An Amazing Story: Part 2

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I had forgotten about the details of that Bill. I was making only sketchy notes then to refresh my memory knowing full well that those notes would be instantly recalled. Now I kick myself for not writing up the phone conversations after they were done. After my post, I talked to Joe today and said I couldn't post the real story, because it might be a "hot potato". He agreed, and so I left that part of the story out. I had the names of some involved, but not remembering correctly all that transpired, I chose to leave it lay.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

If you can't recall the particulars and want your memory refreshed, give me a call. I don't really know how active the participants in that deal are in APBA today. I haven't heard their names mentioned much lately, although I am not around it like I used to be.

I just remember many hours spent on the phone at the kitchen table talking to your Dad, commission members, and others prominent in the PRO ranks at that time, and I don't recall talking to ANYONE who did not think that it (the attempted naming of a PRO VP by APBA without consultation or a vote) was a real intrusion on the business of the PRO Category. We managed to get a lot of feed back going to the powers that were at that time, and they finally backed off. I never really understood at the time what they thought would be gained by that type of a move, although the people involved (namer and namee) were certainly not from the PRO category. It was just another strange deal of many in the management of APBA. I know you understand what I am speaking about, with your Dad as active as he was and some of the things and people he was ready to take on if you hadn't stopped racing.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I will give you a call Bill, just to try to remember. My skimpy notes only say that a certain person may become VP then pass it on to another. It didn't make any sense to me because the one named was actively involved in the direction we were heading, and the one that would be passed the torch wasn't. Both were "alky racers", though one probably had roots in other divisions. As it turned out, the one that we thought would stand in the way of what we wanted to do with Pro racing, actually became a staunch supporter later on.

[Karen Cadle]

Great Pics and enjoying the history! ~k

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Thanks Karen.

I found both of these notices posted in the May 30, 1980 Propeller. It was not a particularly uplifting issue. In it were also notices of the passing of John Valachovic and the death of Myles Hh. "Smiley" Johns, Jr. in an offshore race.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

I have been watching the news about "Dolly" coming ashore in the South Padre Island/Corpus Christi area yesterday, and from my knowledge of where Wayne lives, certainly hope he is weathering the storm OK, and he is not "blown away" as we have all been the last year of so with the stories and pictures from the past he has posted. Especially interesting to see how close he and Lars Strom's paths came to crossing, from information on Lar's thread.

Let us know you are OK, Wayne. Eileen and I are getting ready to leave for DePue this morning, and it is hard to believe that the reunion you and Joe had so much to do with was one year ago already.

Bill Van

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We're fine Bill Van. Thanks for thinking about us. We had mostly calm to 20- 30 mph winds as the bands came through yesterday. Our strongest winds (30 to 40 sustained and gusting up close to 50) came AFTER Dolly made landfall at Brownsville. They increased overnight to about 45 sustained and had gusts in the early morning hours this morning over 50. Rain comes and goes. As I suspected when the wind didn't fall off last night, it continued to creep up behind us rather than turn west as predicted. It finally dipped back down then back to the northwest where it is approaching Laredo. How ironic since Laredo doesn't see many hurricanes but was a recent subject of this story. I was going to call you yesterday, but I couldn't find my little book. You and Eileen had a good safe trip and tell all our friends hello and best wishes.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

....we still weren't done with the aftermath of the weather caused OD World disaster. The foreign drivers were paid their show money, but as all the other races had been cancelled, we had to refund all the other entry fees. I may have posted it earlier, but I believe about half the money went to Hydroplanes International to pay for all the things it took to put on a race and the rest was part of the prize money. Since we burned one day waiting on the wind to lay, we actually incurred two days worth of racing expenses as was originally budgeted. Even though we didn't race Saturday there were still expenses for all the officials, ambulance crew, boat rescue squad expenses, portable toilets etc. All entry fees had been sent in advance so Treasurer Steve Jones had to write checks from the Hydroplanes International account rather than hand everyone back their entry fees. Something Steve hadn't taken into account came back to bite us.

Some of the local Laredo businesses required cashier's checks such as the portable toilet vendor, ambulance guys, local print shop and maybe one or two others. Steve forgot about the service fee which was just debited to our account. Back in the days before ATM's, internet money transfers, etc the banks had no competition so a fee for a cashier's check could easily run $10, 25 or more dollars for each one. A few weeks we got a call from Bill Crumly saying his check didn't clear. Then came other calls. The guys from Texas that deposited their check right away were OK. The ones from out of state were the primary ones whose check bounced. How embarrassing that was to us.

All the surplus money in the account was used up to pay for the expenses occurred and I think my Dad had to fork over enough to get us by until we started funding the Pro Nationals at Dayton. That event wouldn't take as much money on our part for all the logistical expenses because we would be on the same card as Inboard Hydro racing that same weekend. And Hydroglobe had a ready made racing venue that provided many of the things we had to pay for at Laredo.

At first we couldn't figure out what the problem was until Steve called the bank and found out it was the cashier check fees that were debited that caused the initial problem. The sad thing though is that the bank could have called us when it first happened. We were only overdrawn by about 20 or 25 dollars. Of course as each check was sent back, there was a returned check fee. When we finally got a handle on what happened and found who every one was that had a check come back, we sent them all cahier's checks rather than another one on the Hydroplanes International account, which cost even more. But we had a reputation to take care of. Denny Henderson called and said just to keep his money. It wasn't until sometime in June that all was taken care of. Bill Crumly had to give us a different address than we had in order to clear up the last of that matter.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Now it's early June. Maybe a couple of days into it and I get another call. Probably once more from Dieter. Can't find those notes. He tells me that German driver Erwin Zoeller is killed at a race in Hamburg on May 31. This is just two weeks after Zoeller won the UIM OB World Championships at Hannover. And only three weeks after the death of Erwin Zimmerman. These were some very dark days in boat racing. I knew who Erwin Zoeller was. He was one of the top German drivers. I didn't know him personally though and I can't seem to recall his face anymore. Nevertheless, it still hit us hard. I quit working on my Acapulco story after hearing about Zimmerman, and after Zoeller's death, I don't seem to have done much about the upcoming Dayton race except work on publicity photos. Just didn't really have my heart in it at this point.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The Eastern Divisionals were in Acworth, Georgia. We didn't go. At the time were were in the middle of trying to get a hazardous waste site approved in Texas, having been recently booted out of Oklahome at the point of a gun. I was doing a lot of aerial photography and snooping on other sites to gather info for a Texas Water Quality Board hearing. In addition to this, I was working on the program for Hydroglobe and the 700 hydro Pro Nationals and OD North American Championships. There was some trouble at Acworth due to a funnel effect at the start and Tim Butts and Jerry Petersen got together in one of the heats.

On June 28 I called Ralph Donald to see if he had gotten the Pro VP appointment yet and he had not, so I called APBA. Up until a short time earlier Mary Guarnieri had handled all our stuff, but about this time Mary retired and Gloria Urban took her place. My Dad mostly dealt with Mary and she always handled everything very efficiently and professionally. Suddenly in the middle of everything going on, Gloria took over. We weren't too sure about how our international sanctioning stuff was going to get taken care of as efficiently as before, but it was. We never even missed a beat. I worked with Gloria quite a bit back then as I became chairman of the Pro UIM Affairs Committee, and I must say she did a bang up job. She handled anything we sent our way so quickly we felt like she was the personal secretary/office manager of Hydroplanes International.

So I called up APBA after I got off the phone with Ralph to check on his appointment and whether or not the LaCrosse Pro Nationals sanction had been sent in yet. Gloria told me that Executive Director John Love was on vacation, and President Mike Jones was in the office the day before and wrote a letter appointing Ralph Donald as Pro VP.

At this time we were informed that the sanction forms had to be sent in with region chairman and a commissioners approval. The insurance fees had to be included at this point, but not the sanction fees. I this is the ruling that my Dad and Ron Hill stood up to argue against at the national meeting, because it took too much time to pass the sanction fees around for signatures. Anyway...Ralph was finally approved and got high behind getting paperwork filed for the Dayton race.