Featured History Putting a Face with a Name: Cars and Drivers in the 1950s

Helen and Bart Root: A Racing Married Couple
Who Flirted With the Big Time One Year
​

In my dozen or so years working as head tech man at the Bonneville Raceways drag strip near Salt Lake City, I recall a couple of times when racers told me that their wives were threatening divorce if they didn’t give up their racing. In their wives’ views, they were getting short shrift. It was as if the guys were married to their cars, not to them. I distinctly remember one racer telling me that his wife had given him an ultimatum. He said, “Well, the old lady said, it’s either her or the car.” I can remember him coming back about six weeks later—without his car. He had lost both her and his race car in divorce court. In his wife’s bitterness, she got her revenge by mandating that the court force him to sell his car in the divorce settlement.

There is both a financial and relationship cost in drag racing if married couples don’t find a way to manage both. In my case, we made it a family thing. My wife enjoyed photography; did her own film developing in a home darkroom. My fifteen-year-old daughter was looking for a job. So, for a couple of years, my wife was the drag strip photographer and my daughter worked in the time shack, taking down times and giving the time slips to the racers. We made it work, made it fun working together.

There are several married couples in drag racing who also made it work for them. Don and Pat Garlits, Bob and Etta Glidden, Shirley and H. L. Shahan, Peggy and C. J. Hart, Carol and Lloyd Cox, to name a few. Those are probably the best-known husband-wife racing couples. But there were also others less well-known who also navigated their love of drag racing jointly. In the 1950s, some of those racing couples included Joanne and Jack Schnepf, Ruth and Mario Saccato, Mary and Dale Rakestraw, Doris and Ralph Heim, Mary and Jack Stewart, Thelma and Hal Ramsey, Jeanie and Ed Southard—and Helen and Bart Root.



The Roots, from Norwalk, California, navigated the challenges of being a drag racing couple in 1954-55. They capped it off by landing on the front cover of the July 1955 issue of Hot Rod. Even their two cute kids, Jodie and Bart, Jr., standing in their street roadster, were happy to being included on the cover photo.


In 1950, Bart and Helen lived in Downey, California. Bart was 22 and Helen was just 19 years old. They married in 1947, and in 1950 already had two children. Bart worked as a painter’s helper in a car dealership. Helen’s widowed mother lived with them. At age 17, Bart had joined the Navy in 1944. He served for 21 months.


By at least 1952, they had moved from Downey to Norwalk. They were listed in the 1953 Norwalk city directory. Bart was working as a car painter at the Lindt-Wilson Ford dealership in South Gate. Bart was a member of the Long Beach Qualifiers car club. With the help of club members, he began building a ’29 Ford Model A roadster. He got Tom Logan, a fellow Qualifiers club member, to assemble a new engine for him. The engine was a ’38 Ford 259-inch flathead V8 engine, Merc crank, Sharp heads, with three Stromberg 97 carbs on an Evans manifold. In the first year of racing, Bart didn’t win a single round. “Too many fellas start with a small engine, then toss in the towel when they don’t clean house their first time out,” said Bart. “Instead of making the little job run, they grab for the boring bar in a search for more inches. None of that for the wife and me—we’re havin’ too much fun with this little bomb.”


Bart won his first trophy in the D/SR class at Pomona on May 17, 1953, with a speed of 88.64 mph. After that, periodically he let Helen get her feet wet, driving the car during time trials. But when it came for the eliminations, Bart took over. She kept improving, so Bart started letting her run during the eliminations.


Helen won her first trophy at Pomona on May 16, 1954, turning 95.62 mph in C/SR. They drove to Madera to run in the 2-day California State Drag Championships at the airport strip on October 9-10, 1954. Helen won the C/SR class with a strip record time of 89.85 mph. Bart won the street roadster eliminations. Bart and Helen traded off driving the car in 1954 and 1955. Bart won the C/SR class at Paradise Mesa on March 13 with 93.76 mph.


The NHRA regional was held on May 15 at Colton. After she took a class win and set a record with a speed of 88.84 mph, Bart let her do a lot more of the driving from then on.


Probably their toughest competition in their class in Southern California was the 220-inch Chevy 6-cylinder-engined roadster of Safford and Shores. They could be a handful.


The Hot Rod issue with the Root family on the cover, came out in July 1955. On July 23, Bart set a new strip record at Colton with 92.14 mph.


After doing well in 1955 on a state level, the Roots decided to make the long trip to Great Bend, Kansas, for NHRA’s first Nationals. The Hot Rod article had noted their intentions to go to Kansas. “Fourteen-hundred miles is a long way to go to a drag meet,” the article stated. Helen was a novelty at the Kansas meet. The press and media sought her out for interviews. This photo was published in the Kansas City Times (9/29/55), staging her as being capable of tuning the car. It played up that she was a 25-year-old mother of two children.


In this photo, she is giving a radio interview.


While the press played up her mechanical know-how, it was husband Bart who did the tuning.


She did well at Great Bend. The smile on her face tells us that she was pleased with how well she was doing.


When the C/SR class eliminations were underway, she got all the way to the final round.


In the final round, she went up against Dale Ham, running his Dodge-engined roadster from Amarillo. He took the class win with 91.64 mph. She put up a good fight. This photo appeared in the December 1955 issue of Hot Rod. In Kansas, the Roots flirted with national recognition but came up on the short end.


It had been a heady time for Helen, but they needed to return home. Helen was a homemaker at heart. Raising children was her primary interest. Drag racing was just an exciting, but fleeting pastime that she put in the rear-view mirror. Still having the itch to compete, she entered a Mrs. California contest in March 1956, where she was judged for her baking and homemaking skills. She entered and gave it her best but came short of winning. Kind of like what happened in Great Bend, Kansas.

Bart drove it a few more times at Pomona upon their return, winning a couple of trophies in late 1955 and early 1956. He also won once at Colton in February. But the writing was on the wall. Safford and Shores beat his old strip record at Pomona by a whopping four miles an hour. And Bruce Safford and Jim Shores had their roadster really humming as they kept upping their record week after week. So, if Bart kept racing, he wasn’t likely going to win, but just race for fun. Maybe grab a few groceries in it and tool around their Norwalk neighborhood.


The Roots rented out their roadster for an appearance on the “Life of Riley” TV program, which aired on November 2, 1956. It was entitled “Juvenile Delinquent.” Chester Riley got worried when his son, Junior, traded his car for a hot rod. He thought Junior was on the fast road to hoodlumism and a life of crime. Really, Junior and his friends just wanted a safe place to race. As usual in the show, Riley muddled in other’s affairs and screwed things up. He never learns. I used to watch this show every week on our black and white TV. I was only ten years old when this episode aired. In this still frame from the show, Gillis, his good friend, next-door neighbor, and co-worker, is coming over to Riley’s driveway to see what Riley has gone and done now. In the brief appearance in the show, you see Riley driving down the road in the Root’s roadster and pulling into his driveway.


In this still frame from the show, you get a nice view of the bald spot on the back of Riley’s head and Gillis grilling Riley about what “revolting development” he’s done now. Those people of my generation will remember Riley saying, “What a revolting development,” in every episode.


Bart Root passed away in 1992 at age 64. Helen and Bart divorced in 1967. Bart remarried in 1971. I don’t know what happened to Helen after her 1967 divorce.

 

Creighton Hunter: A Hot Rodder at Heart​

By his own count, Creighton Hunter built close to fifty hot rods. “I got my first car in 1936,” he said. His parents bought him a ’32 Model B Ford for $100 while he was still a student in Santa Ana High School. As life unfolded, he dabbled in street racing before there was a legal venue where he could race his hot rods. He raced at the dry lakes. Then an opportunity fell into place where he became one of the co-founders of the very first commercial drag strips in the country. But, before we get into all that, let’s take it from the beginning. That’s always a good place to start.

He was born in Santa Ana in 1920. He lived there, and later in life, in nearby Tustin, his entire life. He went to McKinley Elementary School. He was eight years old the first time he got his name in the newspaper. He was one of just two in his class who got a perfect 100% score in a music memory contest. In 1935 he graduated from the Frances Willard Junior High School in Santa Ana.

He was a husky lad. The Santa Ana High School football coach was pleased when he showed up to try out for the Saints team as a sophomore. He showed real promise, and the coach slotted him into the tackle spot. He enjoyed sports. When he was a junior, he broke his right leg while playing baseball at the high school. That put him out of commission in sports for a couple of months, finishing his junior year hobbling around on crutches.



But he was outgoing and took part in school plays, DeMolay organization, and a school-affiliated Sea Scouts group open to young men looking for adventure onboard sea-going ships. This photo shows him with other boys in the Sea Scout program at the high school.


He graduated from Santa Ana High School in 1938. This senior photo appeared in the school yearbook.

Cars were a big part of his life. “I just love cars,” he said. He joined in with others who raced on Harbor Boulevard, Baker Street, and Golden West Avenue in Huntington Beach. He got his share of tickets. On occasion, he got his name in the newspaper for getting speeding tickets. But in the pre-war years, it wasn’t deemed to be such a public menace or fraught with potential danger. The police were pretty nice about it. “They’d stop you and say, ‘Don’t do it again,’” recalled Creighton, “and we’d just say that we wouldn’t.”

After graduating from Santa Ana Junior College, he went into business with his father, Tom “Dode” Hunter. He worked as a salesman for Hunter Oil Company, an oil distributor in Santa Ana, established by his father in 1922. He was twenty years old in 1940 when he got married.


He registered for the draft in 1941.

In 1942, he joined the Coast Guard, being stationed at Pacific City, on the Oregon coast. After three years, he was discharged and returned home, taking up with his father in the oil distribution business again.

C. J. and Peggy Hart ran a service garage on First and Harbor Boulevard. Creighton claimed that he had stopped street racing, but that C. J. was still tearing up the streets at night. “C. J. was always a bad racer,” said Creighton. “He was a street racer. And I happened to meet him. I wasn’t illegal, but he was.” The police really began clamping down on the street racing scene in about 1949. Don Tuttle, who became the announcer at the Santa Ana Drags in 1952 after he got out of the Navy, wrote about this in the Santa Ana Register (6/24/56). By the way, Tuttle passed away from cancer in 2003. He tried his best to document the history of Santa Ana Drags with little books and videos.

Street racers would congregate on Harbor Boulevard at 1 AM. “The California Highway Patrol soon got wise,” Tuttle wrote, “and began showing up in time to send the contestants scurrying in all directions—down riverbeds or across bean fields.”


By his own account, Creighton wasn’t street racing at this time. He was working for his father. He had a wife and growing family. He needed to keep his record clean. So, street racing was out. Instead, Creighton built a ’24 T roadster that he raced at the dry lakes. He was a member of the Hutters club of the Russetta Timing Association. In that regard, he was trying to be respectable and only race legally at the dry lakes.


Here is another photo of his T roadster at the lakes. It started out as a track roadster at the lakes in the 40s before Creighton bought it.


Creighton also raced at El Mirage. This and the following photo show his T roadster at El Mirage in 1949.


Creighton’s T roadster at El Mirage. Photo taken on September 18, 1949. He raced it at the lakes until mid-1953, when he sold the car to Hildardo “Hill” Alcala.


This photo shows Hill Alcala racing against the ex-Dick Kraft T roadster at Pomona. The Kraft T was likely owned by Richard and Gary Seiden. If you look closely, you can see the Moon Eyes painted on the body near the rear tire. More on that later because I’m getting ahead of myself.


I want to return to the story of how the Santa Ana Drags started. There are several different versions. Being a retired historian, I’ve tried to sift fact from fiction using primary documents, interviews, and other trusted sources, to come up with an accurate account. I contend that the truth is in the details, so this account will hopefully stand on its own because of the little details. The above photo appeared in the cover story in Life Magazine (4/29/57) about Santa Ana Drags.

“Driven off Harbor Blvd., the hot rodders began meeting on an abandoned Marine Corps landing strip known as Mile Square,” said Don Tuttle. Mile Square referred to a square mile plot of agricultural land that the Navy purchased in the early years of WWII. That plot of land is in today’s city of Fountain Valley. Inside that square mile plot of land, the Navy built three landing fields to serve as training fields for pilots. Each field was about 2,200 feet in length. “The strip was so wide we could run up to eight cars abreast,” said C. J. Hart, “so you always had a good chance of beating somebody.” The landing fields were even used after the war for military training fields for the nearby El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and Santa Ana Marine Corps Air Base. “Mile Square had runways about 50 yards across and three-eighths of a mile long,” Tuttle said. “The Marine pilots would come down, touch down and then take off. It was just kind of a touch and go landing. Some of the fellows caught up on that and they would go up and they would start racing out there. It really became more and more popular. Pretty soon they were drawing crowds out there of four or five hundred people. And some of the top cars that later became dragster drivers were racing their cars out there. The Marines came in one time out there, they had some planes that wanted to use the touch and go area and there were so many people there, they couldn’t do it. So, they called the MPs back at El Toro. The MPs came out and the MPs came in one end of the area, and everybody left from the other end of the area, from the other way.”


“One of my very good friends, Melvin Dodd—forgive me Melvin—but Melvin got all the way home, his ’40 Ford all the way home and when he got home, he realized he’d left his fiancé, Yvonne, standing out there,” said Tuttle. “I don’t think Mel still knows how Yvonne got home. She did OK. But true love, it came through. They got married and lived happily ever after. I asked Yvonne about that one time, and she said, ‘You know, oh, yeah. He used to drop me out there. So, you know how I stand.’” This photo shows Melvin Dodd beside his roadster in 1955.

With the plug getting pulled with racing at the Square Mile, hot rodders had no place to race for a few months. “But it wasn’t long until half a dozen enthusiasts got permission from Bill Nichols, manager of the Orange County Airport,” said Tuttle, “to sweep clean a circular road on the landing field and try it for drag racing. The next Sunday more than 20 cars showed up, and this posed a problem for Nichols as to the county’s liability. He contacted Henry Mechan, then captain of the Highway Patrol here, who referred him to Ex Ehrhardt and Chuck Pollard, officers assigned to the CHP’s safety education department. Nichols was informed that in event of a mishap on the strip he might be held liable. Nichols did not feel that he personally should assume this responsibility and also was dubious if the county would accept the responsibility. However, Nichols knew that if these boys did not have a place to try out their cars, they would resume street racing. So, between Nichols and Officer Pollard a conference with the Orange County Board of Supervisors was arranged. As a result of the conference permission was granted to use this strip but no liability or responsibility would be assumed by the county of Orane, the airport or Nichols. But if a group would take out insurance they would be allowed to make use of this strip. Several established timing associations were contacted but the length of the strip (being ¼ mile long) was frowned on or rejected.”

Lou Baney and Ak Miller may have been in one of those timing associations that was initially approached about running drag races at the old airport. Baney, in a 1973 interview published in the 1973 issue of Hot Rod recalled it this way: Ak Miller and I got together and got a contract with the people who owned the Santa Ana Airport so that we could come in one day a weekend and run drag races there. Well, Ak had his shop going pretty good and I had my shop going, and we put it off and put it off.” The airport kept waiting to hear from Baney and Miller. Baney said, “The guy [Nichols] from the airport called me up and said, ‘Look, Lou, I’ve got this guy here named C. J. Hart and he wants to make a drag strip out here at the airport, but I told him that I already had a contract with you and Ak. He’s really hot to do this, so I told him I’d call you guys and see what the story is.’ So I called Ak and we discussed it for awhile, and we figured we both just didn’t have time for it right now, so I called the guy back and told him to let that Hart guy go ahead and set up the drag strip out there. And so ol’ C. J. Hart went and set up the nation’s first organized drag strip out there at Santa Ana.”

In Tuttle’s recollection, the driving force in getting the strip going was Stillwell, not C. J. “However, Frank Stillwell,” Tuttle said, “after being contacted by Pollard, was pep-talked into opening the strip with the cooperation of C. J. Hart and Creighton Hunter.” But, whether it was Stillwell or C.J., who got the others to join in with about $1,000 total seed money to get the strip started, is a minor discrepancy in the story. They pooled their money and the strip opened on opened for racing on July 2, 1950. With that start-up money, they bought timing clocks, built a concession stand, restrooms, and telephone poles to act as barriers between the spectators and the racing. As far as I can tell, that early history of the establishment of the Santa Ana Drags has never been told before.


This article in the Anaheim Bulletin (7/5/50) reported the results of that very first race. Stillwell owned a motorcycle shop in Anaheim, where he also sold used cars. “Frank [Stillwell] had the connections for insurance,” remembered Creighton, “and C. J. had the connections for mechanical, and I was fortunate and had the connections for politics and whatever.” It was undoubtedly Creighton’s father who had those political connections. C. J. remembered, “Stillwell had the insurance, and Creighton had a lot of know-how. We started one Sunday. I think we charged a half a dollar, if I remember right. We finally got up to 90 cents and we went to a dollar when they took the tax off. And then it just kept blossoming on. It just kept on going. Creighton, he quit some while. I don’t know why, but he did.” Hot Rod editor Dave Wallace interviewed C. J. in 1979 about why Creighton only lasted less than a month in the drag strip endeavor. C. J. told Wallace, “He [Creighton] only lasted a couple of weeks. We asked him what he wanted to get out. He said $1,000, and we paid it.”


I’m just speculating about why Creighton opted out of the drag strip deal after less than a month, but I think his heart was more in racing hot rods than in running a drag strip. He had his ’24 T roadster that he raced at the lakes and began racing at drag strips. This is a ’51 photo of Creighton’s channeled 5-window coupe that he used for a street rod. He was just a hot rodder at heart. Running a drag strip would have put a crimp in his enjoyment of just being a hot rodder.


This is the photo of the ’24 T roadster run by Creighton at drag strips. If I were to guess, it looks like maybe it was at Pomona. Dean Moon liked the way that Creighton had painted “eyes” in the double zeros. He used that for inspiration behind the Mooneyes logo.


Creighton and Andy Park ran this roadster, winning trophies in the C/R class at Santa Ana in 1952-53. Its best time was 128.20 mph on a strip and 150 mph at the lakes. Park managed a malt shop in Santa Ana. Don Tuttle always plugged Andy’s ice cream shop before the end of a race. “We always used to announce on the P.A. system to stop at his shop on the way home,” said Tuttle. This photo was taken at Santa Ana. In the background is the refreshment stand.


Don Tuttle’s wife, Punky (left), and C. J. and Peggy Hart’s daughter, Joanie (right), worked in the refreshment stand at Santa Ana Drags.


This photo was taken in 1957, about the time that Frank Stillwell left the drag strip ownership. Although C. J. was loath to talk about it, there seems to be enough solid documentation to believe that Frank Stillwell left the drag strip ownership under a cloud of suspicion. By 1957, C. J. started noticing that the take was thinning even though the crowds were getting bigger. Peggy Hart noticed it, too. They suspected that Frank Stillwell was skimming from the gate receipts. Without C. J.’s knowledge, Peggy hired a private investigator. The investigator’s evidence showed that their suspicions were well founded. The investigator caught Stillwater stealing gate receipts at several races in 1957. Stillwater, angry at being caught red-handed and being deprived of his golden honey pot, went about getting revenge. He used his connections to have the strip shut down way earlier than it needed to be. The airport manager closed the drag strip down without explanation in 1959. It was several years before the construction of the John Wayne Airport would have mandated its closure.


In about 1955, Creighton began building a radical new, very unique, engineering marvel of a dragster. Given its shape, he called it “Slice of Pie.”


The engine was a sideways-mounted Mercury flathead with direct chain drive to the live rear axle. There was no clutch. There were casters mounted under the rear of the car that he could lower with a lever. It featured center steering.


On August 4, 1956, the “Slice of Pie” dragster was debuted at Lions Drag Strip. It was very novel and created a sensation on every run. Richard Roberts, a columnist in the Wilmington Press Journal (8/7/56) described the reaction of the crowd. “Eyes popped and necks craned whenever Hunter rolled his amazing creation to the starting line,” Roberts wrote. “The drag fans had never seen anything like it.” Creighton was disappointed that its top speed of 134.35 mph hadn’t been higher. He also towed it out to Colton to run at its night race on August 4, turning 133 mph.


Don Tuttle took a movie of it in one of its appearances at Santa Ana. This is a still frame clip from that movie. ““This car run by Creighton Hunter had a side-mounted flathead on it,” said Tuttle. “As long as the engine ran, the rear wheels turned. He pulled a lever and lifted the rear wheels off of the ground. They lined him up and get him pointed in a straight line. He dropped the lever and the rear wheels would go down and the car just literally screamed off the starting line.”


“It was a pretty unique design,” Tuttle said. “The engine was mounted sideways and drove the rear wheels direct with a chain. The rear wheels were connected direct to the engine and as long as the engine ran, so did they.”


“When Creighton was on the starting line, waiting for the starter’s flag,” said Tuttle, Creighton pulled the levers and raised the spinning rear wheels off the ground. When the starter prepared the cars for the start, Creighton would rev the engine, and of course the rear wheels would rev at the same time. When the flag was dropped, he would give the lever a nudge with his elbow, the spinning wheels would drop to the pavement and good-bye starting line.”


On August 26, 1956, at Santa Ana, things went terribly awry on a run. He was nearing the timing traps, going about 130 mph when the car suddenly veered left. Don Tuttle watched it from his announcer seat in the tower. “This car was very fast, but quite squirrelly at the top end. On his last fatal run at the drag strip, for some unknown reason, the car made a hard left turn about halfway down the drag strip. Creighton suffered six broken ribs, thirteen broken bones in one hand, and was unconscious for two weeks before coming out of it. The crash totally demolished the car and was never rebuilt. And, I think the fact that it never was rebuilt, his wife had a lot to say about it.” He narrowly escaped death.


This is a still clip from an old movie film showing Creighton and C. J. at Santa Ana, probably closer to the time of the strip closing down in 1959. Creighton was on the sidelines, but still very much interested in drag racing and hot rods.


In about 1985-86, Creighton began organizing Santa Ana Drags reunions. In the latter years of his life, he was recognized for the brief part he played in founding the drag strip. This photo appeared in the Tustin News (2/25/88).


Holding his old racing helmet, Creighton thinks back upon the beginning days of drag racing at Santa Ana.


Creighton, age 83, is reflected in the rear-view mirror of his ’33 Ford roadster. A nice touch is the surfboard strapped onto the top of the car. And that wasn’t just decoration. He liked to surf at San Onofre. Hot rodding kept him young at heart.


Creighton lived a full life and had much enjoyment as a hot rodder to look back upon. He died in 2006 at age 86. His obituary aptly summed up how he viewed life in his later years: “Creighton didn’t live in the past, but he did love reliving his past.”

 

This is the first time I've seen Frank Stillwell referenced as an actual, recent era person. Its interesting that he owned a bike shop.

Previously I have seen that name involved with the early issues of Easyriders magazine - but I assumed it was a pseudonym as many of the names involved obviously were. Historically Frank Stillwell was an old west outlaw, allegedly a member of the "Cowboys" gang - think Wyatt Earp and the Shootout at the OK Corral.

Whether some of the magazine pseudonyms were for only one or a few individuals (to inflate the staffing count or possibly hide the fact that the magazine was actually produced by a very few individuals or for some other reasons) I don't know.

What I have come to know was that some of the staffers were members of the Hells Angels, and some of the featured bikes' owners were not identified as Angels, so the magazine obviously hid those details, and perhaps those staff members might have used pseudonyms.

Anyway - my memory is that Frank Stillwell was also involved in starting and running Easyriders magazine 1970-1971-ish.

Edit in: I wonder if Frank Stillwell was related to Steve Stillwell, a staffer at Street Rodder magazine...

 

I can't find any genealogical information about Frank Stillwell, but he was living in Anaheim at least as early as 1947. He was born in about 1920. He operated his motorcycle shop in 1947 in Anaheim. In 1947, he was going to race at Daytona Beach. He had been racing motorcycles for 9 years.


This article was published in the Anaheim Bulletin (12/29/49).


He still operated his motorcycle shop in 1953, when he was involved in the Santa Ana Drags.


In about 1959-60, he was a Studebaker dealer.


In 1963, he was a Sunbeam and Hilman dealer in Anaheim.


He also became a Mercedes-Benz dealer in 1963.


In 1973, his dealership was called Stillwell Sports Car City. It was at the same address in Anaheim. He was doing well and may have been living on Balboa Island. I don't find much after 1973.

 

Absolute bitchn' thread. Hot rod history at it's finest. Should be Hamb "required reading"..... and should have 100K views.