The official story of Douglas Yates Rose, 80, concluded Friday evening at Norway Speedway, a third-of-a-mile paved oval located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. At about 7:15 p.m., Rose was taking his Green Mamba jet car around the track, just after the national anthem, when something went wrong.

There was, as usual, lots of smoke and fire, but what was unusual was that the Green Mamba began to accelerate right around the flag stand. Exhibition jet cars are built to go straight fast, and turn slowly, and the Green Mamba was approaching turn 1 far faster than it should have been. It appeared Rose tried to make the turn but drove off into the guardrail where his car hit, hard. There was a fire. There’s evidence that Rose suffered a medical emergency prior to the crash. Doesn’t matter. Either way, when his wife Jeanne pulled him from the wreckage, Doug Rose was dead.

The Friday races were canceled, but the Saturday competition was scheduled to go on, and included a tribute to Rose, who had entertained fans with the Green Mamba since 1966. Friday night may have been the final chapter in Rose’s story, but that story is profoundly rich in drama and concludes a never-give-up message that deserves more than a brief obituary. So here it is.

The Green Mamba Norway Speedway Facebook page

Growing up during the true beginning of drag racing, Rose was fascinated by speed and became even more enthralled by the ultimate in speed -- jet-powered dragsters. That interest landed him a job driving Walt Arfons’ legendary Green Monster, mostly making exhibition runs at drag strips.

On July 4, 1966, Rose was driving the Green Monster on the opening weekend of a new drag strip in Virginia. Mist had delayed action, fans were leaving and the promoter asked Rose if there was any way to make a slower-than-usual run on the damp track to help keep the fans around until the track dried completely. Rose, ever the showman, agreed.

The Green Monster hydroplaned and hit the metal guardrail. Rose tried to stab the brakes, but nothing happened because the guardrail had sliced off both feet and ankles. The ambulance crew packed them in a spectator's ice chest and headed for the hospital. For naught. Doctors had to amputate Rose's legs just below his knees.

For many of us, that might have been a convincing message that driving jet-powered cars was not a good idea. Less than three months later, with his new artificial legs, Rose was back in the cockpit.

A 1966 crash took Rose's legs -- but not his love of speed. Steven Cole Smith

Then, as he was Friday, Rose was in the cockpit of his own Green Mamba jet dragster, pretty much just a Navy surplus J46 Westinghouse jet engine out of a 1956-era F7U fighter plane -- maybe 7,000 hp, he said -- mounted on four wheels, with Rose, as always, sitting up front.

Rose built it in California, for $3,800, and had it painted by the legendary Korky's Kustom Studios to look like a green mamba snake. Rose doesn't know anything else but driving jet cars, this jet car. “No one has to go fast, to drive something this powerful,” he said. “But if you want to do it, you'll find a way.”

In 2006, something every bit as devastating as losing his legs made Rose think he might never drive a jet car, this jet car, again.

After living all over the country, Rose had settled in Tampa, in an apartment, about 15 years earlier. The Green Mamba rested in a nondescript white trailer in the apartment parking lot. On Nov. 1, 2006, someone backed up a white Chevrolet pickup truck to the trailer and drove away.

Rose was devastated.

The Green Mamba was the most famous jet car in the world. “It's part of history,” said Tim Arfons at the time. His father Art and uncle Walt built the first successful jet cars, including the Green Monster that Rose drove, and crashed, in the 1960s. “It should be in a museum.”

The Green Mamba shows its stuff in a burndown. Steven Cole Smith

The theft drew a lot of publicity in the racing world. A month later, someone spotted what looked like the Green Mamba in the back of a Tampa repair shop. The police investigated, and it was Rose's car. That was the good news.

The bad news: It had been cut into pieces.

The nose was intact -- the one painted to look like the green mamba snake -- but there wasn't much else. His tools, crash helmets, Nomex racing suit, spare parts -- all gone.

That's when the racing community took over. A racing website, Karnac.com, helped created a site called SaveThe Mamba.org, and word spread that Doug Rose needed help. Money and parts and offers of help poured in. Rose, race-car builder Teddy Kempgens and a pickup crew of helpers began rebuilding the Mamba, piece by piece, as Rose and his third wife, Jeanne, fought with insurance companies, haunted pawn shops looking for his stolen tools and generally wondered if life would ever get back to normal -- or as normal as life gets for a couple who tour the country with their three cats, towing a 40-year-old jet engine on wheels from one racetrack to another.

Doug Rose and wife Jeanne Steven Cole Smith

Eventually, authorities arrested the man who owned the shop where pieces of the Green Mamba were found, but Rose said he wasn't much help. “He says he doesn't know anything,” Rose said.

Meanwhile, work continued on what was left of the Green Mamba, as money and time from the volunteer crew permitted.

And on March 24, 2007, the Green Mamba was back. The Mamba lit up Charlotte County Motorsports Park in South Florida.

Doug Rose was back.

It had been years since Rose drag-raced the Mamba: The act now consisted largely of "burndowns," where he backed the Mamba up to a junk car and lit the afterburner, essentially melting the car into a smoking, steaming lump. It had to be seen, and heard, to be believed.

His life proved one thing, at least: Doug Rose and the Green Mamba did not give up easily.

Not surprising, given the car's name: In 1968, Rose was at a wildlife park in California when he happened upon the reptile exhibit. He was interested in finding some animal that he could name his new car after, maybe even paint the car to resemble.

“I was looking at all the poisonous snakes, cobras and the like, and I wondered: What's that little green grass snake doing in there?”

He was told that the little snake was a green mamba from Africa, probably the fastest snake there is, with fangs full of deadly neurotoxin poison. “They call the snake '90-second death,’” Rose said.

“Perfect,” he thought. “There's nothing as fast and deadly as that but a race car. And, of course, women.”

Not long ago, Rose found out he had cancer. He and Jeanne and the cats moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to her family.

But Rose did not quit. He never gave up.

And Friday night, he went out in a blaze. A blaze of glory, perhaps?

Yes. Let’s call it that. Doug Rose would approve.

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