1915: Ivan starts winning!

Above is the first photo following the 1915 Indy 500, in what I'm going to call scrapbook #2.  This scrapbook mostly contains Ivan's early flying photographs.  I used the photo above in my introductory post since it's such a great picture of Ivan, and you immediately associate the goggles with racing.  Is this the Vite car that was featured in the handbill of the match race with Gotier which I placed with the last post?  I'm making this assumption based on the photos in this post, and on the newspaper articles.  If someone has some information about the car, please post it in the comments.  Better photos of it are coming, however.

The newspaper article starting this section has a pretty encouraging headline... Ivan won the fifteen mile race, and came a very close (11 seconds) second place in the ten mile race due to a blown tire.  Apparently he made pretty good time to have caught back up within 11 seconds after a tire change.  Keep this in mind for later...

We're racing at Berkshire Park in Gloversville at this event, which is about 10 or so miles north of Fonda, as the crow flies.  From the maps of the area, it looks like all of Ivan's racing career took place within about twenty miles of his home in Amsterdam, New York.

The first photo and this next photo appear one above the other, with the newspaper article to the left of them. I get the feeling that this photo is for the sponsors, somehow.  I love the guy with his hat off.  Is he proposing, or something?

The next old photo is pretty pretty fun.  I believe this is Ivan in the second car, but I've never seen a car like this one in the albums.  It does have a number on it, and he sports a 7 in the photo above as well, but I don't think this is the same car.  He has bounced around from Chalmers, to Hudson, to Vite, and raced in a Stearns once; so who knows what circumstances led to him being in this car?

Here's another photo just prior to the start of this race, and I have to say that I don't know what race this is from. It's clear from an article in my next post that Ivan raced all summer, but there are only a few articles about the races in the scrapbooks.  It's pretty cool news, too.  This disproves my belief that he was self-absorbed and saved everything ever published about himself in the papers, though.

Now, the first race in this article stated that Ivan had regained a bit of distance after his blown tire.  This second article (actually third, I didn't post the second one since it's the same news from another paper)  gives a bit of a hint of the interplay between Ivan and Mr. Jones after the ten-mile race. There obviously was an argument that led to this wager.  The article details a match race (a one on one race) between Wheaton and Jones.  I like to put myself at the scene and try and fill in details based on facts that I've read, and human nature.  I imagine that Ivan got in Jones' face after the race and told him that he would have won that race if he had one more lap to go, or something like... "If I hadn't blown that tire, you'd have lost".  Jones then puts down the wager that we read in this article...  The headline seems a bit slanted to me, don't you think?  Why isn't Jones' name in the headline?

Unfortunately there's nothing to indicate whether the race took place, or if it did, what the outcome was.  I've been curious for a while about these races after reading that so and so didn't finish "in the money".  It would be very interesting to know what the purse was for these races.

Next up: more 1915 racing!  BUT!!  Stay tuned if you're looking for the aviation stories.  They're right around the corner.

-kpw

Fourth race, back at Fonda

I'm trying something new with this post.  I've begun placing the collection on Smugmug.com and I'll be linking the photos from there.  I think you'll see a pretty vast improvement in image quality.  Let me know what you think, please.  The newspaper clippings are fairly low resolution images so they will still be housed on Picasa/Blogger.

I chose Smugmug since a prominent photographer (Trey Ratcliff) whose work I enjoy has said great things about the company.  He also mentioned how secure his photos were there, and I've been thinking that it would be a horrible loss if anything happened to the collection.  With the photos on Smugmug, my family will have a digital repository of the collection and I won't have to worry about maintaining it.  It actually makes it possible for you to print some of the photos if you'd like a copy for your own collection, but I'll address that later.

So, this newspaper article concludes the first scrapbook which contained mostly auto racing, auto makers, some circus photos that didn't pass the interest test, and a smattering of family members that also didn't pass.  There are two or three pages after the photos for this post in the scrapbook.  Some interesting automobile photos and some disaster photos, which are very interesting.

This article goes into a little pre-race near-catastrophe.  One of the drivers apparently mistook a signal and went plowing through the pack, thinking the race had started.  That must have been quite a sight.  As with the last couple of posts, I'll skip the motorcycle races.

Ivan put this clip of the race results on the next page, too.  The news behind the news, right?  The article didn't include the times of the other finishers other than first, and Ivan has written them in.  I think this is significant.

Here's a little story relating to Ivan's propensity to write stuff down.  I had been going through the collection around eight years ago, and I found some letters relating to a project that he and a well-known aviation restoration guy had collaborated on.  I called the museum which they donated these items to, and was connected to the curator!  I described the project and he told me about how (I'll save the details til later, sorry) it all worked out.  He wondered how I knew about it, and I told him about Ivan.  "You're Ivan P. Wheaton's grandson?" he said.  "Your grandfather's flight suit, goggles, gloves, boots, and helmet were on prominent display here until just last month!"  He went on to tell me that many books on early Marine Corps aviation benefited from Ivan's input.  Ivan apparently loved writing all this stuff down, and he really loved keeping it.  I still have a couple of books to which he contributed.  For some reason, he was obsessed with keeping a record of his life.  (by the way, I used to play aviator in that suit when I was about 12, when he was out of town)

Anyway, no actual photos of this race, but I do have a few really wonderful pictures of the Hudson he was driving. We saw a photo of the Hudson factory a few posts back, which makes me wonder how his sales of Chalmers, and perhaps his sales of Hudson tie into his racing career.

There is also this portrait of Ivan at the age of what must be 20 or 21.  Also, if you examine the first of the photos above, you'll see that Ivan used photos of this Hudson, but the license plate reads "NY 1915".  The race was held on Oct 14, 1914 (there's another article substantially the same as the one I posted, but with a date).  I'll stay true to my goal not to rearrange the photos due to the actual dates.  I figured I'd mention it so you knew I was paying attention.

The next little batch of photos are a bit curious.  They are not racing related, but are transportation related, and... interesting.

-kpw