Indianapolis, 1959

Published by Mike on May 20, 2015

With the 99th running of the Indianapolis 500 coming up, Hemmings Daily reader Mike Wirth thought we’d like to see several photos that his father, Roy, took at the 1959 edition of the event, including one expansive (seriously – it seems to go on forever) carspotting scene of the parking lot as taken from the grandstands, above. “My dad (22 at the time) and his buddies from southern Illinois went for about a dozen years in a row, Mike wrote. “They just ‘camped’ in the parking lot in or alongside their cars.”

Mike identified the guys in the above photo as (left to right) Norb Wilkening, Donnie Stahl, Charlie Vogt, Bob Bielefeld, and Milton Weber. “Side note: Norb passed away three years ago, but he’s a real inspiration to those that knew him,” Mike wrote. “He came back from Korea minus his legs and half an arm, but he fitted his garages out with what joked ‘monkey bars’ and scaffolds and did most of his own wrenching and collected a stable of muscle cars that he exercised as often as he could. He didn’t understand the word can’t.”