Chuck Scharf – Introduced Short Track Stock Car Racing to Chicago

By Stan Kalwasinski                                                             

 Chuck Scharf and his partner, Eddy Anderson, are considered the “founding fathers” of short track stock car racing in Chicagoland as the pair brought stock cars to the old Gill Stadium in Chicago in 1948.  Scharf owned a hot rod that Anderson was racing with Andy Granatelli’s Hurricane Hot Rod Association at Soldier Field.  Scharf and Anderson toyed with the idea of adding a little spark to the weekly midget racing programs at Gill Stadium, which was located at 1111 E. 87th Street on Chicago’s far southside. 

 Beginning as an “added attraction” to the stadium’s weekly United Auto Racing Association (UARA) midget races, the cars at first were nothing more the used cars from Scharf’s northside used car lot at 6034 N. Western Ave. in the city with shoe polish numbers painted on them.  The idea of a two-car exhibition and then a four-car race wetted the fans’ appetite for more of the same crash and bang action. 

 Stock cars would get their own night of racing at Gill Stadium with Labor Day evening, September 5, 1948, being the first full program of short track racing in the Chicago area with UARA midget racer Larry Johnson winning the first feature race.  Johnson drove a 1937 Ford to the victory in the 25-lap main event over Johnny Werner, Harvey Sheeler, Harold “Wild Willie” Wildhaber and Sam Koske.  All toll, six stock car racing programs would be held at Gill before the end of the 1948 racing season.

 Late that year, Scharf and Anderson’s Championship Stock Car Club would be involved in the first stock car races held at Nick and Pete Jenin’s Raceway Park near Blue Island.  Midget racing ace Danny Kladis in a Jeep would win a 300-lap championship contest on Sunday afternoon, October 31, with Bill Van Allen winning a 100-lap battle the following Sunday. 

 More than 60 years later, Wayne Adams, the “voice” of Raceway Park for countless years and a longtime motorsports writer for the area, reminisced about Chuck Scharf and Eddy Anderson.

 “Scharf and Anderson are the ones that started it all,” said Adams, who announced those first stock car races at both Gill Stadium and Raceway Park.  “I remember Chuck Scharf bringing his wife’s brand new car out to Raceway Park one night and racing it.”

 Scharf and Anderson would branch out, expanding the club’s activities to speed venues in Indianapolis, Anderson, Kokomo and Cincinnati with the Chicago-area based association running seven nights a week during those early days.  Scharf was even a competitor in the new “passenger stock car races” in 1949, racing at tracks like the West 16th Street Midget Speedway in Indianapolis and posting several feature wins. 

Scharf competed at Raceway in those early years also, winning two feature races there in 1949.  Scharf’s racing career also included making two starts at the “Milwaukee Mile” finishing ninth in a 1949 Ford on July 10, 1949 and eighth in a ’50 Ford on August 24, 1950.

 One of the highlights of the club’s 1949 season was Joliet’s Don Odell winning three 300-lap contests towards the end of the ’49 season, winning at Raceway Park, Springfield and Peoria in his 1939 Ford.

 The Championship Stock Car Club really grew in 1950 and presented a total of 173 sanctioned races on 11 major speedways from Texas to Ohio.  Raceway Park was also part of the association with the “World Famous Motordrome” presenting 57 stock car meets.  Raceway Park held 66 Championship-sanctioned programs in 1951 with the season finale on November 11th having four-foot snow drifts outlining the racing surface.

 An early attempt of Scharf’s to gain fame and publicity came in 1951.  During the Korean War President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur and replaced him with a new Commander of the U.S. forces.  This resulted in a huge outpouring of nationwide public support for MacArthur, including parades in several major cities.  On the day of Chicago's parade (April 26, 1951), Scharf took his '49 Ford stock car downtown and put himself in the parade, with a big sign mounted on the roof reading "CHAMPIONSHIP STOCK CAR CLUB WELCOMES GENERAL MACARTHUR TO CHICAGO - Races Tonite at Raceway Park, 130th and Ashland."  When he was thrown out of the parade, Scharf drove a couple of blocks on a parallel street and got right back in, completing the route several spots ahead of his original starting position.

Before the 1952 season began, Scharf and Anderson went their separate ways.  Scharf created the new Society of Autosports, Fellowship and Education (SAFE) Circuit of Champions stock car tour, which was originally restricted to track champions and record holders, driving strictly stock late model passenger cars.

 Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, Pat Kirkwood, who would later own a number of night clubs in Dallas, claimed the circuit’s championship honors in both 1952 and 1953 as the group slowly left its Chicago area roots.  In 1953, Kirkwood won SAFE events at tracks like Grand Rapids, Mich., the Cincinnati Race Bowl, Jeffersonville, Ind., Riverside, Ark., Council Bluffs, Iowa, in addition to the 16th Street oval in Indianapolis.

 “I remember Bill France (Sr.) coming to Chicago to meet with Charley Scharf,” again reminisced Adams.  “I had lunch with them and that’s how I got the deal to provide the trophies for the races that year down in Daytona.  When Scharf and Harry Redkey were running SAFE, they had an office on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.”

 Scharf’s son, Chuck Jr., recalled how the name SAFE came about.

 “Many people thought that SAFE was a strange name for a racing organization, and it was - but there was a reason for it,” said Scharf Jr.  “In the early to mid-1950s racing was under a tremendous amount of political and media pressure due to all the driver fatalities.  There was even the threat of federal legislation, led by a senator from Oregon named Richard Neuberger, to ban all auto racing in the U.S.  The name SAFE was obviously a needle aimed at the anti-racing movement, but I think it was also intended to differentiate stock car racing from the more dangerous forms of the sport.  Dad and Harry Redkey decided on the name SAFE and then thought up some words to match the acronym.”

1954 saw Jack Harrison of West Newton, Ind., win the title as the 25-year-old speedster competed in all 44 scheduled national championship events, winning eight races in his 1954 Ford V8.  Harrison bested Don Oldenberg, Hershel White, Bob Pronger and Kirkwood, who was suspended by series officials for a time, in the final standings.  In addition to Harrison feature winners were Kirkwood (16 wins), Pronger (9), White (5), Fonty Flock (2), Bob Flock (1), Oldenberg (1), Mason Bright (1) and Bill Cornwall (1).  Two of Pronger’s victories came at Raceway Park and Soldier Field in his 1954 Cadillac No. 99. 

 Scharf and his partner Redkey operated SAFE out of their office at 4601 W. 16th Street in Indianapolis in 1955 with the racing featuring all convertibles and it was known as the Circuit of Champions “All Stars.”  The original rules called for all cars to have chrome roll bars!

 Bill Brown, from the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago, won the first SAFE convertible race at Birmingham, Ala., on May 5, 1955, piloting a brand new ’55 Mercury Montclair.  Driving a ’55 Buick Century, Don Oldenberg, hailing from Highland, Ind., was the ’55 series champion.  Oldenberg won seven races during the season.  A lot of rainouts caused Scharf and Redkey a lot of financial headaches during the year.  An interesting note about the 1955 SAFE season – a young Anthony Joseph (A.J.) Foyt competed in an event at Oklahoma’s Taft Stadium on September 20, 1955 and finished 13th in a Dodge.

 The final SAFE convertible race was held at Alabama’s Montgomery Motor Speedway on October 9, 1955 with Art Binkley, who hailed from New Albany, Ind., wheeling his Chevrolet convertible to the win in the 150-lap race at the half-mile banked asphalt track.  Chicago area drivers Dave Hirschfield and Bill Cornwall finished second and third with Hershel White and Oldenberg rounding out the top five.

 At year’s end, SAFE would merge with NASCAR with Oldenberg being named NASCAR’s defending convertible champion when the 1956 season rolled around.  Scharf was named Midwest Vice President of NASCAR and took over the promotion of Soldier Field for the ’56 season.  At the beginning of the 1956 campaign, both Soldier Field and Raceway Park were running their weekly events under the NASCAR banner.

 Scharf Jr. shared some thoughts about the merger of SAFE and NASCAR.

 “NASCAR gradually let the convertible division die over the next few years,” said Scharf Jr.  “The end result leads me and more than a few others to believe that Bill France Sr.'s real motivation behind the merger was not so much to run a convertible series as it was to eliminate a competing sanctioning organization.”

 Speed Age magazine, one of the premier racing publications during the 1950s, ran a story about SAFE in its July/1955 edition saying…

 “The ‘champions’ are one of the top racing attractions in the United States and Canada.  With some $313,000 in prize money on the line, plus a point fund jackpot to be split at the end of the season, the ‘All Stars’ will be the highest paid in the sport.”

 NASCAR came to Chicago in a big way in 1956 with two convertible division races being held at Soldier Field in addition to a Grand National (today’s Sprint Cup) event.  Local favorite Tom Pistone and NASCAR legend Curtis Turner won the convertible contests with Edward Glenn “Fireball” Roberts, another NASCAR immortal, taking the victory in the 200-lap Grand National race held inside the mammoth arena on Chicago’s lakefront. 

 Another NASCAR convertible race was held at Soldier Field in 1957 with Glenn Wood claiming the victory on June 29, 1957.  This would be the last major NASCAR event held in the Chicago area as Soldier Field and NASCAR soon went their separate ways.  NASCAR competition would not return to the area until 2001 when ‘Cup racing came to the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet.

 Still dabbling in the competition of the sport, Scharf entered an orange and white 1956 Ford convertible for the first NASCAR-sanctioned convertible race in 1956 on Daytona Beach’s famous road and beach course.  With Pete Peterson doing the driving, Scharf and Peterson kept the top up all day to promote Peterson’s new automotive air conditioning business – Thermal Auto Air Conditioning.  The team finished 10th in the 159.9-mile contest.  After the race, the roll bars were removed and the muffler reinstalled with the car becoming Scharf’s wife’s daily driver for the next year or so.

 Peterson, who later would become a partner in Lehmann-Peterson, Inc., a company that built luxury, stretched limousines, and Scharf made one last attempt at NASCAR racing, visiting the year-old Daytona International Speedway in 1960 with a brand new Ford that the duo put together.  Scharf did the driving, but missed the big race because of engine issues.  Believe it or not, Scharf actually drove the car from Chicago to Daytona Beach to break it in before the superspeedway racing.

 Scharf continued in his promotional role at Soldier Field through about 1958.  Later, he would assist Raceway Park management with putting together a “claiming” division for novice drivers with the claiming price at $100.  Countless newcomers entered the racing.  One of Scharf’s last full-time roles in racing was promoting Santa Maria Speedway in California.  California was way too far from his Chicago roots so he moved back to the Chicago area for good.

A native of Chicago and a graduate of Schurz High School, Scharf was an accomplished trumpet player, beginning his musical career as a teenager in area speak-easies.  Scharf was the lead trumpeter in the famed Wayne King Orchestra in 1945 and 1946 and was in the house band at the famous Chez Paree nightclub in Chicago.  His last racing affiliation was with Sal Tovella’s International Racing Association in the early 1980s, but Scharf continued to play the trumpet through the early 1990s. 

 Scharf passed away on February 8, 2003 at his home in Northfield, Ill., and was survived by his wife, Jane; three sons, Doug, Chuck and John; a brother, Art; and five grandchildren.

 Chuck Scharf, a true pioneer of Chicago area short track stock car racing.

SAFE

 Thanks to Wayne Adams and Chuck Scharf Jr. for their help with this story.