CHICK HALE'S DAYTON SPEEDWAY FIRE - 1953
Photo from the collection of Chick Hale
One of the greatest racing drivers across the Midwestern United States was, and remains, Chick Hale. I say "remains" because at 80+ years of age Chick is still in the game, still working on his race car, and still expecting to get back on the track.
In 1953, of course, Chick was a much younger race driver bent on proving himself in a stock car on the high banks of Dayton Speedway. On the day of the fire, Chick was driving a Studebaker, a race car he'd built himself. As Chick tells it, they were coming down for the green flag start of the race when the flagman, for reasons lost to time, decided at the last minute not to wave the flag. Some drivers in the field slowed, and some could not.
Jack Farris from New Paris, Ohio, running right behind Chick, rammed the Studebaker causing the gas tank to drop down and drag on the asphalt. Chick's car burst into flames. On the backstretch, with the car still moving, Chick climbed out and held onto the running board until the car had slowed enough for him to leap free, then jumped. The Studebaker continued around the track and stopped on the frontstretch, the blazing inferno you see in the picture above.
Since Hale's leap from his car had gone unnoticed by the fans and the other competitors, all assumed that Chick, or what was left of Chick, was still in the car. Driver Bernie Coppock was first on the scene to try to rescue his pal, but was shocked to find the car empty.
Meanwhile, on the backstretch, Chick picked himself up from the track to find his skin severely burned and literally hanging from his arms. In the days before fire suits, drivers wore T-shirts, and a T-shirt is no match for flame. Hale was rushed to the hospital.
Jerry Wahl, Chick's nephew and an official Friend of Dayton Speedway (FODS), was just a youngster at the time, but remembers the day well. "My mom went to the hospital to check up on her brother and took me along, but since I was just a kid I wasn't allowed in the hospital. I had to stay outside. My mom wanted to reassure me that Chick was OK, so she had Chick go to the window and wave to me. It didn't exactly reassure me. They'd wrapped Chick in a lot of gauze and bandages and when I looked up and saw him in the window, I thought he'd died and come back as a ghost. It scared the heck out of me!"
Chick Hale spent a month and a day in the hospital recovering from his ordeal. And this story has the perfect postscript: when they released Chick from the hospital he returned to his shop, somehow repaired that same well-toasted Studebaker, and then won the very next race he entered with it!
Another view of the Chick Hale fire. It's impossible to look at this picture and believe that Chick rebuilt the same car after he was released from the hospital and won his first time out with it.
--- Photo from the collection of Gene Ingram
Chick Hale poses proudly next to his #83 Studebaker. The Unger brothers who sponsored Chick ran a Studebaker dealership in Arcanum. We're trying now to confirm that this is the same car that is shown ablaze in the photos above. If it is, we wonder if this is the "before" or "after" picture. The banking that you see behind Chick's #83 is part of the 1/4 mile track that was inside the 1/2 mile. Note the odd pattern on the 1/4 mile banking. It looks deliberate. Can anyone explain this oddity?
---Photo from the collection of Chick Hale