Colonel Albert Pope

Do you know who Colonel Albert Pope was? You certainly would have if you had been around at the turn of the 20th century.
 
Pope was a classic specimen of the American work ethic, diving onto the lowest rungs of the Boston-area workforce when his family met financial hardship when he was a teen. When the Civil War erupted, he enlisted in the Union Army and quickly rose through the ranks.
 
He served with distinction at ugly, bloody battles like Fredericksburg and Knoxville. When mustered out of the service after the war he was awarded the title of lieutenant colonel. "Colonel" became affixed to his name by friends and admiring colleagues for the rest of his life.
 
An entrepreneur, he built a business selling shoe supplies but soon saw opportunities in bicycles. The two-wheelers were one of the great sensations of the 1890's and the technology behind their components - frames, tires, wheels, gears, and chains naturally translated to the breakthrough product of the age, the automobile.
 
He had founded the Pope Manufacturing Company based in Connecticut and then established a subsidiary known as the Pope Motor Company to produce automobiles. He went on an acquisition spree and names of his cars, such as Pope-Hartford and Pope-Toledo, reflected that. The names were from the cities where his newly acquired factories were located.
 
Colonel Pope became a millionaire. For Indianapolis Motor Speedway fans it is vital to note that in many ways the old army veteran gave a teenage track founder Carl Graham Fisher the great breakthrough of his career.
 
Fisher was establishing his first substantial business in downtown Indianapolis in the 1890's - a bicycle sales and repair shop. He appealed to Pope, America's largest and most successful bicycle manufacturer of the era, to provide him inventory on consignment.
 
Pope saw something in Fisher's gumption and provided him product. Fisher quickly sold off his allotment and was back for more. The old warrior and the brash teenager fostered a nice business relationship over the next several years.
 
Successful at bicycles, Fisher was able to enter the automobile sales business and soon was one of Indianapolis' most prominent businessmen. It's hard to know what would have become of Fisher or the Speedway without Pope, but the relationship was critical to the arc of Carl's career.
 
The image you see here was published in the Indianapolis News in 1909 on the occasion of Pope's passing. His final years sound tragic as the financial panic of 1907 devastated his wealth. A hard-working, patriotic man who had served his country and set an example of honest, laborious work was blindsided by the games of Wall Street.
 
The prevailing view was that Pope, born in 1843, suffered a sharp deterioration of his health due to the stress of trying to save everything he had worked for late in his life. He remains a figure well worth remembering. We'll help you do that at First Super Speedway.