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VOL. 52 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 13, 2015 P109 Norton. During the race Dykgraaf battled for the lead with Andy Drobeck and Kenny Ingle before edging out Ingle by just a few feet at the check- ered flag to put his 1938-model Norton Manx atop the podium. As motorcycle racing's popularity grew in the 1950s so did the purses. Dykgraaf said no one was getting rich, but it got far more lucrative than the three-dollar purse he'd won in his first pro race. "I made a good living," Dykgraaf says of his days racing in the early 1950s. "I'd pocket about $300 a week if I racked up some top-three finishes. We had a lot of money races all around the Midwest in those days. I'd say the average pro rider could make maybe $200 a week if he was a decent. We lived pretty good. We had a new car every year." Dykgraaf continued racing through the 1953 season. He won a slew of regional races, but never could quite make it to the top again in a national. He finished second numerous times, including just being edged out by Jimmy Chann at the Springfield Mile in 1948. A month later, he was runner-up again at Langhorne to fellow Hall of Famer Ed Kretz Sr. Also in 1948, Dykgraaf finished third at the Milwaukee Mile and Shreveport (Loui- siana) half-mile. The '48 season turned out to be the most consistent year for the Michigan racer. Dykgraaf continued to be one of the top com- petitors until a crash at Darlington, South Carolina, in 1950 left Dykgraaf hospitalized for nearly two months. Doctors in South Carolina told Dykgraaf he'd be lucky to walk again. Shaken, he imme- diately called a friend who owned an ambulance service in Michigan to come and take him back to Michigan. Once home, Dykgraaf found a bone specialist who performed a bone graft operation that helped Dykgraaf fully recover from his leg injuries. "The doctor says 'you'll be lucky if you ever walk again,'" he recalled. "I said 'in another year, I'll be back on the track,' and I was." After missing a year, Dykgraaf returned to racing in 1952. He showed that he still had the touch when he finished third that August in the AMA national held at a half-mile track in Williams Grove, Pennsylvania. Dykgraaf's father purchased a berry farm. Increasing demands of the farm and another bad crash at Langhorne led Dykgraaf to retire from racing after the 1953 season. He was just short of 40 years old and felt it was the right time to leave the sport. "When I was racing, I couldn't get enough of it," Dykgraaf said. "After I retired, I was like, what am I going to do on Sundays? It was my life." Dykgraaf ran the family farm until the early 1960s, when his brother-in-law brought him in to help run a carbonated drink company, which Dykgraaf later owned. He retired in 1982 and moved to St. Augustine, Florida, with his wife, Jane. He continued riding motorcycles until he was 80 years old. When looking back on his ca- reer, Dykgraaf naturally cited the Springfield Mile his favorite race and mentioned Leo Anthony as his toughest competition. Dykgraaf was one of the original inductees into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998. At that time he still made special appearances at vari- ous vintage racing meets around the country. He lived to the ripe old age of 96. He passed away in July of 2011. I was fortunate to get to spend some time with Chet at Daytona sometime in the late 1990s. It was during the height of factory teams and big- salaries in AMA Superbike racing. Dykgraaf had one of his typically sly remarks about the racers of the '90s that had me smiling. "They're living it up," he said. "Some of them have airplanes. All they do is throw a leg over the machine. They've got mechanics. All they have to do is show up. We didn't even have brakes!" CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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