The day legendary Indy driver didn’t stutter
When James Hinchcliffe of Oakville missed out on qualifying for this year’s Indianapolis 500, it was a disaster for him but not for me because it gave me a great opportunity to take a long walk down Memory Lane.
Now, follow along. There will be a test later.
In 1969, a Chicago-area racing driver named Jigger Sirois (and that name is pronounced Sir-oy, not Seer-wah) tried but failed to score the pole for that year’s Indy 500.
He suffered the worst of luck while trying and, as a result, the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Association created the “Jigger Award” that is given out each year to the driver or team determined to have suffered the worst kind of hard luck at Indianapolis.
Recipients have included Janet Guthrie, Johnny Rutherford, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jean Alesi, Roger Penske and our own Marty Roth. The association even gave it to themselves one year when they somehow managed to lose the trophy.
This year, the award was given to Hinchcliffe — who didn’t show up for the ceremony — but lo and behold, the fellow for whom it is named, Jigger Sirois himself, was there to present it.
Now, in 1969, I had just graduated from university and was about to start my Big City newspaper career but I didn’t have to report for work till June. At loose ends in midMay, I decided at the last minute to drive to Indianapolis for the first weekend of qualifying.
Although it turned out to be a miserable time, weather-wise, I was there for a little bit of Indy 500 history and this is where Jigger Sirois comes in.
Although it rained most of the night on my drive down, it had stopped early on the Saturday morning. I napped in my car outside the old Speedway Museum until the press office opened at 8 a.m. and I went in to pick up my credentials. But by the time I came out, it was sprinkling again.
In those days, the fastest car on the first day of qualifications won pole position for the big race. It looked to be nipand-tuck for this to happen because the rain would stop, they would send the cars out to practice, and then the rain would start again. But at a little after 4 p.m., the track was dry enough to be declared open for qualifying attempts. The order had been determined by a draw and the first car out of the gate was being driven by our friend, Jigger Sirois.
Sirois, the son of an Indianapolis car mechanic named Earl (but nicknamed “Frenchy,” presumably because of his cultural background) had been christened Leon Duray Sirois, after a 1920s Indy driver. His nickname came from another Indianapolis friend of his father’s, a riding mechanic named Jigger Johnson.
Jigger Sirois was a midget-car and sprint-car racing driver who’d won four championships in one season early in the 1960s, preparing him for his shot at the big time.
And so I’m there, along with about 100,000 others (they got huge crowds for qualifying at Indy in those days — it would have been double that if the sun was out), as Sirois drove his car through the pit area and out onto the speedway. The air was electric, not just with anticipation (or the thunder storm that was going to hit at any minute) but because of what was about to happen.
The late Tom Carnegie had the Voice of God. There are only a few people in the history of the world you could ever say that about — three, in fact: Carnegie, the tenor Mario Lanza, and John Facenda, the narrator of early NFL Films. This, then, is exactly what Carnegie said over the PA system at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as Sirois drove onto the track: “And now ... from Hammond, Indiana ... driving the No. 14 ... Quaker State Motor Oil Special ... he’s Leon, Duray ... the man they call JIGGER, Sirois!”
And the people cheered. And even though at that time I didn’t know him from Adam, I was instantly a fan of Jigger Sirois. I mean, what a buildup! So Sirois did three laps of the four necessary to qualify, and as he came down the home stretch on his fourth, when he was about 150 yards away from taking the checkers to complete his qualifying run, his car owner waved the yellow flag to call off the attempt, afraid that the speed wouldn’t be fast enough to get the car into the race.
As this was happening, a car being driven by Arnie Knepper of Belleville, Ill., left the pits and went out on the speedway and he got about a quarter of the way around on his first warm-up lap when the heavens opened and it started to rain. It rained so hard that all of the animals suddenly started to run around in pairs.
Qualifying was done for the day. Within minutes, the significance of what had happened when the yellow was thrown dawned on just about everybody in the racing world. If he’d been allowed to finish the run, Jigger Sirois would have been on the pole for the Indianapolis 500. But he hadn’t, and a legendary story was born that continues to be told to this very day.
So in May, when Jigger Sirois showed up to present Hinchcliffe with his award and couldn’t do it because the recipient was tied up elsewhere, I took the opportunity to introduce myself and I am here today to tell you about this remarkable man’s courage, which goes above and beyond anything that happened to him on a race track.
Jigger Sirois was sitting in a car at the age of 3 in 1938 in a barnyard near his home in Shelby, Ind., when a tornado hit. It just about frightened him to death. From that moment on, through his school years and his racing years and his post-racing retirement years, he stuttered. He couldn’t get the words out. And it was only 20 years ago, after intensive therapy, that he learned to speak without stuttering. Since then, he’s devoted his life to helping those who suffer from the affliction.
“It’s imperative that children today who stutter receive therapy before they start school so they don’t get bullied,” he said. “But even more important than the bullying factor, the therapy will enable them to reach their potential in life as a result of being fluent. Racing opened a lot of doors for me but I turned down numerous job and career opportunities because I was ashamed of how I talked. The negative impact of stuttering is incredible.”
Sirois, who’s 83 but looks 15 years younger, travels frequently to carry the message about stuttering and therapy.
“I give talks now,” he said. “I’ve had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker in nine states. Every state has an annual convention with a focus on speech, language and hearing and I’ve been keynote speaker in nine of them. I spoke in Missouri a couple of years ago and there were a thousand people there.
“I simply reveal my life as a stutterer and the unusual and humiliating events that evolved from that affliction through the years and when I pass, half of my estate will go to the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital here in Indianapolis to help children who stutter. Peyton has told me he’ll help to move the program along and he’s doing just that, as we speak.
“No youngster should ever have to put up with the selfdefeating effects of stuttering.”
When I finally got him away from his favourite subject and back onto racing, he acknowledged that it will be 50 years next May when his nonqualifying attempt made him famous.
“The day it happened, I did an interview with Jim McKay, who was the host of Wide World of Sports, and I joked about whether he had any rope handy, or a gun, to put me out of my misery,” Sirois said.
“I’ve always enjoyed humour in situations like that,” he continued. “Inwardly, I was crushed. The speed the first day would have held up, because 33 cars would have had to have gone faster to knock me not only off the pole but out of the field. The second attempt on the following Saturday would have put me 26th fastest and they waved that one off too. But that’s also part of the Speedway; hindsight makes everybody a genius. That’s an old cliche, but it’s true.”
Ironically, when he did the interview on television with McKay, he managed to get through it without stuttering. But when the camera stopped recording, the affliction returned. “I worked through that in the therapy years later,” he said.
It wasn’t just at Indianapolis that Sirois had a little black cloud following him around. He had rides in other Indy car races and something would always seem to happen.
“I drove my first Indy car race at Milwaukee. Pete Salami, who owned the Central Excavating Special, put me in the car and I qualified 23rd. The car was handling great. I was flying and in the process of passing the car that was running sixth when the right rear suspension broke and the car spun. My heart was in my shoes and I thought I’d never get another chance.
“However, Pete offered me the ride for the first USAC race at Michigan and the car was so-o-o-o good. I’m not feigning modesty but we qualified 12th and with just a few laps to go we were solidly in second place when the clutch broke. I think I finished tenth. Again, that could have been a career killer but Pete kept me in the car.
“I got a phone call about a month after that from the mechanic, Roy Reid, and he said, ‘Jigger, Pete’s got it arranged for you to run with the tire test program in the spring with Firestone but you won’t get paid.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care about the money; I just want to get laps at the Speedway.’ A short time after that, Pete passed away. So that was the end of that; there was no more racing team.”
Sirois did drive in one sports car race in his career and that was in a McLaren at Road America in Wisconsin.
“One of the owners of that car was a high school shop teacher,” he said. “I had gotten a little bit of ink in that area and he called me and asked if I would like to add to my resume. I said sure.
“But during the race, they closed off the air vents in the car. It was a blisteringly hot day and I had heat prostration. I wasn’t doing too well anyway; it was an older car.
“There was a strange thing, though. I had never driven on a big track like that before. First practice session, they’d clocked me at 175 miles an hour on the straightaway and that was a big deal to me. The next session, I was running 175 again and Mark Donohue, in one of Penske’s cars, went by me going 235 and I thought my car had jumped out of gear. That’s a 60-mph speed difference. It felt like I was standing still.
“I was out of my element but I enjoyed it. In that time frame, numerous guys wanted those rides so I was very fortunate to have had that one. Same as at Indy. I earned my way there — my record in the midgets and sprints speaks for itself — but I wasn’t a star. There were a lot of drivers who would have given their right arm to be in my car so I was very fortunate.”
Sirois is retired and living in Williamsburg, Va. He and his wife Juanita spend time with their grandchildren and raise money for their favourite cause.
“We live frugally,” he said. “We have two cars and the combined age of them is 38 years. But I know how to keep ’em going. We save our money to help kids who stutter. We buy supplies for local organizations and we donate money to the Stuttering Foundation of America.”
Although his racing days are far behind him, I asked him if he still enjoyed getting behind the wheel.
“I still like to drive,” he said, “but it scares me to be out on the road today. I drive very defensively because people go by you at 80 miles an hour and they’re looking down and doing something with a phone or some other device and I see that and it just makes me shudder.”