50 YEARS AGO TODAY: KENNY GRITZ WON THE KNOXVILLE NATIONALS!
Friday, August 16, 2019
Remembering Kenny Gritz
by Eric Arnold
On August 16, 1969 twenty-five year old driver Kenny Gritz of Lincoln, Nebraska won the Knoxville Nationals. Sixteen days later on September 1, Gritz would lose his life in an accident in a race at the Nebraska State Fairgrounds. It’s a tragic tale of a man who worked hard, and racing was the hobby he and his family were involved with.
Although Gritz had a somewhat successful 1969 season leading up to the Knoxville Nationals, in no way was he considered a favorite to win the event. Gritz won the biggest super modified race in the world paying $3,000 for the win, in what some people think as the biggest upset in the history of the Knoxville Nationals. He literally was the ultimate Cinderella story.
We see the names of the previous Knoxville Nationals champions above the ticket turnstiles as we walk in each night at Knoxville Raceway, but behind each name is a story, and I wanted to know more about this story being a prideful Knoxville Nationals historian. I never saw Gritz race, but this is a story that I felt like researching to honor the winner of the 1969 Nationals, and it’s a story for people of my generation, and those younger, who don’t know much about.
Kenny Gritz started his racing career in late 1964 driving a friend’s car a few times at Midwest Speedway in Lincoln, Nebraska. He helped a fellow co-worker build a car and eventually bought it from him. His wife Jeanne, encouraged him if he was going to own the car, he might as well drive it. By 1967, Gritz had won his first feature at Midwest Speedway and also finished second in the Nebraska Modified Racing Association (NMRA) point standings. A tool maker by day and race car driver/mechanic by night, he spent countless hours working on his race car with the help of his wife Jeanne, father in-law Bob Whitlock, Zeke Zegers, Gary Schoenrock, John Burke who owned Burke Machine, and Larry Snyder who owned Snyder Fiberglass, now known as Snyder Industries in Lincoln.
Gritz loved racing and one of his favorites to compete against was fellow Lincoln resident, friend, and racing mentor, Lloyd Beckman. In an interview conducted in 1968 in the Lincoln Star by George Kaufman, Gritz was asked about how it feels to go up against the veteran Beckman who he looked up to. “It’s quite a challenge to me. I enjoy beating him when I can but even when I don’t I’m learning. I’ve watched Beckman pretty closely and he’s taken the time to help me quite a bit. As far as I’m concerned he’s one of the best in the country today.” In the 1967 season Gritz was starting to win races and one night after a win at Eagle Raceway his mentor Beckman told him, “Kid you are on your own from now on” as Kenny had beaten him. Kenny won the 1968 Knoxville Nationals B-Main, but I wasn’t able to find where he finished in the A-Main that night.
In the fall of 1968 Gritz and Snyder would fly to Los Angeles to purchase an Edmunds chassis four bar sprint car and bring it back to Lincoln where they put in a 327 fuel injected Chevy engine and all new fiberglass from Snyder. The blue number 12 car became familiar to fans and competitors. The car was also built to race with a bolt on and off roll cage as IMCA sprint car competition did not allow roll cages. In February of 1969 they traveled west to race in California at Ascot Park, El Centro, and Imperial. The team returned home to race in the Midwest and won three features in a row at Eagle. At Knoxville Gritz finished fifth in points with four quick times along with the one regular season win in June. He was also fourth in the NMRA points. Kenny nearly won a second feature at Knoxville where he and Earl Wagner had traded the lead and as they raced to the checkered flag they became entangled and wrecked on the front stretch as Joe Saldana snuck by them both for the win. Gritz was able to finish second while Wagner was left sitting against the inside guard rail, only feet away from the finish line.
On Saturday morning before the Nationals win, Kenny was working on his brother in-law Jerry Sanford’s #12JR car when sparks from a welding torch ignited the gas tank and gave Kenny severe facial burns. Lloyd Beckman insisted that Kenny stay in his hotel room nearby that was air conditioned for the rest of the day. Throughout the day there were rumors as to who would drive the Snyder #12, but Kenny fought through the pain of those burns and metal fragments embedded in his skin. He of course would start the A-main and win in dramatic fashion by passing race leader Jan Opperman on the twenty-seventh lap of the thirty lap race. You can see the burns on his face in victory lane photographs. Gritz would take the checkers with a comfortable lead over Opperman, Bob Williams, Ray Lee Goodwin, and Kenny Weld rounded out the top five that night. Opperman, Goodwin, and Weld are all Knoxville Nationals champions, so it was a stout field to outrun. At only twenty-five years old, Gritz was on top of the racing world. He wasn’t the youngest driver to win the Nationals, Kenny Weld was only eighteen when he won in 1964.
It is hard today to imagine that racing fifty years ago was at a time when roll cages were a luxury item for race car drivers. At the time super modifieds had roll cages, while sprint cars typically had none. The Knoxville Nationals allowed sprint cars to attach cages to compete, but Gritz was forced to remove his cage by IMCA rules at the time to compete at the Nebraska State Fair that tragic day when he hit a hole in the track and flipped his car in a terrible crash that ended his young life. Sadly Gritz at only twenty-five years old, who had just starting to peak as a race car driver, was gone. He had been recently promoted to Foreman at Bair Machine in Lincoln, and he left behind a wife and two young daughters Lori and Teresa, who both still live in Lincoln, while Jeanne remarried and passed away in 1991.
By all accounts I’ve read Kenny was a kind and easy going young man who enjoyed racing and his family. The one good thing that came of Gritz’ death is that his wife Jeanne filed a lawsuit that forced IMCA and other organizations to allow roll cages. Obviously we all know now that roll cages are safer, and have become a necessary piece of equipment on nearly all racing machines in the world today. What a pivotal point in the history of racing his death was. Kenny was inducted into the Knoxville Raceway Hall of Fame in the inaugural class of 1979 and then into the Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 2002.
Gritz’ Nationals winning car which was owned by his friend Larry Snyder is on display regularly in the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum. Mike Dewey of Santa Paula, California had the car, restored it, then brought the blue number 12 car back to Knoxville in 2008 and willingly donated the car to the museum!
I would like to thank Bob Wilson and the sister of Kenny Gritz, Jan Sanford, for their help with this story. It was fun to find a way to honor and celebrate Kenny Gritz, who will forever be known as the 1969 Knoxville Nationals champion.
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