In 1959, while in college, a friend I met there Jack Sharky and I purchased a 1956 TR2. We both had other cars so we could set the Triumph up just for road racing, what we forgot was we didn’t have a trailer to put the car on to pull it to the races, so we drove it.

This meant we had to be a little less aggressive in the corners and in the race overall because we had to drive the car home.  I dreamed of racing the big ones all over the world; The European Grand Prix, Formula One Racing and of course The Can Am of America.

I bought out Jack after he graduated in 1960 and spent most of the next four years racing at courses around the Midwest with NO success.

After college I went to work for Kaiser Jeep Corporation right in Toledo, where I quickly moved up through the Industrial Engineering Department and was promoted to the staff of the Vise President of Productions.

While on his staff in 1964 I was asked to represent Jeep at a race in East Liverpool, Ohio where The National 4WD Association was holding its annual drivers 4WD Championship, which consisted of a hill climb, mud drags and an obstacle course.

My job was to talk up Jeep and give away jackets, hats, and other gifts the company had me take over for just that purpose. After watching several of the contestants ……….

I WAS HOOKED!!!!!

In the early days there weren’t many safety rules, just a roll bar, seat belt and if you wanted you could wear a helmet. I even raced my company waggoneer, when we were far enough away from Toledo. I meet lots of people I knew from the Jeep plant at E Liverpool and became good friends with two of them, Larry Lewis and Bill Schneider, they both worked on the assembly line at Jeep.

 I bought in to Larry’s Jeep, flower Power, and we both raced it at several events

over the next few years. Bill had purchased a 1941 Jeep flat head 4 and rebuilt it for racing …… we were off!!!!

To make Flower Power better for racing we added a full roll cage; water proofed the engine and added a snorkel, dropped the axels and purchased some better tires for racing.

We won a few events over the next several years, went on many jeep rallies with the two clubs we joined, The Toledo 4Wheelers and The Rough Riders of Northwestern Ohio and even started our own group within the Toledo 4WD’s called

The Jet Set Blue Racing Team.

Then came 1970 and Jeep introduced the first V8 powered CJ, I purchased a unit with serial number 0000539, which meant it could be entered in the stock V8 class and we rewrote history in the Eastern Division of the National 4Wd Association, over the next several years.

First we went to Charlotte, Mi. home of the Rutherford Ford Racing Team and took on all 9 of their Broncos, beating each one of them in the men’s drags, taking first and second; won the women’s drags and I won the obstacle course.

I sold that Jeep the next month,due to the fact that it had been painted wrong color. It was not Jet Set Blue that we wanted so i got new one with the correct color, which with only 8 miles on it, we proceeded to tear off all the parts we could.

We dropped the axles by extending the spring shackles 2 inches, adding a snug bumper to the front axle to protect the oil filter, quad shocks all round, full roll cage, reinforced the steering rods, water proofed the engine, installed a custom 5 point harness and had the Ford-Beater emblem painted on the side.

My thing was the obstacle course, I could walk the course before hand and literally imprint it to memory; where the tough turns were; where I could make up time and how to get through the water hazards the fastest. I set several course records and won 3 Eastern division National 4WD championships, some 400 trophies in all!

Even Mother-Toni raced and won in the women’s division, it was a family affaire.

We then went on to running the long endurance races, these were anywhere from 50 to 500 miles, I did the driving, Bill was my navigator and we again won races and set records herever we went.

Jay was involved almost right from the start. I think he was around 5 years old when he went to his first Jeep Race and he was hooked as well.

Jay was great, the long rides to Penn, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan or whereever we went didn't seam to bother him. Roughing it in tents and sleeping on the ground or waiting around were all part of the game and he loved it.

Bill's son Johnny would go with us to the races as well, he and Jay would set up their own obstacle course and would RUN through them maiking engine noises as they did. There was always lots of swimming, plenty of sand to play in and they loved the poker runs where they could ride with us and their favorit was going throught the BIG MUD holes.

Jay was alway the first one to my Jeep to see what had happend and the best of all was checking out Dad's engine after I had made a run.

They even had their own uniforms..of course Jet Set Blue !!