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A marvelous discovery: Charles "Fearless" Balke's scrapbook
By
Ed Youngblood
Bill Bradford recalls an ornate, two-foot-tall trophy (right) in the living room of the home where he grew up in Bourbon County, Kentucky. His father explained that it was won by his uncle (Bill's great uncle), who was a famous motorcycle racer.
An inscription on the big cup reveals that his name was “Chas V. Balke,” and he won it on July 4, 1913, at Elgin, Illinois.
Many years later, in 2004, after his parents had passed away, Bill and his wife Beth were cleaning out the homestead, and in the attic they found some of great uncle Balke's national championship medals that bore the initials “FAM.”
Then they found the scrapbook.
The pages were
yellowed with age, but the scrapbook was in good condition and filled with hundreds of
newspaper clippings documenting the career of Charles Balke, whom they
learned from the clippings was not just Charles Balke, but Charles
“Fearless” Balke (left). The scrapbook had been maintained with
obvious care and dedication by Balke's wife, Edith Bradford-Balke, Bill's
great aunt.
In June 2006, the Bradfords donated the scrapbook and the trophy, which was awarded to Balke for winning America's first national championship road race, to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum.
Prior to its discovery in 2004, there is no telling how many years this
valuable artifact lay untouched. Its contents reveal that Edith Balke
effectively closed its cover when her husband died in June, 1914. She
collected clippings about his funeral and a few retrospective articles that
appeared in motorcycle periodicals after his death, but that was the end.
Edith later remarried and went on with her life, and the chronicle of her first love, one of the greatest racers of the first decade of American motorcycling, remained behind with successors in the Bradford family. It has not until now been available to historians of the era, but one does not have to spend too much time in its pages to realize that here is more than we ever knew about Fearless Balke, and he was a greater champion than we might have realized. To the left and below are photos of the scrapbook.
Charles Victor Balke was born in Taylor, Texas in 1891. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1906 where he got a job with the Diamond Rubber Company and bought a 1¾-horsepower Indian motorcycle, on which he won the first race he ever entered, at Agriculture Park on February 22, 1907.
Among his contemporaries in the amateur ranks were Morty Graves and Ray Seymour. All three showed brilliance and would continue as rivals of national caliber through the remainder of Balke's career. Balke beat Graves the first time he raced against him, and it did not sit well with Graves. Balke and Seymore battled relentlessly on the track, but otherwise enjoyed a friendly and mutually respectful, although competitive, relationship. With Graves the relationship was dangerously competitive, and news reports of the day state that even as amateurs, Balke and Graves battled so viciously and used such rough tactics against one another that spectators would shout in horror during their high-speed duels.
During one such battle in 1908, a young woman in the crowd became almost hysterical from the frightening spectacle before her, and she leaped to her feet and cried out, “Fearless!” This was Edith Bradford, the maker of the scrapbook, a spirited young woman known to her friends as “Snooks.”
After the race she was taken to meet Balke, the man who had terrified her with his speed and daring, and for “Snooks” and “Fearless” it was love at first sight.
From 1907 through 1910, Balke raced throughout Southern California
on
several brands, including Thor, Indian, and Flying Merkel. He is pictured
at right aboard a Merkel when he was still an amateur.
The creation of the scrap book actually began in late 1910 or early 1911, just about the time that Balke was graduating from Trade Rider (a promising amateur with industry support) to professional status with a full-blown factory ride with Indian. Once he became a professional, Balke was contracted for weekly league racing at the Riverview motordrome in Chicago. As a pro, he could now afford a wife, and he did not like being half a continent away from Edith.
How he
dealt with this separation, and how they eloped speaks to the romantic
quality of the brief life they would share together. One day, Balke boarded a
train for the two-day trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. Upon arrival, he got
in a taxi and went to the Bradford home, instructing the driver to wait. He
proposed to Snooks on her doorstep, she grabbed some luggage, and they
hopped in the taxi to go to the Justice of the Peace, where they were
married. Then they went on to the train station for the two-day return trip to Chicago
in time for Balke's next racing engagement. The photos of the couple above
were taken
at about the time of their marriage.
An after-the-fact wedding announcement in the scrapbook indicates that the Bradfords approved of their daughter's wild boy, because later that year Edith's mother came to Chicago to host a big reception. Then she gave the couple a honeymoon trip to New York City, followed by a quick tour of Europe.
Snooks became an integral part of her husband's racing career. Yellowed
newspaper photos show her at the track, dressed fit to kill, standing by her
husband, who was sometimes in fashionable street clothes and sometimes in
racing gear aboard one of his Indians, as pictured here. She was rarely
separated from Balke and was often the first person to arrive in the
winner's circle to kiss his grimy face after yet another victory.
The scrapbook speaks to her dedication. From the moment of their elopement onward, it contains what appears to be every clipping from each of his racing engagements, not only for the weekly shows in Chicago, but in cities throughout the nation: Birmingham, Los Angeles, Denver, Salt Lake, Stockton, Oakland, Sacramento, Milwaukee, and on and on. The sheer number of headlines containing the name “Balke” or “Fearless Balke” is simply overwhelming. In photos he is characteristically sporting a big grin.
A historian reviewing the scrapbook will have one regret, which is that Mrs. Balke meticulously cut each clipping right to the edges of the columns of type. In most cases, cities, dates, and the names of newspapers are missing. However, she has maintained a reasonably consistent chronological order, so stories in local news clippings can be reconciled with racing schedules and feature stories published in the leading motorcycle publications of the day. In addition, she sometimes made handwritten notes about which city the clippings were from. Rarely, she wrote other notes that tantalize a reader today.
For example, in March 1912, Balke and Jake DeRosier crashed during a grudge match in Los Angeles. Balke was the young lion who had begun to consistently defeat the great DeRosier (pictured below are some of the Federation of American Motorcyclists medals Balke won in national championship competition). Undoubtedly, DeRosier resented his displacement by the young star. Though they were teammates for both Indian and Excelsior, their rivalry became so combative that track managers would not allow them to practice together. When it came to a head in a grudge race and a violent crash, Balke was unhurt but DeRosier's career came to an end. He was severely injured, his health steadily declined, and he died a year later.
The week after the horrendous crash, a benefit was held in which the riders donated their earnings to help DeRosier and his family. About $600 (equal to perhaps $12,000 today) was raised, and written in a small hand in the margin of a clipping about this race is the note, “$54.” Was this the amount that Balke earned and donated that day? We may never know, but what else could this notation mean?
Another clipping reports that Balke will be riding a “7 horsepower” bike (meaning a 1,000cc twin) for the first time. In the margin of this story is written, “mistake.” Balke had been riding eight-valve works Indians for more than a season when this story appeared.
This example raises a not-insignificant issue for students of documents of that era. One must be cautious about the reporting that appeared in local newspapers. Names of riders are frequently misspelled (Morty Graves is frequently referred to as "Marty," and proofreaders with good intentions sometimes turned Balke into "Blake") and events are not always accurately reported. For example, Balke once took a spill in Birmingham that was reported in some detail in two local papers, and it is quite impossible to conclude from these descriptions that the reporters saw the same event on the same day.
In 1911 and 1912, both Balke and his cohort Ray Seymour (right)
raced at Riverview. Their level of competition was so above the rest of the
field that both Indian and the Riverview management concluded it was too
much of a good thing and a waste of resources to use these two talented men
at the same location. Seymour was reassigned to race in New Jersey, but this
did not help the monotony at Riverview.
After Seymour's departure, Balke won 48 races in a row! When other riders threatened to boycott and not ride against him, Indian put him on the road, taking on and beating local favorites all over the nation.
Except for a few months under the Excelsior banner in late 1911, Balke spent his entire career with Indian, and one could conclude from the scrapbook's contents that he was more than just a hired gun on the race track. He held a job with the racing department in Springfield, and sometimes carried a business card from Indian's depot in Atlanta. Such a card was found inserted between the pages of the scrapbook.
In his travels, Balke was not only a consistent winner, but he also became a one-man promotional machine. He was a great favorite with the fans, promoters, and the press. He had charisma, a devilish grin, and a conversational style that reporters loved. Shortly after he turned pro, one writer said about him, “Of all the racing men, perhaps ‘Fearless' Balke would be the most reckless, if there were need of it. It's in the looks of him – small, limber, quick as a cat, courageous as a bull terrier, and witty with a subterranean lingo that would never do in polite society. He has blue eyes, white teeth, and a grin a yard wide.”
Balke had a fine wit, and to one reporter he confessed that his wife, Edith, was helping him tone down his “non-sectarian vocabulary.” For a young man barely 20, Balke had a good business sense and the ability to deliver the kind of statements to the press that the promoters loved. He would arrive in town some days before a big race, make some practice laps, then with a convincing smile declare that it was the fastest and best-prepared track he had seen in many a day, and that come race day the records were bound to fall.
For promotional value and spectator appeal, Balke became the top draw in the nation. And it was a promoter's dream when he could be matched against Seymour, Graves, or Excelsior's up-and-coming Bob Perry.
The most noteworthy victory of Balke's career came on the Fourth of July weekend in 1913 when he won the first road race in U.S. history granted national championship status by the FAM. It was a 250-mile race over an 8.5-mile road course at Elgin, Illinois, and Balke won at an average speed of just over 55 miles per hour, leading an Indian sweep of the top five spots, plus eighth.
In addition to a road racing national championship title, Balke won $500 in gold plus $200 cash and the large loving cup from the V-Ray Spark Plug Company. His time shattered by more than a half-hour the 250-mile endurance record held previously by Indian's Charles Gustafson Jr.
It was a much-celebrated victory for Indian, which one of the national magazines described as follows: “Warwhoops are resounding through the vales of the Fox River tonight. In the tepees throughout the village there is much firewater and fireworks, and hundreds of Indian braves are ghost-dancing and putting the gin in Elgin. And runners are already far upon the forest and prairie trails spreading afar the tidings how ‘Fearless' Balke today won the First National Road Race.”
Thereafter, Balke
was often described in press clippings as not only the U.S. National
Champion, but the World Champion. Despite the fact that no governing body
had conferred such a title on him, it was a claim that few would dispute,
such was his reputation by the end of 1913. His Elgin victory also put him
on the cover of Motor Cycling (left).
In December, 1910, Balke had broken every amateur speed record from one to 20 miles, but these were disallowed because the officials had not followed proper procedures in measuring his engine. He turned pro before he could get another shot at the amateur records. Balke never forgot this disappointment, and in December, 1913 he and Snooks arrived in Los Angeles with two new Indians and the intention of capturing all speed records from one to 100 miles at the big one-mile circular board track at Playa del Rey.
A fire had burned over 900 feet of the track, and the Hendee Manufacturing Company underwrote the cost of repairs sufficient for Balke's record attempt. However, they did not rebuild the whole of the damaged section, but rather laid down a row of planks only about 12 feet wide at the bottom of the burned-out portion. What Balke intended was fearless indeed, circling the track flat out, riding on the narrow board path time and again for a hundred laps. It would be like walking a tight rope at 100 miles per hour!
The project was thwarted by weeks of rain. The Ascot promoter offered Balke $100 just to show up and ride while he was in Los Angeles, but he refused. He was so determined to break all the records that he would not risk injury, and he was away from racing so long that the press started calling him Rip Van Balke.
But the rains continued, and at last the ground became so wet that portions of the great track's structure actually settled into the mud, creating huge undulations in the surface that left it totally unsuitable for high-speed use. After months, Balke gave up his dream and set out to re-establish his reputation as a fierce competitor.
Into the 1914 season, Charles Balke continued his winning ways, on one
occasion taking seven of the 12 features at a two-day meet in front of
10,000 fans at the Hawthorne dirt track near Chicago. This photo (right)
shows him
leading Bob Perry and Carl Gaudy at Hawthorne.
“You can see I took that story about Rip Van Balke to heart, and I wanted to show you I'm not ready for any big sleeps yet,” Balke joked with reporters.
It was a darkly ironic remark, because on June 8, 1914, what seems to have been a charmed racing career abruptly came to a tragic end. Fearless Balke and two other riders set out to practice at Hawthorne. Without informing any of the teams, the management had sent out a large horse-drawn roller onto the track. Still warming up his machine and running only about 40 mph, the first rider sped safely past the roller, which was still low on the track near the inside rail. Then, stupidly, the crew pulling the roller moved outward and higher into the racing line, seemingly oblivious of the fact that there were racing machines on the track. The second rider sped by, missing the roller by inches. Riding in his dust plume, Balke could not see the roller soon enough and ran squarely into it at an estimated 60 mph. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital an hour later, just one week shy of his 24th birthday.
One report states that Snooks arrived at his side just as his heart stopped beating. The professional riders, including Perry, Crawford, Goudy, and Verrill, as well as many of the amateurs, refused to ride at Hawthorne that day out of respect for Balke and in protest of the way he died.
The next issue of Motor Cycling, the leading trade publication of the day, carried a lengthy tribute under the banner headline,
“Charles ‘Fearless' Balke is No More!”
“'Fearless' Balke, a winner in a hundred hard-fought contests, to be killed in practice is an ending doubly sad," said Indian Chief George Hendee, quoted in the magazine. "His death has cast a gloom over the Indian ‘Wigwam' which will not be dispelled in many a day. A fearless rider, a brave warrior, a good winner and a good loser has passed on to the ‘happy hunting grounds.'”
Snooks and her mother accompanied Balke's remains back to Los Angeles, where he was buried at Rosedale Cemetery. The Los Angeles Motorcycle Club provided an escort for his funeral precession and George Hendee decreed that the Indian factory, all of its depots, and all of its dealerships worldwide would close that afternoon in honor of the great Fearless Balke. One newspaper story reports that his coffin was covered with a blanket of white roses.
After clipping the postmortems in various publications, Snooks Balke's project of documenting her husband's career came to an end. Yet the scrapbook contains poignant and personal artifacts in the aftermath. There is a small black-bordered card that reads, “Mrs. Charles V. Balke acknowledges with sincere thanks your kind expression of sympathy.”
There are two checks bearing the signature “Chas Balke” written on June 5,
1914; one to the New Southern Hotel in Chicago for $10 (left) and
the other to C.D. Peacock for $13.50. On the face of both checks is written,
“Maker Dead.” And affixed with a straight pin to a page of the scrapbook is
a long-stemmed, dry flower – a rose, uniformly tan in color but surprisingly
intact. Is it a rose from the blanket that covered Balke's coffin? What else
could it be?
It is marvelous to realize that exactly 90 years after Charles Balke's death, there emerged from the attic of Bill Bradford's childhood home a record of a great racing career that is probably more complete and personal than anything we possess for another rider of any era. Today, this precious scrapbook of Charles “Fearless” Balke's brief but brilliant life of speed, so lovingly compiled by his wife and friend Edith “Snooks” Balke, is exactly where it should be, at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum, along with the trophy he won at Elgin in 1913 to become America's first road racing national champion.
© 2007, Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum