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 ”You
know that Raffa wanted to be here with you guys,” said
Karen Raffa after sending a torquoise-inlaid silver container
out to the IRP starting line. It was right here, in the adjoining
grassy area, that her late husband had been holding court
since the mid-Sixties. Raffa was the king of magazine editors,
and a mentor to the rest of us. Before he was 30, he was promoted to publisher
of Car Craft (when CC still called itself “Drag Racing¹s Complete
Magazine”). Your author (pictured) was the surprised recipient of his
old friend’s remains, accompanied by verbal instructions to scatter his
ashes in the spot where J.R. had captured so many launches for Super Stock & Drag
Illustrated, Car Craft and National Dragster. Fittingly, this final Indy photo
was snapped by Jeff Tinsley, a former SS&DI contributor who happened by
at this moment. Currently a staff photographer for the Smithsonian Institution,
Tinsley informed me that he’d gotten his
first professional assignment from Raffa, 40 years ago.
Good
Communications Photo By Dave
Wallace
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Throughout the 50th U.S. Nationals, the
regal urn containing Wild Willie’s
remains rested in the seat of the replica “T” roadster that the
late legend and his longtime partner, Al “Mousie” Marcellus (pictured),
started building in 1990 to replace the wrecked Winged Express seen here through
1971. After Borsch passed away, Mike Boyd volunteered to help Mousie finish
the job, and then hung around to make some test runs. He’s been in the
seat since, and anyone who witnessed this car’s best-ever, wheels-up
7.28/202 pass on Saturday night will tell you that Boyd is every bit the
driver that Borsch was (even if Mike does use both hands).
”Willie and I have been out on the
road together since ‘66,” explains
Marcellus, 73. “I always bring him
along, for his friends. Wherever we go,
they come by and talk to him.”
There’s probably some law against
transporting human remains across state
lines without a permit (and some revenue
to be gained). Nevertheless, for more than a decade, Marcellus
has been hauling this ash across the country -- in the very
same 1968 Dodge D-200 that he and Borsch drove to Indiana
every summer. So far, no do-gooder has turned Mousie in to
the authorities. If the big bust is ever imminent, I’d
like to think that one of Willie’s pals will stop by
the urn and tip him off. 
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