Curt Cavin

IndyStar

IRVINE, Calif. – There are only 13 known photographs of former race car driver Dave MacDonald and his son, Rich — the most precious of those is worn and tattered.

That photo, of Rich as an infant with his parents, was in Dave’s wallet the day he and Eddie Sachs died in the fiery, second-lap crash in the 1964 Indianapolis 500.

Other photographs Dave carried were of his wife, Sherry, and their daughter, Vicki, then 4 years old. But Rich noticed something else revealing about his father: He kept two shots of his ’55 Corvette.

“That tells you he kept things he loved close to him,” Rich MacDonald said.

This is a story of what MacDonald has learned about his father and the things he is about to discover. On Wednesday, the boy who was 6 years old when his father didn’t come home, will arrive in Indianapolis to see what drew his father away.

MacDonald is now 58 and has been in this city before, but this will be the first time he has experienced Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The anticipation is great, the anxiety arguably greater. See, MacDonald won’t be coming alone. His mother, now 78, is scheduled to be alongside. She has not been to IMS since she was hurriedly fetched from her paddock seat as the plume of black smoke filled the north end of the front straightaway.

She remembers black noon, as Art Garner’s 2014 book is called. She lived it. MacDonald estimates she’s talked about it three times in the 50 years since.

The plan is to see the area of the track where Dave lost control, hit the inside wall and ricocheted into Sachs’ path. MacDonald wants to join Angela Savage, who lost her father, Swede, in an accident there in 1973, and Sachs’ son, Eddie Jr., for a photograph. Sherry is eager for the trip to IMS and is a strong woman — she's a cancer survivor who volunteers with the La Verne (Calif.) Police Department — but she isn’t sure she can do that.

“This is still raw for her, and I understand that,” MacDonald said. “She said, 'You and Angela and Eddie weren’t there (in '64), but I was.'"

The rising star

Sachs was the Clown Prince of Racing, a two-time 500 pole winner known for his flamboyancy and zaniness. Had he not pitted for a new right rear tire with three laps left in the '61 race, his likeness would be on the Borg-Warner Trophy and A.J. Foyt might not have become the event’s first four-time winner.

Which made Dave MacDonald the other driver in that '64 crash.

MacDonald had been a successful West Coast drag racer, and then a successful national road racer. By all accounts, he was a rising star with Hollywood's attention, a Universal Pictures deal lined up.

The year before being hired to drive Mickey Thompson’s car at Indianapolis, MacDonald won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, where a collection of drivers at Riverside International Raceway included a pair of Formula One champions (Jim Clark and Graham Hill), that year's F-1 champion (John Surtees), reigning race winner Roger Penske, Dan Gurney and 500 winners Rodger Ward and Foyt. MacDonald lapped the field, receiving a whopping $14,000 and keys to the pace car. The next year, Parnelli Jones won — it was that kind of an event.

MacDonald was Carroll Shelby’s stud, giving the automotive designer's Cobra roadster, the King Cobra and the Daytona Coupe their first wins. In Garner’s book "Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500," MacDonald is called “The Natural.”

"He was the best driver in the world," Sherry said, proudly.

Thompson wasn’t the only car owner hot for MacDonald’s services. In the months before the '64 500, MacDonald had signed a 20-race NASCAR deal with Bill Stroppe and Ford, had been offered a chance to drive for J.C. Agajanian in '65 and was only a few weeks from racing at Le Mans, the ultimate 24-hour sports car race.

MacDonald, 27, had just gotten his passport.

A car difficult to drive

Thompson’s cars were radically low rear-engine Fords, which were revolutionary in '63 and still unproven and difficult to drive in '64. Several of the top drivers, including '62 world champion Graham Hill, turned down the chance to race one of them because they were designed for 12-inch tires and the United States Auto Club now mandated 15-inch tires. Shelby had vehemently warned MacDonald against getting behind the wheel of the car with a tendency to have its front end lift off the ground.

Fact is, Maston Gregory, Duane Carter and MacDonald all crashed or spun in Thompson cars that month, and Gregory quit the team. But against Shelby’s insistence, MacDonald stayed loyal to Thompson.

MacDonald qualified 14th and lost a couple of positions on the start, but he was 10th by the time he made his second pass through Turn 4. What happened next has been extensively debated. Rich MacDonald believes the account of driver Len Sutton is the most accurate.

Sutton, who was trailing the impending trouble, said Dave MacDonald dropped to the inside to pass Walt Hansgen and Jim Hurtubise. At that moment Hansgen, a rookie, came down on MacDonald to escape pressure from the right. The nose of MacDonald’s car lifted, shooting him to the left.

After contact with the inside wall, the car's fuel system failed, shooting a stream of flammable gasoline onto hot exhaust pipes. Engulfed in flames, MacDonald’s car slid across the track and was struck broadside by Sachs.

The cars went up in a fireball because of the large amount of flammable gasoline they carried in those days. Said Bobby Unser in "Black Noon:" “The whole track was blocked with fire. I didn’t know if it was one burning car or 10. It looked like 10.”

Sachs hitting MacDonald created an even larger fireball. That’s where the billowing plumes of black smoke came from. Black noon had arrived.

Learning about his father

Rich MacDonald was watching a closed-circuit broadcast at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. He remembers meeting his mother at the airport, and he tells of Thompson coming to their home in El Monte, Calif., to return Dave’s wallet and the watch he was wearing when he crashed.

MacDonald described himself as “a normal kid playing other sports,” and he wasn’t much into racing at the time; he still isn’t. But kids brag about their fathers, and he did, too. His hook: My father died in a crash at Indianapolis.

“I guess that was my way of screaming at the top of my lungs how bad-ass my dad was even though most of the kids didn’t get it,” he said.

For years, MacDonald's knowledge of his father’s racing history was left to others. He became a flight attendant, spending one Indianapolis layover at Market Square Arena watching the Pacers rather than making a visit to the racing palace where his father died.

“Never thought about it, I guess," he said of an IMS visit that day. "I’m sure I told the crew my father was killed in Indianapolis."

That all changed in 2003 when a photograph of his father arrived in the mail. Dave MacDonald was driving a Mercury in the ’64 Daytona 500. Rich MacDonald was blown away.

“I didn’t even know my father ran in NASCAR, and I certainly didn’t know he finished 10th in the Daytona 500, a race which NASCAR.com has called the greatest field in NASCAR history,” he said. “I was so embarrassed (by not knowing) that I made it my mission to find out all I could about my dad.”

The invitation

About a year ago, MacDonald joined Facebook, and soon after he started making Indianapolis connections. One was Sachs, , who was 2 years old when his father died. Sachs owns a race team which fields USAC Silver Crown cars, so he's spent a lifetime around IMS.

"We've been communicating lightly; it's been very amicable," Sachs said. "I'm sure we have a lot in common."

Doug Hardwick, president and pipe major of the Indianapolis 500 Gordon Pipers, became another of MacDonald's Facebook friends, and the Pipers offered to host the MacDonalds over race weekend.

“I didn’t know if anyone had ever reached out to them,” said Hardwick, who plans to formally introduce Rich and Eddie. “Growing up I was a big, big fan of California road racing, and I knew all about Dave MacDonald. Back then there were not many guys who had enough (courage) to do an oval, but he did.

“I thought they should be part of this 100th event.”

MacDonald has been to NASCAR races as a guest of the Wood Brothers, the legendary team his father drove for in ’63 at Riverside, Calif. He also has been part of the masses enjoying the spectacle of IndyCar’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (Calif.), but his young children were in tow, and their attention span was too short for extensive visiting.

When the Pipers’ invitation came, MacDonald struggled with how to — or even if he should — approach his mother. She had returned to IMS once — sometime in the 1990s — for a visit to the photo department. She flew to Indy and back home in the same day.

"I had put all these memories — newspaper clippings and such — in binders, but it was 20 years before I could go back and look at them," she said. "What I didn't have a lot of were pictures of Dave before that awful day, so I went (to IMS) — it was the first time I'd ever flown by myself — and I got some."

Sherry doesn't remember seeing the Speedway, and her son couldn't imagine she'd ever want to.

“I talked to my wife and she said, ‘Whoa, that’s a deep question,’” he said. “I finally decided to, but I was scared to. When your mom cries you cry, right?”

Surprisingly, she said yes.

"Dave achieved his goal, which for a race car driver was to drive at Indianapolis," she said. "Rich has done so much to preserve his dad's memory, and I'm really, really happy he'll get to see (Indy).

"My focus will be on that."

Follow IndyStar reporter Curt Cavin on Facebook and Twitter: @curtcavin.