SAD NEWS-Bill Seebold Sr.

[jrome]

Marshall Grant just called to let everybody know we have lost the Patriarch of Seebold Racing. Mr. Bill will be missed by his boat racing family.

[nightwing]

sorry to hear about grandpa seebold. he was a really nice guy.

[Tomtall]

This man new more on making boats run well and banging props than any other. Sad to here he's no longer with us. Gods speed. Read more about Pops Seebold at the Seebold racing site @
http://212.125.209.209/kunder/seebol...uppe.asp?id=49

[jrome]

This picture shows the great smile that Bill had. It was infectious. Especially when he was around boat racing. I send my thoughts and prayers to the family. He was a great guy.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

When Joe called me today and said Marshall had called him, I was excited until Joe told me the reason. It was a very sad thing to hear of the passing of Bill. I can still hear his voice. Always positive and looking forward to upcoming events. I talked to him and Pauline at length last year. He had rebuilt several PR's and had them running on boats. He told me about one that only needed a carb and he found that Clayton Elmer had one in perfect condtion. He was so proud of getting that motor running. I'll post more later, but it will be in the Encylopedia section where it can be found easier.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

I had an idea this might be coming from a conversation I had with Billy in Florida a couple of weeks back at a gathering of "old fart" boat racers. I had asked about his Dad as I knew he had not been well and Billy mentioned that he was not good and the time could be near.

When I decided in 1967 to get back into boat racing after about an 8 year absense, I got some of the NOA "Rooster Tales" to see if anyone had any equipment for sale. Bill Sr. was still running his Merc dealership in Granite City, Il. and he had an ad in one of them to sell two C flatheads and one D I believe. I called him about the C and basically bought it over the phone and made arrangements to pick it up a few days later. A friend flew me over to the STL area in his 210 Cessna and Bill Sr. picked us up at the airport and we went on over to his shop, got the motor, and he took us back to the plane and helped us wrestle the engine with pipes and all into the back seat which was no easy job. The engines he had for sale were his own that Billy and Bob McFarland had been racing and as Billy was going OPC racing he had no use for them anymore. That started a 40 year friendship that I really enjoyed. He gave me a lot of help with props and setup, as during the time I had been out of it, boat speed in C hydro had gained about 20-25 MPH and I was very appreciative of his help and advice. I found out that he was a real horse race fan at that time and as I was traveling to STL about 3-4 times a month, I hung out at the dealership picking his brain about boat racing and then going to the races with him in the evening. I don't think I ever lost a daily double with him picking the horses for me. We used to go in his Coupe De Ville that he won at the race track. I think it was a drawing or something of that sort, and the main thing I remember about it besides it was a nice car is he had to put AC in it at his own cost, and he always said, if you can afford to give a Cadillac away you ought to at least air condition it first.

When I got the deal to build the "Miss Nickel Eagle", the electric boat project in the mid 70'S, I told him about it in detail as I wanted him to furnish the props for it. We both were in for a BIG surprise as the changing of the battery pack material after the boat was already built increased the total wgt of the boat by 50 per cent and really put us in a trick bag as far as getting the boat on plane and running properly. He must have sent me 25-30 props to try (all at no charge) from alky wheels all the way to some quite large inboard and OPC wheels until we finally found something that would work.We did manage to set both a drag and Kilo record with his help, Although as Wayne Baldwin brought out in another thread about this project, we had to do so much testing because of the overweight problem, we about wore the batteries out before the record runs.

There will be a lot of boat racers, both past and present, that will have many stories about him, but besides all the other great traits he had, he was just a great person. Just like a good friend of his that is also gone now, Harry ZAK, he would help anybody, anywhere, anytime. As I posted a couple of months ago he called me back in the summer of 06 and wanted to know if I knew anybody who would like to run one of his Speedytwins at DePue. Wouldn't it be great and a great tribute also if we could make that happen?