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Don’t you hate it when the weather forecast is right? Most of the time in the winter, they will predict the snowpocalypse and assure certain death to all of us. Then when we see hardly a flake, they assume we are all happy and won’t hold them accountable. Since last Thursday, we heard warnings in Nashville that we would be buried under five inches of snow, with very cold temperatures. Hardly any of us paid any attention, because we’ve heard the cries of wolf before.

Like clockwork, we saw our first flakes around 5:15 Sunday afternoon – just as they predicted, as the already cold temperatures started to plummet. Within an hour, the ground was white. By the time we went to bed, there were a couple of inches on the ground. Monday morning we awoke to 11° temps and about four inches on the ground – and it was still coming down. All in all, we ended up with over eight inches of beautiful snow, but bitter cold temps.

Sub-zero temps are not normal in these parts, but we had them last night. I’m not talking about the oh-so dramatic sounding wind chill – I’m talking an actual temperature of -3°. Northerners scoff, but we don’;t have an abundance of snow-removal equipment here. It doesn’t make sense to spend that kind of money on something that happens once every three years. So we stay home and off the roads.

I was off Monday for the MLK holiday and our offices were closed for snow yesterday, so I was able to work from home. I got word last night that I will be working from home again today. To say I’m getting a little stir-crazy is putting it mildly, as I have not been out of the house since Saturday. Being so stir-crazy has sort of squelched my creativity for coming up with a topic. I feel like my brain has turned to mush.

Rather than take a snow-day off, I’ll take the lazy route and play off of what I posted on Monday.

If you’ve not read Monday’s post, it was about how we should cherish all of our Indianapolis 500 winners while they are still with us. The one I choose to cherish the most, celebrated his 89th birthday yesterday – AJ Foyt. The man has cheated death so many times over the years, it’s a wonder we didn’t lose him decades ago. I’m not talking about the killer bees that attacked him, or turning his bulldozer over on top of him in his lake. Nor am I talking about the many health scares he’s had over the last ten years or so.

The first four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 has suffered and survived some horrible crashes in races over the years. The two that come to mind first occurred a quarter century apart. One was at Riverside in 1965, while the other was at Road America in 1990. Both were caused by brake failure.

In a NASCAR race at Riverside in January of 1965, Dan Gurney had opened a huge lead. Foyt had already had his brakes lock up once, causing him to spin. As they approached a right-hander, Foyt realized his brakes had completely gone away as he realized he was about to run up into the back of Junior Johnson. Rather than take out Johnson as well as himself, Foyt steered into what he considered the infield, when in reality he went down an embankment. His car tumbled, end over end for well over a hundred yards.

When Foyt’s car came to rest, there was Southern California dust filling the air. When rescues crews finally got to Foyt, he wasn’t breathing. He was given last rites by the priest on-site, and was pronounced dead by a doctor on the grounds. Fellow driver Parnelli Jones finally realized the reason he wasn’t breathing was his mouth was full of dirt. He was revived when his mouth and airway was cleared. Still, he had a broken back, a broken ankle and severe chest injuries. Many tough drivers would have taken months to recover, and called it a career. Foyt recovered in time to put his car on the pole for the Indianapolis 500, just four months later.

Fast forward past Foyt putting his dirt car on the pole at Milwaukee, two more Indianapolis 500 wins, a win at Le Mans and at the Daytona 500 and dozens of IndyCar wins – all the way to the fall of 1990. Foyt was on the back-end of a fantastic career. Some might say he was well beyond his prime and probably should have retired about ten years earlier. That’s their opinion.

Whatever the case, Foyt was 55 years-old and had not won an IndyCar race in nine years. His team was still made up of some of those from his glory years, but they had gotten old and comfortable with mediocrity. Reportedly, Foyt had been having trouble with his brakes since they rolled off the truck on Friday. On Lap 26, Foyt was approaching Turn One, after coming down the long straightaway at over 180 mph. He went for the brake pedal as the 90° right-hander approached, just as he had done thousands of times before in his illustrious career.

This time, nothing happened. His foot went to the floor and the great champion knew he was in trouble instantly. Foyt went straight, was launched into the air and went into a large mound of dirt – completely ripping the front-end off of his Lola. The tub of that car was on display at the IMS Museum in 2017, As you can see, the are where Foyt’s feet were is totally ripped away. (Photo by George Phillips)

Foyt’s feet ankle and lower legs were shattered. When Dr. Terry Trammell arrived on the scene, Foyt begged him to hit him in the head with a hammer, just to put him out of his misery. A helicopter carried Foyt out of tiny Elkhart Lake, to presumably Milwaukee. Doctor’s weren’t even sure they could save one or both of his feet at first. Once they realized his feet could be saved, the question was whether Foyt would ever walk again. Racing again was never on anyone’s mind…well, almost no one.

Eight months after Foyt went flying into that embankment, destroying his car and his feet in the process – AJ Foyt put his car in the middle of the froint-row for the Indianapolis 500. He was flanked by Rick Mears on the pole and Mario Andretti on the outside; in arguably the greatest front-row of the Indianapolis 500. Before the race, that front-row accounted for eight Indianapolis 500 wins. By the end of the afternoon, Mears added another – making it nine.

Foyt would go on to race in the 1992 Indianapolis 500, marking his thirty-fifth consecutive start – a record I feel will never be broken. He was preparing to qualify for his thirty-sixth, when his fulltime driver Robby Gordon crashed in practice on the morning of Pole Day. I was there that day and was absolutely stunned.

This man started on the pole of my very first Indianapolis 500 in 1965. I had not yet turned seven. I knew nothing about the crash at Riverside just a few months earlier. All I knew was that he had won the year before when my brothers went with my father, and he was their favorite driver. Trying to be different, I adopted Parnelli Jones as my favorite. As the years went on, I began to switch over to the Foyt camp with the rest of my family.

Throughout high school and college, AJ Foyt was still in the Indianapolis 500. As a young adult out of college and becoming a father of my own kids – AJ Foyt was still in the Indianapolis 500. In 1992, I attended my first 500 in twenty years, with my first wife. AJ Foyt was still in the Indianapolis 500. Then suddenly on Pole Day of 1993, he wasn’t.

This year, I will be attending my thirty-second Indianapolis 500. Considering my age, that’s not a big number. Doug Boles says we can count 2020, but I wasn’t there so I don’t. My parents are both gone, and my two brothers are now in their seventies. I’m no spring chicken at sixty-five. We all still go to the Indianapolis 500 together, just as we did in the 60s. We even sit in the same general area as we did when we were kids.

The one constant that we all have had since we started going way back when, is that AJ Foyt has always been on the grounds. Until 1993, he had always been driving. Since then, he has been a car-owner – but he is always on site on Race Day. I take comfort in that. For someone who detests change as much as I do, it will be a culture shock the first time AJ is not there.

Foyt lost his beloved wife Lucy last April, but he was still there last May to see his driver, Santino Ferrucci, finish third. Better things are expected this coming May, and the future is looking brighter for his team. Foyt turned eighty-nine yesterday, and all indications are he is still going strong. Let’s hope that is the case for a long time still to come. Of all the thirty living Indianapolis 500 winners, he is my favorite. He is the one I cherish the most.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on January 17, 2024 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.