2008-05-17 07:30:30
I couldn't believe it when I got my copy of Vintage Motorsport magazine and read my father's name, from a race he ran in 1958. I had to write the editor, Randy Riggs (whom I've known since 1972, when he was an editor at Cycle World magazine and I was at Cycle Guide).
A few days later, reading Grassroots Motorsports, I thought of Dad again. That magazine is building a project racecar, based on a tiny British sports car that first came to the U.S. in 1958.
Here are the two letters:
Vintage Motorsport Editor,
When I read my father's name, Sam Moses, in your story about the Akron
airport races from 1954-'58, I called my 87-year-old-mother and it brought
tears to her eyes. I remember the 1958 Buckeye Trophy Race well; it was Dad's best
race in his silver AC Bristol, pushing the D production champion and winner
Arch Means the whole way. But what I recall more vividly is driving with
him from Altoona to Akron, towing the AC Bristol on a trailer behind his
emerald green '58 Chrysler Imperial. He swerved on the highway and the
trailer started swinging like a pendulum, as the Imperial's big fins with pointy red taillights punched a hole in each shapely aluminum fender on the gorgeous Ace.
Another driver mentioned in that article is Charles Kurtz, who finished
third in the '57 race in an MG. Charlie towed his car to the races in a '48 Cadillac passed down from grandmother Kurtz, whom he persuaded to help finance the purchase of a Lola he would drive at Sebring a
couple years later. Not long after, he was tragically killed in a crash of
the VW Beetle he had brought back from service in Germany, leaving a pregnant wife
and two-year-old daughter. That widow, Sandra Kurtz Leitzinger, would become
an artist whose historic racing paintings hang in the homes of many Vintage
Motorsport readers; and the daughter, Karen Kurtz Earl, became IMSA's communications director and later served on the staff at Watkins Glen. Sandra, who died in 2002, had remarried Datsun/Nissan dealer and racer Bob Leitzinger, and they brought one of America's most successful road racers,
Butch Leitzinger, into the world.
One more vivid memory: Donna Mae Mims, a true pioneer, who's quoted in the story. I was squeezed in beside her in a big round booth in a bar full of racers, including Don Yenko at the table, I think. She was flashy, fast and hot, a bleached blonde who wore a checkered-flag scarf and drove a hot pink Corvette, and loved the attention--a Linda Vaughn behind the wheel. At least that's how I remember her, and if it's not quite accurate, what can you expect from a dazzled 10-year-old?
Sam Moses
White Salmon, Washington
(formerly of Altoona, Pennsylvania)
Grassroots Motorsports editor,
I've been following your Bezerkeley project with interest and some nostalgia. My father, Sam Moses, was the 1958 SCCA national champion in I Modified, in a Berkeley. It was the first time Berkeleys had ever appeared at an SCCA race, and the SCCA obliged the little cars with a class just for them.
That summer, my dad and two of his buddies from Altoona, Pennsylvania, thought it would be fun to buy Berkeleys. He had raced an AC Bristol until then, so it was just a lark. When the cars arrived from England, they turned out to be nifty little handlers, so the boys decided to enter them in the last SCCA race of the year, the 11th Annual Watkins Glen Grand Prix on September 20, 1958. All it took was three cars to make a class, and they were three. In the race, my dad's two buddies DNF'd (probably broken chains), and Dad spun. It was one of his favorite stories, how he found himself stalled in the middle of the last turn (now the first turn), backwards at the bottom of the hill in the tiny fiberglass car, watching the horde bear down on him!
But he finished the race, in 28th place out of 29 finishers. As the only driver to score any points in IM that year, he was declared the national champion. He's in the SCCA record books alongside Bob Holbert (my hero at the time) in a Porsche RS, in F Modified.
However, he soon came to his senses. He returned to Watkins Glen in 1959 in B Production Corvette.
Sam Moses
White Salmon, Washington
Sam Moses
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