Editor's Page

[Note: This Editor's Notebook column first appeared in the Summer of 1997 after a racing incident at Road America took the life of well-respected woman race car driver. We offer a repeat of the column in light of the current concerns about safety in racing and to elicit your thoughts on auto racing putting women in harm's way. Please join us in the Drivers' Group to continue this dialogue.]

I didn't know Mary Wollesen. I couldn't tell you if she was a happy, fun-loving woman who enjoyed life to the fullest. I couldn't tell you if she had a great marriage with her husband and fellow driver. I do know, though, that she was a member of that small sorority of women who drive race cars.

I watched her race again at the SCCA June Sprints in Elkhart Lake this year. As usual, I scanned the entry lists for women drivers and was pleased to see her named along with her husband as drivers of two Austin Mini-Coopers in the GT-5 class. She was one of the very few women drivers among the five hundred racers competing. I saw her mangled Mini being hoisted off the track, wrapped in a tarp.

The following Monday, I saw the press release. "A 54-year-old woman was killed Sunday during qualifying for a sports car race at the Road America track. Mary Wollesen of Clarkston, Mich., was fatally injured when her Austin Mini-Cooper was struck broadside by a Chevrolet Camaro after she had spun on the high speed portion of the 4-mile course. Wollesen was an 11-year veteran of SCCA racing. She finished third in the Central Division GT-5 standings last year."

Many people have spun on that high speed portion of the track. The Road America Kink is known around the world as a 'hold-your-breath, here-we-go' piece of terror. I've spun on that high speed portion of the track. I know of others who have died on that high speed portion of the track.

The joy, the freedom, the delight of racing is the absolute knowledge that you can control your car and control yourself through all the 'hold-your-breath' high speed portions of all the tracks. That you can make it through all the 'hold-your-breath' hard braking portions of all the tracks. That you can master all the 'hold-your-breath' high speed straight-aways of all the tracks.

Mary Wollesen was a member of an elite sorority. Whatever other accolades she may have achieved in life, she was a race car driver. I didn't know Mary Wollesen, wife, perhaps mother, perhaps career woman, perhaps home-maker.

But, we all know the Mary Wollesen who experienced the sheer exhilaration of controlling her car and herself through the high speed portion of the track. We lived that exhilaration with her and we mourn her passing.

The pages of the Thunder Valley Racing web site describe the lives of women race car drivers. Teen age girls, grandmothers, paid professional drivers, Saturday night dirt track amateurs, sports car, stock car, dragster, open-wheel and sedan drivers.

That sorority is special. It grows and lives through the joy and the terror of the shared experience of racing. We celebrate that joy and we grow by overcoming that terror.

To Life!

--T.W. Theodore

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