A visit with Gil Gillis
By
A visit with Gil Gillis
01-19-09
Written by Tracy, Gloria and Gil Gillis
Edited by Richard Parks,
Photographic Consultant Roger Rohrdanz
Gil Gillis was born July 8th 1940 and raised in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia by his parents Okey and Pearl Gillis. Gil's father, Okey, supported his family as a coal miner and timber jack while his mother, Pearl, was a homemaker. Gil attended a typical old style one room elementary school in Minister Run, West Virginia, where his father had a saw mill. Gil attended school there up through the 6th grade, with about 15 other students. It was the duty of the oldest boy to get to school early to start the fire in the big stove in the middle of the room so that when the teacher arrived the fire was going and the stove was hot. That meant cutting the wood or bringing in the coal. Every day each kid would bring a different vegetable or meat. A big pot was placed on top of the stove with these ingredients and left to simmer until lunch time. Gil remembers how hungry he would get sitting there smelling the food while trying to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution. During recess the boys would go to the creek to catch snakes and bring them back to scare the girls with. "We would turn them loose close to the girls’ outdoor restroom and they would get really mad at us," said Gil. Okey and Pearl moved the family about ten miles away and bought a little restaurant in the town of Rivesville. It was a little coal mining town with a population of about three thousand people, including the surrounding areas. The restaurant that they bought was close to the high school and they named it the 'Ram's Hut' after the mascot of the school. Gil attended middle and high school in Rivesville and the student body was about sixty students at each school.
There was no auto shop classes offered in high school. According to Gil, "most of us learned mechanics by working on farm equipment, hay rakes, mowing machines, tractors, cream separators, and other various types of farming equipment. We learned to do our own electrical wiring on own houses, barns and other farm constructions. I can remember helping my Dad wire our home for a door bell by having a nail in a ten can, when you would open the door or push the button the nail would flail around in the can, what a racket." Back in the early 1950's there was no racing in the West Virginia area where Gil grew up. Gil remembers hearing cars coming out of the dirt road hollers real fast and loud. His dad would say, "There goes a load of liquor." He knew, when he grew up he would build a car just like those. The first race Gil saw was a motorcycle race around 1945. It was a motor cross on big old tank shifters. As a kid, Gil loved sports of any kind. He played and lettered in high school baseball and football. Gil also hunted; sometimes for sport, but other times out of necessity for living. Squirrel, deer, rabbits, turkeys, and other birds were normal hunting targets in the mountains of West Virginia. As did most of the young boys in the area where Gil grew up, they worked for the farmers all summer long in the hay fields, and learned to sheer sheep, build fence lines, dig wells, and other manual labor for a mere 25 cents per hour.
Back in the 1940’s and ‘50's, in the mountains of West Virginia, you were expected to serve your country. If a young man chose a career over going into the military or college you were looked at unfavorably by the old veterans of the community. Gil volunteered and enlisted in the Air Force and served our Country from 1959 through 1965. Gil trained as an aircraft mechanic, and worked as a crew chief on the F-100 Super Saber or "Lead Sled" as they were known in the military circles. When Gil was twenty years old and stationed at RAF Woodbridge in England, he saw his first organized road race and a motorcycle speedway race. The road race was made up of all of the different English sports cars, including Healeys, Jaguars and Triumphs. The speed way bikes were Japs and Jawas and they were very exciting to watch. The bikes had no oil tanks and would run four laps. Attendants were positioned all around the track with big rakes and when the bikes would go by they would run out and rake the track real fast to keep it smooth. When Gil returned from overseas he was stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his neighbor was drag racing a 63 Ford 4-speed with a 390 engine. Gil started helping him at the local track.
After serving six years in the military, Gil returned to his home town in West Virginia. The second day after getting home, he ran into an old friend who also was just returning from the military and was on his way to visit his uncle. Gil decided to go hang out with him and it just so happened that the uncle was the coal mine foreman. Gil and his buddy went to see the uncle at the local Grant Town mines. When they arrived, his friend's uncle was headed down into the mines and he tossed them helmets and lights and asked them if they wanted to go with him down in the mine while they visited. Gil got on a huge cage type elevator, which could accommodate a ten ton coal car, and they went down six hundred feet. When they reached the bottom of the mine and got out of the cage, Gil was very surprised to see that the area was white and there were various shops for the electric, hydraulic, welding and communications. The foreman was looking for men to work the mines and hired Gil right away. That very night Gil began working in the mine and earned $600 per month, plus any overtime pay, which was a great deal of money in those days. He worked the grave yard shift, going into the mines at midnight and coming out at eight in the morning. This gave him time to attend classes at Fairmont State University as a biology major. Gil's duties at the mine consisted mostly of demolitions, blowing down bad roofs, blowing sump holes, etc.
While working in the mines he met Joe Law. In about 1965 Joe built a dragster as Gil remembers it was an A/Comp, and it had a 426 Hemi engine. At that time they were building the interstate through the mountains. When it came time to test the dragster, this seemed the most practical place to run it. The problem was at the end of the straight-a-way there was a gradual up hill turn, "Joe made it on two wheels as I remember," Gil said. Joe said that is when he learned how hard it is to steer a dragster under power. Law went on to win the NHRA Nationals in Indianapolis, Indiana with this car in about 1966. Joe went on to build and campaign a Lakester, #355, which he called the "Grumpy Ol Men." He set many records with this car at Bonneville, some of which are still unbroken and a record at Muroc dry lake as well. Gil moved to Amarillo, Texas and went to work for Champion Spark Plug Company as a territorial manager. This offered him an opportunity to traveling around the mid-west involved in racing in one form or another. His responsibilities were to call on distributors, parts stores, garages and to service his industrial accounts as well. He promoted Champion Spark Plugs and worked for the company from 1968 through 1978.
Tracy, Gil's daughter, remembers the day her Dad brought home the cab of a 40 Ford and nothing else. "He said he was going to build one like the old moon-shiners used. I couldn't imagine what it was going to look like. Then, along came the chassis and fenders. Piece by piece he built an awesome 40 Ford coupe; fire engine red (Vermillion) with big white wall tires. It seemed like every day we were getting packages from J.C. Whitney or Rick's Automotive with some kind of nuts or bolts. I could hardly wait to see were they fit in that huge puzzle he was putting together. As I remember, after many months of cold nights in the garage, the big day finally arrived; dad started the car, the event of the neighbor hood. Several guys and kids standing around the old flat head motor, no hood, no fenders on the car just listening to her purr when the old cast pulley on the generator blew up, fortunately no one was hurt. The fan belt must have contained the shrapnel. This should have been an omen of things to come with the 40," she added. "A day or so later dad had to drive it, dad sitting on a coke box, no doors on the car, he has mom push him down the road to get it started. Mom is not pushing fast enough so dad is all excited and yells at her to speed it up. So, mom does, at the end of the street is a right hand turn, dad can't stay on the coke box, there is no door so dad falls out of the car and it continues on down through a vacant field. After that all of us kids got to ride around the area, we sat on milk crates until dad got the bench seat installed. It had little fold down seats in the rear, dad said it was an opera coupe," she said.
Tracy remembers the day dad came home laughing about beating some young kid in a Mustang with that 40. "I think he was going down Western Street, in Amarillo, when the drag race began. The police officer that pulled them over let dad go with a warning and gave the kid a ticket," she added. Tracy also remembers her dad building a racing Triumph motorcycle. "It was a 500 cc Twin, which he installed in a Rickman frame. I believe that was the one that Dad was riding flat track when he broke his collar bone. He was racing at the Perryton, Texas race track, when he high-sided and went over the handlebars," she said. Gil raced the bike around Lubbock, Wichita Falls, and Amarillo in Texas, as well as Albuquerque and Clovis, New Mexico. Gil competed in TT and flat track motorcycle racing with the OL Twin. He crashed the bike on a half mile track in Amarillo and tore the bike to pieces, ripping the engine out of the frame. A few days later he looked at his new leathers and battery acid had destroyed them. This was his first set of leathers, because prior to that he would wear two pairs of Levy Jeans and his old flight jacket from the military. Gil's son Joe rode flat track motorcycles for a while around the area. His son Jubel and his grandson Lyle raced Quarter Midgets, using 600 cc engines, in the Amarillo area.
Later in life, at the ripe age of 60, Gil was racing stock cars at Irwindale raceway. His crew chief was John Petsco, who in his own racing career had done quite well driving at Saugus, California, before it closed in the mid to late 1990's. Gil had just crossed the finish line when out of nowhere he was struck by another driver who had lost control and both crashed into the wall in turn one. As a result of this crash, Gil's stock car was totaled. Later that evening, while he was recovering from the crash, Gil was talking with his crew about the possibility of doing something different. The only type of racing that no one in the group had experienced was land speed racing. The crew consisted of Chuck Sawyer, who has been involved in racing for so long that Gil likes to say, "Since they invented the wheel," Randy Simmons and Garret and Gloria Yamada. The crew packed up in August and flew to Bonneville to investigate their new interest. It was agreed that they would come back in 90 days, for the October meet and compete. And return they did, with the "Xtreme Freedom Special," a beautiful green, front-wheel drive modified roadster. Chuck Sawyer built the G/class motor, Randy Simmons built the car, Forrest Commer worked on the engineering and Gil drove the car to a new land speed record in the G/FMR class with a speed of 166.166mph.
They have gone on to set records at El Mirage dry lake in the F/BGMR class with a speed of 193.879mph in 2007. In 2008 they set a record in the F/BFMR class with a speed of 205.066mph. Due to the interest of the crew of Xtreme Freedom Special in supporting spinal chord injury victims, Patrick Rummerfield drove the car to a record in the F/BFMR class in 2005. In 2007 Gil and Joe Law sat side by side in impounds, what are the odds of that, two old coal miners from West Virginia? El Mirage is their favorite; the short course provides challenges that are very frustrating. One shot, maybe two is generally all you get, so you need to be dialed in. At present they hold records in two classes at El Mirage, the F/BFMR and F/BGMR. Gil's wife Gloria is very involved with the Xtreme Freedom team, she and Chuck's wife Nonie, provide the meals. Gloria keeps the paper work current and deals with the keeping the guy's organized. Gloria holds a 2nd degree black belt in Marshall Arts so they listen when she speaks. She also makes various types of jams and jellies which she provides as prizes at the banquets. It is great; people are always coming up to her through out the year asking for more. In 2007 they put the Xtreme Freedom Special into the 'Dirty Two Club' at El Mirage by setting a new record in the G/BFMR with a speed of 205.066; Gil says this is his 'Crown Jewell' of racing. "The land speed family is the most fun and accommodating group of racers I have ever had the privilege to hang out with," said Gil.
Gone Racin' is at [email protected]
2007 Gil and son Jubel @ El Mirage. |
2007 Chuck Sawyer, engine builder, Forrest Comer, engineer (goofing around) and Gil Gillis at El Mirage. |
2007 Gil and wife, Gloria, at El Mirage. |
2007 Gloria and Gil at Fontana raceway with the wounded soldiers. |
2007 Gil and Patrick Rummerfield with wounded soldiers @ Fontana Race Way |
2007 Giving rides to wounded soldiers @ Fontana Race. |
2006 Gil @ Bonneville, photo by Landspeed Louise. |
2006 @ Bonneville, Car builder Randy Simmons, Patrick Rummerfield, engine builder Chuck Sawyer. |
2008 Extreme Freedom Special leaving the line @ El Mirage. |