Episode 165: Tom D'Eath, Part 1

A phone connection to Detroit’s past opens into a story of risk, grit, and craft. I sit down with legendary hydroplane driver Tom D’Eath to trace the path from a kid on a bike chasing the sound of engines to a champion whose name echoes on the Detroit River. Tom walks us through the early pull of the sport, including family boatyard days, outboard marathons, and the intoxicating feel of 135 hydros that smelled like alcohol and danger. If you love racing history, high-performance mindset, and the decisions that define a career, you’ll find plenty to savor here.

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*Photo from the Roger Newton Collection

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening & Guest Introduction
• 3:30 Detroit roots and early inspiration
• 8:20 First races and DIY funding
• 15:40 The harrowing first inboard crash
• 21:40 Learning by failure and first wins
• 25:15 Florida move and mentorship with Sunshine Baby
• 29:40 From seven-liter dominance to Miss U.S.
• 31:55 Cliffhanger and listener updates

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

Startups started 1450. The first week that we have with incorporating the storage code with the first time. I don't think that's that kind of thing again. But it's the characteristics, the toughest and the grip that he had driver to be able to overcome and first of the go through the different challenges that hide in racing has. Well, I don't need to talk more about it. Let's jump in. Let's end up part one of my interview with Tom DeEath. I'm sitting down here talking with legendary hyphen racer Tom DeEath via phone. Tom, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

I'm doing actually pretty good for 81 years old.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

Good to hear that. Good to hear that. Excited to hear that you're kind of come out and uh and and watch uh some races here in a couple weeks at Tri-Cities and in Seattle.

SPEAKER_00: 4:10

Yeah, I've got my flight reservations and uh it's kind of like uh you know on my bucket list, maybe one last time to come out west to watch Pasco and Seattle, uh two of the uh favorite race courses.

SPEAKER_01: 4:27

Yeah, that's uh it's it'll be fun to see out there, and it's I'm sure you have a lot of memories from from racing out there. Was is that truly one of your favor your favorite race sites that you went to?

SPEAKER_00: 4:38

Well, it it it certainly had a lot of favorite memories on and off, you know, and and obviously some agony of defeat memories too, but uh but uh you know that's all goes with the territory, you know. Yeah when you when you become a you know professional boat racer, which I never had any intention of doing when I was young, it just kind of evolved that way.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

Okay, all right. Well, let's talk about that when you started racing. I believe you were 14 or so, Michigan native, began racing outboards. Uh right. Was this just for fun or or did you didn't really have big ambitions for it?

SPEAKER_00: 5:15

Uh no, I obviously my father was a big influence because we had a uh you know a boatyard on Ashland Avenue, which was on the Fox Creek Canal that led to the Detroit River. And obviously uh that was very close to where the traditional uh Detroit race course was, where you know, uh even before I was born, they were running sleepstakes races, Harmsworth Trophy, Silver Cup, Detroit Memorial, uh once in a while the Gold Cup. Uh so Detroit had as many as three races a summer, so we could hear the boats testing us kids. I'm talking about, you know, I was probably 11, 12 years old, and we'd get on our bicycles and we would ride down to Keynes, which is where the pit area was. So it took us a while to get there, and by the time we got there, you know, we probably missed the testing, but we at least saw the boats, you know, coming out of the water and and the teams around the boats, you know. So because at that time Keynes, which was a marina right there by Sinbad's and across from the the Detroit Yacht Club is where all the boats got launched, you know. So uh yeah, so the interest was there. Uh magazines my father had, obviously, and uh, you know, of course, way back then uh we didn't get a television until 1952. So uh uh, you know, we picked up uh literature boating magazines uh and read and of course I went through them pretty fast looking for the results of the races or stories about race boats, you know. And that's when I got the interest to want to get a race boat. I was probably twelve. And my dad told me that if you ever earn enough money, son, uh you know, we'll talk about it. So that that's how the uh the ember got you know turned into a small flame.

SPEAKER_01: 7:22

Well then that fl that flame continued to grow throughout your life.

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

It did. I uh you know, all I really wanted to do, my favorite class uh at that time was called the 135 cubic inch hydroplane class. And I thought they were just the coolest boats, uh uh, you know. They had Ford V860 flathead motors in them, and they smelt really cool. They had alcohol for fuel, and they all had cool names and they all were tiny, 13 and a half, fourteen feet long. And so, but you couldn't drive those or race those until you were sixteen. And APBA wouldn't allow uh uh you know, young people, and I wasn't even fourteen yet, you know, for that. So that's the reason I decided, well, the first thing I would love to do is get you know, uh an outboard race boat. And and I thought marathon racing would be a good way to go because uh y you're on the water longer, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 8:25

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00: 8:27

My very first race was the Detroit News, Bell Al Outboard Marathon, and it was fifty miles, and I had a Sidcraft and uh hand throttle and a seven and a half horsepower Mercury, and we went twenty-five miles downriver under the Ambassador Bridge and the Bell Al Bridge. So my first race was on the Detroit River, all the way down to Wyandotte and turn around and come back, you know. So that was my very first experience in a sanctioned race. And of course they ran A utility or yeah, A utility, B Utility, 36, C Utility, and D utility. Those were the faster guys, you know, with the uh fift 40 horsepower motors, I guess, back then. Wow. So that was that was it. Now I I couldn't get enough of that, you know. So and of course, all at the amateur level, and I'll even back up. I was always kind of a mechanical uh guy, and I had paper outs, two of them, and I carried groceries, cut lawns, rake leaves, did anything I could. I was fascinated with money. Uh couldn't wait till I could take my nickels, dimes, and quarters to the the Commonwealth Bank. And back then you had a bank book, and when you put all that all your money up on the counter, the lady counted it and she added it into your bank book, you know. And so I look at that. And I collected coins too, so obviously when you're young, you know, and you're getting paid with change, you're looking at dates and stuff saving the good ones, and obviously, or the ones you already have collected. And so I did that a lot. So but that's how I raise money.

SPEAKER_02: 10:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 10:11

Kind of stuff to uh, you know, support my goal to someday, you know, uh end up with a 135 cubic inch hydro, which became the 150 cubic inch class. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 10:25

Yeah. Well, it's a it's a dangerous sport to enter if you're fascinated with money, right?

SPEAKER_00: 10:28

Because you're it it takes a lot of money to you start off with a fortune and you turn it into a small one, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 10:37

Yeah. Well, uh growing up in that that time frame and that in your area, you had some huge names in the sport. Uh we did. I'm sure I'm sure you had some people you looked up to. Did you have any mentors growing up?

SPEAKER_00: 10:50

Uh people you just looked up to in the They were almost all the drivers, you know, of course, us kids, we you know, we we wouldn't get much information because we were either sneaking around the pits or sneaking to a place where we could watch them. And so we got to know who the drivers were by the colors of their shirts uh or their helmets and stuff like that. So uh we did uh were drawn to drivers like uh Wild Bill Cantrell with the star on his helmet and Danny Foster. Um, you know, he drove a lot of different boats, uh, but whatever he got into, we knew he'd usually win with it. Chuck Thompson was another one that and of course the Miss Pepsi was the favorite of a lot of the kids because of Pepsi Cola. And uh and we liked the Canadian drivers too. Bob Hayward was uh you know, such a gentleman, drove uh with an orange kapok jacket, but he had a collared white shirt and long sleeves. So he was kind of like getting into the office, you know. He was a businessman looking until he put the life jacket on, you know. Right. So yeah, there were there were a lot of, you know, and of course we knew about Lee Shahneth, and we knew about you know uh uh quite a few of the other drivers. And then I was very much in tune with limited inboard racing. So I knew uh uh Donnie Wilson ran a 135, uh Ronnie Muson drove a bunch of different boats, uh because I went to some of the races with my father, and so you know, uh we got to see uh Chuck Hunter, Buddy Byers. Uh so there was a lot of people that that I admired. Did any of those at that time influence me? Only enough to keep that amber burning to where I wanted to get at 135 and race inboard hydroplanes.

SPEAKER_02: 12:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

Later on, there was a few people that did. I could mention names. Uh the guy that really taught me how to start was a guy named Ed Barko. He was from downriver, and his uh he had uh a 135 and a 136. His boats were called the Vagabond. And uh he was he was like really uh the kingpin at that time in the 135 class. Another guy, Bob Lukenhoff, drove for my father, 135. And uh so that was the class that I really was fascinated with, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 13:25

So uh it was probably more of a driver's class, too, right?

SPEAKER_00: 13:31

Yeah, because uh it was real remember back back then when I first fell in love with that class, there was no such thing as a 136, one four which became one forty-five. There was no such thing as a two hundred eighty. There was, you know, there was no such thing as uh, you know, the stock classes. They basically were 48s, 135s, 225s, 266, and 7 liter, you know, and and that was it. Uh the stock classes didn't come into play until much later. Which would be the 145 class today, like I guess they call it two and a half stock, and you know, the those classes all evolved from the modified classes when uh, you know, obviously they had uh those were expensive classes to get into. So the 136 class basically was the same V860, same boat, but a two-barrel barrel carburetor on gasoline went much slower, obviously.

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

Well, well, fun yeah, fun fun times to think back on.

SPEAKER_00: 15:35

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 15:38

But you know, just a few years later in the 70s, uh George Simon hired you on to drive his Missy West, and you were his last last driver there. And like you said, you weren't looking for being a professional racer, but you became one and made a pretty big name on the unlimited circuit. You won 50 years ago the uh 1976 Gold Cup in Detroit.

SPEAKER_00: 16:01

Uh yeah, that would be next summer, is the 50th anniversary, June the 27th. My first victory was the Garwood trophy race, uh just uh it was June the 29th, just past uh the 50th anniversary of that. But yeah, before that, uh I'll I'll back up a little bit because I certainly was kind of uh I finally did get out of outboards after I was, you know, I raced those two years. So when I became sixteen, uh the first boat that I was able to get my hands on, because I couldn't afford a 135, was a burnout 280. And uh I uh spent the whole winter in the garage behind the house uh cutting out little pieces of wood with my brother's help too. Yeah, Roger, I had an older brother. Was he wasn't interested in racing like I was at that time. And so uh that really is the first boat uh, you know, that I uh got to race. Uh we went down to Cincinnati, Ohio, and uh unfortunately it was a tragic race, uh no fatality, but my very first heat of racing and this is the truth, uh uh you know, in the outboards I was making good starts even in the marathon races. So I I learned how to, you know, make decent starts. And so uh in the 280, in my very first heat of racing, an inboard, I was sixteen and I made a beautiful start, and nobody's around me. I'm heading for the first turn way on the outside because I kind of figured I should be away from the fast guys. And of course I backed off for the corner way too soon, and I got passed by everybody, you know. Um and the the experienced drivers wouldn't have backed off at all, they'd have just hauled it in there, you know. And I had a guy on the outside of me, Joe Alby, uh his boat was called Sir Ron, and he chopped right in front of me. I thought I was outside, but he was actually outside of me. And he blew my goggles off and black and blue my face, and everybody went around the turn, and I saw nothing but rooster tails sitting down the back stretch, and my motor was sputtering, and finally it cleared out, and I was dead last, and so I kind of followed the rooster tails, yeah, and I'm heading down the back stretch, and uh and all of a sudden I see rooster tails coming at me, and remember I'm kind of ducking behind the dashboard a little bit because I don't have any goggles on anymore. My eyes are stinging, and so's my cheeks, and I'm thinking, oh my god, I hope I'm not on the wrong straightaway, you know, because Cincinnati-Ohio River is pretty narrow.

SPEAKER_02: 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

But I was on the right straightaway when I got closer to where these boats were actually coming at me. They were coming at me on the backstretch. What I didn't know, and I as I got closer to the halfway point of the backstretch, I saw a boat, the moonshine baby, uh, kind of bobbing around with no driver in it. Okay. And then I looked and I saw uh there was the back of an orange helmet, because you know, back then we had not even Gentex jackets, we had K Pok jackets, and the drivers were pretty low in the water, so all you saw was the helmet.

unknown: 19:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 19:26

And it had a bubble shield on it, and when he turned around uh toward me, uh this is where the gory part starts, uh his face shield was all steamed up. And I'm shutting my boat down, coasting toward him, and he's waving for help, but his hand was gone and his arm was gone uh hanging on by a piece of skin. He had got thrown out of his boat and one of the other boats ran over him. Okay. And I'm 16 years old. And so I'm thinking I my boat is slowing down, stopped. I was almost the first one to him. Uh the other two guys that were coming, the rooster tails that were coming at me, okay, were Ed Morgan and Chuck Thompson Jr. And uh Ed Morgan and Chuck both realized that that the driver was seriously injured. And they jumped into the water. They in fact Morgan was running down his deck faster than the boat was coasting, you know. And uh anyway, uh long story short, uh they jumped in the water, so I didn't see much point in me, you know, hanging around watching this. Ed swam up behind him and grabbed him behind and and held his arm really tight. And I thought I better get to shore because they used to have what they'd call uh the human line from the beach to the ambulance, you know. And they had people holding arms on both sides to have a clear pathway for the rescue people. And so I chugged my boat away from there and to the shoreline and beached it. My dad came down to me and he says, What's going on? And I I said, Better get the human line, because uh the driver lost his arm. And I didn't know it, but the guy's wife was standing right there, so very traumatic. Uh obviously, he he survived, he lived, he went on to race again with one arm and became a good friend of mine. But on the way home, my dad said to me, uh, because he was driving the car and stuff and towing my race road with my mother, and he says, Uh, son, you sure you want to do this?

SPEAKER_02: 21:43

Yeah, oh my God.

SPEAKER_00: 21:45

Yeah, so that was my very first inboard hydroplane race.

SPEAKER_01: 21:49

Wow, yeah, that that would make a huge impression on your own. Oh, it did, it did.

SPEAKER_00: 21:55

Uh so I made it a point to visit him, obviously, when he came home. He was from the Detroit area.

SPEAKER_02: 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:01

And uh, we became really good friends, and uh so but that's that's the story of my first inboard hydroplane race. Obviously, I continued on, so but I did learn a lot from from that experience, yes.

SPEAKER_02: 22:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

So, and and to get to the George Simon thing, remember, I'm still don't know diddly squat about uh race boats. I'm trying to figure this stuff out on myself. Yeah, I didn't know a lock nut from a farmer's nut, and uh and so the first few races I went to the dashboard would get loose and fall out. And of course, you kind of learn from what you what what you did wrong, you know. Fortunately, I didn't get in anybody's way too much. My dad really wasn't mechanical, so he kind of just let me figure it out on my own, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 22:58

Okay, the trial by fire.

SPEAKER_00: 23:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:01

And I finally did get rid of the 280, and uh and I was this is a funny story, but true. I was uh engaged to be married to Judy, and I was saving money uh to get married, and I had twelve hundred dollars saved up. And I still had the two eighty and I saw an ad for a laughterback hydroplane. Uh Shorty Hogarth was selling his uh 150 cubic inch hydroplane, Shorty's Lauderback Special. Fifteen hundred dollars boat motor trailer. Oh wow. And I didn't want anybody to know what I was doing. I had a good job, I was working at General Motors and and I was gonna get married that fall. And so I borrowed three hundred uh more dollars from my grandmother and took my twelve hundred out of the bank and I I drove straight to Portsmouth, Virginia, and bought my first one fifty cubic inch hydroplate.

SPEAKER_02: 24:04

There you go.

SPEAKER_00: 24:05

Needless to say, that didn't go well with anybody, you know, except me.

SPEAKER_01: 24:10

Right, right, right. Oh well that's that's a racer right there. That's a racer. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 24:16

So I I actually won, you know, I was trying to win a heat of racing, let alone a race, you know. But and I actually did win one heat of racing. Uh that uh uh that's what I was aspiring to at least win a heat, let alone a race. And I did do that with the 280 in Chicago, the uh in a rock quarry. It was a short course, and I uh elimination heat, I got a first place there. And in fact, I still have the trophy. I ended up third overall. That was the first trophy I ever won.

SPEAKER_02: 24:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 24:48

And uh and then the lauder back that I bought uh from Shorty Hogarth, uh, I went to Charleston, West Virginia the same year that I bought that, and uh that was my first victory, uh where I won both heats. So but I still didn't know what I was doing, okay. And uh so anyway, long story short, there were there was one particular person. I mean, when Judy and I got married, uh we both had great jobs and no kids yet, and of course Vietnam was hanging over everybody. Yeah um there was an opportunity to go to Florida and so I did that because uh there was a marina, take over the lease, thousand dollars down, take over the lease. So we were newly married, we both quit our jobs and we moved to Florida and took over the lease of this marina, and that's the key part of how I got better and uh uh more knowledgeable about how to uh race a boat and race smart. Okay. Uh and he owned a seven-liter called Sunshine Baby.

unknown: 26:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 26:10

And Ray kind of took me under his wing. He saw something in me, because there's a lot of people in the St. Pete area that race boats. Right. And young people. But uh Judy and I were new, and Meredith, his wife, and Ray, of course, he was in the marina business, and so was I. Obviously, I was a competitor, but and I had a lot of back, and so did he. His was a seven liter, mine was a one fifty. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but he must have seen something in me that he didn't see in any of the locals. And uh so he started guiding my uh experience and taught me how to win as slowly as possible. Tom, don't let the boat don't make the boat do something it doesn't like to do. It's smarter than you are, let it do what it likes to do, you know. So he told me how to taught me over time, you know, how to hide the buoy, how to do a lot of mechanical stuff to be make my motor better. But so he really uh mentored me, and then I started driving his seven liter when he couldn't anymore. And and of course, then I started winning the bigger races. So without the Sunshine Baby, there never would have been a Miss US.

SPEAKER_02: 27:21

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:23

George Simon called my father uh and wanted to find out which one because Roger was racing by then, which one of the two boys drives the seven liter, and what possessed George to call my dad, I don't know. Who advised him to call my dad? I don't know. Okay, but he knew about me driving a seven liter and winning races in Ray Gasner, Sunshine Baby, H57. And so uh that was he said, Well, that'd be Tom. So I want Tom to call me, is what George told my father, and give him my contact information. So that's how that's how that began.

SPEAKER_02: 28:07

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

So without the Sunshine Baby, there never would have been some beats and a Ms. US. Absolutely would never have happened.

SPEAKER_01: 28:17

That's pretty wild to think about this all the steps you had to go through to to get that position. Uh I mean, a lot of a lot of things in life, right? If something doesn't happen, you're not gonna get that end goal.

SPEAKER_00: 28:28

Exactly. And again, I'm still doing this at an amateur level. And uh, you know, uh, and I didn't I mean Ray took a lot of time with me teaching me how to run with the educated right foot. And so uh because a Hemi engine with a supercharger fuel injected on methanol with uh all the horsepower that thing had, Don Gartlett's helped uh Doc, you know, Doc Hardin and him and Ray build the motors. So there was no lack of horsepower there, trust me.

SPEAKER_01: 29:01

I'm sure that was fun to drive.

SPEAKER_00: 29:03

Oh, it was uh an eye-opening experience, and and to this day, that's the only boat that I have never, and this is the truth, I was never able to ever run that thing on the mat wide open. I never got to the bottom with a with the right pedal. Never. I tried, and I was full of a lot of brave back then, but trust me, it had its own, you know, and I kept listening to what Ray told me, you know, don't try and make the boat do what it doesn't want to do, it'll bite you. Let it do what it likes to do. So I was trying to, you know, run that thing exactly the way that he was teaching me how to run it. And uh and then when things started clicking between the boat and Ray's patience and me, uh we started beating everybody. Boats that we shouldn't beat. I mean we had plenty of speed on the straightaway, but it was an older boat with a narrow transom and the new cabovers were coming out, so it was uh uh you know quite a challenge uh with that boat. And the biggest race I I think was the turning point that I won with that. He always wanted to win the Southland sweepstakes, which was the St. Petersburg free-for-all at the end of a regatta weekend.

SPEAKER_02: 30:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 30:23

And uh and there was a whole fleet. I won the seven-liter race that weekend and against the boats that would be in the free-for-all, the Southland sweepstakes. And of course, I finally won the Southland sweepstakes for Ray Gaster and Sunshine boat, never raced again. Wow. Never raced again. Yeah. So so that was uh you know, that was the beginning of the end of my amateur career, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_01: 30:52

Okay. Well, well, let's talk about your professional career. Um because you got a lot of great accolades and wins and championships in the unless. Unlimited ranks as well as inboard racing. But we're going to pause here, knuckleheads, and we're going to get back to this episode next week. It's a cliffhanger, I know. I can hear you groaning from my studios. But we're going to jump back in next week and talk to Tom more about his start of his unlimited racing career and the process he went through in Unlimited Rinks. I hope you enjoyed part one. Don't forget to come back next week for part two. In the meantime, check us out online. We're on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, as well as our website, RichotellTalk.com. And when you're on the website, check out Richardel Talk Plus, a subscription-based service where you can choose a monthly donation amount. And in exchange, you're entered into a monthly raffle drawing. You can win numerous prizes, as well as early entry to all new episodes, and some many more fun prizes along the way. But that's all I got for you this week. So until next time, I hope to see you at the races.