Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,182
By This is the grave of Tony Bettenhausen.
Born in 1951 in Joilet, Illinois, Bettenhausen was born to a crazy motherfucker. See, his father, also named Tony, was a race car driver, the craziest lunatics in the world, with the possible exception of bullriders. Tony Sr. was a very fine driver and won many races and then was killed in 1961 during an experimental car test in Indianapolis. Now, did being orphaned by their father mean this boys were going to avoid being crazy motherfuckers as well? Nope, they were inspired by the family goal of dying young. His older brother, Merle, raced exactly one time on the IndyCar circuit. He crashed, had his right arm torn off in the crash, and so couldn’t race Indy cars anymore. Note I didn’t say he couldn’t race anymore. Sure, he had his arm torn from his body, but he still spent much of his life racing one-armed on dirt tracks. Again, these are crazy motherfuckers. The oldest boy, Gary, had a very long Indy career, though not very successful.
Tony was about as good as Gary. I remember both from when I was a kid and my dad watched Indy cars sometimes (never NASCAR though, we weren’t those kind of people). He would race in 11 Indy 500s. His best finish was his first, in 1981. He finished 7th. He’d also race quite a bit of NASCAR too in these years, running 33 of what was then called Winston Cup races. Ah, the good years for tobacco companies.
The thing about the Bettenhausens is that every one of them was a pretty good driver. But none of them was a great driver. Now, it’s not uncommon for families to be drivers. The Andrettis, the Unsers, the Earnhardts, this kind of insanity is more learned from parents than acquired elsewhere. But the Bettenhausens hold the record for most races without a win. I found this odd to discover. Not because I know anything about Indy Car racing. I definitely do not. But because these were names I very much knew when I was a kid so when I saw this grave, I was like, hey I remember that guy! He was a big enough name for me to remember. But then maybe I don’t know why since he wasn’t actually very good. None of this is meaningful except for how people remember sports figures of their childhood. I started following baseball seriously in 1987 and that was the year George Bell went crazy for the Blue Jays and won the MVP. I knew he didn’t really have another great season like that in the future, but I didn’t realize until much later how he really was just a good player and that’s all. So talking about childhood memories of sports might be a lot more interested than talking about Tony Bettenhausen. Or, Lord knows, Indy Car racing.
In 1993, Bettenhausen retired from active racing after the Indy 500. He had his own stable of drivers for the rest of the 90s, though because they weren’t very good, sponsorships got hard to come by around 1999. There was also a divide in Indy racing with something called CART pulling off from it and Bettenhausen was part of that, so was able to have a car in the Indy 500 since 1996, which he was bitter about.
Bettenhausen died way too young too. But in his case, it was an airplane crash and not a car crash that killed him in 2000. But Bettenhausen was the pilot because of course he was. These people who get into experimental vehicles love flying their own planes too. It went down over Kentucky. His wife and a couple of other people were on board too. He was 48 years old.
Tony Bettenhausen is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis, Indiana.
If you would like this series to visit other Indy Car drivers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Al Unser is in Albuquerque and AJ Foyt is in Houston. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.