It was a simpler age, far less frantic than the swirling current of today. Its colors were black and white. Its values were reflected in perfectly coifed television families. Its rhythms were soft and easy and always melodious, and all the entertainment choices of 2002 were not yet even conceived.
There were no theme parks like Disney World or bone-rattling amusement parks like Great America. Professional sports still were localized and not yet broadcast across the land. The local county fair was often the destination of a family outing back in the ’50s and there the major attraction was often the Chitwood Thrill Show.
Joie Chitwood, its star, had been a legitimate racer in the late ’30s and early ’40s, three times finishing fifth in the Indianapolis 500. But then war came and that sport ended for a while, and so he was looking for work when the widow of one Lucky Teeter contacted him. He had just died while doing a trick with a thrill show he owned and she wanted Chitwood to help her sell the franchise.
Instead, he simply bought it, which started him on his way, and by the ’50s his show was such a success that he had five units of it traveling through the United States. His sons, Joe Jr. and Tim, would carry on the legacy through the tumultuous ’60s, and then, in 1974, Joie Chitwood III made his debut. He was 5 years old at the time, and he did a 180 in a go-kart, got out and bowed.
“I just remember, at 5, that it didn’t seem special,” remembers Chitwood. “I had been growing up with dad, riding with him on two wheels, that was part of my life. What really got me, when I was 12, 13 years old, we were on `That’s Incredible.’ I remember them filming as my father drove around the track on two wheels with me in the passenger seat. Then I pulled myself up and stood on the side of the car as he was driving on two wheels. When I looked at the camera, that’s when I thought, `This is big time. This isn’t a summer job. You’re part of the show.'”
Chitwood is now part of a much bigger show, the show that will go on this weekend when the Winston Cup and Busch and IROC series all run at Chicagoland Speedway. For at 33, he is the vice president/general manager of that playpen in Joliet, and that means he is the man responsible for making the production a success.
“I always say I was rode hard and put away wet,” Chitwood says of his experiences, and that was certainly true as he continued on with the thrill show. He stayed with it for 20 years, barnstorming the country, performing five times a week, entertaining the audience with dive-bomber crashes and roll-over crashes, with reverse spins and laps on two wheels.
His father crashed six times, once breaking an ankle, another time spraining his back. But Chitwood was luckier, he never broke a bone, but he did have that scary moment in North Carolina when the motorcycle that was scheduled to fly over him got bogged down in the mud. The motorcycle wouldn’t make it this time, and it landed on Chitwood’s front windshield, leaving him covered in broken glass.
“It was certainly a different life. Traveling made you older beyond your years,” he recalls, but still there was always time for school. That was the wish of his dad, who had never gone to college, and that made the decision easy when his son was given the chance to study for a summer at Cambridge University in England.
“My father was great,” Chitwood recalls. “And I always said to myself, `If you live life only one time, you have to take advantage of your opportunities.’ How could I turn it down?”
In 1992 he graduated from Florida with a degree in business administration and finance and a year later he left the thrill show for good. (The show itself finally disbanded in 1998 after a 55-year run.) He then enrolled at the University of South Florida and, in 1995, left there with an MBA and an uncertain future.
“I didn’t know what area I’d go in,” he recalls. “I had the urge–my grandfather did wonderful things. I’m proud to have the name. But I always had this thing to stand on my own. I’m never going to escape the stunt-show business and I don’t want to. But to be honest, as the third generation, I felt it was time to see if I could establish myself outside the show.”
He thought of working for a bank, thought too of immersing himself in the corporate world. But NASCAR was booming in the mid-’90s and around the country tracks were being built. One of his professors at South Florida sat him down and said, “With the experience you have and your education, there are not many out there who have that package. You might want to think of going in that direction.”
“So, with the arrogance of youth, I pick the two biggest names,” remembers Chitwood with a chuckle. “I sent letters to [Indianapolis Motor Speedway President] Tony George and [NASCAR overlord] Bill France.”
George responded and in 1996, Chitwood helped the then-new Indy Racing League stage its first event in Orlando. He went to work for the IRL, and when George and France starting thinking of building in Joliet, he was on the committee sent to look at the property.
He traveled there for the first time in early 1999 and in April of that year, the entity backed by George and France purchased the land for their speedway. Now Chitwood got busy drawing up plans for its development and operation, but a co-worker in Indianapolis whispered to him, “You ought to put in your resume to run it.”
“I did and didn’t think anything of it,” Chitwood says, but George quickly approved the idea and sent him to Florida to meet with France.
“Actually,” Chitwood goes on, “when I sat with Bill France one of the things that came up was my experience with the thrill show. Knowing that I’d dealt with interesting characters and promoters, they thought it might help me doing this. When you’re trying to make a straight deal that works for everybody in some small town in Pennsylvania, you don’t learn that kind of stuff in school. They thought that was good..”
That got him the job, and his next two years were consumed with preparing Chicagoland for its inaugural Cup race. That went off successfully a year ago, and Sunday comes the encore with a full house of 75,000 again guaranteed.
“Some days,” Chitwood says, “I’m like a normal business person. But some days it’s nice to look at the track, and what’s really nice is the sense of fulfillment when we put an event on. Then we can say we put on the Super Bowl of motor sports.
“That Monday [after the inaugural race], I don’t know how sore I was, but I felt like I was beat up. I felt like I’d run a marathon and boxed 15 rounds. I’d never experienced that before. As a stunt man I’d had peaks and valleys. But that, after two years of your life, we just went, `My God, we did it.’
“Was it worth it? Yes. People felt good about it.”
