Derby Downs: The 1936 and 1937 All-American Soap Box Derbies

By Ronald Reed

Ronald Reed was first introduced to the Soap Box Derby in 1949 when the then seven-year-old attended his first race with his uncle and father. As he excitedly watched the Akron champ win his first heat by a large margin, there was no question Reed was hooked. In this second installment of his Soap Box Derby series, Reed covers the events of 1936 and 1937 as the All-American Soap Box Derby became an American tradition and found a permanent home.

Reed, who has witnessed sixty-four of the seventy-seven All-American races, begins by chronicling world events in 1936 as a formal rule book for the Soap Box Derby was introduced, tickets and programs were printed, and the Derby found its home in a new racing facility in Akron, Ohio. As Reed details the first race announced by legends Ted Husing, Graham McNamee, and Tom Manning, he expertly captures the excitement through preliminary heats and five rounds until Herbert Muench of St. Louis, Missouri, coasted to a decisive victory. Included is a follow-up history of the winners as well as a chronicling of events of 1937 as a new race began and over one hundred boys anxiously awaited their chance at fame.

Derby Downs continues the fascinating story of the All-American Soap Box Derby during 1936 and 1937 as it became an American institution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491745519

Ronald Reed

Ronald Reed attended his first All-American race in 1949 at age seven. His miniature replicas of top Derby Downs’ racers are on display the derby museum in Akron. Reed was inducted into the All-American Soap Box Derby Hall of Fame in 2008 and resides in Mogadore with his wife, Sandra.

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Copyright © 2014 Ronald Reed.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4552-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4551-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916237

iUniverse rev. date: 09/23/2014

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1

Prologue The World in 1936

Leading Up to the Race

Race Day

Round 1 The Preliminary Heats

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5 The American Championship

The International Championship

The Banquet

Follow-Up

Part 2

Prologue The World in 1937

Derby Downs Comes of Age

Round 1 The Preliminary Heats

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5 The Championship Heat

The Banquet

Epilogue

About the Author

To Valerie Sue Carlton, my precious jewel of a daughter, who combines working a full-time job with being a homemaker and a soccer mom, chasing two active sons, and still making time for Dad.

PREFACE

There’s an old saying that goes, There are two things that people think they can do better than the ones doing them. One is writing songs, and the other is umpiring baseball. I would like to add a third: winning at Soap Box Derby racing.

Being from the Akron area, I grew up with the Soap Box Derby. Everyone was either building a car or knew someone who was. Everyone, that is, except me. I couldn’t build anything. I was the guy who, along with my buddy Chuck Pope, constructed a doghouse for my pet Henry and then couldn’t get it out of the basement. Okay, so maybe I would never be the All-American Soap Box Derby champion and never ride in a new Chevy convertible waving to a cheering crowd of fifty thousand people. But I could still attend the race every year and have a ball. And I did! My introduction to the derby, at age seven, took place in 1949 when my uncle Bob took me and my dad to the race. This is the one we are rooting for, my father told me as the Akron champ, Fred Derks, won his first heat by a large margin. I was hooked. Even at seven I knew that when I saw Akron Beacon Journal painted on the side of a racer, it was the one I wanted to cheer on to the championship heat.

There have been seventy-seven All-American races, and I have seen sixty-four of them—not bad, considering that the first eight took place before I was born. Throughout my teen years, I purchased photos of each year’s final heat from the Akron Beacon Journal. The next step was compiling a scrapbook and enlarging my collection. Soon, one scrapbook was not large enough to accommodate all that I had. One scrapbook became two, then three, four, and five, until now—with the advent of the masters, kit, stock, and superstock divisions, plus the addition of the rally program—the total has swelled to 154 books. When a former contestant or parent requests a photo from a time that he or she raced, I simply go to my bookcase and extract, say, the junior division book for 1981 and copy whatever photo is wanted. The idea of writing a book on the history of the derby has always been in the back of my mind, but I soon realized that covering all seventy-six years with their rule changes, local races, celebrities, human-interest stories, and all the events of the race days would require a three-thousand-page book. The market