The Vault
“WILD BILL” FITZGERALD – “$25 AND A COUPLE CASES OF BEER WAS A GOOD SPONSOR IN 1960”
Posted on: Thursday November 10, 2022
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(The following is an excerpt from the 2015 release “Life In The Past Lane – a history of stock car racing in northeastern Wisconsin from 1950-1980.” The chapter is titled “Wild Bill.”)
Bill Fitzgerald’s Mother Cecelia sobbed as she signed a waiver form for him to race at the age of 16 – literally.
Fitzgerald, from Manitowoc, was still in high school when he got the itch to go racing after attending a race at the old Manitowoc County Fairgrounds in 1946. “The tears fell from her eyes onto the waiver form– literally,” said Fitzgerald, who raced for four decades across Wisconsin. “All it took for me was to go watch the races there that one time. I was hooked and there was nothing holding me back.”
The races at the fairgrounds were sanctioned by the Badger State Midget Racing Association. The car he ran was a Chevrolet Hot Rod, which was extremely unsafe, even for back then. “The car was a death trap, plain and simple,” said Fitzgerald. “Honestly, when I look back now it’s amazing I didn’t get killed at some point along the way. The Hot Rod I ran was a roadster, and the cars weren’t safe at all. I had an aluminum helmet. No firesuit. No gloves. And I was only 16 at the time. The roll bar I had was from the outside of a wagon wheel. It was a joke as far as safety was concerned. You could have knocked that damned thing over with a ball peen hammer.”
Fitzgerald would fuel his racer with airplane fuel, which was common at the time. “It was great – it was 120 octane and it’s what everybody pretty much was running back then,” said Fitzgerald.
In Fitzgerald’s maiden voyage he spun out after taking to the crudely carved out, half-mile horse track. “The track was built for horse racing and as such there was straw mixed in with the track so it was easier on the hooves of the horses when they ran,” said Fitzgerald. “It made for some pretty big holes and ruts in the track. While the surface may have been good for horses it wasn’t much for race cars. Cars would fly all over the place. When I spun out that first time my Mom she left and never came back.”
Despite the rough outing at first, Fitzgerald was hooked and there was no turning back. “I won the feature and semi-feature a couple of nights later at the fairgrounds,” said Fitzgerald. “The cars were cheap, real cheap. And because of that they weren’t real safe. I don’t know if we were fearless or that stupid. It was probably a little bit of both I guess.”
Despite being a teenager, Fitzgerald ran all across Wisconsin for three seasons with the Wisconsin Roadsters Association. “We’d run tracks all over the state – places that have since been closed for many, many years,” Fitzgerald pointed out. “Gas was cheap, that never factored in. We’d just load up and race, anywhere and everywhere we could.”
There were no fancy enclosed trailers used to tow race cars in the 1940’s and 1950’s. “We used a tow bar and sometimes we even used a big block of wood with some ropes or chains,” said Fitzgerald. “Half the excitement was getting to and from the tracks.”
During his late teen years Fitzgerald copped victories at Manitowoc and the now defunct track at Lodi in central Wisconsin. “(Lodi) was dangerous – real dangerous,” said Fitzgerald. “We were running open cockpits and I remember the tops of the fence were right at head or neck level. One guy got a huge splinter in his arm. It’s weird but nobody thought much of it back then.”
Fitzgerald would get as much seat time as possible racing anywhere and everywhere he could. Some of the tracks he competed at included Oshkosh, Apple Creek in Appleton, Cedarburg, Shawano, Slinger and Plymouth. “I even ran a race at a track in Edgerton, down by Madison,” said Fitzgerald. “It was a mile track. A guy flipped over in a pond in the infield there and almost drowned. That was crazy.”
When Fitzgerald worked at Lauson Chevrolet in Manitowoc he earned the nickname “Wild Bill” from his co-workers. “I guess I was a little crazy driving on the streets in town,” Fitzgerald confessed. “The track announcers went with it and it sort of stuck throughout the years.” Jochem’s Auto Parts of Manitowoc was a long time sponsor of Fitzgeralds.
After racing in Wisconsin for a few seasons, Fitzgerald served his country in the military. When he returned, he loaded up the family on a whim, packed up a bus and went out to California in the mid 1950’s. The racing bug bit him out there as well. “It didn’t take me long and I was racing out at a track called Balboa, like Rocky,” said Fitzgerald. “There were 120 cars there and they all ran flathead Fords. I was the outlaw of the time and ran a Chevy 6 cylinder motor and after I won out there the first time, I had two guys offer me full time rides out there. They couldn’t believe how I could beat all of those Ford flathead motored cars with a Chevy 6 cylinder.”
Fitzgerald continued to hone his craft on the West coast but returned to Wisconsin around 1960.
Fitzgerald was a front runner on the third-mile, paved oval at the Brown County Fairgrounds in De Pere. He’d race a 1950 Studebaker on the half-mile, horse track and a 1933 Chevrolet Coupe on the paved, third mile. “We loved racing up at De Pere and had a lot of wins,” said Fitzgerald. “Problem was we’d spend all of our winnings at the taverns on the way back home. We’d stop at Shirley’s in the town of Shirley just south of De Pere and have burgers and some beers. Before that we’d always hit the Swan Club in De Pere. They’d sponsored me back then. $25 and a couple of cases of beer was a good sponsorship back then. We took everything we could get. We’d usually hit a place of two in Denmark and Two Rivers on the way home. It made for a long commute home from De Pere to Manitowoc, that’s for sure.”
Fitzgerald was a dominant driver at 141 Speedway in Francis Creek, which held its first races as a paved track in 1960. 141 became Fitzgerald’s “home track” of sorts and he wound up winning three modified track championships.
In 1960 there were very few high-tech parts or tricks to their cars. Drivers learned things by trial and error and on the fly. One night a bottle of soda pop helped Fitzgerald into victory lane at the tiny, quarter-mile, paved oval. Fitzgerald’s car developed a slipping clutch during time trials and had to scratch from the 50 lap feature.
A crew member suggested he pour a certain brand of soda pop on the clutch. The remedy worked and Fitzgerald, who was forced to start dead last after initially scratching from the event, threaded his way through the field to capture the victory.
Drivers like Bob Wester, Bucky Wagner, Earl Ness and Benny Pritzl were some of the top competitors Fitzgerald would spar with back in the day. “The rivalries were pretty big back then,” said Fitzgerald. “I remember one night at De Pere Benny (Pritzl) and Bucky (Wagner) wound up throwing dukes right there on the track. They had gotten together and that as all it took. Benny spent a lot of money to go racing, even for back then. The joke back then was Benny paid for every feature win he’d get.”
Fitzgerald would mix it up at a number of Lakeshore area tracks that weren’t always operating for more than two or three years at a time. “I remember the track at Hartlaub’s Lake in Manitowoc – it was a road course,” said Fitzgerald. “It even had a jump on it. The cars we were running were not equipped at all to be jumping into the air. But there were plenty of cars at that track and you know what? Most of them were locals. We had a lot of local drivers from the Manitowoc-Two Rivers area who raced back then. A lot of them.”
While racing the road course at Hartlaub’s Fitzgerald got into a wreck – not with a car – but with a tree. “I went into a corner too hard and shot straight off the track,” recall Fitzgerald. “I skidded into this big tree. But the hit was so soft because it was real swampy down there and almost like quick sand. When I hit the tree it was like hitting this big, soft, giant rubber ball. It was the weirdest feeling.”
In the 1970’s Fitzgerald would continue to run modifieds, mainly at the Sheboygan County Fairgrounds in Plymouth and at 141 Speedway under the Eastern Wisconsin Stock Car Association (EWSCA) sanction. Towards the end of Fitzgerald’s racing career he raced an econo-mod with IMCA modifieds at 141 Speedway in the mid 1980’s. He got his son Bill Jr. involved at that point. Bill Jr. was a frontrunning IMCA modified driver until he hung up his helmet in the early 1990’s.
After Fitzgerald Sr. retired from behind the wheel in 1985 he had a hand in promoting some races at the Manitowoc County Expo Speedway in the late 1980s on the track’s half-mile. He also drove the track’s pace car. After he quit racing Fitzgerald climbed behind the wheel of a much bigger vehicle – a school bus. “Wild Bill” was a school bus driver for Manitowoc Roncalli until he retired from that in 2014. “I’ve got no regrets,” said Fitzgerald. “(Racing) takes a lot of time. It cost me two different wives along the way. But I’ve got no regrets.”
As of 2015 Fitzgerald was retired and still resided in Manitowoc. He still attended races locally but only as a fan in the stands.