Gone
Racin' ...Karl and Veda Orr
Story by Richard
Parks with contributions by Bob Falcon, Carole Sweikert, Ron
Ceridono, Tom Medley, Wally Parks and others. Photographic
consultant Roger Rohrdanz. This story is an updated
version with new and corrected material from an older version
first published in 2008.
Karl Orr was born in Kingston, Caldwell County, Missouri on February
9, 1906. He died on January 15, 1992 in Los Angeles, California.
The day that he died he kept talking about how tomorrow would be
Veda's birthday, which was on January 16. Karl began
building racing cars as early as 1921 in his shop in Missouri.
He came to California in the 1920's and raced in land speed time
trials as early as 1929 at Muroc, in his Model A. Karl raced a
4-cylinder modified and recorded a speed of 125 mph, which was
supposedly the first to attain that speed on the Southern
California dry lakes. He recorded times of 120 mph in his '32
Ford roadster. Karl was a flinty old codger at best, but he
attracted a following of loyal fans and friends. He was talented
and dedicated to his goals and not a person to trifle with. His
views were seriously considered and he contributed to dry lakes
racing in ways that gave respect to the early timing associations
and to their successor, the Southern California Timing
Association (SCTA).
Karl was one of the older statesmen, even older than Wally Parks,
Ed Adams, Art Tilton and the early leaders of the SCTA. If his
views were not accepted by the SCTA, Karl often went his own way.
He raced at Muroc long after the SCTA felt the criticisms of the
public due to the outbreak of World War II. The main body of the
governing board for the SCTA held the view that continued racing
was not in their best interest. The war had brought shortages of
every basic commodity and auto racing in general had been shut
down in order to save on rubber, gasoline and other materials
that the military needed badly. Karl didn't see any reason why
the desperate world situation should inconvenience him in his
quest for more speed and throughout the war, Karl found places to
race. (He wasn't drafted, nor did he volunteer. Karl
and his brothers had very flat feet. He also had a very
personal birth defect and he took a lot of criticism for not
serving in the war, but his stubborn pride kept him from telling
anyone about it.)
An article in the SCTA Times, written by Wally Parks, just after
the war was over, complementary in nature towards him, sent him
into a frenzy and he marched down to the SCTA offices with
several of his followers to get satisfaction or else. Other than
a great deal of shouting, cooler heads prevailed and Karl left
without any broken furniture. He had taken offense to the words,
"Karl Orr, sire of the record setting car." (Karl
wanted kids of his own and the word 'sire' probably hit him the
wrong way due to his birth defect that made him sterile.) As
difficult as he was to deal with, Karl Orr was also an important
fixture in the Southern California racing scene, as a car
builder, mechanic and owner of one of Southern California's
pre-eminent new Speed Shops. He was an important member in the
SCTA, but one who was given a lot more leeway than was allowed to
others. One favor that he extracted that bordered on sheer heresy
was letting his wife race at Muroc in the late 1930's, under the
Muroc Timing Association's banner. The SCTA seriously frowned on
women racing or even belonging to their group.
The MTA was under the auspices of George Wight, owner of Bell
Auto Parts and George Riley, who manufactured the Riley 4-Port
among other speed equipment. There were other men who donated
timing equipment and a delivery van that doubled as an ambulance,
but the ownership of the MTA was held by a few older men. Karl
was more their age and when he closed the cloth tarp on his
roadster and told his young wife, Veda, to take off as soon as
her name was called, no one contested Karl's decision or
authority. It was a power and authority based on sheer will and
crankiness. You challenged Karl Orr at your own peril. Right or
wrong, Karl was a presence in land speed racing and he always
earned a grudging respect from his peers, though he made their
jobs much more difficult.
Veda married Karl Orr in 1936 and fell in love with the whole
aspect of land speed racing and automobiles. In a way she went
past the tutelage of her husband and became beloved by all the
land speeders of that early generation. She was kind,
compassionate and caring, but when Karl was attacked, she forgot
what the controversy was about and rallied to his side. She raced
with the Russetta Timing Association and after the war; the SCTA
passed a special resolution giving Veda the full rights of
membership and the ability to race at their meets. She set a
record of 104.40 mph in the full fendered roadster class and then
improved on the record by going 114.27 in 1937 at Muroc. Nellie
Taylor and Don Blair let her drive their modified car and she
turned 131mph, in an SCTA meet. She raced to a speed of 121.62
mph in a C Roadster category in 1947. Those were exceptionally
fast times in those days with the type of cars that they had. The
timing associations had policies about excluding women from their
racing activities. They weren't exactly anti-women, though they
weren't supporting women's rights either. The men simply felt
that women couldn't do what the men could and that it would put
people's lives at risk to let women drive. A bigger issue was the
public perception of land speed racing and hot rodding.
The public saw hot rodders and street racers as dangerous, out of
control punks that felt no remorse as they put the public's
safety at risk by their irresponsible behavior. By today's
standards, those hot rodders were tame, but they often straddled
the line between creative car builders and street-wise criminals.
The timing associations, especially the SCTA, wished to present a
picture to the public of a safe and sanctioned race, where speed
and mechanical know-how and ability were the key elements. If
someone crashed at a dry lakes meet and was injured or killed,
the bad publicity would make it that much harder for them to
convince the public of their good intentions and wise planning.
If a woman was injured or killed at the dry lakes, the publicity
might have ended any hope of acceptance by the public. State laws
were being passed to outlaw the sport of hot rodding and land
speed racing. The Dills Bills came very close to passage and they
would have outlawed any car that was not stock. That the timing
associations gave an exception to Veda Orr meant that she had
gone beyond what was required to prove her driving skill and that
she had gained the love and respect of the racers themselves.
In fact, that's exactly what she did. As WWII began, a huge
number of hot rodders were drafted or volunteered to go into the
military and the SCTA lost so many members that within months of
the outbreak of war, they voted to disband for the duration. All
except Karl, who stubbornly went out to the desert and kept
racing, bringing as many rebels as he could with him, until the
military chased them out for good in 1942. There are reports that
Karl continued to race wherever he found a flat surface to do so,
while the SCTA board bit their tongues and resisted any
discipline against him. Veda immediately took over the function
of the old SCTA Times and began to send out newsletters,
laboriously typed on mimeograph paper and reproduced, over and
over again, until the paper gave out and she had to start over
again. Finding valuable supplies not requisitioned by the war
department, she collected news about the homeland and from the
hot rodders overseas and put it all in her paper and then sent it
back out to news hungry GIs and sailors. The SCTA Times had begun
as a newsletter for land speed racing in Southern California by
Wally Parks, Bozzy Willis and Eldon Snapp. Harry Cameron was the
supposed editor, but they only used his name to deflect any
criticism that might come their way. Veda loved what she was
doing and her newsletter reached over 750 men overseas, who had
just recently been SCTA members. They shared the newsletters with
other service men and the land speed sport became well known. She
never charged for her publication and she carried on
correspondence with many lonely men serving in the military
during the war.
Before the war, the land speed movement had been localized to Southern
California and there were few ways to inform young men in other
parts of the country. In 1941, Jack Peters published Throttle
magazine and it did quite well, but after twelve issues, it was
closed down and Peters went into the service. No one knows what
happened to Peters after the war ended, but Throttle
magazine only existed for that one year prior to the war. It gave
a great deal of coverage to land speed racing, but was also
concerned with oval track racing as well. Veda's newsletters and
later her Dry Lakes Pictorial book, was the first real attempt at
spreading the gospel of dry lakes land speed racing. In
1966 Karl and Veda had lunch at Sambo's with Jack E. Jerrils, who
had used the alias Jack Peters before the war. They had
both previously written about the dry lakes racing days.
They talked about the end of the war and old friends. In
1974, at the Orr's home they had talked about Jerrils needing
income after being discharged from the military and how he could
not risk his job by writing elsewhere. That was the reason
that Jack E. Jerrils, alias Jack Peters never reestablished Throttle
magazine after the war and left an opening for Robert E. 'Bob'
Petersen to get a toehold into the publishing business with Hot
Rod magazine. Hot Rod looked very
family in style and writing to Jerrils' pre-war Throttle
magazine. Jack's railroad and newspaper positions had kept
him contented. He wrote a book about the City of Carson,
California, where he lived and that inspired him to want to write
a book about the dry lakes with Veda. Jerrils health
deteriorated before they could do that and lung cancer ended
their collaborations. Veda prized his Throttle magazine set
that he gave her. Jack's death was inscribed in Veda's
special ledger for lost allies in 1980.
After the war came a series of B rated movies about young men and
women gone bad and racing and wrecking lives on the streets and
roads of America. So desperate were young men and women in the
military for news at home that Veda's newsletters, photographs
and pictorials were passed around to everyone. The number of
copies per issue probably never exceeded 750, yet for the first
time, land speed racing became known by hundreds of thousands and
many of these young men came home with the hot rodding bug. After
the war ended, Karl and Veda rebuilt the Speed Shop and as a
team, they went racing at the dry lakes and in oval track racing,
in midgets, track roadsters, sprint cars and any other
motorsports that struck their fancy. Veda was born on January 16,
1910 and passed away on December 13, 1989. Two years later
Karl passed away in 1992, and they never had any children, though
they were very close to a number of people, including Bob
Sweikert's oldest daughter, who was Veda’s
Goddaughter. Karl was remembered as an early pioneer, but
Veda was never forgotten by the men she gave hope to during the
war years. The SCTA gave her a written commendation, thanking her
for the service she had provided. The Veda and Karl Orr '32
Roadster was chosen as one of the top 75 Deuce Fords by the Ford
Motor Car Company, when they celebrated the 75th Anniversary of
the famous Roadster in 2007, at the Grand National Roadster Show,
in Pomona, California.
The following excerpts come from Wally Parks and Tom Medley.
"I first met Veda in the 1930's, when she raced her 1932
roadster at Muroc Dry Lake. She was later active as the first
female driver in SCTA's time trials history, at a time when women
were not allowed to become members of the association. Veda was a
behind-the-scenes partner with her husband Karl, who operated one
of the first speed shops of prominence in California. She was
accepted primarily because of her dedication and her expertise as
a capable driver in what was still an experimental stage of the
desert's lakebed speed trials. Karl was an outspoken, but
genuinely dedicated member of that era's hot rod culture, who
backed up his opinions, good and bad, with building and driving
his own race cars. He was an early member of the 90 MPH Club, who
later switched to the Road Runners.
Until the World War II years, Veda was a dry lakes speed trials
contestant, and then to cover more than just SCTA's activities
she introduced her own CT (California Timing) News publication
and a CT News pictorial featuring popular race cars of that
period. After the start of WWII, when SCTA's activities were put
on hold, Veda extended her CT News to a special-interest mailer
sent to military servicemen and defense industry hot rod members
gratis-at least to ones she could locate. It was a blessing for
overseas contacts. Veda was a door opener for the interest and
participation of women in dry lakes racing. She was a role model
in vehicle know-how and high-speed experience behind the wheel.
Her record 122 mph in her '32 roadster was a mark for the guys to
shoot at, which they did. After they sold their speed shop and
discontinued their racing careers, Karl and Veda retired to Mint Canyon,
north of Los Angeles on the road to the dry lakes, where they
bought the local water works and discontinued their active roles
as speed trials pioneers," Parks concluded.
Tom Medley spoke of Veda, "(She) was the glue that held hot
rodding together during the war years," said Tom. Tom
"Stroker McGurk" Medley remembers meeting Veda on the
dry lakes before World War II, where she was, in his words,
"a hell of a competitor." Medley served in the European
Theater of Operations (ETO) and was in the Battle of the Bulge, a
vicious and deadly German counter-attack, where Ak Miller and
Nellie Taylor were seriously wounded. "Even with everything
that was going on around us, lots of us were thinking and talking
about our hot rods back home, and Veda certainly helped out in
that regard," said Tom. "Veda corresponded personally
with lots of the guys overseas; she kept everyone posted on who
was where and how they were doing. Veda Orr was the glue that
held hot rodding together during the war years," Medley
added. Tom sent one of his cartoons to Veda to be used in her
newsletter and book. "When I got home after the war, I told
Veda that we should start a magazine, but she said no because the
speed shop was getting so busy," Medley continued. Tom and
Veda often wondered about what would have happened if they had
formed their own magazine. Would Hot Rod Magazine have ever got
off the ground, they mused.
Gone Racin' is at
RNPARKS1@JUNO.COM.
(Part of this story comes from an article by Ron Ceridono, and
the recollections of Tom Medley, Wally Parks and Carole
Sweikert.)
**********************************************************************************
The
following story comes from Bob Falcon with editorial comments in
parenthesis from Carole Sweikert.
-------------------
Thought you'd
like to know about this discovery. While reorganizing my
personal library I uncovered an old dry lakes publication, Veda
Orr's Lakes Pictorial-1946 Season. (Veda produced
several different years of the Pictorials.) I recall, when
as a teen, I would visit Karl's Culver City Speed Shop and Veda
would be at a desk, organizing snapshots and banging-out copy on
an old upright typewriter. In fact I knew the Orr's pretty well,
in those days since their home was just a few blocks from my
parents, in Culver City. I do remember their house was on a
street about three blocks from where my folks lived. As I recall
it was just south of Braddock and across the street from (and
around the corner from) a small park. The location was south of
MGM Studios Main Lot. Their favorite color combination was white
and black; hence, their house was painted white with black trim.
The Orr's were real hot rodders! Their "family car" was
a 1932 Ford Roadster with full fenders and a canvas top. Veda
used to run this car at the lakes meets.
I had visited there many times and
recall Karl had ashtrays in his garage, a policy I adopted and
continued until I gave up the habit many years ago. As far as I
recall, Veda was a housewife who also helped at the speed shop.
She handled the books and did some counter work when Karl was
running errands. Of course, she did the assembly on her lakes
books at the shop. One of their customers, who had a really neat
1932 Roadster, was a former Doolittle Raider. This flier was a
frequent visitor to the speed shop. He lived in Venice, California
and he was a paraplegic who received his injuries when he bailed
out of, or crashed, his B-25 bomber in China. (Captain Ted W.
Lawson was the pilot whose leg was amputated after his B-25
crashed in China. Ted piloted the Ruptured Duck that took
off from the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942. The book was
written in 1943. The movie was released on November 15,
1944. Actor Van Johnson portrayed Ted in the movie.)
I can't recall his name, but I know that Van Johnson played his
character in the famous WW2 movie, "Thirty Seconds Over
Tokyo. Karl had closed the speed shop in the mid to late
1950's and went to work for Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. He
was a regular visitor to my dad's shop. I recall that I was
working the Swing Shift at AiResearch and building my 1932 coupe
Jalopy racer in my dad's shop. Karl would stop by and check out
my work, give me a few tips and go to the beer bar on the corner
for lunch. One day he took a very long lunch and was headed back
to the "Bird Farm" and declared he was going to tell
them to shove it! He then disappeared off the radar. A
few years later I was in Bouquet Canyon and spied a sign that
read "Karl Orr Speed Shop" and we had a reunion.
(The Orr's took in two young women during their marriage.
One was a relative of Karl's who wanted a change in life.
She sometimes helped the Orr's at the shop to contribute to her
upkeep. The second was a pregnant lady from out of the
area, whose fiancée had died while racing. She promised to
let the Orr's adopt her baby, but later changed her mind.
She also helped out at the Orr's shop and maybe this explains why
people believed that the Orr's have broken up and divorced and
that Karl had remarried. Seeing these young ladies might
have given the wrong impression to some people and the rumors
spread that the Orr's had divorced and that Karl had
remarried. The Orr's remained married and lived together
until they passed away in the late 1980's).
I remember that Karl still stocked Crème Soda in his soft drink
machine. Several years later I was told, by Jim Bremner, I
believe that Karl and Veda had remarried and they were living in
the San Diego area (this was another rumor that was believed but
did not happen). I think I had learned later that they both
had "crossed the finish-line." I always liked them;
they were really kind to me. Bouquet Canyon was a
settlement kind of northeast of Saugus, in the desert. I was up
there to do some target shooting with a friend and one or two of
my kids. I wanted to test fire a .22 Beretta I had just
purchased for $25. My friend had his Colt Army .45. We
were driving through town when I spotted the speed shop sign.
That was the only time I had ever seen the new Mrs. Orr, (Karl
was still married to Veda and they never separated or divorced,
so this lady might have been an employee or one of the women that
Karl and Veda had taken in to live with them) but recall her as
being a very attractive blonde. I don't recall
whether they had any children and I would reckon that Karl was 50
or better at this time. I think Jim Bremner picked-up the later
news from Frank Oddo. Both Jim and Frank are on the mailing
list for the LSR newsletter. When I was helping John Kelly,
and later Sandy Belond, build their Track Roadsters, Karl was a
frequent visitor to the shop in the evenings. John Kelly
and Sandy Belond were very good friends and both appreciated my
efforts on their race car, even though I was just a kid in their
eyes. I lost track of John but remained in touch with Sandy
and his wife, Ruth, until their demise. I am still in
contact with their daughter and her sons.
I first met Ray Nichels through Sandy when Ray was working as the
Chief Mechanic on Sandy's Indy Roadster. I maintained contact
with Ray and his buddies Paul Russo and Johnny Pawl until they
all "crossed the finish line." Later Karl built a
"Big Car," which we now call Sprint Cars, and I think
it was a conversion of his old lakes modified. He named the
Sprinter “The K. O. Special.” He raced it with
the old Western Racing Association (WRA) that served as the Big
Car organization for SoCal. I've seen a picture of the car
recently, but can't recall the publication that ran the
photograph. I doubt if any of your present day WRA contacts
can shed any light on the doings of the old WRA that was in
operation for a short time right after WW2. If Joe Gemsa,
Vince Conze or the Famaghetti brothers were still alive they
could probably help. I think Karl had Bob Sweikert driving
for him at one time. (Bob Sweikert drove off and on for Karl Orr
between 1948 and 1952 and sometimes at the dry lakes for Karl.)
Dan Fleischer may be able to help since he is a good historian. Most
of the present WRA guys think 1965 is ancient
history!
Bob Falcon