EUGENE RICHARD CASE 1935-1959

Eugene Case was born second child of Levi and Alys-Mae Case. He, along with his brothers, lived with various relatives and friends after Freeman and Alys-Mae separated.  After attending schools in Southern California, he lived with his mother Alys-Mae, her husband Richard Shrank, and his two brothers Leighton and Gordon in Hayward, Alameda, CA. 

Eugene graduated from Hayward Union High School in 1955, where he had evidenced a talent for math, writing and participated in school plays. He played the lead in “My Heart’s in the Highlands”, about an elderly gentleman reminiscing about his childhood in Scotland.

Eugene was early interested in all things automotive.  He once brought home a car to restore ( I think a ’36 ford)  but he was too busy and didn’t have the necessary money, so we broke it apart with sledge hammers and axes, and it was sold for scrap.  We “hung around” a Hayward truck stop so he could talk to the truckers about their trucks, and engines and he was a charter member of the Hayward Head Hunters, an early car club.  Eugene worked after high school as a body and fender repairman, at a shop in Hayward. The shop owner had a sprint car that he ran frequently at the old Bayfair Speedway in San Leandro, CA, where Eugene learned to drive in races. 

  He attended one semester of Auto Engineering classes at U. C. Berkeley, but left , he always said, because they would not allow him to wear Levis--but I know he was distraught over a sweet-heart that had dumped him, and I think  the theoretical world was just not for him. After leaving college, he left for Los Angeles to be “where the action was”.  In Los Angeles, he worked at Sonny’s Muffler shop, where he became an expert welder and racing engine balancer.  Eugene devised and sold Red’s Headers, a custom header kit, with quick-remove plugs that allowed exhaust to be routed around a car’s mufflers, for road racing.  In Los Angeles, he drove for several racing teams:

Long Beach, CA Drag Strip, January 15, 1956. Car owned by Scott Fenn, Engine by Belmont J. Sanchez, Jr.  Speed for this run was 141.50 mph with 11.12 ET.

Eugene’s ’49 Mercury, raked 2 feet, with high-powered engine and pressure fuel system was a frequent winner in Los Angeles area street-drags.  It was also an easy target for the L.A. P. D. and after too many citations, in the summer of 1956, he and  Diana  moved to Tulare, CA. In Tulare, Eugene, Diana and his younger brother Gordon lived together for a short time, while he tried out the quiet life as Engineering draftsman for the Morrill Rake Co.

The rural life did not suit Eugene, so he and Diana returned to Los Angles where he became a mechanic and semi-professional driver for the well financed Sanchez racing team organized specifically to set world records. 

Eugene and Diana first child was a son, Eugene Richard Case, Jr.:

      Diana with the newborn "Geno"         Happy dad with Geno         "Geno" (L'il Red) about 1956

Their second was daughter, Jeanette Ann Case:

                                                                And their third,  Daniel James Case.

 Jeannie, Geno and Danny, about 1958    Danny(?) about 1957  

                                                                                                                                                     Geno, with his Stevenson grandparents

It was easy to understand the lure and excitement of that drag-racing world. The car Eugene last drove, was one he built himself in 1958-59.  I was a streamlined,  unlimited-class dragster.  Drag cars then had two gears, neutral and high, they were powered with super charged V-8s fueled with a mixture of Nitro and Methane.  After being started with a push-car, and then hand pushed to the starting line, they were revved until running smoothly. When the starting light blinked, and the race was on, the cars roared to almost a dead-stop, as the tires squeeled, bit and then hurtled down the ¼ mile strip to speeds approaching 200mph in about 8 seconds.  

The last time I saw Eugene alive was a pure coincidence.  In February of 1959, I was in the Navy's electronics school  at Treasure Island, San Francisco, and on the spur of the moment decided to hitch-hike to Mojave and surprise our Mom for her birthday.   I was standing on the shoulder of Hiway 99, about 15 miles north of Bakersfield, when a black Chrysler station wagon towing a streamlined dragster pulled up to a roadside coffee-shop on the other side of the highway. Eugene and his crew were in that Chrysler on the way to a drag-meet, and we had a nice lunch together before he went North and I went South. Little did I know at the time that it would be the last time I talked with him---

That team’s car had some promising runs at Bonneville salt flats, and was a frequent winner in the California drag scene, until one May Saturday in 1959, at the Yolo County, CA airport drag race, the throttle stuck and Eugene went across the end of the strip in excess of 200 mph and the drague chute could not stop it from going end-over-end. 

After 3 days of intensive care at the Woodland, CA clinic, Eugene died June 3, from massive injuries.  He was buried in the Crestview cemetery, Porterville, CA after a funeral in which brothers Leighton and Gordon, and racing friends from Los Angeles were pall bearers.  Also present at the funeral, in addition to Mom and Richard Shrank, Granny and Grandpop Barkwille---Dad and Helen, Uncle Deward Case and  Aunt Louella.  

November 1, 1959, Smokers, Inc. a Bakersfield, CA car club held a “Red Case memorial drag race and donated part of the proceeds to Diana and her kids.

UNFINISHED POEM/PROSE of lament, ALYS-MAE SHRANK, 1960:

What shall it profit a man, if he gain his desire and lose his life?
Who would mourn me? Disappointments.
To have--the poet sang--to hold and in time to let go--
But I cling--I must cling.

I miss him--miss his ready grin.
His wit and hearty laughter.
I draw the memories all to thin
for the solace I am after.

My grief is quiet--deep and cold
Time does not heal my pain.

I want so to behold his dear face, once again.

Once? No--that would never do.
For could I only see him,
I know that I would beg God to
Return him and to free him.

Locked within the arms of Death, 
Sleeps and knows no sorrow.
Were God to give again his breath,
come the morrow.

For who am I to tell the Lord,
What should or should not be?
He tells me in the written word,
His eye alone can see.

Perhaps this way is for the best,
Although I cannot say.
But I do know my life was blest ....

Showing me how foolish is this attitude. Being aware of the fact that I have suffered no more, or no less than millions of other mothers made no difference to me at the time of my own deep sorrow.

Their loss was to me just that--their loss.  This great and all important event was mine.  I loathed the murmured words of sympathy, the gentle touches of others, and shut my mind from any effort made to relieve my grief.  Who were these persons to say they were sorry?  Who gave them the right to try to share my despair.  I bore this child.  I gave him the body that was so pitifully destroyed. I was proudest of the masculine beauty that had been his.  I was the one who was deprived of a tall, healthy, brilliant son.

Perhaps never before, and surely never again, was anyone as selfish in sorrow.  There is no doubt that all of these things were true, but it is a bitter thing to realize too late that sorrow is better shared.  It becomes a veritable canker in the heart.

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