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VOL. 53 ISSUE 24 JUNE 21, 2016 P105 experimental department where they would show him the projects the company was working on for the future and seek his opinion on the designs. This was in the 1920s and the Indian factory was near its peak and, even though he was a regular guest, Betar said he never toured the entire factory. "It was bigger than anything I ever saw," Betar said of the Indian's Springfield operation during that era. At about same the time he began working at Nelson's Albany Indian shop he also began his hillclimb career, along with teammate, friend and fellow mechanic Tommy Paradise. Betar and Paradise took a methodical approach to finding the best combination of torque and horsepower to tune their Indian hillclimb machines. Thanks in large part to Betar's tuning, Paradise was able to win an AMA National Hillclimb Cham- pionship at Muskegon, Michigan, in 1941. Betar never won a national title, but he won numerous regional events and was a leading national con- tender almost every year. Betar could be flamboyant on the hill at times. He described one humorous incident after an unsuccessful attempt up the hill. "I started up the hill and got most of the way up when the bike stopped. I was so mad that I started it up in the middle of the hill and gave it gas back down the hill. I was heading straight for the crowd when I turned the handlebars sideways and skidded to a stop right in front of them. Every- body waved and clapped at me, so I waved back with a big smile. They didn't know I had to clean my pants afterwards," he joked. Brownie also did what they called short track racing at the time, now called speedway. He earned several regional speedway titles. He also raced midgets as well. In 1948 his mentor Slim Nelson passed away. When he was called to the reading of Nelson's will, he was shocked to learn that Slim left him the motorcycle dealership. Betar kept the name of the shop the same for a time, but later changed it to Brownie's Indian Sales. On one visit to the Indian factory in the early 1950s, a secretary he was friendly with, took him aside and told him that she thought the company was in serious trouble and wouldn't last long. She advised him to buy all the parts he could. "How could they be in trouble?" Betar thought. "They are one of the largest manufac- turers in the world." To his regret what the secretary told him ulti- mately proved to be true. When Indian stopped producing motorcycles, Brownie sold other ma- chines, mainly British brands, to stay in business. Fortunately for Betar, the shop had such a huge stock of Indian parts, thanks to its longtime contracts with the various police departments, that when the vintage motorcycle craze took off in the 1980s, Betar was perfectly placed to meet the growing demand of restorers. Yet even though he was sitting on a goldmine (Steve McQueen once offered Brownie $250,000 for his entire stock and this was in the late 1970s) Betar never got rich off his inventory. Instead he worked into the mid-1980s, filling orders at more than fair prices and repairing bicycles just to make ends meet. In the mid-'90s Brownie finally decided to retire and the entire contents of his shop were hauled to Florida for a big auction. Unfortunately, old Brownie never got to enjoy the windfall of that sale, since shortly after he fell ill and was confined to a nursing home. He died on Decem- ber 30, 1999. Brownie Betar left a legacy as one of the true Indian Motorcycle loyalists and for those who knew him said he lived a life full of enthusiasm for the sport and the brand he loved. CN "BROWNIE" BETAR Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives