Reprinted from Unlimited NewsJournal, October 2020
In part one of our interview with John Walters, he talked about his early involvement with boat racing, starting in outboard classes. He later moved to inboard boats and worked for Ron Jones in Costa Mesa, California, where he proved his mechanical aptitude and woodworking skills. Walters discussed his work on the crew of Red Man and Miss Vernors and his employment with boat builder Don Kelson in the second part of this series. He also moved over to Bill Muncey Industries and was working on the Atlas Van Lines crew with Jim Lucero. In part three we’ll learn what happened in 1980 when Dave Heerensperger decided to build a turbine-powered Pay ‘n Pak and hired Jim Lucero to head that project.
The interview was conducted by Craig Fjarlie.
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| John Walters |
UNJ: Well, Dave Heerensperger made a decision to get a turbine boat.
Walters: Yup.
How did the whole process come together? How did he come up with crew-members without stealing them all from Muncey?
You know, Bill Muncey was always an ambassador for the sport and always looking to make improvements in the sport, and that meant securing its future, as well. Bill, of course, purchased all of the equipment from Dave Heerensperger. After a couple of years, Dave decided that it might be a fun thing to come back and do it again. There were a couple of meetings at lunch. There were a couple of other meetings where Jim [Lucero] and Dave Heerensperger got together and talked about things.
Dave Heerensperger had a great amount of respect and loyalty to the crew chief that had made his Pay ‘n Pak teams work and made ‘em famous, really. So, Dave wanted to go racing again, but Dave didn’t want to go racing again starting from scratch. He wanted to come in and be competitive right off the get-go. Wanted, you know, help to ensure and guarantee that as much as possible and, of course, he wanted Jim Lucero to be his boat designer and crew chief.
Jim had talked with me about that a bunch of times. He’d also talked with Bill Muncey about it a bunch of times. Jim was pretty confident that we could go start another team, enhance the sport, make things better and at the same time still have enough time, at least on an advisory capacity, to keep the Bill Muncey Industries effort respectable, as well.
Bill was in favor of it. Again, anything to help the sport and whatever it took to make things work there. Jim came to me one afternoon and we went to lunch and talked about things and he kinda explained to me what was goin’ on. He paid me the ultimate compliment and said that I’ve got an amazing opportunity here to go racing with Pay ‘n Pak and Dave Heerensperger again. I won’t do it unless you come with me.
Oh!
And again, that was one of the most amazing compliments anybody had given me in my racing career. So when I agreed to do that there was, build the boat, do the installation of the hardware and the rigging and all that sort of thing, and at that point in time there was never really a thought in my mind that I was gonna drive this boat. You know, you always hoped that things like that could happen and I was hoping that the stepping stones and the things that I was laying in place, it was going to lead to an eventual ride in an Unlimited hydroplane, but I honestly didn’t expect that it was gonna be, you know, that day and at that time.
So naturally I accepted the offer. We started looking for buildings and shops and gathering equipment and everything while still working with Bill Muncey and guaranteeing that, you know, his boat was gonna get done and that his effort was gonna be good. We got all moved into the shop and everything. The turbines started showing up and we ordered the honeycomb and started laying out the boat and getting ready to build this thing.
I was still continuing to race boats. I was driving boats for Mike Jones, the Ragged Edge 280 and different rides as they presented themselves. As the boat was getting closer to being finished, we used to run on Green Lake in May…
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| On Thursday, July 24, 1980, a large crowd of hydro fans gathered at the Stan Sayres Pits on Lake Washington to witness the christening and first test runs of the new turbine-powered U-25 Pay ‘n Pak. |
Sure.
…and usually we’d get to go to Green Lake and I’d get to drive on Green Lake before we’d leave for Miami or whatever the first race was. That particular weekend I think I was driving boats in seven different classes. Dave Heerensperger, of course, came to the race, you know, to watch the races and all. I won first place in five of the seven classes that I raced in and was second and third, I think, in the other two.
Later on that week when it was getting time to make an announcement on who was gonna drive the boat, there were several discussions with Jim Lucero, Dale Van Weringen who was giving us a hand at that point in time, even Bill Muncey and myself. And Dave Heerensperger thought that it would be best to get someone who didn’t have any Unlimited experience, who didn’t have any, you know, a lot of experience with a Merlin or Allison. In his words, “I think we ought to get somebody and train ‘em to do what we want rather than get somebody with a bunch of habits and try to adapt them to what we want.”
Yeah, yeah.
Again, at that time I wasn’t clever enough to pick up, you know, on the idea or the fact here that they were talkin’ about me. So later on, there was another discussion with Dale Van Weringen and Dale made the comment to Jim that, yeah, John has won races and every boat that he’s been in he’s managed to win races in—boats that other people struggled to drive. And, you know, I was young at the time. I was eager. I was willing to learn and adapt to do whatever was necessary
And, uh, Dave Heerensperger came to the shop one day and he asked me if I had time to do him a favor. And how do you tell the boss, “No”? [Laughter.] “Yes, sir, of course I do.” And he gave me this address and he said, “I need for you to go downtown to this address.” Honestly I should, but I don’t remember the person’s name that I was supposed to ask for, and I was most of the way there before I realized that I was going to the Seattle Times and I was about to make the announcement that I was gonna drive Dave Heerensperger’s new Pay ‘n Pak turbine-powered hydroplane, so…
OK.
It was kind of a surprise. I guess I was kind of silly and innocent and didn’t realize at the time how special it was ‘cause I was still kind of in shock, but it was a real honor and a real privilege to be part of that team.
Something we’d like to ask about was the turbine engines.
Mm hmm.
They weren’t the same as the ones that were used on the U-95.
Correct.
How did they choose to go with the T55?
You know, there was a fair amount of research gone into that, including Chuck Lyford who had been with the U-95 program. His son, Charlie, was working with us on the Pay ‘n Pak program and then Chuck came to the shop quite often and kinda checked on things, and it was several things. One was the T55s were in the early stages of becoming surplus, so they were available. They were in the horsepower range that we were looking for. They were certainly in the price range that we were looking for, and it’s much more simplistic to run one engine than it is to run two engines into a combining gear box and all that sort of thing. So, for ease of maintenance, ease of installation and parts and all the other things, it made more sense to go with one engine that could make as much horsepower as two T53s.
Yeah.
And actually, at that point in time they were almost less expensive because the T55s were being surplussed. The T53s were still currently in production. They were still currently being used in the Hueys and a lot of other different helicopters and so the parts and the prices and everything were as expensive, if not more expensive, and just for makin’ it simple we decided to go with one engine.
Something else that was done in those days that eventually they didn’t have to do was the start cart with the plug-in. Was that a different set-up than what was used on the U-95, or was it still…
Very similar. In fact, the start cart that we used came from the U-95.
OK.
That big cart on wheels and everything that set on the dock was mostly just a huge, big bank of batteries. And those batteries then, plugged into—with a long extension cord—the side of the boat and you were able to start it.
You locked the shaft so whoever was handling the plug-in could get back off the boat?
We put a disc brake on the N2 side, the power turbine side of the gear box, actually, to lock up the N2 and power turbine wheels. And, so, you could start the engine. It would sit there and idle but the propeller shaft or nothing was turning. Somebody could then, you know, remove the cord and get back on the dock, give me the all-clear signal, I could release the brake and drive away.
That was something that was done for several reasons. That’s the way they started the helicopters and the aircraft. That’s the way the U-95 had done it, so that was the technology that was available and we kind of followed what had been done before. There were some disadvantages to that, certainly. The start cart was bigger than two engines, so it took up a lot of room in the truck. It was heavy, it was a lot of maintenance. The biggest problem was that because you relied on that start cart so much, if I had a problem on the race course and had to re-start the engine, I couldn’t do it.
Yeah, you were done.
Right. And so as time went on, we started to understand and realize that maybe a better way to go—and we eventually did away with the disc brake, too—to get rid of the weight, get rid of all the stuff that needed to be done and we didn’t really need to have the engine running at the dock for any reason without it going to the racecourse. So in an effort to be able to re-start it, in an effort to get rid of all those extra systems and all the weight and the hassle of carrying the start cart around and all that sort of thing, we started to put more batteries in the boat, which was a little more weight. I’m not exactly sure who came up with the idea of going from just a standard 24-volt start system to a 48-volt start system. And so, we would initially start to roll the engine over on 24 volts. When it got up to 5 or 7 percent then I would hit another switch and bring on another set of batteries that would jump it to 48 volts. Then the engine would start, and it was easy to start and very controllable. I had to do multiple starts in those batteries so if you had a problem on the racecourse you could re-start. It just kind of evolved to a simpler way.
Got away from the start cart completely.
Yeah.
Well, the first year, things didn’t go too well. You had a flip.
Yeah. We tested here in Seattle late.
Yeah.
We ran into issues and problems, which honestly, I don’t really recall what all they were. We ended up not making the first few races. Jim was never a big fan of going to Miami, particularly in the saltwater races later on, but we were just under the gun tryin’ to get everything done and David Heerensperger by no means wanted us to show up and look unprepared or unprofessional. Let’s not go racing until we’re ready to go racing sort of thing.
So, we started in Tri-Cities. We tested, as I remember, I think we tested on a Tuesday here in Seattle of the race week in Tri-Cities. We were trying to do a lot of different things with that boat and so weight was always an issue. There was no minimum weight on the boats in those days. So, the shaft log and the stuffing boxes and things, um, where in the past were usually cast aluminum, we made ‘em out of molded fiberglass and foam and they were very light. We had a bit of a vibration and it turned a propeller shaft here and broke one of those when we were testing, which cut our tests a little short.
But we had done, we’d accomplished what we wanted to do. The boat started, it ran, and the systems worked. We had a little oops there that we needed to fix and that, so we got back to the shop, worked to get that all done. We ended up going to Tri-Cities, um, I think we got there on Saturday.
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| Making its first appearance at a race only two days after its launch, the new turbine-powered Pay ‘n Pak heads onto the Columbia River in Tri-Cities for a test run. |
I can’t remember right now.
I remember it was a big deal. Tri-Cities was always good to Pay ‘n Pak and they were always good for boat racing. You know, Pay ‘n Pak seemed to be a favorite. Of course, we had stores in all three cities, and everyone was familiar with Pay ‘n Pak and in the old days Pay ‘n Pak was certainly a favorite there. They had people with radios set up from, I think, the shop in Seattle all the way to Tri-Cities, radioing where the boat was and all that sort of thing.
I had to help work. I was still working on the crew with the boat and we worked pretty late. David thought that it made sense for Arlene and me to fly with him to Tri-Cities in the Lear Jet so that I could get some rest and some sleep while the guys were driving over. And I think [pause] that it was Saturday. We got there on Saturday, got the boat set up, got it trailer-fired.
Think we ran twice that day. We ran, like, a 125 mile an hour qualifying lap right off the trailer. Things looked pretty good. It was obvious that the boat was gonna be, you know, have some handling issues. Came back and we had another problem with that shaft log thing, which we got repaired, but it was an all nighter for the guys. I don’t think we ran heats on Saturday in those days, so I think there was a testing/qualifying thing and we got there on Saturday.
Then Sunday morning I went out to get some start times and get a little seat time and a little more time in the boat. We had trailer-fired that morning. We didn’t run a wing blanket or anything in those days and again, in an effort to save weight, the wing didn’t have any spars in it. It was just a honeycomb core with carbon fiber skins. They used to pick up water out of the river in pumps and pump it through white PVC pipes and things to supply water to the pit area. We had guys on the boat with hoses, you know, keeping things wet and keeping the wing and everything from melting.
And for whatever reason, as the engine was running there, the pumps shut down. All the water in the pits went away and by the time we could get the engine shut down it had delaminated about a 20-inch or 24-inch section of the bottom skin of the wing directly over the tail pipe there. And, uh, not knowing any better, I guess, being anxious for all the wrong reasons, I guess the decision was made, do you want to run, or should we just wait ‘til the first heat? And I said, “No, I’d like to go run the boat.” I needed some more time and I didn’t have start times or anything.
So, we went out to run and a patrol boat had gone across the start-finish line area there from the tower. I remember running a warm-up lap, getting some start times, coming off the exit pin and standing on the throttle to time it to the starting line. And when I got to the area where the wakes were from this patrol boat, the boat kind of rattled over the top of the wakes and got up in the air and it just hung there. I felt like it was gonna come back down, everything was gonna be OK, but it just seemed to hang there, and hang there, and hang there, and it kept getting worse and worse.
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| During a test run on the Columbia River on race day morning, the Pay ‘n Pak suddenly lifted off the water, did two complete back flips, and landed with a huge splash. |
And, I kept thinkin’ the last, the worst thing you can do is come off the power. You gotta stay on the power to keep the propeller up and keep it, you know, from tipping over on its nose. And it just kept getting higher and higher and higher. Eventually it got to the point where it was so high that I thought I was gonna turn it a little bit to try to settle it back down and by the time I turned it the rudder
was out of the water, everything, there was really no control. And then it was like someone just kicked a jack stand out from under the thing and the back end settled down and the blue bridge disappeared and my infamous quote of, “Sky, water, sky, water, sky, water.” And the boat just took off. I honestly believed that I was gonna save it right up ‘til the minute that the blue bridge disappeared.
I remember goin’ around, you know, the first revolution and, uh, kind of leveled off and I was a long way in the air. Because of the rotation of the boat the g-forces just kind of pinned you in the cockpit. I really couldn’t move or do very much. And I remember as it was comin’ back towards the water on the last revolution there, it was like in slow motion and every tick just took a long time and I could see the shadow on the water getting bigger and bigger and bigger and thinkin’ “Boy, this is really gonna hurt and the guys are gonna be upset and I’m frustrated trashing our brand-new boat.”
The next thing I knew I went from being hot, I guess from the outside temperature in the boat, to feeling like I was freezing when I hit the water. The boat hit the tip of the sponson. It didn’t quite have enough rotational speed to come around and land flat, or enough altitude to do that. And then, when the sponson touched the water, it spit me out of the cockpit immediately. The boat went over the top of me. Stuck the transom in and spun around.
I remember being in the water just feeling freezing and cold from the temperature differential. And of course, from the limited days and everything else my first instinct was to make sure that everything worked and that I had arms and legs, and everything was OK. And once I was confident that I wasn’t in any serious danger that way, in those days the sign to the rescue boats and to the tower and everything was to wave your hands above your head to indicate you were OK. And I remember when I did that there was just a huge roar from the crowd, you know, everybody yelling and screaming and all the noise.
By that time the rescue boat was on the way and again I just felt like I was freezing. As the rescue boat got closer I kind of rolled over onto my stomach and I tried to swim to the boat, and boy, the minute I kicked, my left hip let me know that was not gonna be a good thing to do, and my right shoulder. And it turned out that I later on ended up with a fractured hip and a dislocated hip and a dislocated shoulder and things from tryin’ to hang on to the boat and all. But, you know, it mostly was just disappointing.
Yeah.
So, we got that close to being able to go racing and couldn’t do it. In those days the boats were much more difficult to repair and knew that it wasn’t going to be a thrash and be back in Seattle or San Diego. It was gonna be a season-ender. And it really was our season beginner.
Yeah.
So, it was frustrating from that point of view. But, you know, we got back to work on the program and got the boat back together. I got healed up and had physical therapy and all the things that needed to be done, and we started testing in February of that winter and ran a lot of times before we ended up going to the first race in Miami.
Did you have any concerns that you might not be able to continue as the driver, or were you confident that you could make a come-back?
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| The Pay ‘n Pak’s builder and crew chief Jim Lucero with John Walters. |
You know, I honestly had some doubts. I had some second thoughts. I guess I questioned my abilities at that point in time. You know, could I have done something different? If Bill Muncey or Dean Chenoweth or Chip Hanauer would have been driving this boat, would the same sort of thing happen? Was I just not ready yet? I did have some second thoughts and I guess I kinda doubted my abilities at times.
I had lots of support. Certainly, Arlene and my family were very supportive.
Very supportive in a more concerned way than they had been before. I had fallen out of limited inboards at different times, different places, and outboards at different times, different places, but this was different. It was pretty rare, honestly, in those days that guys survived accidents like this.
Yeah.
So, there was a real concern for myself and the family and that sort of thing, but as always, Arlene was there to support me and back me at whatever I wanted to do. Dave Heerensperger and Jim Lucero and all the team members, my brother and Mark Smith and Charlie Lyford and Kirt Kirkpatrick and all the guys that had worked so hard to put this thing together, spent the winter repairing a brand-new boat. So that was kind of frustrating and, you know, concerning, I guess, but as we started to run the boat, each time I got a little more confident. Just about the time that I’d start to get confidence up and feel good about it, something weird would happen that would make me question that decision again. But it was such an exciting thing and scary at the same time.
Yeah…
So, it was a fun time in a scary way.
Well, the ’81 season you went to Miami. You didn’t win a race that year.
Right.
Without trying to go through each race, are there any specific things that stand out?
Yeah, uh…
Besides Acapulco.
Yeah, you know, the most difficult part of driving that boat was the inconsistency and the unpredictability. You could drive the boat the same way in the same conditions in two different laps and get two completely different responses. Because of that, it seems like every time we ran the boat, we made changes. I never got to run the boat the same way, and every time you ran the boat there was something new, there was something different and I never got the opportunity to feel comfortable. I never got the opportunity to feel like I knew what it was gonna do or how it was gonna react, because it never did the same thing twice.
There were times that we were very competitive. There were times that we were fast in qualifying. There were times that it seemed like we were making very good progress and then something’d jump up and bite us that we hadn’t thought about or that was, you know, that never happens. So, the first year especially was the unpredictability, the inconsistency. It was so unpredictable.
Yeah. And then you were at Acapulco.
Yes.
You lost Muncey.
Yes.
That must’ve been a really difficult day for you…
It was an extremely difficult day.
…and for Jim, too.
Yeah, for a lot of reasons. You know, one obviously was losing the icon and the hero of our sport. And more than that, even, a close friend. Bill was like a second father to me and he had become so close to the girls and Arlene and my family and all that I think everyone was still in somewhat disbelief. It really brought home the reality that if something like this could happen to Bill Muncey, it could happen to John Walters.
Yeah.
I won’t say anything about that, you know, made me feel good or made me feel better, but it started to change my feelings on my own abilities. If the Blue Blaster can fly over backwards on Bill Muncey, then I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the Pay ‘n Pak flew over on John Walters. And then it also really upset the confidence and the fun factor of racing boats for my family and Arlene and the girls. They went from being so excited and so much fun watching the boats, and we’re going racing this weekend, to almost being afraid, that I’m not sure I want to watch dad do this again.
On another topic, Budweiser was running the Griffon. That was a very powerful piston engine. Did you have concerns whether the turbine engine in Pay ‘n Pak could run with that?
No, I was pretty confident that the turbine program would eventually, you know, we’d stumble on the right combination and things would go the right way to where we could run with those guys. I think— this is taxing my memory here a little bit—I think it was in 1981 that in Tri-Cities I actually drove around Dean on the outside and we had a pretty close race for a couple of laps there, until we had a mechanical failure. And a lot of people that saw that, I still see pictures of that come up on Facebook every once in a while where people feel like Dean took a cheap shot there and moved out on me and took me out, and in all reality what was really happening there, of course, like I say, that was the first time I think ever, maybe, that anybody had driven around the outside of Dean in that Griffon Budweiser in the first turn there. Uh, actually it was the second turn.
We had a real close, real tight race there. And of course, me being on the outside position, I was trying to pinch Dean as much as I could and hold him on the buoy line to hopefully bleed off some speed. Dean, on the other hand, was trying to push me out at the same time to, you know, have me make a mistake and use up some time to where he could get the advantage. And in the first turn, I think of the third lap, we were real close to each other there and the P3 line, which is an air line, pressure line, that goes from the fuel control to the air diffuser on the engine, to let the engine know that it’s running and everything so that the fuel control will work properly, that line broke at the fitting. And when that line breaks the engine goes to ground idle. There’s no throttle response and it will just idle.
When that happened, I had my foot on the throttle, to the floor, and was turning and trying to pinch Dean and everything. When it slowed down so fast and settled in the water, it almost tried to hook on me. When it did, I ended up driving right through Dean’s roostertail. Went blastin’ through his roostertail, right into the infield. When the water settled enough that I could see what was going on and looked up, there was a rescue boat with four guys right in front of me.
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| John Walters and the Pay ‘n Pak round the Roostertail Turn on the Detroit River. |
Oooh.
Fortunately, I was able to make the necessary corrections and make all that work. Me getting wet had nothing to do with Dean. He was a clean driver and didn’t do anything wrong there. It was purely a mechanical failure on my part. But even though the end result wasn’t what we wanted, it showed me and the guys on the beach, and I think maybe even Dean and the Budweiser guys, that we aren’t there yet but…
It won’t be long.
…it won’t be long.
Well, in the 1982 season, what changes and things were made to the boat during that winter, before the ’82 season? It seemed like it improved in performance.
It did. It came out of the box better. It still wasn’t right, but it was a lot better. Because the boat was so light and the sponsons were so big and there were inside secondaries and outside secondaries and primaries, and so much surface area and the tunnel was so big and so much air packed under the boat, and the weight was so light, we made an effort to try to calm the boat down some. We flattened out the angle of attack on the sponsons. We narrowed up and increased the separation between the primary and secondary sponsons, so they didn’t pick up that surface area quite so fast.
We started running propellers with a little more rake in ‘em, which tended to pick up the nose just a little bit so that it didn’t hit hard on the sponsons and over-react. Honestly, I’d like to maybe pat myself on the back a little bit that I was learning how to drive it a little better maybe, too. I kinda knew some of the things that I could do that would make those things better.
We put a set of adjustable canards on the front, hoping that I would be able to have better control over the attitude of the boat. Unfortunately, because of the position and for different things, they didn’t work the way we thought that they should and actually caused more problems than they did good, and so we took ‘em off and they never saw competition. But I think that we made some subtle changes in the boat to settle it down, make it a little more forgiving, make it a little more predictable. And, again, I think I just was maybe learning to drive it a little better, too.
That season started in Miami and then you went to upstate New York and won that race.
Yup, and actually we should have won in Miami. We were fast qualifier in Miami. We were runnin’ really well. Unfortunately, John Walters learned a very valuable lesson in the final heat in Miami there: that this was a different level of racing. You know, some of the guys that I used to race 280s with drove differently in the Unlimiteds.
Oh.
I was more thinking about making the boat work properly, about me making a good start, not making any mistakes on the race course, and more focused on the things that I had immediate control over than the other drivers. I should have paid more attention to Bill Muncey when I would see him standing on the dock or on the back of the truck watching what the other drivers were doing and how they were doing it. I honestly never put much thought into another driver or another team taking me out before we got to the starting line.
And we were fast. I was poised and ready to win my first boat race in an Unlimited and everything was looking like we could do that. I went deep into the first turn area of Miami, having my timing marks and everything to where I thought I was in good shape, and just as I came out and started to go down the back straightaway, Chip came from the infield, drove right in front of me, turned right in front of me, stood on the throttle and just washed me down big time. It was hard for me to believe at that point in time that Chip would do that intentionally, but the sport’s different in the Unlimiteds…
Yeah.
…and it literally is every man for himself. And you do whatever you need to do to put yourself in a position to win, including taking out the competition if you need to do that. And that was a valuable eye-opening lesson for me. Of course, I got wet down big time. The salt water was very unforgiving on the turbine and that sort of thing and we limped around, and I think we did finish the race but not in the winner’s position like I thought we would.
Then we went on to New York and were pretty successful there. Made a really good start and was in a good position on the racecourse to maintain and keep that start. I think when we went to Detroit, we had a win in New York, had a very respectful performance in Miami, and I think we were leading in points when we got to Detroit.
Could be.
Detroit was a horrible experience. The water was rough, the boat was just pounding me to death. It got way out of shape going to the first turn in one heat with Dean on one side of me in the Budweiser and Chip on the outside of me in Atlas Van Lines. The boat came down hard on its nose, up on the recovery areas, and I remember seeing deck hatches up on the tips of both sponsons blow off.
Oooh.
And they came flying up and geysers of water, you know, comin’ through the holes just crushed and caved in the recovery areas up there and cut our day short. At that point Dave said, “You know, I appreciate all this fancy foam and carbon and all this stuff but let’s take this whole thing home and put sponsons on it that we know are gonna work.” As I remember, we skipped Madison…
Yeah, I think you did.
…that year and took the boat home to re-do the sponsons and put oak battens and aluminum runners and everything on it and showed up in Tri-Cities. The boat was really hard to get on a plane. It went from poppin’ up like a cork that it used to be, to really being a handful and difficult to get on a plane. However, once it was on a plane and it was a race boat, it handled nice. It didn’t over-react. It was predictable. It was all the things that I thought we wanted it to be. I thought we had a pretty decent shot at winning the race in Tri-Cities.
As it turned out for the final, Tommy D’Eath was driving The Squire Shop, Chip was driving the Atlas. I guess Dean had had the accident in the Budweiser on Saturday. And that was another horrible day. Got me and the family, just one more opportunity for the kids to worry and Arlene to worry, having gone to the hospital with Dean and the things, that was, it was tough.
As it turns out, it was windy and nasty and they decided to go ahead and run the final heat. I struggled and struggled and struggled tryin’ to get the boat up on a plane and every time it was just about, the wind was blowing right at me, and just about the time it’d start to break over the hump and get on a plane, the water’d blow over the front, go right in the inlets and put the fire out.
Finally, after many times of doing that, I realized that the one-minute gun had gone off and I wasn’t eligible for the final anyway. And as I was lookin’ around to see what else was going on, I noticed Chip was still at the dock. He couldn’t get started. It basically was a gimme win and I was really frustrated, you know. That’s another one that should’ve been our win. Just something that we couldn’t predict took us out again.
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| Walters has a discussion with Jim Lucero after he returned from a run on Lake Washington in preparation for the 1982 Sea Galley Emerald Cup in Seattle. |
So, then we came to Seattle. We ran early. We were fast qualifier, I think. That was the first time we’d run a 140-mile-an-hour lap with the boat. Came back to the dock and I could see the guys were all excited. The radio wasn’t working. I didn’t know, have any idea how fast we went.
It was easy to drive the boat. I was comfortable. We could make a few changes and go a fair amount faster. Came back and found out that lap was 139.9-something, or whatever. And I thought, “Wow. That’s crazy,” ‘cuz it was just effortless. I mean it, was finally doing the things that we had hoped that it would do. And then, of course, on Sunday we ended up having the accident that was a career-ender for me. And, you know, I don’t honestly have any first-hand memories of that. I have a lot of what I call acquired memories, I guess.
Yes.
I watched the video tapes so many times. I heard the stories and read the articles and all the different kind of things. I kind of feel like I know what happened and all, but I honestly don’t have any first-hand memories of what really happened.
But as near as I can tell, we had talked that morning. Um, Jim and Dave Heerensperger and myself, and everybody kind of agreed that we have a legitimate chance of winning the race. But we were pretty short on equipment. So the agreement was that I would start on the outside and just stay out of trouble and, you know, pick guys off as best I could. A couple of thirds would put us in the final and then we’d go all in to try to win the final.
I remember starting on the outside and trying to stay out of trouble. I remember thinking to myself as I was watching my watch and paying attention to my starts that, um, Ron Armstrong was driving the Budweiser that they had brought out of the shop to run in Seattle after Dean’s accident the weekend before in Tri-Cities. Chip was in the Atlas and Chip and Ron both jumped the gun. When they jumped the gun I figured, OK, I’ll just stay on the outside here, in three laps I can pick off the Executone and The Squire Shop even from the outside here, and even if I don’t it will put us in the final with another good finish.
I just remember tryin’ to stay out of trouble and stay competitive and the next thing I remember, really, was wakin’ up in Harborview [hospital]. There had been a three-boat collision goin’ into the first turn in Seattle there. The Executone had gotten badly out of shape and turned hard to the left and banged into The Squire Shop, and in an effort to over-correct and the energy that it absorbed from bein’ hit by The Squire Shop, it made a hard right-hand turn and I ended up driving right over the top of him.
It was a big, ugly mess there for quite a while. Lots of confusion. It looked like a hydroplane yard sale with all the stuff in the water and things scattered everywhere. I had made a horrible mistake. I had gotten a new life jacket and I would always jump in the water or swimming pool or something to make sure that it did what it was supposed to do and roll me over and do all the right stuff. It came special delivery on Saturday, UPS, to the pits. I didn’t test it. I put it on and wore it in that heat there and it did make me float but, unfortunately, I floated face down for almost nine minutes before rescue teams found me.
Part of the confusion was that George Johnson, who was driving the Executone, his boat was a wood and aluminum construction. It sank. As it sank, in an effort to save himself, he swam over and got up on top of the Pay ‘n Pak. Well, when he was standing on the back of the boat, everybody just assumed that was me.
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| The Pay ‘n Pak collides with George Johnson and the Executone during the first heat of the 1982 Seattle race. |
Oh.
So, they were lookin’ in the complete wrong area where the Executone had gone down for George Johnson, thinking that he was missing, and I was standing on the boat. Then when somebody finally realized that he’s way over there, they got to me. Doc Peterson and Eric and the divers got there.
Like I say, at that point I had floated face down in the water for almost nine minutes and was clinically dead when they got to me. I had no pulse, no respiration. They managed to roll me over, get me back to the dock. It wasn’t until the cameras and the news crews and everybody on the dock there that they were pullin’ the helmet off that they realized it was John Walters, not George Johnson.
And my kids didn’t come to the race that weekend because we’d lost Bill the year before, we lost Dean the weekend before. They were just really concerned. Arlene and the girls had not come to the race that weekend. They had stayed with close friends and neighbors across the street from us in Renton, Lance and Kathy Baze who always had a big Seafair party and barbecue. They were scared. You know, we lost Dean the weekend before; we lost Bill in the last race of the season before that.
Now all of a sudden something that had been so wonderful and so much fun for the girls, to go racing, was something that they were afraid of and they were concerned about. Arlene didn’t think that it was a good thing for them to be there just in case something like happened were to happen. And I honestly again don’t have many first-hand memories of, just because of the head injuries and things, but I’ve got lots of, again, acquired memories from looking at the stories and hearing the stories and hearing the things from friends and relatives and all and I was hurt bad.
Yes, you were.
I ended up being in and out of Harborview for the next 14 months. I had 11 different major surgeries including a replacement elbow on the right side, a replacement hip on the left side. My knees and ankles are held together pins and wires, and plates in my head and face. Had a very serious, close head injury, uh, the amnesia for a while, and had fractured the eye orbit and broke my jaw. Did substantial damage…
On the left side?
…to my chin. Yeah, it was on the left side. Again, fractured my hips and pelvis again and dislocated that. A compound fracture of the left femur where, when I hit the other boat, obviously things decelerated very quickly. Again, I don’t have first-hand memories of this, but I did, you know, go back later and take a look at things and try to, you know—crime-scene investigation—figure out what happened. To the best of my abilities to figure out what happened, when the boat went forward hitting the Executone, it decelerated, of course, very quickly, which made me go forward in the cockpit. No seat belts, no canopies again.
Sure.
When it hit, the boat went into a right-hand barrel-roll. As the left side of the boat came up, the cowling, cockpit area hit me underneath the helmet, which was a full-face helmet at the time. It pushed that back. The chin strap, when it came across, it broke my jaw and that’s what caused the scars on my chin here. The bottom of the eye opening in the helmet hit me in the top of the eye orbit here, fracturing my skull, doing severe damage to my jaw and teeth and eye and everything on that side. It rotated the helmet back and displaced my neck vertebrae and caused some spinal damage back there. Fortunately, just bruising.
Again, as I got pitched out of the boat, the seat was meant to hold me in because we didn’t have seat belts. It fractured my hip again and dislocated my hip. My left femur, here, hit the bottom of the steering wheel and caused a compound fracture of that. I’ve still got pictures of me hanging onto the steering wheel with my right hand and this arm is over the top of the cowling, bent like this [gestures] the wrong direction, and so it trashed that elbow. It broke several ribs; it poked holes in my esophagus, my heart, and my lungs.
Because I floated face-down in the water, I ended up with pneumonia and different things and lots of lung and problems that way. So, it was a long, serious process. I didn’t have any feeling from my hips down for several months. I had to learn how to walk all over again. And once again, my beautiful wife, Arlene, was here to pick up the pieces and take care of me. With all of the support of friends and family and Dave Heerensperger and Pay ‘n Pak, the fans of Unlimited hydroplane racing, I guess I’m here to tell the story.
Well, if we can back up to just one thing and talk about Dean Chenoweth’s accident at Tri-Cities. It was a really hard day for everyone.
It was a really hard day and it was difficult on every level. Not only, um, the reports that I got said there was no chance Dean was gonna survive.
Yeah.
But when they towed the boat upside down past our dock and my daughter, Katrina, was on the dock there with me and, as they were bringing the boat, the Budweiser, by upside down, looked up to me while holding my hand and said, “Daddy, I know this is really important to you, but next year would you just stay home with me?”
Wow
And it just kinda ripped my heart out. And then, you know, in addition to knowing that my good friend and competitor, Dean, was not gonna survive, it really put some doubt in my mind as to, you know, were we doing the right thing as a sport? Was I doing the right thing as a father and a husband? And so, it was a really difficult time, really difficult day.
To kind of wrap up for now, after the ’82 accident you put yourself through turbine school. How did that happen? Did you have help from somebody? Obviously, you had some healing to do after the accident first.
Yeah, it took a long time to get better. I mean, it was the better part of three years before the doctor would give me a release to be able to go back to work. Actually, when I did go back to work it was with Dave Heerensperger and Pay ‘n Pak in a store management position.
OK.
After a year or so of doing that, I was good at it, I was OK at it, but it wasn’t where my heart was at. And I think that Arlene knew that, and I think that she and Jim Lucero had had several conversations that, honestly, I didn’t know about at the time, and I believe Fran Muncey was involved in those conversations as well.
Arlene, I think, kind of initiated that thought process that John is working and we’re doing fine, but I don’t think he’s happy, and if there’s a chance that maybe he could go back to boat racing, could you guys maybe help? Kind of, it seemed, out of the blue to me, I got a call from Jim Lucero one day and he asked me how I was doing. It was a good lunch that we did, and I went and spent some time with them and, you know, he asked me if I had any thoughts or inclinations to ever want to come back to boat racing.
And I said, “Yeah, I did.” But I felt obligated to Dave Heerensperger and Pay ‘n Pak that they had stood behind me for all those years while I was getting better and, you know, offered me what was really an outstanding opportunity to have a job with the company and everything as long as I wanted ‘til I was ready to retire and all.
And he [Lucero] said, “Well, this is what we’re doing, and you know, we’re doing the turbine Atlas Van Lines boat,” and, uh, gave me the opportunity to get involved as the engine builder if I wanted to do that. I went and talked with Dave about it. And honestly, at that point in time Dave and Jim were not very good friends anymore.
Oh.
I think Dave was concerned about Fran and Chip and different things and Dave told me that all he wanted was for me to be happy. He said, “If you want to go racing again, I’ll support you 100 percent in whatever you want to do, and if it doesn’t work out and I still have any say-so in this company, you’ve got a job here.” And I said, “All right, with that I will do this,” and we shook hands and went on my way.
As it turns out, the turbine schooling thing was a deal that I did kind of online with Lycoming, with Jim’s help and by taking the manuals home and just start studying and reading and I had some idea how they worked and that from the Pay ‘n Pak days, but this was a different engine. This was the T55-L-11, and even though they work on the same principle and all, there were some differences to the accessories and how the stuff worked, and an extra turbine wheel and then some things that made them special. So, yeah, it was kind of a self-taught thing, but it wasn’t an official Lycoming ground school or anything like that. It was more of a, “Here are the books, go read ‘em for a week and see if you really want to do this.”
The ’82 Atlas, when they built that, and Lucero built it, did you work on that hull at all?
Afterwards. It was still painted in Atlas colors and everything when I was able to go to the shop and take a look at some of the stuff there. The boat that when I went back to work with Fran and Jim and everybody, it was on the ’84 turbine Atlas that later became the Miller American.
Yeah, OK.
So, I mean, I worked on the ’82 boat a bit. Not much. It was being built in our shop. It was after the ’81 Acapulco thing where Bill had the fatal accident there. Mr. Frisbie and Fran and everybody with Atlas said, you know, Bill would want us to continue and so, we started building a new boat. And yes indeed, I did work on that one a little bit and we built a second Pay ‘n Pak that was very similar. The ’82 Atlas was very similar to the second Pay ‘n Pak boat that we built. And I remember that boat, for Chip, came out of the box just fast.
Yeah.
And I so desperately…we had one just like it sitting on the floor at home, let’s run that one. And I remember having the conversation with Jim, and Jim, I think, let his pride get in the way a little bit and he made the comment that if we pull that boat out it’ll look like we couldn’t fix this one. Honestly, I didn’t care.
Yeah.
Dave Heerensperger didn’t care, he just wanted to win races. That boat was done to the point that, in a day or two, we could’ve run it. I mean, it went in the Torchlight Parade here one year and the same type of thing, after the accident and everything and all the equipment was sold to Steve Woomer, uh, Steve Reynolds hopped in the thing and was running 144-mile-an-hour laps with the thing right out of the box. Won a World Championship with it. I guess I felt a little bit frustrated that, you know, I thought we had a boat that could’ve put us in the winner’s circle, and we didn’t get to run it.
OK.
So, yeah, I did work on the ’82 Atlas a little bit. My brother, Gary, worked on it quite a bit and some of the Atlas guys came out to the shop and worked on it some, too.
OK, well, thank you very much.
We hope that at some time in the future we can talk again with John Walters about the many boats he has worked on as a crew chief or engine technician, as well his work now in the H1 tech truck. Meanwhile, for those who want to know more about his life in racing, Walters is working on a book that should be available soon and will cover his career.
