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VOL. 54 ISSUE 18 MAY 9, 2017 P131 Joe was when he was recovering from a stroke. In spite of serious health challenges for decades, whenever I talked to Joe he seemed to be in good spirits. He sent me a photo of him recovering in his hospital room with whisky bottle on his lap. Did I mention the stories? Joe told me the story about Al Gunter who had a '57 Ford Ran- chero onto which he installed a supercharger. He and Charlie West would caravan behind Gunter's hot rod in Joe's Nash Ambassador. "Some of those trips cross country we'd be running through Wyoming in the middle of the night and Al would open that thing up and we'd draft him with our car, pulling a trailer on the back. If we lost the draft Al would pull away from us. But we'd get him back, I'd turn off the lights and catch him and he didn't even know we were there, and then all of a sudden swing out and pass him. He'd about run off the road it scared him so bad." Then the time Everett Brasher flipped a Caddy full of racers. "Everett had just won Lang- horne," Leonard recalled. "Penn- sylvania was dry on Sunday, so we all loaded in Everett's '49 Cadillac to head to Maryland to celebrate. On the way back, Everett said, 'This Cadillac flat runs.' So, I said, 'Go ahead and hook up.' Brad Andres was in the middle, Charlie [West] was on the passenger side and me and Fernando, my mechanic, were in the back. Everett had a couple of spare motors in the trunk, too. He was bragging the thing would do 110, and I said 'Well Everett, you're only going 102!' Everett said, 'Hang on!' And I said, 'You better hang on, there's a corner coming up and that sign said 35 mph!' Everett wasn't looking at the road, he was looking at his speedometer—105 miles per hour around a 35-mph curve don't work out too well and you know what happened. We went topsy- turvy. "We flipped it and luckily the roof only hit once or twice. We were down eight feet in a gully, but it landed back on the wheels, so that was one stroke of luck. We were out with a flashlight looking for Harley engine parts that had flown out of his trunk. Everett tried to fire the Caddy up and it had broke the motor mounts. So we got a jack and got it close to being in place and Everett cranked it over and it rattled and smoked, but it came to life and we drove it out of that gully. Those '49 Caddy's had tall roof and it was smashed about halfway down. We drove the thing the next day on the Pennsyl- vania Turnpike with no windshield. That was better than winning some races." But for all the fun-loving times Joe had, he had a reputation for having a big heart too. You could hear the emotion in his voice when Joe reminisced about his wife Di- ana, who preceded him in death, dying in March of 2000. Leonard saved fellow racecar driver Mel Kenyon's life at Lang- horne, Pennsylvania, in 1965. Kenyon was knocked out after a crash as his car ignited in flames. Leonard, who was involved in the crash with Kenyon, jumped out of his car and without thinking about his own safety, pulled Kenyon from the flames. Joe also said one the most memorable moments was the time, as an Indy car driver, he visited sick children in hospital. "I didn't know how it was going to be," Leonard said. "When I was a kid I met a race driver and just stood there frozen looking at him, but it turned out to be a wonderful experience getting to meet those kids." Joe Leonard was one of the true legends of the sport and the thing I'll miss most are all the great stories. Memorial services, followed by a reception, will be held on Satur- day, May 13, 2017, at 1:15 p.m. at Oak Hill Funeral Home & Memorial Park, 300 Curtner Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125. All friends are invited. A celebration of life follows in the Reception Room until 4p.m. Keep Joe's tradition alive and bring your favorite story about the man himself. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives