Hometown honors Dick Trickle
Racing legend immortalized in bronze as memorial dedicated in Rudolph.
RUDOLPH – In a chilly mist, Dick Trickle stood with a smile on his face.
So did his family and friends.
The Wisconsin racing legend has been gone for more than six years, but Sunday a statue of Trickle became the centerpiece of a memorial in his hometown, a life-sized likeness of a larger-than-life character.
His smile will remain, cast in bronze. His arms are raised, forever saluting his fans.
“It’s amazing. It’s amazing what they did,” said Chuck Trickle, Dick’s younger brother, who drove the nearly 30 hours from his home in Las Vegas to be join in the celebration.
“I got here Monday at 5 o’clock. The guys were still here. We sat and had a beer, and I gave ’em all a hug and I looked at this thing and I got tears in my eyes.
“It really means a lot to our family and myself.”
Childhood friends and central
Wisconsin racing rivals Tom Reffner and Marv Marzofka were among those who’ve shepherded the memorial since its inception in 2013. Now it is nearly complete, built by mostly volunteer labor and donations, a tribute to a charismatic man regarded among the greatest stock-car drivers of all time.
Trickle worked on farms in the summer, as well as his father’s blacksmith shop, to build his first race car in 1957, at age 16.
He quickly decided he could make a living behind the wheel. Central Wisconsin, alone, offered the opportunity to race numerous times each week and special events abounded around the state.
Running more than 100 races a year, Trickle piled up victories around the country, including a personal-best 67 features in 105 starts in 1972. He purportedly took more than 1,000 checkered flags, although it seems likely such a number would have to include heat race and preliminaries.
“He had to get good to beat Marv and I … and Joe Shear and Jim Sauter and all the good guys,” Reffner said. “I think we made each other better. We were running five, six nights a week … and if you aren’t good, you better get good.
“Sometimes we might get a little unhappy with each other, but we all appreciated that we were always there making each other better.”
Although Trickle made a handful of NASCAR starts early in his career, he never really got his chance until 1989, when Stavola Brothers Racing hired him. He was 48 and a grandfather when he was honored as Winston Cup Series rookie of the year and told people he was happy someone was willing to take a chance on a young driver such as himself.
Trickle’s age, his good nature, the double-entendre of his name and his penchant for smoking cigarettes in the race car all contributed to a cult following. His renown far exceeded anything that could be expected for a self-taught racer, born into a poor family in a crossroads town in the midst of Wisconsin farmland.
Although Trickle never won a pointspaying race at the highest level, he did win an exhibition qualifying race and two in NASCAR’s second division, then known as the Busch Series.
Trickle also was credited with mentoring hundreds of drivers, including NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace.
Trickle made the last of his 461 NASCAR national series starts in 2002. He competed periodically on the regional level into his 60s before heart trouble necessitated the use of blood-thinners.
Although Trickle maintained a cheerful demeanor, those closest to him were aware of the persistent, severe pain he endured that defied diagnosis in the final years of his life. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot on May 16, 2013, at Forest Lawn Cemetery, where a granddaughter, who had died in traffic accident, was buried.
On a day completely unfit for racing, several hundred fans and fellow racers and friends joined the Dick Trickle Memorial board members and volunteers and Trickle’s brother, sisters and daughter for the statue dedication.
“I walk through here, and they all know me,” marveled Chuck Trickle, who moved away from Wisconsin more than 50 years ago. “Sometime I was at a race and they were there, and so on.
“I’m excited. It’s cold and it’s raining, but just look at these people.”
They gathered in the park’s pavilions and tents for a seven-hour celebration and fundraiser for the memorial that is still a year from completion. People snapped pictures and asked members of Trickle’s family for autographs. They checked out a handful of race cars parked near the statue.
Reffner was asked to share a favorite memory and initially said he had too many from their 60-year friendship to pick just one. Then he recalled a day when they were 16 or 17, doing donuts in a church parking lot with Reffner’s Studebaker.
“That car would lock the steering wheel up and it wouldn’t go back to the right. So we were doing donuts to the left,” Reffner said. “He was riding passenger, and he knew the passenger door came open. I don’t know how he fell out, but the door came open, out Dick fell, and he was gone.
“I jammed on the brakes, and it was a good thing the car wouldn’t steer to the right, good thing it locked up. He had went under the car, hanging onto the floorboards. He crawled out of there and I think I was happier to see him OK than he was.”
Stories of races and friendships and parties flowed, some familiar, some long forgotten. More than a few Pabst Blue Ribbons flowed, too.
Chuck Trickle summed up the mood. “He was my brother, my friend and my hero,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of heroes, but I had him and he was my hero.”