The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 188

"fi II -Til "III I I J4 THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR SUNDAY, MAY 15, 1994 AT WORK There's more to Donald Davidson than '500' stats By Donald Davidson, as told to Star staff writer Donna S. Mulllnix VSI13 M'-. 1. i-v I Donald Davidson The job: Historian and statistician for United States Auto Club. Quote: "I'm really fascinated by the drivers and their interests I've watched transitions and aging, and I've learned things about them, sometimes, that I wish I didn't know." Background: Grew up in Salisbury, England.

Worked in a' movie theater after high school. Started memorizing race statistics as a hobby during teens. Still a British citizen, but married to an American, with four children. Years in business: 29. late Frances Derr.

director of ticket sales, and told them of my ability and Interest. I came on a 21 -day excursion, arriving the night before the first qualifying day and leaving after the race. I never asked for a credential, but they gave me a bronze badge so I could get In the garage area. I started seeking out the people I had written to; they started taking me around to the drivers (showing that I could do what I'd said I could). I met all these marvelous people who had been my heroes for years.

I was astounded at how friendly almost all of them were. Then I went back home, back to being a projectionist. I came back in May 1965 on a one-way ticket, but fully prepared for the gimmick of the previous year to have worn off. It hadn't. Everyone welcomed me with open I talked to several people, got some (job) offers, but none felt right.

And get paid for it? Henry Banks, then director of competition for USAC, said to see him after the race. I went in on Thursday morning, and before I had walked back to the house in Eagledale where I was staying, they had called for me to come back to go to work. When they explained what my Job was, I thought they were Joking. "You gotta be kidding! Keep the records? I've been doing this for years!" It was fate. I'm still able to memorize the 33, but a lot more beyond that trivia about their lives and stuff like that, from all kinds of sources.

I hear it, read it, go home and make notes. I've got drawers full of envelopes and pieces of I'm really fascinated by the drivers and their interests I've watched transitions and aging, and I've learned things about them, sometimes, that I wish I didn't know. But one-on-one, the drivers are still almost all nice guys. laiiiiiiii Star Staff Photo Ron Ira Steele HAPPY FATE: Donald Davidson, USAC historian and statistician, remains delighted with where the interests of his teen years, automobile racing and memory feats, have led him. hour WIBC (1070 AM) program, Talk of Gasoline Alley, daily, often arriving at the track at 5:30 p.m.

for the first time in the day. For that, I need to know what's gone on all day, but there are pipelines: Bob Lamey's reports on WIBC, two-way radios in the office. Or people call me. If there's wall contact, I normally know about it in 30 seconds. On Qualifications Days, I'm on (the radio) all day with Lamey, and we do a post-race show.

On Race Day I'm on the network, and I do short network qualifying shows with of the '500' Bob Jenkins. Then I do bits and pieces for the Lingner Group for ESPN. I do a daily column for The Indianapolis Star in May, and I normally write several pieces for Autoweek, as well as a piece for Carl Hungness' "500" yearbook and the Speedway's program and Indy Review publication. During May I often do talks in the evenings, although I try to keep the distance reasonable. I'm going to Rushville for the 20th year, taking a driver with me.

I'm given credit for having a photographic memory. That's not true; I have a retentive memory I didn't pay a great deal of attention to motor racing until I was about 13. When I listened to the 1956 Italian Grand Prix from Mon-za, I first really began to take an interest In who the drivers were. In Europe, then, there was almost no interest or information available about the "500." An English magazine called Motor Sport had a review of the 1956 "500" yearbook. I bought it In a bookshop in London in the spring of '57.

This whole new magical world opened up. I Just dived into that headlong and memorized it very easily. I saved up some money and title Is statistician and historian for the United States Auto Club. A lot of people mistakenly think I work for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but I work for the auto club. USAC runs anywhere from 160 to 180 races a year sprints, midgets, road.

Formula 2000 series, Russell Pro series. We crown 11 or 12 champions. I keep the stats for every race we run. In May, June, July, that might be eight or nine races a weekend. I keep a driver card and a car-owner card on each person's accomplishments: their start nosl- tion, finish position, prize money won.

I don't go to most of the races. The stats come in here, either brought in person or by fax. In all cases, on a Monday morning I've got everything. For most races conducted by us, the prize money is paid out of the office and I create the payoff sheets (and) the financial records for tax purposes. I proofread entry blanks for 80 to 100 races a year.

And I contribute to the USAC newsletter. People know me best, I guess, for my memory on "500" Information. Because of that, in May, I do a lot of extra things. For USAC, I do the same as always, but in addition, there's a lot more calls coming In here: nostalgia; settle-this-bet; sportswrit-ers and the like. In some ways, the Indianapolis 500 is Just another race.

As far as what I need to record for the job, I don't spend any more time on the "500" than I do for a midget race at the Speedrome. The memorizing of qualifications and personal information Is for other things that I do, and for me, personally. Information pipelines People probably think I'm at the track every day, but I don't spend a lot of time there. I do the two- Daughter Family biography deals with matters like race and identity. By Lynell George LOS ANGELES TIMES 1 ith a simple infinitive "to be" she was.

For three-quarters of a century, Grace Morris Cramer lived her quiet, Spartan life as a white woman. Her younger sister, Margaret Morris Taylor, cut off from most of the Morris clan, lived as black. The sisters were worlds apart, both haunted by their ghosts. The story of these two sisters, their torn family and the geography of pain separating them Is at the center of Shirlee Taylor Haiz-lip's book. The Sweeter the Juice.

Ostensibly a family biography, Haizlip's slim volume also examines the facile labels of race and identity, while exploring the varying degrees of privilege. (Haizlip is Margaret's daughter.) "Passing" is a term out of an antique void. It renders the notion of "color" a state of mind. With a una uu AUTHOR INTERVIEW recounts anguish of passing on subjects that I am interested in. I'm fortunate that I can memorize the Indianapolis results quite easily, year after year.

I've wondered if there will be a point when the enthusiasm level or the ability wears off. But I can still do it. I don't know how. Soaked up informalon I found out that I could memorize things before I knew what the Indianapolis "500" was. By the time I was 9 or 10, I would be captivated by some subject and I'd memorize a bunch of stuff.

That would fade away and something else would take its place. reconstructed through a bridge she built through time. Margaret Morris Taylor sits beneath a wall of windows, surrounded by the faces that in life had eluded her. Taylor, who has been accompanying her daughter on the book tour, touches on Just a small portion of her arduous journey; her reluctance to reach out to the family that had abandoned her as a child: "I wasn't going to try again," she says. "They had already rejected me two times.

I couldn't do it again. So Shirlee said she would Question: What was your emotional state while revisiting the sources of your mother's pain? Answer: I'd heard my mother's story since I was a child, so I think probably the emotionalism was gone It was just a fact of life So it was an intellectual exercise to find the answers to this puzzle. 9: At what point did you decide to turn this search for your mother's only surviving sister Into a book? I didn't know it was going to be a book. 1 was doing a personal "This Is Your Life" kind of manuscript for my mother's 80th birthday. Then I saw the drama of all the things that had happened to her.

I thought, "This could be a book." sent away for more information. By '58 or so, I really wanted to come (to Indianapolis). In May of '61, I was out of school and in London. Shortly after, I was fortunate to get a Job as projectionist at the Odeon in Leicester Square, the "Indiana-polls" of film theaters. I started saving up the money to come to the 500-Mile Race.

I was 21 in 1964, when I came here the first time. A lot of people think the Speedway brought me over. No, brought me over. But I had written to some people, Including the late "Voice of the '500'." Sid Collins, and the many others like it calls into question the concept of color as a means of self-definition." When he lost his young wife, Rose, to cancer, Haizlip's grandfather, William Morris Sr. (whom Haizlip describes as being of Irish and mulatto descent) took the first step over the line.

Figuratively shedding his skin, he hoped to find better fortune as a "white" man. Some Morris children were soon to follow. One by one, the siblings sampled life on the other side, breaking ties with the youngest, r- 4 i slight change of a last name, a new address, a "new race," some black families splintered in two or three like a branch inflicted with dry rot. The most complex challenge: making sure no clues were left on the trail. Heritage discarded In the case of Margaret Morris, it meant, without warning, that she was unceremoniously relieved of her history.

No family Bibles or albums filled to spilling with stoic portraits of her forebears. No grandmother's hug or grandfather's knee. The Washington, D.C., family unraveled in 1916 when Margaret's mother died and her father and five older siblings scattered to live as whites. Four-year-old Margaret, quite fair-skinned herself, was sent to live with a cousin. She.

too, became what she believed herself to be: a "colored" woman. Nowadays, Shirlee Haizlip's sunny Hollywood living room is shot through with photos six generations of them. Portraits of the family immediate as well as extended, both black and white For what is often an emotionally fraught topic, to what do you attribute the wide interest? The The mass consciousness. Five years ago, a story like this couldn't be published. This whole thing about multicul-turalism.

And diversity statistics have shown that America is getting more and more brown In the year 1995, 58 percent of the world's women will be Asian. And the fastest-growing group of children In this country are children of mixed race So the browning of America is inevitable. Corporations have known it; schools know it. And I think it's Just getting out there in the consciousness. Some core issues But no matter how open or forward-thinking one believes he or she Is, what Haizlip contends is sure to raise eyebrows, if not Ire, In some quarters.

In others, she hopes it mines long-buried issues at the core of race relations. "Many Americans," Haizlip writes, "are not who they think they are; hundreds of thousands of white people In America are not 'white' If a new sociological method of determining race were devised, equal numbers of black people might no longer be black. What happened in my family and as well. Shannon Prltchett (granddaughter of the 1950 "500" winner, the late Johnnie Parsons) is chairwoman. PPG Industries returns as the major sponsor, with Carol WUkins taking over host duties from the retired Jim Chapman.

Although tickets are scarce, some might be available. They are $45 a person. For information, call (317) 299-2277. The social hour begins at 11 a.m. and lunch at noon.

Proceeds will be used for needs within the racing community, as well as many causes related to children. CARA also will share in proceeds of "A Roast and A Toast for Mario" on May 26 with Methodist Children's Hospital here. Part of Mario Andretti's "Arrivederci, Mario" racing tour this year, the evening will feature high-profile celebrity speakers (hopefully including his car co-owner, actor Paul Newman, and TV's Tim Allen, as well as top race Graduate Studies pp in education DESERTED: Margaret Taylor (in front), abandoned when her father and sisters "passed" for white, is the'subject of a book by daughter Shirlee Haizlip. Los Angeles Times Margaret and Michael. Only those family members who could pass for white could enter their carefully tended world, the rest disappeared from the conversation, erased, as best they could be, from memory.

Margaret weathered the abrupt abandonment and the subsequent family rebuffs to "those black genes." She survived her "own personal middle passage," Haizlip says. Margaret eventually married Julian Taylor, a preacher, and they raised four children. present a special cabaret performance for the Damien Center at 11 p.m. Friday. After their show at Clowes Hall, they'll go Down-.

town for the late show on Indiana Repertory Theatre's Upper Stage. An auction of Broadway memorabilia also is planned. Proceeds will be shared by Damlen Center (the local HIV and AIDS service agen; cy) and Broadway CaresEquity Fights AIDS. Tickets are $25; some will be available at the door, but for information, call (317) 632-0123. River Jam, a fun dinner and concert Friday night on White River at the Indianapolis Art League, will serve as preview to the Broad Ripple Art Fair on Saturday and May 22.

Tickets for the 6:30 p.m. event are $12 in advance, or $15 at the door, and include dinner and two drinks. Barrel House Blues will provide the dinner; Swinging Steaks and the rain chorus will entertain. Support for the event comes from Miller Genuine Draft. WTTS radio.

Nuvo Newsweekly and Cameron Springs. CARA's show always in style among race fans MASTER DEGREE IN EDUCATION WITH A FOCUS ON CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION Applicants must hold a bachelors degree in education. Students join a graduate cycle and complete the program together. Classes meet in your area on Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The degree can be completed in sixteen (16) months. The program may be taken for a masters degree or plus hours. Thirty-six semester hours are required for the Master Degree. INFORMATION MEETING Tickets for this 6:30 p.m. event at the Indiana Roof Ballroom are $150 a person.

Call (317) 299-7996. Phil Collins benefit The last 300 tickets available for the July 14 appearance of Phil Collins at Deer Creek Music Center will go to attendees of a benefit for Horizon House, known until recently as Indianapolis Day Center for the homeless. A 6 p.m. dinner in a tent precedes the show. The $75 tickets for "Another Night in Paradise" include parking, dinner and the show.

Rick Posson, Horizon director, says in its 5'2 years of operation, more than 13,000 people have been served. Events like this one will help the center to expand its services, he hopes. Call Rick at (317) 636-7550 for ticket information. Other Mullinix picks: Cast members of the Radio City Music Hall Spectacular including Susan Anton will The largest fashion show in Indianapolis each year (1,300 attendees) is that staged on the Friday before the 500-Mile Race by the Championship Auto Racing Auxiliary. This year's extravaganza on May 27 at the Westin Hotel will be no excep-' Painting The Town Donna S.

Mullinix tion. Jacobson's again will present the fashions, with drivers, wives, mothers, children and others involved in racing as the celebrity models. Commentary for the show, done this year by WXIN (Channel 59) sports directoranchor Brian Ham-mons and Beth Daly, wife of former drivercurrent ESPN announcer Derek Daly, will reveal details of the lives and Interests of the racing fraternity. The theme this year, "A Look Back and Fast Forward," adds a nostalgic view Indianapolis, Saturday, May 14 at 10:00 A.M. Columbus, Wednesday, May 18, 7:00 P.M.

Indianapolis, Thursday, May 26, 7:00 P.M. indIana wesleyan Main Campus located in Marion, Indiana Accredited by North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.