“Lone Star Jr” Wins His First Indy 500

It took Johnny Rutherford a decade to win his first Indianapolis 500, but on Memorial Day 1974 his dream finally came true.

John Sherman Rutherford III was born in 1938 in Coffeyville, Kansas which may come as something of surprise to many of his fans that know him as “Lone Star Jr.” They can, however, take comfort in the fact that while still a preschooler his family brought him to Fort Worth, where he lives to this day.

Growing up in the carcrazy days following the Second World War, Rutherford was just ten when his father took him to a midget car race. “After that,” he recalled many years later, “everything was racing related.” While a student at North Side high school, he joined the hot-rod club and with a fellow enthusiast regularly watched the dirt track races at Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Dallas.

After graduation, Rutherford bought a 1932 Chevy Coupe and souped it up with a V8 engine. Behind the wheel of his pride-and-joy, he began burning up area dirt tracks.

In no time flat, he advanced to modified stock cars and gradually climbed the racing ladder. His progress was nothing less than phenomenal, culminating in his qualification for the Daytona 500 in 1963.

Nineteen sixty-three was also the year Rutherford met a nurse named Betty Rose Hoyer. As soon as he succeeded in convincing her that he really was single, they started dating and two months later tied a knot that held for more than half a century. “It really was love at first sight,” the happy husband would say at the drop of a hat.

The third momentous event of 1963 was the newlywed’s initial start in the 500. The next year at Indianapolis he narrowly survived one of his closest calls. He was directly behind Eddie Sachs when Sachs crashed into Dave MacDonald’s burning car killing them both instantly. Johnny somehow slipped between the blazing wreckage and the wall passing so close to Sachs that the lucky lemon the dead driver wore around his neck was later found in the engine compartment of the Texan’s car.

At Eldora Speedway in Ohio two years later, Rutherford was not as lucky. Driving a rear-engine Ford-powered sprint car, he “hooked his front wheel (in a deep rut) while coming out of Turn 2. The impact hurled his car over the outer wall of the high-banked track nose-first, launching it into a complete somersault before it landed in a 40-foot ravine outside the backstretch.”

Rutherford suffered a serious head injury, two broken arms and a fractured finger. His long and painful recovery kept him out of competition for the rest of the season forcing him to miss the annual visit to Indianapolis.

Rutherford continued to qualify for the Memorial Day classic, but the checkered flag remained elusive. Then in 1974 with his personal timekeeper Betty in the pits, previously offlimits to women, he posted the second-fastest qualifying time behind fellow Texan A.J. Foyt. To his bitter disappointment a controversial ruling by the chief steward forced him to start far back in the pack.

Even though Foyt jumped out front, Rutherford was confident he could catch him. In 24 laps he moved up from the ninth row to second place and 41 laps later passed his homestate rival. An oil leak on Lap 142 ended the race for Foyt, and Rutherford cruised to victory winning by a comfortable 22.32 seconds.

He claimed the checkered flag again in 1976 and 1980 and added his name to the list of three-time Indy 500 champions. The Pocono 500 in 1989 was his last race before officially announcing his retirement with a ceremonial last lap at Indianapolis in May 1994.

In a 2021 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Rutherford spoke warmly and with emotion about his wife Betty, who passed away two years earlier. Whenever he got the racing itch, he always remembered what she once said: “If you ever retire, you’re not going back.” He added with a smile, “I’m pretty sure she would have broken me somewhere.”

Their life after racing had been active, happy and fulfilling. But sometime in 2016 Johnny began to notice the love of his life was changing and not for the better.

“She would sit in the den at home and ask me, ‘What happened to those four people that were just sitting over there?” “I said to her, “I didn’t see them when they were there.” He paused with unmistakable sorrow before adding, “There wasn’t anybody there.”

Doctors confirmed Rutherford’s worst fear. It was dementia, and the woman he knew and loved would not be coming back.

Betty Rutherford spent her last months in a memory care center. She rarely recognized her husband or her two children or her grandchildren before permanently slipping away in January 2019.

In a final twist of fate, Johnny Rutherford (88) joins fellow racing legends A.J. Foyt (91) and Mario Andretti (86) as survivors of one of motorsports’ most dangerous eras. Their longevity is almost as remarkable as the careers that made them famous.

Read all about the early years of the oil frenzy in “Texas Boomtowns:AHistory of Blood and Oil” Order your autographed copy for $24 by mailing a check to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.