A.J. Foyt: Scar never healed after seeing friend die in horrific crash at 1958 Indy 500

Jim Ayello | IndyStar

INDIANAPOLIS — Sixty years later, and the memory still shakes A.J. Foyt to his core. His friend’s arm dangling, lifeless, as the car burned.

Doctors would later say that fan-favorite Pat O’Connor probably died instantly from a skull fracture suffered when his car flipped upside down amid a horrific, 15-car, Lap 1 pileup.

But that was little consolation to a 23-year-old Foyt as he circled the track, easing up the gas, a rookie just trying to survive his first Indianapolis 500. He considered O’Connor a mentor as well as a friend. The jovial Hoosier, who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated the week before the race, taught Foyt the ropes of racing on high-banking tracks and how to handle the treacherous turns at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

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In his 1983 book, “A.J.,” Foyt confessed he kept telling himself not to look at the wreckage. There was no reason to think his friend was alive. But after he came around the track and approached the fiery mess a second time, he couldn’t help but steal a glance. What he saw scarred him for life.

“When I turned around to see the car burning and his arm hanging out, I figured maybe I better go back to Texas,” Foyt told IndyStar. “It’s a little bit too rough for A.J. Foyt. … I (had) come from little racetracks, nothing like this. My biggest dream was to qualify for the race. Here I qualified in 1958 (for the first time) and all of a sudden, it turned into a major disaster. I decided I don’t know about this.”

Foyt would return to the track that day -- he’d finish 16th after spinning out in Lap 149 -- but he never forgot the lesson he learned. O’Connor, Foyt said, is the reason he never allowed himself to get close to others drivers. It hurt too much to lose his friend. He never want to experience that feeling again.

“It was (hard to block out),” Foyt said of the crash. “When someone helps you, and then you see them burn … you know, it’s hard. I don’t care who you are.

“After that … I had a lot of close friends, but I never really did get close with anybody after that. I mean, I run with some of them, but mainly I did a lot of work on my race car myself. So I was always ostracized quite a bit.”

Last week, Foyt, now 83, listened to his 1958 post-race interview for the first time, with IndyStar. In it, Foyt told IMS radio network broadcaster Luke Walton that he hoped to be back next year to try again. Looking back, Foyt said, he’s not sure if he really felt that way or if he was just saying that for his sponsors.

Of course, he did return for 35 straight years. Despite the dangers, the allure of the speedway proved irresistible. Three years after his IMS debut, he won the first of four Indianapolis 500s, as his legend grew and grew. Yet, Foyt said, he never felt completely comfortable at Indianapolis.

“I don’t care who it is, if you run here one time or 50 times, when ‘(Back Home Again in) Indiana' plays, your stomach tightens up," Foyt said. "And if they say it don’t, they’re just lying to themselves.

"Every time I started a race here, you get nervous," Foyt said."When people say they don’t, they’re just kidding themselves.”

Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.

The crash

May 30, 1958, was a beautiful day, a vivid late-morning interplay of blue sky and bright sunshine and an ascending rainbow of balloons, charged by the buzz of anticipation. It all turned to horror on the first lap of the 42nd 500-Mile Race.A third-turn crash collected 15 cars, eliminated eight and killed North Vernon native Pat O'Connor. "It was a nightmare. I lived with it for 200 laps," grim-faced race winner Jimmy Bryan said before ducking away from reporters that day.

The crash occurred when Ed Elisian spun in the third turn, He took out pole sitter Dick Rathmann and the first two rows. It was instant mayhem. Jerry Unser's car ran up over Paul Goldsmith's and cartwheeled end over end over the wall, where it landed upright."I looked up and saw him go over me," recalled Goldsmith, whose coveralls bore the tread marks and whose right shoulder and arm still bear the scars.

"Cars everywhere," remembered Bob Christie, who started 17th and found a hole through the carnage that put him suddenly among the leaders. O'Connor's car hit one driven by Jimmy Reece. It flipped, landed hard upside down, skidded across the track and burst into flames before rolling back onto its wheels. The race continued under caution. As the wrecks were cleared and O'Connor's body was transferred into an ambulance and slowly driven away, the horror on the track took hold in the crowd.

"Why did it have to be Pat?" an onlooker murmured at the track hospital.

— excerpted from a 2008 article by Phil Richards