians and newspapers. The Speedway had more than its share of fatalities and serious injuries during this time. Rickenbacker responded by making improvements to the Speedway including re-engineering the curves, putting in other safety items, and beginning the process of paving the Speedway.
 
Miller approached the book as not being focused totally on the Speedway but rather on championship racing during the Rickenbacker years. Through his book, he talks about the drivers, the challenges they had, and some history that has been forgotten. The chapters are divided by years in chronological order so if you want some detail on something that happened in a particular year, it is easy to find.
 
One of the stories in the book is the aftermath of a crash at El Centro County Fairgrounds resulting in the death of three people including popular driver Ernie Triplett. At the time, the Los Angeles Examiner was leading an effort to ban auto racing and sent a reporter and a cameraman to cover the funeral. With emotions running high, when the Examiner photographer tried to take a picture of the grave site, the two Examiner employees were forced into a car by drivers Babe Stapp and Al Reinke and were driven to the newspaper’s administrative offices to demand the paper stop its campaign against auto racing. The next day, the reporter filed charges with the authorities that he and the photographer had been kidnapped. California had recently passed a statute providing for the death penalty in kidnapping cases probably because of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of American hero Charles Lindbergh’s toddler son. While the two drivers face the possibility of the death penalty for roughing up the reporter and the photographer, they were fined instead.
 
The book does not stop with the end of the Rickenbacker era in 1945 when the Speedway was sold to Tony Hulman. Miller tells about the deaths of some of the most popular drivers of the Rickenbacker era including that of Wilbur Shaw, who was then the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in an airplane crash in 1954.
 
One of the tales about those drivers who didn’t die pursuing their passion for auto racing is that of Kelly Petillo, the 1935 Indianapolis 500 winner. From the Indianapolis 500 hero, his life descended into a series of confrontations with law enforcement ending in imprisonment and his incarceration in the Indiana State Prison. After exiting prison, Petillo returned to auto racing with some limited success, but he never again ran at the Speedway.
 
The book closes the loop with those drivers that survived auto racing during the Rickenbacker era and went on to live long, productive lives.
 
In his forward, Miller warns the reader “Don't cringe on certain typos--I purposely capitalize the “R” in Race in various places as my way of showing reverence to the Indianapolis 500. Other grammar and punctuation irregularities are my humorous middle finger to those former “composition 101” profs who used so much red ink correcting my themes.” Overlook the grammar issues and you will find a book chocked full of detail of the 1930s Indy car racing scene.
 
If you know of someone who would enjoy this article, please forward it to them. If someone sent this to you and you would like to be added to my subscriber list, please let me know at sigurwhitakerbooks881@gmail.com.