Jim Sitz Remembers Richie

Story by Jim Sitz
Photos by Jim Sitz unless otherwise noted

You have already read (we hope) Allen R. Kuhn’s photo essay on Richie Ginther, which looks at a few of his racing efforts from 1956 to 1965. In this article, we asked Jim Sitz to provide a few of his Ginther photos and even more importantly, recall his friendship with Ginther. These two articles constitute a small part of Richie’s life. For a much more complete look at Richie’s life, we highly recommend “Richie Ginther, Motor Racing’s Free Thinker” by Richard Jenkins. Both Kuhn and Sitz contributed to this effort. Here, Sitz provides his recollections of his times with Richie, and is by no means meant to be a biography. Some of Jim’s thoughts below can also be found in Jenkins’s book. Ed.

My own intro to Richie was after he and Phil Hill drove in the Mexican Road Race in 1954. I introduced myself, and told him he must be very brave to ride at such high speeds through Mexico. He replied, “Oh, no. I’ve known Phil for a long time, and we did a lot of cross-country trips together.” In July of 1950, Richie had left his day job at Douglas Aircraft to join Phil at Roger Barlow’s International Motors. Seems that the pair would deliver and or collect cars. For example, they would drive a new Rolls Silver Wraith to Memphis, go on to Texas and pick up a new Simca from Bob Evans and drive that back to Barlow’s.

Ginther was a good mechanic and would have made a great engineer with the right education. Racing got in the way. With his talents, Richie would have made a good old hot rodder from the Cal scene. His first racer was an MGTC with Ford V8 60 motor, and it belonged to a steady customer, Bill Cramer.

For his first race, Richie took the MG V8 to the Sandberg hill climb in April 1951, an illegal event held every spring and fall until it was busted by the California Highway Patrol. But not before making the cover of Road & Track in July 1951, with Hill and the 2.9 Alfa. Sandberg was the old highway from LA to Bakersfield and called the “ridge route.” I did it on my dirt bike later but the road was not maintained, badly eroded and boulders had fallen. It was a lovely hillclimb to run, much like an English garden party.

Next month on May 27th, Ginther drove the Ford MG at Pebble Beach and got a 3rd in the Handicap event. When they both raced at Pebble in ‘51 Phil was number 2 in the big Alfa, Richie in the MG Jnr entered by Bill Cramer and was number 82.

In 1953, Richie had served in the military in Korea, and back home he and Phil had been entered the Mexican Road Race in a Ferrari built expressly for that event, the 342 “Mexico” coupe owned by Mr. Guiberson. Despite high hopes they ran off a cliff. “Are you ok” “Ok, are you ok”? they asked each other before making a run out of the car when another race car came careening over the bank toward them. Phil later told me that running through the grass he hit his ankle on rock and suffered his one and only racing injury.

A few months later there was to be the first public event on the new racing course at Willow Springs in May of ‘54, held on Mothers’ Day. It would also be debut for the new Triumph sports car in southern California, and in the pits a lovely blonde lady, Miss Dorothy Deen, owner and entrant, was betting all her friends that her driver would be top of the hill on the first lap. Dorothy was very enthusiastic and new to the sport. Our little group of Bob Cumberford, Bob Gurr and myself were amused by this as she had new driver, one Richie Ginther at the wheel and not sure if he would be the hill topper or not. Sadly for Miss Deen, Richie could not continue driving the car since he also had new job at Olympic International Motors (not Barlow’s International Motors) and selling the Triumph’s dreaded rival, the Austin Healey.

By 1955, Richie’s new job meant that he was able to race a new Austin Healey 100 and entered six events, placing well in each. It was his year of initiation into serious racing, including being at Le Mans in 1955 with Hill, where he witnessed the crash that took the lives of 84 spectators. He would never forget that and raced with the knowledge that death is only a slip of the concentration away. After a tragic and tumultuous year, on Labor Day weekend 1955, Richie got a break that would change his life.

A good deed never goes unrewarded and Ginther learned this in the summer of ’55. It was one hot summer when John von Neumann received his second Ferrari Monza, this one for Phil Hill to drive locally. Ginther was working as a tuner for von Neumann, getting the new Monza set to go. After dinner von Neumann came around to check their work, since the annual Santa Barbara event was coming soon on September 4th. Johnnie took Phil aside and told him, “If your friend is helping, we have to provide a ride for him at Santa Barbara as well.” He then told Richie that they had a second Porsche 550 Spyder on hand and he could run it. Ginther was astounded at his good fortune, as his previous rides were just the MG, a Triumph and the Healey. He didn’t realize at the time von Neumann was covering his bets and had another Porsche 550 as a spare. He did well in the 550 and by was soon a real ‘hired gun’, driving cars for Tony Parravano, John Edgar, and Joe Lubin as well as von Neumann.

It was a break that paid off even more so as later on his boss decided to become the distributor for Ferrari and appointed Richie manager of the agency in spring of 1957. His job at the von Neumann Ferrari distributor led to his going to Modena to supervise and test any new car for his employer at the old Modena “Aerautodromo.” Ginther suitably impressed Mr. Ferrari who offered the new boy a ride in sportscars for 1960.

Richie had to decide on accepting this opportunity or hang on to his good position with the agency. It was a real dilemma and finally he approached Eleanor von Neumann, as she had taken control of the franchise. Her reaction was “go for it Richie,” meaning don’t turn down Mr. Ferrari’s offer.

And looking back now, I have to believe that she may have subsidized the new Ginther home in Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. His new wife Jackie had office job at the Cal Club Office for a very modest pay at the time. I first met Jackie at the Cal Club office to collect my photo pass; she had just begun working and cute…just 20, and I sure liked her, but then Richie did too, and he was a real racing driver, and me a mere photographer. She made a scrapbook of his career at the time with many of my photos. In 2001, I took Jackie to Fab 50s Christmas party and had good time, next year we invited her but she was not feeling well and died a week later, far too young, just 66.

I was with Richie in 1981 in his motorhome, and it became positively clear that he felt his best and most satisfying race was with the Ferrari “Sharknose” at Monaco in 1961. He spoke of chasing Moss the entire race, and remembered that Stirling admitted being knackered at end of it. Richie paused a minute, then reached over to the glovebox and pulled out the Monaco program for the next year and said, “Look here fastest lap credited to me. I set that time and Stirling could only equal it!” He was so proud and beamed with that big grin of his. After leaving Ferrari he also felt he could win with the BRM, but his mate being Englishman Graham Hill, that was not in the cards.

When Ginther left Ferrari and joined BRM in 1962, he was testing a new car and crashed at Snetterton before the season began. Tony Rudd, the team manager, felt Richie should recover from his injuries at his family home, a kind gesture and of course Richie, not one to just sit and doing nothing, would drive their kids to school and repair many items in home that had been neglected. Mrs. Rudd of course was thrilled with that! (Another great book one must read is Tony Rudd, It was Fun-Ed.)

After his sudden departure from racing and non-appearance at Monaco for the Dan Gurney team, Richie returned to California and became somewhat of a gypsy, touring around in his big motor home and exploring the country. Then, a couple of years later he formed a team for John von Neumann with the new Porsche 914 model to go racing.

In those days, Richie and I would go motor cycle riding since von Neumann had pair of BMW bikes at his Palm Springs winter home, and I had my own grey R100-RS model. Once when we stopped for a drink, Richie told me he really needed a new challenge in his life and very likely something involved with motor cycles and probably racing too, as the AMA national series of super bikes was big and another friend, Reg Pridmore, was then the champ and had a dealership in Ventura.

I would often see Richie at Jackie’s home where he would arrive in that motorhome to visit son Bret, then attending college..(he is now a doctor) and was indeed a very nice young man. We would sit in the kitchenette booth with glass of real Italian wine and relive a few more memories of the early days of California sports car racing.

In June of 1982, I was attending a surprise birthday party for John Bond at his Escondido ranch and in waltzed Mrs. Alma Hill and husband Phil in tow. She was full of gossip that Richie had re-married and got a home on the ocean at Rosarita in Mexico, just below the border. I felt very pleased for our old friend; he had married Cleo Blote, a Dutch girl whose father had been an exec at Shell Oil in Holland. She was tall, perky and fun to be with and seemed like a very good match to me.

Then, in the second week of September of 1989, I received a sad phone call from Doug Nye that Ginther had gone to England to take part in a BRM reunion and trying to drive, the old racer felt exhausted and had to be lifted from the cockpit afterward as it was just too much. Shortly after, Richie died at his home, on September 29, 1989. He was 59 years old.

PS I wrote a letter wishing Richie well after the BRM crash and wished him a good coming season for the new team. I never gave it any more thought.
30 years later, I walked into a bookstore in Burbank, and the owner saw me, said nothing but tossed a piece of paper down on his counter, and there was the old letter I had written to Richie after his crash. I could scarcely believe my eyes and was amazed that Richie had saved it all that time, to be recovered from his estate after his death.