Tucson notable: Race car driver Roger McCluskey

Indy vet McCluskey dies

Tucsonan, 63, battled cancer for three years

Ron Somers
Arizona Daily Star

He died the same way he raced cars - pushing hard to the end.

Tucsonan Roger McCluskey, who raced from the dirt at the old Tucson Speedway to the bricks of the Indianapolis 500, died of cancer yesterday at an Indianapolis hospital.

He was 63.

Three years ago, after complaining of back pain, McCluskey was diagnosed with cancer. It didn't stop him from performing his duties as vice president and chief operating officer of the United States Auto Club, the main sanctioning body for open-wheel racing in the United States.

"He was never a quitter in a race car or against cancer," four-time Indy 500 winner A.J. Foyt said yesterday by telephone from his ranch near Houston.

"Roger was a fighter to hang on; he had to be a lion," said fellow Tucsonan and Indy 500 veteran Bill Cheesbourg. "You knew that stuff (cancer) hurt."

Lloyd Ruby, another fellow Indy 500 driver, saw McCluskey at a race last month in Indiana.

"He was in a wheelchair but never complained," Ruby said from his home in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Despite the pain and confinement to the wheelchair, McCluskey until recent weeks worked several hours a day at his office in Indianapolis. Earlier this year, he gave the command "Gentleman, start your engines" at a race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Foyt said he saw McCluskey working the computers while sitting in his wheelchair at last May's Indy 500.

McCluskey raced in the Indy 500 18 times. Although he never won the world's most prestigious auto race, he led briefly in 1962 and '63, finished third in 1973 and fifth in 1975 before retiring from racing in 1979. When he led in 1962, he was the 100th driver to do so in the history of the race.

He also raced at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1967.

McCluskey and Foyt were the only drivers to win USAC championships in three different divisions. McCluskey was the national Sprint Car champion in 1963 and '66; the Stock Car titlist in 1969 and '70; and, at age 43 in 1973, became the oldest driver at the time to win the Indy car crown.

"He knew more about racing than 90 percent of the people out there," Foyt said.

"Roger loved to win, and he did his share of winning," said Bob Huff, who promoted races at Tucson Speedway sometimes featuring McCluskey, Cheesbourg, Foyt and other open-wheel greats.

McCluskey won 54 races in USAC national competition. He was inducted into the Tucson Raceway Park Hall of Fame in 1992.

Huff recalled a Sprint Car victory of McCluskey's in the mid-60s that he called awesome.

It was at Ascot in Gardena, Calif., and Huff said, "It was against impossible circumstances."

Foyt, Parnelli Jones and Johnny Rutherford were in the field, which Huff said was filled with the best Sprint Car drivers of the day. McCluskey started in the second or third row. But in the first corner of the 30-lap race, he pulled to the side, and everyone raced past him.

"He got hit in the face with a big wad of clay," Huff said. "It just about tore his head off."

Once he cleared the clay off his goggles, McCluskey resumed racing and started passing people. With four laps to go, he was still a half-lap down. Undaunted, he drove into one of the corners so fast that he sent up a rooster tail of mud that landed on a freeway next to the track, Huff said.

McCluskey won.

"I was the first one out to his car," Huff said. "I said, 'Roger, there was never a better race than that. There couldn't be a better Sprint Car race.'

"He grinned and patted the cowling of the car.

" 'I've got a pretty good horse,' he said.

"I've lived that race over a thousand times. I don't believe it yet."

Foyt's favorite story about McCluskey involved what he called a "witchy woman" in Indiana in 1961.

"We both qualified for the Indy 500," he said. "This weird-looking woman, hoo-doo woman came up to Roger and said don't race, you're going to get upside down (roll over)."

Which is exactly what happened.

Foyt said they saw her at many other races.

"Roger took off running after that," Foyt said.

Cheesbourg said driving was not McCluskey's only skill.

"Roger could not only drive a race car," he said, "but he could build them and make them work. He could look at a car and understand it."

After winning the Milwaukee 200 in 1979, McCluskey retired from racing but not from the sport itself. He went to work for USAC as the competition director.

"He was instrumental in making those cars safer every year," Cheesbourg said.

McCluskey was instrumental in developing the popular program "Saturday Night Thunder" on ESPN. The show features USAC Midgets and Sprint Cars. He also worked with Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George on bringing theNASCAR Brickyard 400 to the speedway next year.

McCluskey was born Aug. 24, 1930, in San Antonio.

He moved to Tucson as a boy after his mother, Zelma White, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He learned welding from his stepfather, Dewey White, who was welding a roadster for Cheesbourg. That was his entree into motor sports.

In 1947, McCluskey hooked up with the late Hank Arnold, building Supermodifieds and Sprint Cars. Their first car was a jalopy that they ran on a track in an old cotton field near Romero Road on the Northwest side of Tucson.

McCluskey is survived by his wife, Jean; his son, Roger Jr., and daughter-in-law, Rita, all of Indianapolis; by his mother; daughters Sharon Galarza and Karen McCluskey; grandchildren Tamera and Justin; brother-in-law George Buchanan, all of Tucson; and by his stepdaughter Lee McFarland, of Olive Branch, Miss.

Funeral services are scheduled for Indianapolis but plans were incomplete yesterday, said Huff, who was asked by the family to be its spokesman.

"I loved him as though he were a blood relative," Huff said.

Stories of 'Old Leadfoot' McCluskey outlive the Tucson racer

Along the way
By Corky Simpson
Tucson Citizen columnist

On the fabled brick racetrack at Indianapolis, the man was just about ready to announce, "Gentlemen, start your engines."

It was the 1967 Indy 500.

Tim Tyers of the Phoenix Ga­zette, who was covering his first Indy, walked over to Tucson racer Roger McCluskey who was preparing to climb into his rocket on wheels.

"Hey, Rog, you gonna win?" Tyers asked.

"Hell, Red," McCluskey shot back, "that's why they run this thing . . . if you don't think you're gonna win you'd better not be out here."

"Old Leadfoot" died yesterday after a 3½-year bout with cancer.

McCluskey, 63 at the time of death, fought the disease with the same ferocious confidence he showed in winning 54 victories in United States Auto Club national competition.

Throw a challenge his way — I don't care what it was — and Roger Frank McCluskey would never back away.

Roger and A.J. Foyt are the only men ever to win USAC titles in three separate divisions.

And if you're thinking, "Hey, he must'a been good to be ranked with guys like that," forget it.

They were lucky to be ranked with Roger.

He was born in San Antonio in 1930 and moved to Tucson when he was 10.

Roger attended Sam Hughes Elementary and Mansfeld Junior High before enrolling at Tucson High.

The honky-tonk dirt tracks of the desert had never seen the kind of dust and excitement McCluskey raised in the late 1940s, after he dropped out of Tucson High.

He raced the Gilpin track out on Romero Road, once a cornfield where he and old buddy Bill Cheesbourg used to tangle in the wildest, rompin'est, stompin'est showdowns in dirt track history.

His cancer was diagnosed in De­cember 1989.

Roger is survived by his mother, Zelma White of Tucson; his wife, Jean; daughters Karen McCluskey and Sharon Galarza of Tucson; son Roger Jr. of Indianapolis; step­ daughr Lee McFarland of Olive Branch, Miss., grandchildren Tamera and Justin; brother-in-law George Buchanan; and three nieces in Tucson.

Funeral services are scheduled in Indianapolis.

"He was a great human being, a good friend and one helluva race driver," Tyers said.

That seems to sum up every­ body's feelings.

Bob Huff, another racetrack leg­ end from Tucson — he operated tracks here for years — said, back when McCluskey's illness was first diagnosed: "He has been such a great asset to the sport . . .USAC not only has grown under his lead­ ership, he held it together."

Roger led a list of all-time, star­ spangled Arizona motor racers:

Bobby Ball, Jimmy Bryan, Art Bisch, Donnie Davis, Wayne Weiler, Hank Arnold, Chees­bourg.

Roger was one of the first in­ductees in the Arizona Auto Rac ing Hall of Fame, in 1985.

He started his racing career here in 1947 and competed until 1979. He retired that year after winning the Milwaukee 500 and became director of competition for USAC.

At the time of his death, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of the organization.

Roger had 17 Indy 500 starts.

His best race was in 1973, when he finished third, the position he held when rain stopped the race after only 131 laps.

When the opportunity presented itself he would take a shot in the highly-competitive California Racing Association Sprints, and won many times. He was a regular challenger in Midget racing in Arizona and southern California.

Roger was inducted into the Tucson Raceway Park's Hall of Fame in 1992.

Unable to attend, McCluskey asked his daughter, Sharon, to give his acceptance speech.

But Roger sent along a personal note thanking his friends for the honor, and saying how important Tucson had been to him.

'I'm a little worried, though, that somebody like Chees­bourg might show up and tell stories about me," Roger added.

He was right.

They'll be telling stories about Old Leadfoot as long as we have racing out here.