Walter's Pain Has Been Hydro's Gain

Terrifying Accident In '82 Paved Way For Safer Boats

Reprinted from The Seattle Times, July 31, 1986

Sometimes the pain gets so bad, he can barely move by the afternoon. If it's his elbow that's troubling him, he'll wrap it in two ice bags and wear a brace the next day. If it's his back, his hip or his leg, or all of them, he often must resort to medication and then wake up at midnight to soak himself in a hot bathtub.

Four years ago, he was in and out of a hospital for seven months. At first, he clung faintly to life. Later, doctors told his family he might be a vegetable for the rest of his life, then that he would probably lose the sight in his left eye, have his right arm amputated and might not walk again.

Today, his back still is misaligned. He has artificial parts in his left hip and right elbow. His right leg is longer than his left. He is as medically recovered as he'll ever be, but every new day is certain to bring the same old pain.

But for John Walters, crew chief of the Miller American unlimited-hydroplane racing team, pain is not always measured in physical terms. It also is an aching of the heart. When the former unlimited pilot looks out onto a race course, he often sees in his colleagues the dreams he only partly fulfilled.

"There's no question I miss driving a lot," he said. "I don't necessarily lay awake at night and think about it, or have hard feelings toward the sport. But it does bother me sometimes to look at what's going on, and thinking I should be, or could be, part of it right now."

Part of the reason Walters is not driving today is indelibly etched into our psyches. Clips of his 1980 double flip on the Columbia River in the turbine-powered Pay 'n Pak are part of lead-ins to NBC's SportsWorld, ESPN race coverage promos and news broadcasts virtually every night in Eastern Washington. Walters suffered a fractured left hip socket and sprains to his left shoulder, elbow and knee. That accident, however, is not what pulled the plug on Walters' driving career.

Two years later, during Seattle's Emerald Cup regatta, Walters was injured critically in a three-boat accident that involved George Johnson in the Executone and Tom D'Eath in The Squire Shop.

For six years, Walters had moved his family from outpost to outpost, driving limiteds and working on unlimited crews, before getting his shot in an unlimited cockpit. In one brief moment of terror, it was all gone.

"When I got the opportunity to drive the Pay 'n Pak, I had many goals," Walters said. "I wanted to win races, the Gold Cup, the national championship -- all things possible, I wanted to do. In a short period, I did achieve some of the goals and had a reasonably successful driving career.

"But I feel a little like I've had a rug pulled from under me.

Just when we got to the point where the boat was doing what it was supposed to do, when winning Gold Cups and national championships finally were reasonable goals, it was over."

What is not over is Walters' career in unlimited racing. Two weeks before the start of this season, the sport's all-time winningest crew chief, Jim Lucero, left the Miller American team over a dispute.

Walters, already a member of the crew, took over.

It might have been less painful for Walters just to walk away from the sport. Pak owner Dave Heerensperger offered him a spot in the Pay 'n Pak stores' management-training program, and Walters accepted.

However, back in Harborview for follow-up surgery, he listened on the radio to the 1984 Gold Cup race in Tri-Cities, and knew he had made the wrong decision.

"Knowing what the Atlas Van Lines had to go through to win that race literally brought tears to my eyes," said Walters. "I knew then that it was not fair to myself or Pay 'n Pak if I was emotionally not pointed in that direction. I knew then that I wanted to get back into the sport."

Though Walters has had previous experience in almost every facet of the team he now oversees, his practical contributions to Miller American's success this year still are overshadowed by his emotional endowment. Earlier this year, driver Chip Hanauer joined Gar Wood as the only unlimited pilots to have won five straight Gold Cups.

He dedicated his historic fifth to Walters.

"I have a whole lot of admiration for John," Hanauer says.

"I'm proud I'm the driver for his first Gold Cup as a crew chief. He's really paid a higher price than I have. He inspires all of us."

In a bigger way, Walters has inspired the entire sport to reach the level it now enjoys.

In 1974, Jim Clapp's U-95 was the first, albeit brief and unsuccessful, attempt at harnessing the power of turbine engines in unlimiteds. The Pay 'n Pak hydro Walters drove was the real catalyst of the sport's turbine revolution. In 1982, on New York's Lake Onondaga, Walters became the first driver to win an unlimited race in a turbine-powered hydro.

"There's no question we were doing things no one ever attempted before," Walters remembered. "The boat ride in the Pay 'n Pak, compared to those of most boats today, was atrocious. The boat was totally unpredictable; it would never do the same thing twice.

"If I wasn't scared, I should've been. I was nervous an awful lot of time. I was concerned an awful lot of times, again, because of the unpredictability of the boat. The boat had real problems, but the bottom line is, it was a bad design from the very beginning.

"We had a new boat being built, but we continued to try to sort things out on the old one. We didn't want to quit on it before learning everything we could."

The second-generation Pay 'n Pak turbine hydro was scheduled for unveiling in 1983, but after Walters' accident, Heerensperger withdrew from the sport for good. The Lucero-designed hull now is one of the circuit's hottest -- the Steve Reynolds-piloted Miss 7-Eleven.

Walters' pain has been the sport's gain. In addition to 7-Eleven, the top turbine boats -- defending national-champion Miller American and the present high-points leader, Miss Budweiser -- and the top two piston entries -- Mr. Pringles and The Squire Shop -- all have direct lineage to the ill-fated Pay 'n Pak.

"All the mistakes we made with the Pay 'n Pak were modified, improved or corrected altogether in the boats today," Walters said.

"Unfortunately, we tend to learn more from our failures than our successes. I'd like to be able to say I wished there was another way to learn what we needed to know, and that I didn't have to get abused so badly.

"On the other hand, what happened to me helped us learn things faster and might be keeping a bunch of guys from paying the same price I did. So, yes, from that standpoint, it was worth it."

Ride along with Tommy Fults

Reprinted from The Seattle Times, July 3, 1970

Greg Heberlein of The Seattle Times sport staff got his first "up-close" look at hydroplane racing yesterday and he went all the way — hitching a ride with Tommy Fults in Lil' Buzzard.

Photo by Bruce McKim

Greg's concern started early, as evident by his white-knuckles grip on the edge of the cockpit even before Fults started the engine.

Turbos could steal the show in Pasco — Heerensperger

By Del Danielson
Reprinted from The Seattle Times, July 3, 1974

The first four races on the 1974 unlimited-hydroplane calendar have been strictly Pay 'n Pak — Budweiser duels, but the owners of the front-running Pak think the next outing could be won by an of one of a half dozen boats.

"I think there are six boats that could win in Pasco," Dave Heerensperger said earlier this week after returning from Detroit, where his boat ran second to the Bud.

Despite the dominance of the Budweiser and his Pak, Heerensperger feels "this is the best field I've ever seen." The affable owner thinks the turbine-powered U-95, Miss U.S., Atlas Van Lines, or Lincoln Thrift could steal the show from the two boats which, together, have triumphed in 11 straight hydro starts over the past two years.

Next stop is the World Championship Regatta on the Columbia River at Pasco, July 21.

"The water will be better in Pasco," Heerensperger said. "That's always a great course and we had the usual junk water back east."

The U.S., Atlas and Lincoln Thrift are powered by turbocharged Allison engines. That's why Heerensperger feels they have a chance at victory.

"They've got to have more power than we've got - if everything is running right," said Heerensperger, who hinted that he might be thinking about the turbo setup as a future power plant for his boat.

So far, the turbos have been plagued by minor engine problems. "If they get everything worked out, they're plenty tough," the Pak owner added.

For now, Heerensperger will stick with the Rolls engines which have pushed his boat 56 points ahead of the Bud in the race for the national points championship. The Pak has 3,750 and the Bud 3,694.

George Henley, driver of the Pak, and Jim Lucero, crew chief, get the lion's share of the credit for the success of the Pak.

"George is some kind of driver," Heerensperger said. "He does everything we ask, tells us exactly what we need to know about the handling of the boat out there. He really knows what he's doing.

"I tried to hire Dean Chenoweth who I think is the best driver in boat racing. But dean was tied to business commitments and can't drive for anybody.

"George has been a very pleasant surprise. he's going to be as good as Chenoweth. he's not very far from that right now, really."

The Pak owner beams when asked about Lucero. "He's an unbelievable guy as far as devotion and wanting to win and what he knows about hulls and engines. Jim and Dax Smith are the main engine guys for u and we haven't busted an engine yet."

Heerensperger has mixed emotions about the move of the Gold Cup from the Stan Sayres Park area to Sand Point.

"I think the idea is right to charge admission," he said. It's the only way to keep big-time boat racing here and build big purses.

"But the Sayres course is better. I don't know why they don't just invest $50,000 in a big snow fence and put it up every year down there and keep the people off the streets like they do in Madison, Ind.

"The pits are great and the course is ideal!"

The boss of the Pak team hedged on the number of "true" contenders for the Gold Cup. "I said six boats could win in Pasco. Well, I think it will be limited to few real contenders here because of the rough water at Sand Point. But I don't want to be too negative on the Sand Point thing because charging is the only way we can build big purses."

Heerensperger would like to see another Northwest race on the unlimited slate. "We need another race out here real bad. We've added races in San Diego and Phoenix and Jacksonville and Dayton, all over the place. Everybody wants us to come and race. But if we had another race in the Northwest I think we could get another four or five boats. The sponsors would go for it.

"Portland, Eugene, Coeur d'Alene or Spokane . . . I'd really like to get one going in Spokane. They tell me there might be room for a course on Long Lake."

Heerensperger is not so interested in adding a big-market site in California as he is in his home area, the Pacific Northwest. "This is where all the enthusiastic people are," he said.

"The interest in unlimited racing is here in the Northwest. It's like Class C baseball and the major leagues when you compare this area with the Eastern race cities.

"This is where it's at."

Heerensperger plans to be married on August 3, the eve of the Gold Cup race here.

"It's going to be one helluva weekend, I'll tell you that."

Pay 'n Pak in a pool!

By David Williams, March 21, 2018

The Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum worked with a Hollywood production company to film a commercial for T-Mobile using Ken Muscatel's beautifully restored 1973 Pay 'n Pak hydroplane.

The boat along with four museum volunteers traveled to Los Angeles on March 5th and 6th. The theme of the Commercial is that "Speed shouldn't be contained" so they put the Pak into the pool, and with the magic of Hollywood, made it look like the boat was running!

To get the boat into the pool it took a 200 ton crane to be lift the 7,000 boat over the hotel, and some palm trees, the crane operator estimates that the boat was over 100 feet in the air.

To make the roostertail, they hooked up 4 100 PSI hoses each pumping 3,000 gallons per minute.

View the finished commercial - Pay 'n Pak stars in T-Mobile commercial.