The Vault
RENE GRODE – “I FELT LIKE A COLLEGE RECRUITER”
Posted on: Sunday September 19, 2021
Rene Grode went to great lengths in the mid to late 1970’s helping to build the Fox River Racing Club into a profitable venture on Thursday nights at Wisconsin International Raceway in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.
In this segment of ‘The Vault’ we go back to our 2016 book “Wisconsin International Raceway – Where The Big Ones Run” and the “Beating The Bushes” chapter where Grode talks about the things he did to draw drivers and fans to WIR.
Hortonville, Wisconsin native Rene Grode is a former Fox River Racing Club president and 2020 inductee into the ‘Circle of Fame’ at Wisconsin International Raceway in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.
Although his title read Fox River Racing Club “president” most of the time Rene Grode felt like a “college recruiter” in the mid to late 1970’s.
Grode was involved as one of the founding fathers of the FRRC, and was involved with the club promoting the Thursday night races as a secretary and president. But with WIR reopening Grode and its club officers were in a constant effort to lure drivers from neighboring dirt tracks, Grode was constantly beating the bushes, attending races several nights a week to try and get drivers to the pavement on Thursday nights.
“I would make deals with guys like Gary Roehborn or Cliff Ebben and that who were on the fence at the time about trying it out on the tar,” recalled Grode. “I’d buy these runoff asphalt tires from the teams that were running. As many of those tires as I could stuff into the backseat and trunk of my car I would. I’d go to Oshkosh on Tuesdays, Shawano on Saturdays and Seymour and De Pere on Sundays. I’d tell them “I’ll make you guys a deal. You’ve gotta come down and try it. They would always say they didn’t have money to buy the asphalt tires.”
The deal was Grode would buy the runoffs (used asphalt tires) and give them to the dirt track drivers. It they didn’t like running the tar they’d simply give the runoff tires back. If they decided to stick with it, they’d simply pay Grode back what he bought the runoffs for. “I bought more damned tires than Richard Petty Enterprises,” joked Grode. “They were $10 a piece used. I’d go to the Red White and Blue races and buy the used ones from the bigger teams. I’d go to the guys who were running around here during the week and buy some from them at their shops too and take them to the dirt tracks. I never once got hung with a set of tires.”
In short, the consignment-type tire deal with the dirt boys worked.
“I build the motor for (Cork) Surprise in the 1971,” said Grode, explaining how he got involved in the racing scene decades ago. “That was after I got out of the hospital that year. I had a car fall on me at the wrecking yard and I broke my back. (Grode was confined to a wheelchair after that) After that myself and Dave Thompson built a Dodge Dart. We ran at Apple Creek and Shiocton. Dave was a Dodge guy like myself.” With Thompson as the driver the team ran up until 1974 and also at Leo’s Speedway in Oshkosh and took occasional trips to the half-miles at Shawano Speedway and even the Brown County Fairgrounds in De Pere.
After the 1974 season Grode sold his half of his ownership in the car and took a new challenge – helping form the Fox River Racing Club.
Just how did the name Fox River Racing Club come to fruition? “At the time there already was the Wolf River Racing Club which disbanded after the track in Shiocton closed in 1973,” explained Grode. “So I just went along with Fox River Racing Club after the Fox Valley Stock Car club basically ceased after Apple Creek closed. It just sort of stuck. It actually wasn’t anything intentional.”
Prior to 1975 KK Sports Arena was not hosting weekly racing. “In some spots there was grass growing through the track,” said Grode. “It was just Red, White and Blue races there for a while.”
“The first year it was myself as secretary, Ronnie Van Roy was the vice president, Ray Dietzen was the treasurer and Bob Seehawer was president. This was in 1975. The track was still called the KK Sports Arena prior to that.”
The Thursday night program consisted of late models on the half mile, a “sportsman class” on the inner quarter mile which even included coupes driven by drivers like Bryce Spoehr, and many Apple Creek and Shiocton drivers who were stuck without a track to race at. Figure 8’s rounded out the weekly show.
“People thought we were crazy to try and resurrect a Thursday night racing program at WIR because some other guys had gone belly up trying to do it,” explained Grode. “Guys like Clyde Schumacher tried it when the half-mile was dirt. It didn’t work. They didn’t have a big turnout of cars. It was more than one guy could handle. Connie DeLuew tried and it went haywire. Then Joe (Van Daalwyk) got it back again.”
“We had approached Joe (Van Daalwyk) about getting this going again. Because I was secretary in the winter of 1974, I’d negotiate a lot of stuff with Joe. He’d always say “SPELL IT OUT! SPELL IT OUT!” He wasn’t too bad to deal with if you knew what you what you were talking about. I’d go in his office, throw the figures and calculations on his desk and say “here’s what I think we can do.”
Van Daalwyk took a puff of his cigar, scratched his head and and told Grode “O.K. let’s do this.”
Grode had recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in marketing and advertising. While wheelchair bound for the better part of his adult life, Grode refused to let that disability slow him down.
The club tried several different “tricks” and “gimmicks” to draw the fans to the races on Thursday nights. “We started a scout night where all scouts who were in their uniform were admitted free,” said Grode. “I even had scout leaders from Milwaukee call me and come up. That was a successful promotion along with the Big Wheel races we started. We started the “Dash for Cash” promotion. I’d go to the bank and get all these pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We’d go down the front straightaway and my future wife Lois would pour the coins out of the window of my ’70 Dodge Charger. The announcer would countdown from 3,2,1 and the kids would scramble for the coins. It was a hoot.”
After consulting with K and K Insurance, the company that insured the weekly races at the track, Grode and company decided to give kids rides in race cars during the national anthem’s pace lap. Shopping cart races were held at intermission with drivers and their pit crew members. Spectator eliminators were also an added attraction on Thursday nights. “We needed stuff like that to fill the show because honestly, some nights between all three classes we’d be lucky to get 35 to 40 cars some nights,” said Grode.
Things weren’t always easy in the beginning. “I remember the second night we ran financially we were in tough shape,” said Grode. “We had spent what Joe (Van Daalwyk) had given us in startup money from the first week for expenses. So the second night of racing I’m sitting in the office in the pit area and I only had $300 to pay the drivers in all three classes. That was it.”
Van Daalwyk came around. He saw the long faces of the club officers and asked “what’s the problem?” Grode told him they were short to make the drivers payout. Van Daalwyk loaned them the $400 to make good on the payout the drivers had coming. “Joe knew what we were trying to do and he was making money on concessions anyways so he helped us out,” said Grode. “Joe was good to work with as long as you knew what you were talking about. Obviously we B.S.’ed him enough to convince him that we did indeed know what we were doing.”
Not only was the effort ongoing for fans it was for drivers as well. “Ronny Van Roy and I went to Adams Friendship on one cold, winter night to one of their meetings to recruit the guys who ran Plover and the Wisconsin Rapids circuit initially,” said Grode. “We weren’t real well received at the time because they had Wausau which ran on Thursday nights at the time. We told the drivers they were welcome to come. Some of the younger guys who were at that meeting came down to try racing by us. Butch Mierendorf (Waterloo) was there. It seemed as if Trickles and the Detjens, Reffner and that had sort of a clique. The younger guys listened to us. Somers started running by us. He was a central Wisconsin guy. They knew we were there and what we were doing. I guess I can understand why we weren’t that well received. It opened things up for the drivers who weren’t so hot on the tar for them, middle of the pack guys, who could make some money by us. They couldn’t make money racing against Trickle and Reffner and the like.”
Several club members were pitching in – drivers, fans, car owners and club officers – to build the Thursday night show. And get the word out in the various Fox Valley communities. Locals would donate items like bottles of booze for fan giveaways. Van Daalwyk would giveaway tickets to the Red, White and Blue shows. Grode did ticket giveaway swaps with the local dirt tracks. It was all an attempt to build fan attendance at the relatively new Thursday night program.
Among the local drivers who supported the Thursday nights races from the beginning in 1975 were Roger Regeth (Kimberly), Pete Parker (Kaukauna) and JJ Smith (Appleton) all of whom were some bigger names already on the local dirt track scene. “What we found were some guys who weren’t necessarily front runners on dirt like “Stan The Man” Gracyalny, Roehborn and Mike Kelly would come by us and run better and make more money. They were more like mid pack guys by us on asphalt.”
With the Thursday night program being so new to many drivers there was quite a gap between the front running cars and the back markers – especially on the half mile. “That gap was so great that we had setup a rule where a driver had to turn in at least a 29 second lap in order to make the feature,” Grode pointed out. “We didn’t want anybody to get run over. We had five or six really fast cars – guys like Rich Somers and Larry Schuler for example, because they already had the experience on the tar.”
With that great disparity in half mile speeds Grode came up with an idea. “We decided to create the six-for-six fast dash. That way those fastest six cars each night, who were normally head and shoulders above the rest of the field anyways, could have their own race in lieu of a heat and it was normally one helluva race.”
Once word spread through word-of-mouth and the racing trade papers of the Thursday night program drivers would come from all parts of the Midwest – even on a week night.
One of them was Larry Schuler. “(Schuler) would come up every week for a few seasons all the way from Lockport, Illinois,” said Grode. “Schuler was a really nice guy. He was a linemen for the power company down there. His Dad Lee would bring the car up and Larry would usually pull up later, barely in time to time trial. Real nice guy he was. Larry had little pieces of metal, it was like shaft. He would take those pieces of shaft, different length ones, and put them on different places on the car. And if it lined up the car was good to go. If it wasn’t, he’d start changing shocks and springs and stuff like that. Screw jacks too. He had a system down and that car was fast, very fast.”
“We were pulling in guys to run weekly by us from Wisconsin Rapids and the Wausau area. We even had some tow up from Indiana on occasion, too. On a Thursday night. After a while Rich Somers came. Alan Kulwicki came eventually. Tony Strupp. Al Schill. Those Milwaukee guys came up. They were all great guys and they supported us well in the beginning.”
From a public relations standpoint Gary Vercauteren of nearby Chilton, a De Pere native, went to bat for the club in its early years. “Gary was a great guy who wrote a lot of good press about the club,” said Grode. “At first I had a problem with Gary because I equated him with Joe and the race track, which was kind of against us a little bit in the beginning. But I later found out that was not true. The man loved racing. We got to be really good friends. I bought a 65 Barracuda from him at one time. He got me into the Chilton Times Journal he was running. The whole family had been involved in racing for quite a few years and Gary really did a great job for us getting the word out.”
By 1977 the FRRC had mustered up a $25,000 point fund that was split up between the club drivers. Towards the end of the 1977 season weekly crowds of nearly 4,000 people attended the races. Grode remained president of the club in 1978 but stepped down after that. “I got married that year. I had to put more hours in at work at Valley Auto Parts. I was building a house. I needed to put more effort into my personal life. I was attending races five to six nights a week. It just got to be too much.”
Grode has no regrets. “You forge relationships after 30 years. Guys who were your enemies back then now are your friends. You always had your chronic bitchers, and you’ve got the guys who just come to run and are happy you got the deal going. It was a great ride and a wonderful learning experience for me in those four years.”
To this date, the FRRC remains one of the strongest, active club run weekly racing programs in the Midwest.
In recent years Grode has been a driving force in management behind the successful Mackville Tractor Pulls. He still resides in Black Creek.