Dan Gurney-One of My Heroes

When you are a journalist, you are supposed to be unbiased,  or at least to tell your readers why you can’t be impartial.  My heroes have mostly been racing drivers, since I was a young kid.  Here is my disclaimer, there are some drivers that I always considered to be my favorites. This group is small, but important to me, and it is not going to change.

Dan Gurney is on this very short list, in fact, he’s one quarter of  it!  I have to admit that I have several reasons for my unbridled enthusiasm for Dan Gurney.  Chief among them is the fact that I have known him for many years. My father bought  an Indy car from him over twenty years ago.  He never tried to rebuild it, and we sold it after my dad died.  That wasn’t even the first time that I met Dan. In the late 60′s, I met Dan through a former co-worker of mine, Leonard Brown.  “Brownie,” as he was called, worked for Toyota, and Dan did lots of work for Toyota at the time. He and I had worked together some years before.

Fast forward to 2004, and I met Reeves Callaway at a car show in Newport Beach, California. I didn’t know it at the time, but Reeves is a close friend of Dan Gurney, and has made it possible for me to see Dan fairly often.  In fact, Reeves once asked me along to Dan’s All American Racers shop, and Reeves took a photo of me in one of Dan’s open-wheeled race cars.

These days, in my career as an automotive artist,  I see Dan at several times a year, at various gatherings of racing fans.  One such get together happened last year (2009), at the “Legends of Riverside” event, in Riverside , California.  During this three day conference, and auto film festival, many of the racers of what some might call the “Golden Era” attended. The event was to honor the racers that plied their trade at the long-closed Riverside International Raceway, in Riverside,  California.

Dan Gurney was scheduled to be there, and I was looking forward to seeing him, and his family. I even had some of the artwork that I have done of Dan (a portrait), and drawings of some of his cars, and his Alligator motorcycle.  Dan’s son, Justin Gurney, came through the exhibitors’ area, where I was displaying my artwork, with Evi Gurney, Dan’s wife.  They stopped at my booth, looked at my work, then walked on. In a minute, Justin came back and asked if the drawing of the Alligator motorcycle was for sale. When I told him that it was, he asked me to deliver it to the shop, and that is was going to be presented to Dan for his birthday!  To say that I was shocked would have been a wild understatement!

To have some of my artwork presented to him, was such an honor, I believe. Dan has always been a hero to me, as I stated, now even more than before, he is such a classy guy. One more thing, I often get an invitation to go to lunch with Dan whenever I call over to his race shop. He is one of the good guys.