Elbert "Pappy" Booker

ELBERT "PAPPY" BOOKER

(I hope to provide a more thorough bio for Elbert "Pappy" Booker in the future. For the present, this brief bio, taken from the In Memoriam page, will have to suffice. ---Mickey December 10, 2008)

Detroit, Michigan native Elbert "Pappy" Booker, a foreman at the Briggs Body Co. in Detroit, at age 45 was among the older active race drivers when the American Automobile Association (AAA) sprint cars rolled into Dayton Speedway in June 1947. Unlike some of the youngsters on the circuit, he'd raced sprint cars both before and after the war. Dayton Speedway had been converted into a high-banked dirt 1/2 mile sometime around 1939, but Booker, who began his racing career in 1931 and had raced with almost every sanctioning group in the country before joining AAA in 1941, knew his way around all the high-banked tracks on the AAA circuit.

He'd won the June 29, 1946, 30-lapper at Dayton, and the August 11 twenty-lapper at Winchester the same year.

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(Photo at right shows Pappy Booker and his wife before a race at Jungle Park. The photograph was provided by Rand Thompson.)

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According to Buzz Rose in his book Kings of the Hills, "Booker had no illusions about getting a ride at Indianapolis when he signed up with the AAA. He was motivated instead by Frank Funk's circuit of high-banked race tracks. He fell in love with the tracks when they were part of the CSRA circuit and when Funk went AAA, Booker followed. So enraptured with the tracks was he that for a while during WWII he lived on a farm only a few miles away from Winchester!

"Although Booker drove many top-notch cars during his career, his greatest notoriety came at the wheel of the black Lawrence Jewell 183 cubic inch HAL. Like Elbert, the car was small and light and the two bonded almost immediately. Many said that when on the race track Booker and the car were as one. The little HAL would go anywhere Elbert placed it and in spite of its small engine they won several races against bigger machines. Many of his contemporaries have related that while respected, Elbert was not particularly liked by his fellow competitors. He was viewed as arrogant and somewhat of a show-off. That he was beating men ten years and more his junior may have contributed to his attitude.

"Eyewitnesses to his accident have said that it was this combination of arrogance and ultimate confidence in his race car that did him in. Dayton was still suffering from the rain disaster of 1946 and was very rough in spots. Booker won the inaugural race there in 1946 and generally was one of the two fastest qualifiers at the track--he obviously liked the place. Leading the first heat race over Spider Webb, he went to the outside on the back straight while lapping George Metzler. As he went by Metzler, Elbert turned around in the cockpit and looked over his left shoulder as if to needle George. As he did that the Jewell caught one of the ruts in the tracks, bicycled and flew 70 feet through the air, landing upside down on Elbert."

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Note: James Booker, Pappy's oldest son, can be reached at m.y.book@live.com.

---(Left) The photo of Booker's cemetary marker in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Detroit, Michigan was provided by Don Tash.

A great photo of Elbert "Pappy" Booker in his beloved Lawrence Jewell owned HAL #34.

---Photo from the collection of Karl Brown

This photo was taken in 1946 at Winchester Speedway in Indiana. Booker's son Don (left) was 12 when the photo was taken, son James was 14. According to James, "Many times people woud say that Dad looked like a bank president when he came to a race. But when he changed [clothes], he became a different person."