Reprinted from The Day, October 6, 1982
Lately, it seems that half the stories I’ve written about powerboat racers should have been handled by a medical writer – grim tales of injury and death that make for depressing reading, especially when they are about people you know and like.
That’s why I was disturbed recently to hear John Walters, upon leaving the hospital, say that he hadn’t given up the idea of getting back into the cockpit of Pay ‘N Pak, the unlimited hydroplane that nearly killed him six weeks ago.
If you lined up 20 men, Walters, 28, would be one of the last you would select as a top practitioner of possibly the world’s most dangerous sport. He’s slender and not very tall, and his back mustache seems designed to make him look older.
Walters is quietly confident and not given to bragging about what he does, which is guiding two tons of hydroplane on the ragged edge of disaster, taking turns at 120 miles an hour and going down straight-aways at nearly 200.
He has stepped over the edge twice.
The first time was three summers ago, when, in the glow of seemingly perfect initial runs, he took an untested, radical turbine boat out for a run that was expected to blow everyone else away. The boat did a double back flip at 170 mph.
The second time was August 8 in Seattle, when another boat spun out in front of him and he turned over after colliding.
“I don’t know for sure what I’m doing to do,” Walters said when asked about his future. “I’ll have to wait until I’m healed before I’ll know if I can drive the boat again, but the doctors say it will be six months to a year before I can even drive a car.”
Away from the boat, his life centers on wife Arlene and their two daughters, Katrina, 11, and Maciva, 9. They live in Renton, Wash., in the heard of unlimited country and only a short distance from the test waters where 99 percent of the new unlimited boats and drivers get their baptism.
Walters said that Arlene “knew from the time we were married, when I was still building unlimiteds, that I wanted to drive them. She knows what the risks are and she accepts them . . . no, I guess I have to admit that she’s not terribly pleased with the idea of me driving again.”
After thinking for a moment, Walters added, “I don’t know if I’ll want to drive again. I’ll have to see how I feel when the time comes. I’ve been extremely lucky twice. Right now, I’m not sure what I want.”
John Walters is lucky that even without driving, he can still be intimately involved with the sport he loves so much. Walters’ first connection with the unlimiteds was in designing and building the boats. When he started to drive them, he turned his mechanically inclined mind toward learning all he could about the boat’s jet turbine engine.
All forms of motor sport are familiar with the gentleman driver, the guy who doesn’t know where the engine is but can make the machine go like a bat out of hell. That’s not Walters’ style.
“As a driver, it was to my advantage to be able to come back and talk to the guys working on the motor and say this is what I think it’s doing and why it’s doing it,” Walters said.
Crew Chief Jim Lucero, the man who designed many of the competitive boats on the circuit, pays Walters the ultimate mechanic’s compliment by saying he is “a darned good wrench.”
It has been a tough couple of years for unlimited hydroplane racing. Since November 1981, the sport has seen Bill Muncey and Dean Chenoweth, probably the two best drivers who ever lived, killed in accidents. The wreck that hospitalized Walters also smashed two other boats, although their drivers escaped without serious injury.
A number of drivers, owners and others connected with the sport are casting worried eyes at Chip Hanauer, the 27-year-old pilot of Atlas Van Lines. Hanauer is a bright, vibrant and articulate driver who is one of the most competitive human beings ever to strap himself into a boat seat.
He has a new boat and is virtually guaranteed the 1982 national unlimited title, but he shows no inclination to play it safe.
Knowledgeable observers say Hanauer is so competitive that, in the words of one friend and fellow driver, “He doesn’t seem to even think about the danger. It’s like he has a switch in his head that he turns off when it comes to his own safety. On land, he’s very smart. It’s hard to believe he’s the same guy when he gets in the boat. I guess he’s trying to prove something, that he really is the best.”
Walters left the hospital in a body cast after his most recent crash, and he worries more about walking normally than when he will be able to drive again. And even if the body heals to the point that he doesn’t look any different than before, there is no guarantee that he’ll still have the almost superhuman reflexes and high-speed judgment that mark top drivers in every form of motor sport.
John Walters has nothing to prove to anyone – not to his pears, not to the fans who line the riverbanks and lakeshores by the hundreds of thousands, certainly not to himself.
