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 There
is an old story about a priest who takes a friend to a prize
fight. Before the fight one boxer, obviously a Catholic, crosses
himself. “Will that help him win the fight?” the friend asks.
“Sure it will”, the priest says, “if he can punch.”
Tru Cheek has found the same thing to be true in his 20 year
driving career: everyone wants to know about a handicapped
race driver – if he runs up front. Tru is a front runner who
has won the Saugus championship twice in the last three years
and is a threat in any race in which he runs. The article
I did on Tru (July 1980 – my first for SCR) told of how he
had overcome a broken back which paralyzed his legs and then
found racing which became his mental and physical therapy.
The fascinating thing to me is that for much of his career.
Tru didn’t run up front. The reasons for this are revealing
about his character as well as short track racing itself.
One of these reasons is common to all racers: lack of good
exquipemnt because of money. The other was unique to his situation:
lack of stamina due to the stain put on his body because of
the paralyzed legs. Tru often had to belifted into the car
for the race because he was so exhausted from the work of
preparation.
Tru’s business slowly prospered and through careful planning
and saving he was finnaly able to buy the Dave Jackson chassis
and (used) Dennis Fischer engine necessary to win at Saugus.
He credits his close friend Dan Press with teaching him the
finer points of chassis setup so crucial (along with ability
and equipment) to moving from the back to the front of the
pack.
Anybody familiar with short track racing knows that a successful
driver needs a savy and hard working crew. Dave Rodrigues
and Steve Adams have performed this function for Tru, leaving
him to concentrate on the driving.
Tru is a living example of the physical conditioning aspect
of auto racing, which places such a demand on upper body strength.
Years of racing have made his arms and torso tremendously
strong, compensating for his legs. In a race car he is the
physical equal of any racer. I have seen him relentlessly
run down much younger drivers forcing them into a mistake.
So that he could walk with braces, the doctors broke all the
bones in Tru’s feet so as to fuse them together. Because there
is no feeling in his legs, Tru says that operating the brake
and throttle is the equivalent to racing while wearing stilts,
but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down.
The crowd at Saugus is a particularly loyal one and this is
even more the case with Tru. The key to the feeling of both
fans and racers for Tru Cheek is that everyone would like
to feel that they would handle personal tragedy as well as
he has. That he has also become a winner on the track has
made for a tremendously strong bond.
The important thing here is that his actions have reshaped
the attitudes of everyone who has come in contact with him
toward the handicapped. Among racers the bottom line is usually
whether or not you can drive a race car, which is as it should
be. At the school for the handicapped at which Tru has appeared,
the children are living proof that they can accomplish goals
they set for themselves. When Saugus promoter Marshall Wilkings
arranges for Tru to speak to a civic group, it promotes racing’s
image and those in the audience invariably end up with a completely
different perception of what a racer is.
Tru credits racing with giving him a reason to live and therefore
being responsible for what he has accomplished with his life.
The truth is that he has given racing and the people who know
him much more than he has gotten in return.
To outsiders, racing is at best a frivolous if not anti-social
sport. For someone as admirable and articulate as Tru to be
a spokesman who proves it is neither, it is a service to us
all. To me he is in the mold of Richard Petty: someone who
can temper the tremendous drive it takes to be a winner with
the ability to look at racing objectively.
Tru certainly deserves recognition for what he has achieved
off the track because of this unique personality and
determination. On the track he deserves recognition
because he is one hell of a race driver.
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