The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 1

AS SO CI AT ID PRESS HIT ED I fc A 1 0 A I I I i I. i i in i if i topay Cloudy, RithtT gh. (iS; Lou, 0(1 Yesterday gh, BS; Lou, 47 "i A IS ii II li A I I A MA i'i Jii jJJiiriil 'i I i ii 1 I 5 I SUNDAY, MAY 31, 1961 irre Me spirit of iie Lord is, there is Liberty" 11 Cor. 3 17 VOL. 61, 0.

361 A rp vlwm A ME 8-2411 Single Copy 25c Mmee JFiannnhag MenButppiail Wut Wur JPeawaeEffi iff fS. Ml It i sir i Rs Tlio Slnr IMioloniphor lanns fOn Top 01 Wreck From Pross Fisse fatfhes Ioiios9 Fseapo Hx; Frank If. I o) -1- i llnmey Was again posed for a few pictures. But this was a chore he did not like, and after a few shots he hopped out of his car and led Lucy to the pace car for a triumphant tour around the track he had just conquered for the second time. AS HE DROVT off someone yelled, "Hey, A.

how about those funny cars" (meaning the rear-engine cars)? A. J. grinned sincerely again and shouted, "They might be all right, but I'll take Old Betsy and show them the fast way around." A short time later Foyt and his crew stopped for an interview at the starting line. His crew consisted of Frank Catania, refueling; Foyt's father, Tony, who was to change the right rear tire; Leroy Neumeyer, right front, and Bud Mover, in charge of Turn to Page 7, Column 2 I KllM.lt M4 LI iiii.atio ix Sachs, MacDonald Die In Race Car Inferno Mellowed A. J.

Thanks Everybody, Displays A True Champion 's Smile By BOB COLLINS A. J. Foyt won a 500-Mile Race yesterday that was marred by flaming tragedy and a raging controversy. iJ'i'' EDDIE SACHS DAVE MacDONALD It vat lis lllamcd On Gasoline Star race expert George Moore blames death of Eddie Sachs and rookie Dave MacDonald in yesterday's 500-Mile Race on use of gasoline, demanding ban of extremely-volatile fuel by United States Auto Club and Speedway management. Story on first page of sports section.

A tisi, HP'S- 'fjj 4 vtr VMrronv i-axi: wheeled the Sheraton-Thompson Special into victory lane, he was acting like a champion. He kissed his wife, Lucy, enthusiastically, shook hands with his crewmen, who were beside themselves with happiness, and then he gulped milk. He turned his head left and right as photographers yelled, "Hey, A. over here over here, A. Now one more." The smile never ceased.

And periodically he would reach for his wife and give her a squeeze. Then the photographers yelled for Foyt to give "500" Festival Queen Donna McKinley a kiss, and he did twice. But then he kissed Lucy again. The small group sat smiling in the midst of the pop of flash bulbs and the yells of, "Over here, A. And then the expression on Foyt's face changed to a frown.

It wasn't an angry frown. It was sorrow showing. Someone handed Foyt a newspaper on which the blar-i headline proclaimed, "Foyt Wins 500 Sachs, MacDonald Killed." A. J. turned to Lucy, "Are they dead?" Lucy, a stunning blond, looked directly into her husband's eyes and said nothing.

Then she squeezed her husband's arms for a moment and stepped back. Foyt swallowed deeply and hung his head for an instant as he read the headlines again and then once IS EA Reached walked around it and were silent. Across 16th Street in the Holiday Inn Motel, his wife, Nancy, was closeted in a room with friends unwilling for a time to share her grief. Some of her friends had gone to the motel after learning of his death to remove the race decorations. A maid outside the rocm said in broken English: "I cry.

They were awfully nice to each other." LATER, after the crowds at the Speedway had vanished, they wheeled Eddie's car into Garage No. 53. The car bent, burned and uv i By RICK JOHNSON In the past, they called A. J. Foyt "Terrible Tex.

The Kid," and many have called him Cassius, but not to his face, because all of the cat-caller! know there is one thing Foyt will do and that is fight, whether it be on the race track or anywhere. But his critics saw a different man yesterday, a gentleman who expressed sincere thanks to his crew and his mechanics and his car owners, Shirley Murphy and William Ansted. both of Indianapolis. His critics also saw a man who fears the Almighty. Foyt has mellowed and wisened considerably since his last victory here in 1961 and since he won the first of his three national driving championships starting with 1960.

YESTERDAY, when Foyt The Weather Joe Crow Says: "Why ro mud during a campaign," Con-gressman Sludgepump inquires reasonably, "when rocks do the job betterr Indianapolis Cloudy, rather cool today and tonight. Indiana Cloudy, cool today, tonight north. Chance of showers south, ending tomorrow. (Star Photo) FOYT III- HI VICTORY LA'E Seond Trip For I Drlvpr Full page of pictures on Page 10, Section 1. Other stories on Pages 6, 7, 8, Section Pages 6, 7, Section 2, and In Sports Section.

more combustile than the alcohol mixture most race cars use. Flames from the burning cars shot high into the air. The fire was so intense firemen and safety patrolmen exhausted their supply of hand extinguishers and fire trucks were called. And immediately there was a demand that gasoline be barred from use in race cars. It's certain that none of the 300,000 citizens who watched the race would object to such a ruling.

ONE DRIVER said, "They saw what gasoline will do. I'll bet you'll never see gasoline in a race car out here again." It was a sad and dismal day for Ford, which had seven cars in the field and had hoped to break the 14-year reign of the front-engine Offenhausers. Only 12 cars finished the race. And just one of them was a Ford. That was the car Rodger Ward drove to second place more than a lap behind Foyt.

Foyt, the handsome 29-year-old Texan who many believe is the finest race driver in the United States, gained his second "500" victory with a record speed of 147.350 mph. Foyt also won in 1961 after a memorable duel with Sachs. THE VERY competitive Foyt also just about wrapped up his fourth national driving title. He has won all three championship races this season and is way ahead of the field with 1,400 points. Foyt never was in trouble Turn to Page 6, Column 1 Crowd Sees Death In Ball Of Flames Veteran Eddie Sachs and rookie Dave MacDonald died in an inferno of burning race cars and flying wheels on the main straightaway during the second lap.

The accident involved seven cars and caused the race to be halted one hour and 45 minutes. Sachs, one of the most popular drivers in Speedway history, burned to death in his car. MacDonald died of flam inhalation a few hours later at Methodist Hospital. Bobby Unser and rookie Ronnie Duman also suffered minor burns in the fiery crash. PARNELLI JONES, winner of the 1963 race, was taken to Methodist Hospital with burns on his arms and legs after his car caught fire as he was leaving the pits on the 55th lap.

Sachs and MacDonald were driving cars with Ford engines mounted in the rear. The cars were using gasoline which is ly, "He just got his driver's license and had been thinking that he's pretty good. Like he'd like to be a driver himself till this." Miraculously, despite the intense heat, the greasy, mushrooming cloud that swept westward directly across the grandstands and the immediacy of death in their midst, the crowd at no time showed evidence of panicking. It was, perhaps, all too fast. "We all jumped back from the fence and the heat, but nobody down here by the fence or up in the stands tried to do anything silly.

When it was all over, then I screamed," confessed Mrs. Atasca Creech, 3135 Keswick Road, Indianapolis, as she told how she and her two friends, Mrs. Earlene Johnson, 3122 Normandy Street and Miss Patricia O'Connell of Peoria, 111., scrambled away Turn to Page 6, Column 3 Sfar Average April Circulation In Excess of 3 19,800 'CLOWN PHIXTE' Vl I.Y TIME oval, the sudden movement fell into focus as a man hurtling to his death in a ball of red-to-white-hot flames that, an instant before, had been rookie Dave Mac-Donald's Thompson -Sears Special. 'Td heard something, I don't know what, and then Prise And so tne end to a big dream came in half sen- tences from men who didn't want to look each other in the eye. The dream was to win the 500-Mile Race.

WITH THAT victory, 37-year-old Eddie Sachs planned to retire from racing. Sachs had raced on everything resembling an oval since he began racing in the early 1950s. "No guy, and I mean no guy, ever went farther on less ability than he said in describing himself, "I AM probably the world's Turn to Page 6, Column 5 By DON G. CAMPBELL It began as "a sudden movement" a flicker of something slightly unnatural in the otherwise well-ordered confusion that is the beginning of the annual Speedway 500-Mile Race. And then, on the densely packed northwest turn of the For 'Big twisted out of any resemblance to an automobile and covered by a tarpaulin rolled in on squeaky tires.

The red carpet had been rolled back. Then the doors closed and the Venetian blinds were pulled. Inside, only the mechanics, the car builder and some Speedway workers were there. One by one they added remarks: "He had a chest injury the fire didn't kill him. It never hurt him just look at that roll bar.

It's still intact the only way we'll ever know what happened is to study the pictures." there was this sudden movement in the corner of my eye and I jerked around in time to see him like he'd just decided to turn off the track. And then he went into the wall." THUS, DID William H. Clones of Brownsburg, rocking lazily in an aluminum patio chair in front of Section four of the North Terrace, describe the beginning of a seven-car pile-up that was to brand the 48th running of the classic event as less of a race than as a battle for survival. From his vantage point in the Terrace itself, a stunned F. R.

Walker of Cincinnati, 0., watched death erupt in front of him "just as if the whole car and the driver in it had disintegrated. There wasn't even time NOT to watch, it was all so fast." Sitting beside Walker, Jeff Webb of Williamstown. felt the searing blast of heat roll up over the Terrace seats like a wave of the flaming fuel, itself. He instinctively pulled his broad rimmed straw hat over his face for protection and moved over to shield his 16-year-old son, William. HE NODDED at the boy, still shaken, and said hoarse Eddie They called him the "clown prince of racing" and now be is dead.

Eddie Sachs, always ready to play the buffoon for friends and the crowd but always intense behind the wheel, lost his last chance to win the biggest prize of all in a fiery crash on the second lap. And so his followers came Li a steady stream yesterday to Garage No. 53 in Gasoline Alley to look at the last spot that held a memory for them. Where Eddie's car had sat a few hours before, there was only a red carpet. Mechanics and Speedway officials Inside Today's Star 206 Pages In This Issue WARREN REPORT NEARLY COMPLETE Evidence re-portedly shows conclusively that Oswald assassi-noted President Kennedy while acting on his own Page 4, Section 1 POPE DEPLORES JEWS' SUFFERING Pope Paul VI confirms Church's attitude toward Jews, upholds Pope Pius' stand during World War II.

Page 4, Section 1 ROCKEFELLERS HAVE SON A baby boy was bom yesterday to Governor and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, with mother and child doing "wonderfully" Page 7, Section 1 Index On Page 2, Section 1.