The magnificent maniacs of Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway: A loving tribute to drivers who probably shouldn’t have had licenses

Between 1967 and 1994, Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway stood as a beacon of questionable safety standards and even more questionable decision-making on Indiana’s east side. This quarter-mile oval of cracked asphalt and broken dreams hosted some of the most spectacularly unhinged individuals ever to strap themselves into rolling death traps for the entertainment of drunk locals and their bewildered children. The track is gone now—bulldozed in ’94 to make room for a strip mall that includes, ironically, both a trauma counseling center and an auto parts store—but the legends live on.

Here are five drivers who made Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway the beautifully deranged circus it was.

“Breakfast” Eddie Kowalski: The Man Who Raced on a Strict Cereal-Only Diet

Eddie Kowalski earned his nickname not through any feat of morning glory, but because he exclusively ate breakfast cereal. For every meal. Since 1971. His pit crew reported that Eddie’s car perpetually smelled like Lucky Charms, and he once tried to use milk as engine coolant during a particularly desperate pit stop in the summer of ’89.

His racing strategy was equally baffling. Eddie would spend the first fifteen laps driving backwards “to confuse the competition,” a tactic that resulted in twelve separate crashes, four fistfights, and one extremely awkward conversation with the Fort Wayne Fire Department. Despite—or perhaps because of—his methods, Eddie won the 1987 Midsummer Mayhem Championship after every other driver either crashed into each other or simply gave up trying to understand what was happening.

“Eddie once asked me if I thought Froot Loops counted as a vegetable because of the word ‘Froot,'” recalled longtime track announcer Dale Henniman. “I told him no. He said, ‘Well, that explains the scurvy.’ I thought he was joking. He was not joking. His teeth started falling out by ’92.”

Local dentist Margaret Fothergill added: “I treated Eddie three times. Each time I told him his vitamin C deficiency was entirely preventable. Each time he asked if they made a vitamin C cereal. When I said yes, he seemed offended that I would suggest he eat a health cereal.”

Reverend Tommy “The Wrath” Buchanan: Man of God, Enemy of Guardrails

Reverend Buchanan was an ordained minister who raced every Saturday night and preached every Sunday morning, often while still wearing racing gloves. His sermons were reportedly punctuated with lengthy tangents about optimal tire pressure and the spiritual symbolism of carburetor repair. His racing number was 777, because of course it was.

The Reverend’s signature move was what he called “Divine Intervention”—simply closing his eyes during turns and “letting Jesus take the wheel.” This resulted in a catastrophic accident rate that insurance adjusters later described as “statistically improbable without deliberate intent.” He crashed in approximately 67% of all races entered, yet maintained an eerily calm demeanor that witnesses found more disturbing than the crashes themselves.

“After he T-boned my car at sixty miles per hour, Tommy climbed out, checked if I was okay, then asked if I’d accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior,” remembered driver Pete Gallagher. “I was bleeding from my forehead. He produced a laminated pamphlet from his firesuit. To this day, I don’t know if he kept those pamphlets specifically for post-crash evangelism or if that was just coincidence.”

Track owner Bernard Haskell noted: “We had to put a clause in Tommy’s racing waiver that said, ‘Divine Providence is not a valid legal defense.’ Our lawyers insisted. He signed it, then added a handwritten note that said, ‘But it should be.’ Can’t argue with that logic, even if I wanted to.”

Donna “The Hurricane” Kowalczyk: Undefeated Champion of Psychological Warfare

Donna Kowalczyk never won a single race at Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway. Not one. Her highest finish was fourteenth place in a twelve-car field (she lapped herself). But what Donna lacked in driving ability, she compensated for with an absolutely deranged commitment to getting inside her competitors’ heads.

Her tactics included: hiring a mariachi band to follow her primary rival to his day job for three consecutive weeks; having her mother call her opponents’ mothers to discuss “concerns about their sons’ life choices”; and once releasing 200 crickets into the car of driver Jimmy Henderson, who was, unfortunately, severely phobic of crickets. Henderson didn’t discover them until he was halfway through the third lap. The resulting crash made the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette under the headline “Local Man Abandons Moving Vehicle, Cites ‘Cricket Situation.'”

“Donna sent me a fruit basket every Monday for two months,” said driver Marcus Webb. “Nice gesture, right? Wrong. Each basket contained a single banana and a note that said something like, ‘Hope your weekend wasn’t too BANANAS’ or ‘Don’t SLIP UP this Saturday.’ I started having stress dreams about potassium. My therapist said it was the most creative psychological torture he’d encountered in thirty years of practice.”

Former Fort Wayne Journal Gazette sports reporter Helen Kiminsky reflected: “I once asked Donna if she ever considered, you know, actually trying to win races. She looked at me like I’d suggested she eat a live hamster. She said, and I quote, ‘Winning is temporary. Psychological damage is forever.’ Then she winked. I still think about that wink. It haunts me.”

“Cautious” Carl Zimmerman: The Only Driver Slower Than the Pace Car

Carl Zimmerman was a sixty-eight-year-old retired postal worker who began racing in 1985 because, as he told reporters, “it looked like fun and I had nothing else to do on Saturdays.” His nickname was deeply ironic—Carl drove with such aggressive timidity that he once finished a twenty-lap race seventeen minutes after everyone else had gone home.

His car, a 1974 AMC Hornet painted the color of disappointment, featured modifications that included: oversized mirrors, a “Student Driver” bumper sticker, and a horn that played the first seven notes of “Ode to Joy.” Carl used this horn frequently, apparently believing that proper signaling etiquette applied to short track racing. He would honk before every turn, before every attempted pass, and whenever he felt another driver was “following too closely.”

The low point—or high point, depending on your perspective—came during the 1989 Independence Day Spectacular, when Carl stopped his car mid-race because he “saw a turtle on the track and didn’t want to hit it.” The turtle was a discarded beer can. Carl required prescription glasses but refused to wear them while racing because, in his words, “they make me look old.”

“Carl once pulled over during a race to let an ambulance pass,” said paramedic Janet Sullivan. “There was no emergency. The ambulance was parked. It had been parked the entire time. When I asked Carl what he was doing, he said, ‘Safety first.’ I didn’t know how to respond to that. Still don’t.”

Track official Morris Grant added: “We had to create a new rule because of Carl—the ‘Please At Least Attempt to Compete’ rule. It stated that drivers must complete laps within forty-five minutes of the race leader or be black-flagged. Carl finished eighteen seconds under that limit exactly twice. We think he was timing it deliberately.”

Sheila “Butterfly” Morrison: The Driver Who Brought Interpretive Dance to Motorsports

Sheila Morrison was a former modern dance instructor who transitioned to short track racing in 1991 after, as she explained in a local TV interview, “a profound spiritual awakening involving a vision of Carl Jung driving a Ford Fairlane.” Her racing style could best be described as “vehicular choreography”—graceful, utterly impractical, and frequently ending in spectacular mechanical failure.

Sheila would “interpret” each race as a narrative journey, assigning characters to other drivers without their knowledge or consent. She once spent an entire race attempting to “mirror the emotional arc of Hamlet” through her driving patterns, which mostly involved driving in confused circles while occasionally accelerating dramatically for no apparent reason. She finished seventh in a six-car race (she drove the wrong direction for three laps, creating the illusion of an additional competitor).

Her car featured wind chimes welded to the roll cage, creating a haunting symphony of dissonance at speed. After crashes—and there were many crashes—Sheila would emerge from her vehicle and perform what she called “impact interpretation dance,” a spontaneous movement piece exploring the “metaphysical relationship between velocity and consequence.” Track workers learned to wait for these performances to conclude before attempting rescue operations.

“Sheila once told me her racing strategy was based on the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies,” recalled fellow driver Randy Kowalski (no relation to Breakfast Eddie). “I asked her to elaborate. She couldn’t. She just kept saying, ‘You know, monarch butterflies,’ like that explained everything. It explained nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Fort Wayne News-Sentinel columnist Arthur Pemberton wrote in 1993: “Watching Sheila race is like watching someone have a conversation with a version of reality the rest of us aren’t privy to. It’s uncomfortable. It’s confusing. It’s possibly genius. But it’s definitely not racing. Or is it? I genuinely don’t know anymore. She’s broken my understanding of motorsports. Send help.”

Where Crazy Becomes Legend

Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway closed its gates for the final time on September 17, 1994, not because of financial troubles or safety violations (though there were plenty of both), but because, according to final owner Bernard Haskell Jr., “the insurance companies literally laughed when we called them.” The track hosted one last race—won, improbably, by Breakfast Eddie, who celebrated by pouring a box of Corn Flakes over his head instead of champagne.

Today, a plaque in the strip mall parking lot commemorates the track with the words: “Fort Wayne Memorial Raceway, 1967-1994: Where Racing Met Madness and They Got Along Surprisingly Well.”

Eddie Kowalski now runs a breakfast cereal museum in Muncie. Reverend Buchanan returned to full-time ministry but still occasionally test-drives church vans “spiritually.” Donna Kowalczyk became a corporate negotiation consultant and is reportedly excellent at her job. Cautious Carl passed away peacefully in 2003 at age eighty-six, never having received a single speeding ticket in his life. And Sheila Morrison opened a combination dance studio and auto repair shop in Portland, Oregon, because of course she did.

The drivers are gone. The track is gone. But the legend—beautiful, deranged, and utterly inexplicable—remains forever.

As longtime fan Morton Griggs put it: “I’ve been to Indy. I’ve been to Daytona. Hell, I even went to Monaco once. But I never saw anything as purely, magnificently insane as a Saturday night at Fort Wayne Memorial. And I never will again. That kind of crazy doesn’t get made anymore. EPA probably banned it.”

Amen, Morton. Amen.