Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I t was just over three years ago that four-time AMA Grand National Champion Carroll Reswe- ber suffered terrible injuries when he crashed his Goldwing while riding home from the New Orleans Supercross. Resweber was never the same after that. He spent his last years in a care facility, un- able to do the things he loved to do. So knowing that eases the pain of his May 8th passing some- what, just knowing that he was suffering and that's now over. It's a situation all of us hope to avoid, but have little control over. Resweber was 79. Resweber was the best motorcycle racer in America during the late 1950s and into the early 1960s. He won four-consecutive AMA Grand Na- tional Championships and won 19 nationals along the way. His record of four-consecutive titles was a record that would hold until 1998 when Scotty Parker broke through to win five straight. As extraordinary as they were Resweber might have established even more impressive records had his racing career not come to a premature end after a crash on a dusty half-mile in Lincoln, Illinois, in September of 1962. Resweber looked to be well on his way to winning his fifth straight title that season. He'd won on the road courses at Bossier City, Louisiana, and Watkins Glen, New York and on the Santa Fe short track in Hinsdale, Illinois—and he was leading the championship, when the series rolled into Lincoln. During a practice session, Resweber went out on the track in a second group of riders. Another group had gone before them and a rider had crashed, his bike down on the racing line. Due to the dust, Re- sweber never saw the fallen bike and hit it at high speed. He went down hard along with four other riders. Jack Gholson died from injuries suffered in the crash. Resweber and Dick Klamfoth were badly injured. Resweber spent two years recuper- ating from the crash and was never physically able to return to racing. After his recovery, Resweber returned to work for Harley-Davidson, where he stayed until he retired in 1992. He later moved from the Milwau- kee area back to his home of Port Arthur, Texas. Once while on the way to the Springfield Mile, I stopped to see the track at the Logan County Fairgrounds to see the place where the path of AMA Grand National history changed. I walked the grounds and directly over the part of the track where I'd been told the terrible accident happened. A half century of racing had gone by since the fateful race that ended Resweber's career and Gholson's life. I looked around and the track looked like your prototypical Midwest- ern half-mile. It was eerie to think of the sheer awfulness of that accident that had taken place 50 years earlier. ANOTHER LEGEND GONE P138

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