So hi!
Long story short, I did the research for this episode and wrote the outline almost a year before I recorded it. It was also the first time that I have attempted to do a non-scripted episode and honestly, while I was editing it, I thought it was incredibly clear that you could hear me struggling to remember the information and I had a sinus infection and the audio just didn’t turn out great.
And so, in lieu of a podcast episode, I’m doing just a written version of the episode.
One of the things that I really love about researching the Indianapolis 500/Indianapolis Motor Speedway and everything connected to it is that the Indy 500/IMS really attracted some colorful and interesting characters. Some of them innovated, created and pushed motorsport forward. Others were just… interesting in a myriad of ways.
Of course, I will talk about the great ones but I’m a genealogist and so I find a lot of enjoyment in piecing together the lesser known stories or the ones that have just been lost to time. These are the Ghosts of the Brickyard that the podcast is named after.
And so, these episodes are called “Minor Hauntings” because I think the ghost-y theme is cute. Sue me.
Anyway, the subject of the first Minor Hauntings is Frank Fox, who raced in the inaugural Indy 500.
So who was Frank Fox?
He was born Francis Peter Fox on June 10th, 1877 to Francis J Fox and Theresa Lechner in Pennsylvania.
To be honest, the early parts of his life are a bit of a mystery to me. According to some sources, he was working in oil fields by the time he was a teenager. But he was listed in the 1900 census as a machinist who was living in West Virginia. It was here in West Virginia that he met and married Margaret Evelyn King in 1901. The couple had three children – Harold in 1902, Mary in 1906 and Robert in 1908. I’m not sure if Frank and Margaret got a divorce or if Frank just – flat out abandoned his family but – Margaret and the children remained in Pennsylvania while Frank went to Indiana. Frank married a woman named Bess Southcott in 1913.
The first time I find him in newspapers is in 1908 (when he was 31) in Vincennes, Indiana with plans to build a three story hotel. He had amassed a fortune investing in oil fields, he also owned at least two garages and had a taxicab line that operated in Indianapolis. Auto racing was Frank’s passion and he pursued it solely for his own enjoyment.
I want to take a moment and share the text of a newspaper article I found in The South Bend Tribune in January 1911 that mentions something noteworthy.
The headline says, “ONLY AUTO PILOT WITH WOODEN LEG IN GAME” with a byline of “Frank P. Fox, of Indianapolis, Will Enter Speedway Event.”
An automobile race driver, who is in a class by himself from the unique standpoint of that hazardous sport, is Frank P. Fox, of Indianapolis, who has just entered a 1911 model Pope-Hartford in the 500-mile international sweepstakes race over the Indianapolis motor speedway on Decoration Day, May 30 next. Fox is the only motor pilot in the game who has an artificial limb. The left leg having been amputated above the knee several years ago.
The strange part of his willingness to accept this handicap against other famous drivers is the fact that he is independently wealthy and owns two or three thriving business institutions which yield him a large annual income, so that the element of personal pain does not enter into his participation in automobile racing. Fox is known as one of the hardest, most fearless drivers who sit the wheel to-day, and despite his physical handicap he has been the winner of many races during the past three or four years. Most of his driving has been done In the east, although he has been a contestant hard for the others to reckon with in several of the events at the Indianapolis track. During the May race meeting at Indianapolis last year, the big PopeHartford which Fox was driving blew a front tire and swerved off the track into the fence. Although the car was badly broken up, Fox and his mechanician escaped injury.When asked if he was hurt, the dirt begrimed driver replied:
“Guess I’ve broken my left leg. It’s not painful, but it probably will cause me some inconvenience because I can’t get another one until I get home.”
Note that the above article says that he had won many races during the past three or four years prior to 1911 and while that may be true, I haven’t found any newspaper evidence of these wins (that doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t happen but often times, careers were embellished in newspapers)
He did, however, race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 1910, capturing a pair of third place finishes before a wheel gave out on the 15th mile of the Prest-O-Lite Trophy Race. In the July 1910 races at IMS, he finished fourth in the five mile event. He was one of the first to enter for the inaugural 500 mile race.
Through this research, I have come to realize that Frank Fox is not recognized as one of the drivers to drive the Indy 500 with a prosthetic leg. There are three others, Al Miller, Cal Niday and Bill Schindler. Frank was the first.
And so, I would love nothing more than to restore Frank’s name to that ( incredibly niche) list.
I want to pause Frank’s story so we can give some brief background information on perhaps the most interesting thing that Frank was ever a part of. Let’s talk about the American Labor Movement.
Now, I’m going to be brief and I want to be clear, I am only scratching the surface on the history of all of this and hopefully I will make sense –
The American Labor movement’s history is brutal and bloody.
To set the stage: In 1886 workers striking for an eight-hour workday rallied in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. After a day of peaceful demonstrations, police arrived en masse to disperse the crowd. A bomb was thrown. Gunshots were fired between the police and strikers, with seven policemen and four workers killed in what became known as the Haymarket riot.
Six years later in 1892, steelworkers at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead, PA factory went on strike demanding better wages, locking out the factory to prevent strikebreakers from continuing operations. Carnegie Steel chairman Henry Clay Frick sent armed Pinkerton agents to break up the strike and reopen the plant; open warfare between the two factions, including an assassination attempt on Frick, went on for two days until the state militia arrived to break up the strike and reopen the plant. Miners in Colorado went on strike throughout 1903 for an eight-hour workday and better working conditions; the year of violence that followed between miners and operators is known as the Colorado Labor Wars and ended when the National Guard declared martial law to reopen the mines. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, exposing the wretched and unsanitary conditions in America’s meatpacking industry as Lewis Hine traveled the country photographing and documenting the plight of child workers.
Some unions to know:
In 1896, the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers was formed in six cities across America; by 1902 it was the dominant union in the American Bridge Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel, and had 10,000 members.
In 1903, the National Association of Manufacturers and Erectors of Structural Steel was formed to represent employers’ interest and weaken the power of the Iron Workers union.
In 1906, the Association broke off all ties with the union and the Iron Workers took up a dynamiting campaign against the Association, targeting iron works and job sites of its members.
The same year the Iron Workers union was formed, the Merchants & Manufacturers Association was created to promote the interests of manufacturing companies. In 1897, two key men joined the Merchants & Manufacturers: but the one to know about for this is Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Otis, and by extension his newspaper, were staunchly anti-union, using the paper’s influence to drive unions from Los Angeles—which the Iron Workers resisted.
Under Otis, the Merchants & Manufacturers began aggressively promoting the open shop, or a place of employment where joining a union is not a condition to employment. The issue of the open shop brought the Merchants & Manufacturers and Iron Workers into conflict, with a strike in June 1910 being called across Los Angeles. Five months later, the Los Angeles Times building was bombed.
On October 1, 1910, a bundle of dynamite was placed in an alley outside of the LA Times building and set to detonate just after 1 am. The force of the explosion shifted the walls and successive detonations ignited fires. Massive Linotype machines crashed through the floors, smashed into gas mains running beneath the building. 20 people were killed and 17 more were injured.
There were unexploded bombs found in the homes of FJ Zeehandelaar and Harrison Gray Otis.
Otis immediately suspected the Iron Works (I’m guessing because dynamiting was their MO). William J Burns, the famous private detective, known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes” was hired to track down who was responsible for the bombing.
At the end of April 1911, Burns arrested Ortie McMangial and James Barnabas McNamara in Detroit. JB was the brother of John J McNamara, the Secretary-Treasury of the Iron Workers.
On the same day, McMangial and JB were extradited to California, JJ McNamara was arrested at the Iron Workers’ Indianapolis headquarters while at a meeting of the Executive Board.
JJ was denied the representation of an attorney upon his request and a local judge ordered JJ be extradited to California despite not having the proper jurisdiction to do so.
Burns approached our pal, Frank P Fox and asked him to drive them west. Frank recounted the ordeal to the Indianapolis Star, in part saying, “Saturday morning, Burns called me at my garage, saying he wanted the most powerful machine in Indianapolis to take a party of men on a long trip… Of course, at that time, I knew nothing of the detectives’ plans, but I am in the garage business, I have cars for such purposes and I decided to go, whatever should follow.
Frank drove the group to Terre Haute and Burns secured another driver there to take them the rest of the way to California.
The less than legal tactics used by Burns to apprehend the McNamaras, prompted outrage from the labor union and Burns, Fox as well as others who were involved were charged with kidnapping and they were arrested. Frank was able to post bond (bail?) and leave jail and continue preparing for the first Indy 500 which was in a month’s time.
Frank renamed his car, “Dynamite” as a nod to Detective Burns and the wild ride they went on. I could only find one brief mention of how the first Indy 500 went for Frank – a universal joint on the car went out and it took over an hour to repair. He finished 22nd, completing 162 of the 200 laps.
Two weeks later, the kidnapping charge against Frank P Fox was dropped.
When the McNamara brothers went to trial in November 1912, the third guy who was arrested, Ortie McMangial, flipped and testified against them and part of his testimony told of a plot by JJ McNamara to orchestrate a hold up during the inaugural Indy 500, when everybody would be busy with the race and steal $150,000 from the ticket office (which would be about $4.9M in today’s money). From the testimony, it doesn’t seem like the plan had any sort of actual plan in place but the ‘what if’ enjoy in me does think it’s fun to think that if William Burns hadn’t apprehended the McNamara brothers when he had – maybe they would have held up the ticket office and maybe that would’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back and Indianapolis Motor Speedway wouldn’t exist except in the memory of super dedicated motorsport historians.
Who knows.
Frank participated in an unsanctioned hill climb that got him suspended by the AAA for the majority of the 1912 racing season (which to be clear – getting suspended by the AAA was almost a rite of passage and a lot of drivers were suspended by the AAA at some point or another).
Frank built a car specifically for the 1913 Indy 500, calling it the Fox Special and later on, the Gray Fox. The car was a Pope-Hartford that Frank had rebuilt. He did not race the car himself, instead employing future Indy 500 winner, Howdy Wilcox. I could not really find any sort of details about this entry or why Frank did not race it himself. Howdy had a good race, finishing 6th which netted them prize money.
Frank again entered the car in the 1914 Indy 500, employing Howdy Wilcox, however a valve ended their day early and he finished 22nd. It seems that after this Frank largely retired from auto racing.
He bought a farm and raised horses that he raced with, having success. He became the first Vice President of the Indiana Trotting and Pacing Association He sponsored a 2 year old race called the Frank P Fox Stakes which eventually was called just Fox Stakes and is still run to this day
Frank Fox died on April 19, 1931 of complications of colon cancer. He was 53.
Not to be brief on his post-racing years but I do not really know anything about horse racing nor am I particularly interested but I found this obituary that was written by George Gahagan, who covered horse racing that was published in the Indianapolis Star that outlines his horse racing career, as well as glimpses to his personality.
“Horsedom has lost an unique personality, to say the least, in the passing of Frank P. Fox, who for several years was as deeply Interested in the doings of the trotters and pacers as any other Hoosier. His first connection was In 1920, through the pacing filly La Paloma, she having been purchased as 1 yearling by Clair Wolverton upon an order from Mr. Fox. Wolverton schooled the filly well, and as a 3-year-old she took a record of 2:091, in a race at the state fair. Taken out into high society the following two years, she acquitted herself creditably, and in the fall of 1924, she won a sparkling race at Lexington, with a heat in 2:01 3/4.
Through the success of La Paloma he had taken deeper interest in the harness kind, and before she had reached her zenith he had founded the stud at Fox stock farm near Oaklandon, by purchasing the Axworthy stallion, Boyd Worthy. Turning this stallion over to Wolverton, a few weeks’ work sufficed to bestow a record of 2:20 on the horse, this being the stallion’s best and final record.
About the time of La Paloma’s culminating race, Mr. Fox obtained a price on the then rising stallion, Peter McKlyo, 2:06. The figure was somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000, and with characteristically quick decision he announced for 1925 the Fox stock farm stud, consisting of this notable pair representing the Peter the Great and Axworthy family lines. Selling La Paloma for a high figure, he purchased a retinue of brood mares and gave liberal publicity to his farm, its foundation stock and its products. Activity reigned there for four years, but early in 1929 through a public auction at the state fairgrounds, he disposed of practically all his horse holdings, reserving for a time the stallions Peter McKlyo and Braden Direct, 2:01 1/4, the latter having been added to his stud shortly after his acquisition of the mentioned pair.
A man of highly impulsive nature, Mr. Fox was colorful to the extreme in his connection with harness horses. Following the custom of some leading farms, he sought to market the yearling products of Fox farm at the Old Glory auction in New York, his ambition being to equal the sale averages of Walnut Hall, whose prestige over a long term had caused high figures to be paid for its youngsters. The outcome at one sale was fairly agreeable to the Fox farm master, but in the auction of 1928 the results were lacking decidedly in his estimation, and his decision to close out all his horses followed before he left the sale arena, At the closing out the horses went irrespective of prices, which in numerous cases ruled low.
Undoubtedly his greatest gratification in connection with horses was when, in a “gentleman’s match race” at Lexington in the fall of 1927, he drove his trotting mare, Edna McKlyo, 2:06, to victory over the sensational trotter, Dewey McKinney, 2:01 3/4, reined by his owner, Claude Ludington of Syracuse. It was a popular event to the big attendance and Mr. Fox was a distinct hero.
So far as his effect on the horse world goes, there probably was most lasting influence through his initiation of the Fox Pacing Stake, which he began in 1926, with nominations for yearlings at that time. That event was raced in 1927. The first racing of the Fox was for a purse of nearly $15,000, and succeeding races also have been of excellent value.
When Mr. Fox was planning this big event he submitted the tentative provisions, with the several payments and other features, to several, including the writer, though to any one conversant with his wavs it is unnecessary to state that the submission was not for advisory purposes. The writer disagreed with the idea which he had outlined of large payments early in the development of the event, and was promptly ridiculed by the promoter, who failed to even allow the “crossing of a ‘t’ and the dotting of an I” in his plans. His notion of that proved a decidedly favorable one, so the writer is perfectly willing to admit that the Fox financial brain was much superior in it’s gravitation towards rich developments.
Intensely loy to the horses of his ownership, and probably more so (if possible) to those bred by him, he was a menacing agent through verbal barrages when some unfortunate disagreed with him. The writer was inclined to do this frequently and the confession is freely made that sometimes this divergence of opinion was ventured to call out vocal pyrotechnics always forth- coming when anything suggesting aspersions were turned towards the trotting, and pacing prospects under his colors.”
And so, that is Frank Fox – who by all accounts was impulsive and loved to argue (He would have THRIVED on Twitter).
