Dynamite Mike McGee
A biography by Lona Smith
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Double Edge Press, Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania
Selection
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Double Edge Press – Smashwords ebook edition
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4524-7023-8
Dynamite Mike McGee
Copyright © 2011 Lona Smith
Cover Artwork: Original design by Double Edge Press.
Elements contained within the original design include the following images in its composition:
The following images are royalty paid via dreamstime.com:
Racing Flag by Mitch1921 – royalty paid
Additional images were used with permission and were provided by:
Warren Vincent of http://www.racingfromthepast.com/
Barbara “Totsy” McGee
Persons included on the cover are (from left to right): Mike McGee, Reed Johnson, Bob Cox, Rex Johnson, Jody Wells
The following original artwork was also used on the cover:
“The Penguins” by Mike McGee
For more information on Mike McGee’s Artwork, go to http://doubleedgepress.com.
Non-fiction
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Double Edge Press, 72 Ellview Road, Scenery Hill, PA 15360
Dedication:
For my cousin, Barbara “Totsy” McGee
Acknowledgments and Thanks
Researching and writing about my cousin, Mike McGee, has been an exciting mission, filled with joy, moments of nostalgia, and gratitude for the people who’ve shared in this project. First, there are my relatives, my sisters and cousins—my inheritance through my maternal grandparents, the Conner’s—who connect us and make me proud. I am particularly grateful to Cousin Totsy, Mike’s mother, whose recollections, preserved records, and memorabilia were a treasure chest of information.
It’s indeed a unique relationship when high school and racing buddies of the 1960’s and 1970’s can come together forty years later and share memories and experiences with admiration and affection. I am particularly indebted to Jon Cummins and Rex Johnson who’ve always been only an e-mail or a phone call away when I’ve had a question, and for their time and input in compiling the racing chapters and sharing their memories. Thanks, too, to Bill Rick, Buddy Cagle, and Vic Paddock for their priceless stories.
I’m honored and profoundly grateful to Dr. Mark Ashley, founder and president of Centre for Neuroskills, and to author Jude Stringfellow, owner and biographer of Faith the Dog, for taking their time to read and review the book. Thanks also to those other professionals who have been encouraging and helpful in reviewing certain portions of the book for accuracy. They are Joanna Campbell, CEO, and Gary Arnold, VP, of Public Relations for Little People of America; Lori Mathis Long of The Center for Individuals with Physical Challenges; Emmett Hahn, long-time racing promoter; NCRA’s C. Ray Hall and Warren Hardy; and Warren Vincent from racingfromthepast.com.
To my friends, Brenda Burton and Ed Laveri, for their generosity in creating my new web site and for their patience and computer expertise in helping me become more computer literate than I’d ever hoped. To Merrilyn O’Connell, proofreader extraordinaire, who made the manuscript ‘clean’ for competitions and submissions.
Which brings me to thanking the Florida Writer’s Association and my fellow members for their support, encouragement, and the venues through which I had the opportunity to meet and present Dynamite Mike to my publisher, Rebecca Melvin.
My thanks to Rebecca Melvin of Double Edge Press for believing in Mike’s story and finding it worth sharing, for her dedication to producing an exceptional product and her contributions to the industry as a whole.
My husband George is the constant in my life, my on-the-sidelines promoter, critic, and encourager. I couldn’t think of it being any other way.
Most of all, I offer my deepest admiration and appreciation to my cousin, Dynamite Mike McGee, who lives in a place of peace in his heart, and inspires those who know him to do the same.
Dynamite Mike McGee
A biography by Lona Smith
Chapter One
August 12, 1975, is a hot night at the speedway in Dewey, but then people expect summer nights in Oklahoma to be hot. As the sun sinks behind the bleachers, spectators climb into the stands hoping a breeze will give some relief. Few of the excited fans notice a short figure in a white, red-trimmed racing suit, hands behind his back and face hidden by a wide-brimmed Western hat among the several drivers walking the track, checking out conditions for the evening’s races.
“How’s it look, tonight?” Phil asks as Mike makes his way back to the pit.
“Pretty good, Dad,” Mike says. “Track’s ironed, but it’s still tacky.” He crawls into his red-and-white Super Modified 302 Chevy with the number “69” painted on the side. The hot laps (the laps in which drivers check out the track) are about to begin. He fastens his helmet and pulls on his gloves.
“Go get ’em, Mike.” His dad taps the roof of the car as the crew rolls it onto the track.
Mike McGee is a fixture in the pits at the Tulsa Speedway and on the Oklahoma racing scene. He had worked as a member of a pit crew for friends until he was finally old enough to climb behind the wheel of his own car. Three years later he’d logged many miles in laps but had never won a race. In the beginning he was not even close, finishing 68th in the circuit the first year. To many race fans, Mike McGee is just a name on the race card and among those “who also ran,” but he’d changed tire sizes, corrected steering problems, made his engine hotter, and fine-tuned the timing. Tonight he places second in his class, which qualifies him for the Trophy Dash. Maybe—just maybe—tonight will be the night, Mike thinks as he eases his car into position for the dash. His recently built racer is “dialed-up.” The engine rumbles rhythmically in sync, while the steering wheel pulses beneath his gloved hands. His skin is wet inside his suit, and as the engine heats up, the temperature inside the car climbs to 110 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time the race is over, the steering wheel will be hot enough to blister the bare hand.
The pace car moves onto the track and drivers fall in line behind it, keeping their place. Mike has a good position. He checks his gauges and quickly glances at competitors ahead and on either side of him. They round the fourth turn, and he sees the green flag swirling in a frantic figure eight as the pace car pulls off the track. Engines rev up, the grandstand fills with acrid-smelling blue smoke from the exhausts, and the noise becomes the roar of a swarm of angry bees, but Mike hears nothing of this. Behind his goggles he keeps his eyes fixed on the track in front of him. In the periphery of his vision, he sees an opening and plunges the accelerator to the floor. As “69” shoots forward, adrenaline kicks in and he passes two cars on his right.
Mike forgets about all the things that have previously gone wrong with his car, or what could happen to it tonight, and concentrates on the course ahead of him. The needle on the temperature gauge jerks back and forth, climbing as he shoots ahead of the cars on either side of him. The engine has nothing more to give. Is it enough? As he leaves the cars behind, he sees the white flag—one lap to go. They approach the first wall, and Mike heads toward the inside rail, but the driver in front senses his move and shoots into the space. Mike leaps to the outside, lifting “69” into the air. They approach the third turn, and Mike has the advantage; his opponent must take one hand off the wheel to gear down, but Mike’s transmission shifts automatically. The little red-and-white car shoots ahead. Out of the turn, Mike makes for the inside lane, his competitor so close he feels the vibration of the other car. He hugs the inside of the track. At the fourth wall, he sees the black-and-white checkered flag and heads for it. There is nobody in front of him.
Mike McGee could have cried for many things in his life, but since his infancy he has rarely cried. Tonight, as he makes the victory lap around the track, tears mix with salty sweat on his face.
“It’s Dynamite Mike McGee,” the announcer shouts. “Dynamite Mike has done it.”
His pit crew with wide grins on their faces pump their fists into the air as they wait with the trophy girl on the red carpet. Mike’s car rolls to a stop in the winner’s circle, but it’s not until he shuts off the engine and takes off his helmet that he hears the cheers. He crawls out of the open side of his racer. The applause drops to a smattering, and then rises to a crescendo, while the trophy girl stands with her mouth gaping open.
“It’s a little kid,” spectators who don’t know Mike whisper. “It’s a midget. He’s a dwarf,” others say in awe.
“No,” a friend says, “It’s Dynamite Mike.”
All his life Mike McGee has been doing things he is not supposed to do. Tonight he’s done it again—he wins.
CHAPTER TWO
Mike McGee’s efforts to win began the moment he was conceived. It was something he and his parents would not immediately discover, but would confront them for months and years to come.
Eighteen-year-old Barbara Walters, pretty, dark-haired and slender, loved to dance and she loved to skate. She had been dancing since she was a toddler. In fact, the large house on North Elwood that was home to the Walters had a ballroom on the lower floor. It had once been the Kennedy estate, with rock walls and formal gardens surrounding it and covering a city block. Her bedroom on the third floor was where she retreated with her friends and her teenage secrets, hopes, and dreams.
For as long as she could remember the family had commuted between southern California, where the Walters’ side of the family lived, and Oklahoma, where her mother’s family had homesteaded in the early 1900s, spending two years in each place.
I was one of the Oklahoma relatives, a cousin. We saw my Aunt May, my mother’s sister, and her family only at holidays and special events during those years when the Walter’s family was living in Tulsa. I remember visiting them only once in California. Memories of that trip were my first view of an ocean and sand in my bathing suit.
In California, Barbara’s father Leonard was an electrician by day and a professional ballroom dancer at night. He supplemented the family income by giving dancing exhibitions with his Japanese partner. During the day, May Walters, an artist, made extra money by painting murals on the walls in the homes of the rich and famous. At night she waited behind the scenes with her daughter while her husband performed. Barbara, having been given dancing lessons since she was old enough to stand, became part of her father’s routine when she was five. The nights were late for a five-year-old, so her mother let her sleep until it was time to put on her dancing shoes. Then she would run a brush through her daughter’s hair, straighten her dress, and, with the sound of applause in her ears, the little girl would tap her way onto the stage.
Because of their treks from the Midwest to the west coast, Barbara changed schools every two years. In one state the schools were harder, so she always entered the next grade behind her classmates. Schools in the other state were easier, so she started out ahead. Although she had friends in both locations, it was in Tulsa she graduated, and Tulsa where she stayed.
Barbara’s other passion was ice skating. Every Friday night she and her friends headed for the rink at the Coliseum where, under the yellow glow of bare light bulbs strung overhead, they skated to the popular songs of the ’40s, met boys, and, when they got thirsty, drank Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper.
It was here that she met Philip McGee, a Tulsa boy, who was home for the weekend from his job working for the telephone company in Texas. He was cute, slender, had a quirky smile, and, Barbara learned, was three years older than she. Before the evening was over, he’d asked her for a date.
“Do you know how to dance?” she asked.
“No,” Phil replied.
“I’ll go out with you only if you learn to dance.” But when he gave her that winning smile, she relented.
Phil commuted back and forth on weekends to see Barbara, but after a year, when he couldn’t stand the long-distance romance, he asked her to marry him. “It was not the most romantic proposal,” she recalled. “We were in a car with four of his friends. He was driving and I was in the backseat.”
When she said, “yes,” Phil quit his job and moved back to Tulsa.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” her parents asked them.
“Well, no,” they admitted, “but we’ll work it out.”
“You’ll be sorry,” pronounced Mrs. McGee, her future mother-in-law, and Barbara, observing how unhappy Phil’s parents were in their marriage, prayed it would not be so.
Believing that love would take care of everything, the couple married in her parents home on North Elwood, and moved into a tiny rented apartment at 612½ South Elgin for which they paid $65 a month. They had no car, and Phil was yet to find a job. Although she was named and christened Barbara Jean, Phil’s pet name for his new bride was “Toots.” To her family and her friends, she had always been called “Totsy,” a name given to her by her Grandfather Conner when she was “a tot.” If someone called out, “Barbara,” she would not even turn around. She was probably no more naïve about sex and marriage than most teenage girls in 1949. When she confessed to her best friend Scotty that she didn’t know what to expect from married life, they bought a book about marriage and read it. With the limited information that the book provided and the erroneous advice from an older friend, it was not surprising that three months later Barbara learned she was pregnant.
***
Barbara Jean stood in front of the open bathroom door where her husband was shaving, her hand on her extended belly. “Phil, the contractions are getting closer. I think we better get ready to go to the hospital.”
He looked at her in alarm. “Call your parents,” he said and promptly cut himself. His hand shook as he grabbed a washcloth and pressed it against the oozing red on his cheek.
“But I thought we said we’d take a taxi.” She drew in a breath and grabbed her abdomen.
“No, call your parents,” Phil answered more sharply than he intended. “We don’t know how long a cab would take to get here.”
May and Leonard Walters lived only a few blocks away, and when they showed up at the door minutes later with Barbara’s fourteen-year-old brother Bud in tow, Phil was still shaving. May phoned the hospital and asked them to tell Dr. Looney that they were on their way. They waited for Phil, and they waited.
“When’re we gonna go?” Bud questioned.
“Soon,” his mother said.
“You’ve asked that a dozen times,” Leonard scolded. “Don’t ask again.”
Bud stomped over and plopped down in a chair. While they waited they timed Barbara’s labor pains. Each time a contraction began Bud would say, “Oops, there’s another one.”
“Aren’t you about through, Phil?” May called to her son-in-law as Barbara’s pains grew in frequency and intensity. After what seemed like forever, Phil appeared at the door wearing bits of bloodied toilet paper in a haphazard design across his face.
At St. John’s hospital, they made a comical group; Phil with his splotched face, Barbara, bending over with pain, and Bud, embarrassed by the scene, dragging behind. Inside, they pushed the button for the elevator, and when the door opened they rushed on, except for Leonard, who got caught in the door. The grandfather-to-be was half in and half out of the elevator, and the doors would neither open nor close.
“Do something, Leonard,” May said. “You work on elevators.”
“I can’t do anything from here,” Leonard said as he struggled to force his way in.
“But you’re an electrician,” his wife insisted. Barbara started to giggle.
When they got to the second floor, Dr. Looney was waiting for them. “What’s so funny?” he asked as the hysterical group spilled from the elevator.
The doctor calmed the excited father and grandparents and reassured the mother-to-be that everything was going to be all right. Barbara adored her obstetrician and believed him as he handed her over to the delivery room nurse and went to scrub.
The birth was easy for a first pregnancy, and Michael David McGee came into the world on April 20, 1950, weighing six pounds, five ounces. He was sixteen inches long.
“We have a son,” Phil said as he leaned over and kissed her.
“When can I see him?” Barbara asked groggily.
“You’re tired,” May soothed, sponging her daughter’s face with a dampened washcloth. “Wait until you’re stronger.”
By the time her parents came for visiting hours the following afternoon, Barbara had been bathed, given breakfast and lunch, but she still had not seen her son. “Why won’t they let me see him?” she demanded.
“They want to keep him in an incubator for a couple of days,” her mother replied.
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“They keep all babies in incubators when they’re first born,” Leonard lied. Barbara didn’t think that was true, but why would her father lie to her?
“What are you keeping from me?” she asked when on the third and fourth days she had not seen her son.
“We’ll check with the doctor,” the nurses said when she inquired. Her husband and parents did not seem to be as happy as people with a new baby in the family should have been.
For four days her husband, her parents and the doctors had been waiting for the baby to die. Nobody wanted to tell her that the child she had brought into the world had so many things wrong with him that he probably would not live. “There are some things wrong with Mike,” her mother explained.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Barbara screamed.
“We didn’t want you to get too attached to him. We thought we were doing the right thing.”
“What is wrong with him?” Barbara threw back the covers. “I’m going to see my son,” she said.
May punched the call button and a nurse rushed into the room.
“Take me to see my son,” Barbara demanded.
“Wait here, Mrs. McGee. I’ll get the doctor.” The woman scurried from the room.
The man who came was not Barbara’s beloved Dr. Looney, but a pediatrician to whom she took an instant dislike. From him she learned the blunt truth—and blunt it was, because he did not seem to have a compassionate bone in his body.
The doctor explained that Mike had a cleft palate so severe that there was no roof to his mouth. Unless he was fed with his head at a certain angle to keep from aspirating formula into his lungs, he would asphyxiate.
“Can’t that be fixed?” Barbara asked.
“His digestive system is not completely formed,” the doctor continued, ignoring her question. He went on to explain that because of a severe inguinal hernia, his intestines had dropped into his scrotum—a repulsive-looking, ugly black mass between his tiny legs, which the doctor described in detail. In addition, pressure on his urinary tract prevented him from urinating as he grew more jaundiced each day.
“If he does not pass urine,” the doctor warned, “he will die.”
“But can’t you do something?” she pleaded.
“We wouldn’t be able to perform surgery to correct any of his problems until he is a few months old,” the doctor continued, and although he didn’t say so, Barbara sensed that he thought everybody would be better off if the baby died.
“There are a few minor problems as well,” the pediatrician said. “His two little toes are turned up at right angles, and his thumbs face backward. Those things are easy to fix,” the doctor added matter-of-factly. “Oh yes, there’s one more thing. It’s too early to tell until he starts to grow, but his limbs are short. He may be dwarfed.”
By the time the pediatrician finished, tears were streaming down Barbara’s face. “I want to see my baby,” she said quietly.
“Have it your way,” the doctor said as he left the room closing the door, not too gently, behind him.
A nurse brought Mike to her. Swaddled in a clean, sweet-smelling blue blanket, his abnormalities concealed, the tiny boy was laid in his mother’s arms. Yes, his head seemed to be a little large, but Barbara looked into the rich, dark eyes of her son and thought he was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. The eyes that looked back at her appeared to hold knowledge no infant could possess. His expression seemed to say, I have been given to you. Take care of me. We will make it. That day, mother and son formed a bond that has lasted a lifetime.
On the fifth morning Mike passed his first drops of urine.
CHAPTER THREE
When the young parents took Mike home, Barbara’s fear bordered on nausea as she remembered the pediatrician’s parting instructions. “You will have to hold the baby at an eighty-degree angle when you feed him or you will kill him.” The doctor then explained the procedure she would have to go through every day to help Mike eliminate his bowels. “If his intestines turn blue, call an ambulance, not me, because that means he’s strangulated and is dying.” She vowed that this doctor would never know her apprehension and that she would do what was necessary to raise her son.
Mike was a contented baby and rarely cried except for the time each day when his bowels had to be relieved. It would have been a horrible scene to watch, but the daily routine of inserting a special suppository in his little bottom and massaging his intestines, forcing the elimination of his bowels was carried out in private, sparing mother and son embarrassment. It was an excruciatingly agonizing process. Barbara sobbed and the baby screamed in pain until he almost couldn’t breathe. Yet—it had to be done—every day.
Phil’s mother, Mrs. McGee, scoffed at the procedure. “A couple tablespoons of Karo syrup in his formula will do the trick—it worked for all seven of my children.”
Though intimidated by her mother-in-law, Barbara replied, “We were told not to add anything to his formula.”
“Nonsense,” the older woman barked, letting her daughter-in-law know how she felt.
Barbara bit her tongue as she thought that Mrs. McGee and the pediatrician would make a good pair.
One day when Mrs. McGee and Phil’s sister Dorothy were visiting, it was time to feed Mike. Barbara took a bottle of formula from the refrigerator, heated it, and tested it on her arm as she’d been taught. She picked the baby up from his crib and cradled him in her arm at just the right angle. She lifted the nipple to his lips and her heart jumped into her throat as she noticed a viscous substance in the bottom of the bottle. She jerked the bottle away from Mike’s seeking lips.
“Just a minute, sweetie,” she said, juggling the infant as she stood up.
“Excuse me.” She willed her voice to be calm as she looked at her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. “I have to go talk to Phil.”
“Do you want me to feed the baby?” Mrs. McGee rose and reached for her grandson.
“No. No, thank-you.”
Barbara was shaking with anger when she found her husband in the garage. “Phil, look at this.” She held the bottle up for him to see. “Your mother put Karo in Mike’s formula. “She’s trying to kill our baby.”
Phil grabbed the bottle out of her hand, squeezed some of the mixture on his finger and tasted it. He raced upstairs to the living room. “What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. He shoved the bottle into his mother’s face. “You’re trying to kill our son.”
“Get out of this house, Mother—you too, Dorothy. You’re not welcome here.”
“Come on, Mother, let’s go,” Dorothy said, leading Mrs. McGee to the door. If Mrs. McGee had wanted to argue, Phil didn’t give her the chance. “You tried to kill our baby,” he repeated over and over as they made their way down the stairs.
Grandmother and aunt came to call a week later bearing gifts, not for the baby, but for Barbara. There was no apology, and the incident was not mentioned, but Barbara never again quite trusted her mother-in-law’s advice.
Feeding her child was not the pleasure it should have been. If Barbara was alone when it was time to feed him, she sat near the telephone—just in case. Mike, always a good eater, gained weight. To this day Mike enjoys a good meal, and one of his pleasures is going grocery shopping.
There were other anxious moments about which the new parents had not been warned. During his first year of life, when Mike was sleeping in his crib, for unexplained reasons, he would begin struggling for breath. They would rush him to the hospital where he was examined and given oxygen. It would be years before they had a suitable explanation for these occurrences.
On June 1, 1950, when Mike was six weeks old, Dr. White performed the herniorrhaphy. It was an intricate surgery in which the enlarged hernial sac was isolated, the redundant portion removed, and the intestine relocated in the reconstructed abdomen. Barbara, unwilling to let her son out of her sight, stayed with him at the hospital.
The McGee’s apartment was across the street from the Tulsa Coliseum and the skating rink, and Phil finally had a job. He was hired to prepare the ice for skating and before hockey games. What better job for a couple that so liked to skate. They got to know the hockey players, and because Phil had a key, they would invite their friends over after hours and skate the night away, becoming known as “The Rink Rats.” By the time Mike was walking, he was fitted for a pair of skates. His parents and friends took turns holding his hands as they led him around the rink.
Early in 1951 Barbara learned she was pregnant with their second child. “It was not planned, of course.” She smiled. “I even had an appointment to be fitted with a diaphragm—I never kept it. Naturally, we were scared to death that we might have another child with problems. In those days there was no such thing as an ultrasound, so we had no way to know if there were any problems. But,” she continued, “even if we had known something was wrong, we still would have wanted the baby.”
There was the question of Mike’s growth. His little arms and legs were so short. He was beginning to walk, and even though it wasn’t funny, they laughed at his turned-up little toes. Every pair of new shoes they bought had to have holes cut in the top.
Barbara was relentless in her efforts to help her son in every way possible, exhausting the opinions of every doctor in Tulsa who might be in a related field. Dr. John Hastings, who would remain Mike’s physician until his retirement in 2008, referred the McGees to a specialist in Oklahoma City to discuss the probability of Mike’s being dwarfed. He was fifteen months old. Barbara made the appointment with the doctor, and Phil borrowed his brother Jack’s car for the trip.
Air conditioning was unheard of in 1951, and, seven months into her second pregnancy, Barbara was uncomfortable for the entire 120-mile journey. The doctor looked over the records and could not dispute previous diagnoses that their son was probably an achondroplastic dwarf. The trip back to Tulsa was a somber one as the parents played over the specialist’s prognosis in their minds. Phil was irritable as stress often made him, and Mike was fussy with the heat and a dirty diaper.
“Phil, could we stop at the next filling station? Mike’s diaper needs changing, and I could use something cold to drink.”
“Sure, Toots.”
While Phil lit a cigarette and walked over to the metal icebox in front of the station for the soft drinks, Barbara hoisted the diaper bag over her shoulder and gathered Mike into her arms, heading for the door at the side of the building marked, “Restroom.” The baby was getting too heavy for her to carry. She was frustrated and discouraged.
The restroom, although fairly clean, smelled so strongly of disinfectant that Barbara thought she was going to throw up. How were they going to be able to handle all this? She spread a clean diaper on top of the toilet lid and laid Mike down on it. He smiled at her as she bathed his body with cool water from the tap. As she powdered him, she saw the healed scars from his surgery, his turned-up little toes, his big, brown eyes, and his smile. Her heart overflowed with love for her son. She started to cry.
The room was hardly big enough in which to turn around, but she felt a presence beside her, and a great sense peace came over her. She looked into her son’s eyes. “God,” she whispered, “you have given me this special child for a reason. I promise you that I will devote my life to doing the best job I can to take care of him.”
Two months later the McGees made their second trip to the obstetric ward at St. John’s hospital where her beloved Dr. Looney waited for them. On September 19, 1951, Phyllis McGee was born. Mike had a little sister, and they had a daughter, perfect in every way.
The McGees moved into a second home at 527 S. Victor, a larger, pleasant apartment above a garage. Their landlords, an older couple, lived in the house in front and immediately took a liking to the young family.
When Mike was nineteen months old, Phil and Barbara scheduled the surgery to correct his cleft palate and create a roof to his mouth. Mike was admitted to St. John’s hospital on December 2, 1951, and Dr. Kelley performed the surgery the following day. His operative record states: This little pituitary dwarf has an incomplete cleft of the palate. …The patient was placed in the extreme Trendelenburg position following which the palate was repaired in the following manner. …Care was taken to preserve the palatine arteries, both of which were visualized and not injured. Bleeding was minimal. …Patient withstood the procedure well and was returned to the ward in good condition.
Nothing, his parents thought, could be worse than recovery from his previous surgery, but it was. By this time Mike was eating solid food, but in order for the sensitive mucosal lining to heal, he had to be put back on a liquid diet.
Mike did not like that—not one bit. He was now toddling and when he smelled food cooking, he would make his way to the kitchen and beg at his mother’s feet to be fed. Phil put a gate across the kitchen doorway, but it didn’t take away the pitiful cries that wrung his parents’ hearts.
“I can’t stand it, Phil,” Barbara said. “We have to do something.” They decided that they should not eat in front of Mike, so they began taking turns sneaking their plates down to the landlord’s kitchen to eat while the other amused the baby. Their caring neighbors took pity on them and began inviting them to share their evening meals so that Mike couldn’t smell the food.
CHAPTER FOUR
Without explanation at the age of twenty-three, Phil McGee’s immune system decided to turn on itself, killing the beta cells produced in his pancreas and placing him in an insulin-dependent state.
Both Phil and Barbara knew something was wrong with him. He was irritable, tired, drank copious amounts of water, and had begun to pass out. Barbara nagged him to go to the doctor. Phil resisted. They didn’t have any medical insurance, Phil argued, but maybe Phil didn’t want to hear what was wrong.
One day when Phil was holding baby Phyllis, Barbara looked over to find her husband passed out and the baby’s head inches above the floor. She screamed and lunged for her daughter, catching her just before she fell.
“Something’s wrong with you, Phil,” Barbara said as she soothed the crying infant. “You have to go to the doctor.”
Phil reluctantly agreed.
On the day of his appointment, Phil was gone a long time. Barbara paced the floor, looked out the window and tried to keep herself busy. When he came home Phil had little to say. Gauging his mood she didn’t ask questions. He sat down at the kitchen table, opened a bag of cookies, and began eating them.
“Oh, you bought cookies,” Barbara said. “May I have one?”
He shoved the bag toward her. “Go ahead. Those damn doctors don’t know what they’re talking about anyway.” In defiance he ate the entire contents of the package. His erratic behavior of passing out or going into a rage, about which he had no knowledge or memory, had a name: type I “brittle” or “labile” diabetes.
All the contributing factors for this disease are not known, but they include genetics, food intake, exercise, and stress. Labile diabetes is classified by wide swings in the blood sugar level, sending the patient into coma or uncontrollable fury. Episodes can occur even when the diabetic is monitoring his diet.
As in the case of most chronic health issues, Phil was not the only one who struggled with the diagnosis. Barbara, who thought she had been assigned enough responsibilities in her life, taking care of her son and daughter, discovered that she had been given another one.
The doctors insisted that Phil be hospitalized so they could closely manage his medications and stabilize him.
The young couple was already struggling financially. Barbara had been given a secretarial job in the law office of a good family friend, Attorney Harley Van Cleeve. The extra money helped, but Phil and Barbara barely made ends meet.
“How can we do that?” Barbara asked her boss. “We don’t have any insurance and we can’t afford it.”
“Phil is a veteran, isn’t he?” Harley Van Cleeve asked.
“Yes, he was in the Navy.”
“There’s a veteran’s hospital in Muskogee. Maybe we can get him in there. I’ll see what I can do,” the attorney promised.
The hospital welcomed Phil McGee as a patient. The couple still did not have an automobile, so on the day Phil was to be admitted, his brother Jack came to drive them to the hospital. Phil was already passed out in a diabetic coma when they loaded him in the car. For the next five months, every Saturday Jack drove his sister-in-law and her children sixty miles to the hospital to visit Phil.
Fortunately, Barbara’s parents, Mrs. McGee and Aunt Dorothy were close enough and able to lend a hand. While Mrs. McGee had her opinions, she loved her grandchildren and was a willing babysitter, as was Aunt Dorothy. In addition, Barbara hired a woman for twenty five dollars a month to take care of Mike and Phyllis while she was at work.
Having a diabetic in the family was not a spectator disease; it required participation by all members. Meals—proper meals—had to be prepared on time. Desserts were dropped from the menu, or hidden. Blood sugar had to be checked multiple times daily and insulin shots adjusted accordingly.
While life went along normally for the McGees for periods of time, Barbara and their children learned to watch for warning signs of approaching episodes. Often the father and husband who loved his family would fight them when they tried to help him. It sometimes took two of them to hold him down while the other one forced Coca-Cola, or some other sugared liquid into his system. He never remembered what happened, and they never told him.
Being a diabetic was not always a private matter. On several occasions Phil was found in his car in a ditch, passed out, or stopped by the police who thought he was a drunk driver. On one occasion Barbara had to call on a next-door neighbor to help her while she administered her husband’s sugar fix.
In spite of the difficulties his illness presented, Phil continued to work for the phone company. Over the years the company changed its name from Western Electric, to Southwestern Bell, to AT&T, but it was still the same company. Basically, Phil McGee was a troubleshooter, and during the last fifteen years of his employment, he was in special services along with ten other coworkers. The crew who worked with him understood his condition and was able to support him or fill in for him when necessary.
Mike had the usual childhood illnesses—measles, mumps, and chicken pox. He also had his tonsils removed, and, in 1952, he had the little toe on his left foot amputated. For some reason the little toe on his right foot was not removed until 1955. Then he was able to wear shoes that looked like everybody else’s.
Locally, Barbara had exhausted all the medical opinions for treatment of her son’s condition, but she was not ready to give up. She read everything she could find about dwarfism and was impressed with studies that were being done at the Mayo Clinic. “I want to take Mike there,” she announced to her family.
“But, Toots, we don’t have insurance or the money to pay for it,” Phil argued.
Her father, Leonard Walters, gave her the money for the trip. So, while the grandparents and Aunt Dorothy took care of baby Phyllis, Barbara and Mike boarded a train to the nationally known clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
They checked into a motel across the street from the Mayo Clinic, and, for a week, Mike was taken to appointment after appointment while specialist after specialist examined him. The stoic three-year-old patiently endured all the tests and measurements and consultations. Barbara grasped at straws.
“I remember asking a couple of really stupid questions,” she said. “I asked if stretching exercises for his arms and legs would help, and if Mike drank more milk, would that make his bones grow.”
“Milk certainly won’t hurt him,” the doctor replied. “It will make his bones stronger, but it won’t make them longer.”
When she asked about surgery, she was told that there was a painful and controversial limb-lengthening surgery in which metal extensions are attached to the bones. “We don’t recommend it,” the doctors told her.
On their last day at the clinic, they had one final appointment with a psychologist. After spending some time with Mike, the doctor invited Barbara into her office. Her instructions were to the point. “How Michael’s life turns out is up to you. You can make him an invalid, or you can help him lead a normal life. If you do everything for him, he will be an invalid.” On the long train ride home, Barbara had a lot of time to think about the doctor’s words.
While achondroplasia, a genetic condition, accounts for 70 percent of all cases of dwarfism, there are approximately two hundred differentiated types, and some individuals never receive a definitive diagnosis.
A letter from Roger Kennedy, MD from the Mayo Clinic said, “Michael suffers from what we call osteochondrodystrophy. This is a congenital abnormality in the growth of the bones so that the long bones tend to be shorter and broader than usual. No treatment was recommended when Michael was here, but it was suggested that at the age of 12 to 14 years, an operation might be employed to try to straighten the thumbs.”
Barbara knew her son would have difficulties that normal children, including his sister, would never have. He would have to learn different ways of doing physical tasks, and he would have to endure ridicule and discrimination.
When she got home Barbara called a family conference. “We will treat Mike as a normal child. He will learn to do everything any other child learns to do.” She made sure her husband, the grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even his little sister understood that. They made one concession. Phil built steps and stools that were scattered around the house so Mike could care for his own needs, get his own cereal, hang up his own clothes and brush his teeth.
Between the years 1950-1954, Mike McGee was seen by thirty-two doctors and had five operations. Several years later, when his parents approached him with the idea of straightening his thumbs, he said no, he liked them the way they were. He made them work. Today Mike’s thumbs are still turn backward, and they work for him very well.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mike showed an aptitude for mechanics at an early age. Stern as she was, Mrs. McGee indulged her grandson. At the time, Phil’s sister Dorothy and his brother Jack were both unmarried and living in their parents’ home. One day when he was only three or four and his grandmother was taking care of him, Mike became fascinated with the new power lawn mower his Uncle Jack had just purchased. Power lawn mowers were not all that common in 1954, and Jack, proud of his new convenience, left it protected and secure in a corner on the front porch. Grandma McGee kept her eye on Mike as he played around the new machine all afternoon. When his uncle came home from work Mike had the engine in pieces. Jack was furious.
“Mom, how could you let him do that?”
“How else is he going to learn?” Mrs. McGee replied.
The entire family and their friends developed the attitude that Mike was no different than any other child, and that was fine with Mike because he didn’t see himself as different either.
In 1955 Barbara’s parents, May and Leonard Walters, and May’s sister and brother-inlaw, Elvie and Roy Carpenter, bought a business on Lake Fort Gibson, near Wagoner. Water sports have always been popular in Oklahoma, but few people outside the Sooner state know that it has more than 200 man-made lakes, totaling over one million surface-acres of water and 2000 more miles of shoreline than the Atlantic and Gulf coasts combined. Lake Fort Gibson covers 19,000 acres and has a shoreline of 225 miles. Their business was called Toppers Resort, and consisted of a restaurant, a convenience store, six cabins, boats for rent, and a fishing dock. After two seasons, May’s sister and her husband moved out of state, and the Walters took over the sole proprietorship of Toppers, which they continued to operate for several years. The grandparents moved to the lake for the summer and the rest of the family, when they could, escaped to this easy, sun-filled life.
Mike loved going to the lake. He remembered those days as the best of times. He also remembered one year when there had been a lot of rain and all the roads were flooded, and they had to go in by boat.
Both Phyllis and Mike learned to water ski by the time they were five and six years old and the two children in their bright orange life jackets were a common sight on the lake. Curiosity that brought other boaters closer to get a good look at these two little figures made Barbara nervous and she would frantically wave them away.
Family albums are filled with photographs of Mike doing everything any child his age would do. There are pictures of him in his cowboy suit, his boots reaching his thighs; with Phyllis in their robes when they sang in the children’s choir at the Methodist Church; as a cub scout, and a boy scout, receiving his badges.
There was one picture in which Mike, the happy child, did not look happy. It was his school picture when he started first grade. He had on his new school clothes, one chubby leg tucked under the other; his hair neatly parted and slicked down. He looked so sad that if the photographer had waited a second longer, we would likely have seen a tear rolling down his subject’s cheek. Barbara and Phil had done what they could to prepare their son for going off to school, but clearly he was not looking forward to it.
The McGees finally had a car which Phil took to work. Fortunately, Hoover Elementary School was not far away from their home. Each morning Barbara, as she would for many months to come, helped Mike get ready for school, and, because the end of August in Oklahoma is still warm, she dressed Phyllis in her coolest playsuits. Then, she loaded her children in their little red wagon and pulled them the few blocks to school. It was certainly faster than walking with a five year old with short legs, and a toddler. In the afternoon she and Phyllis made the return trip to pick up Mike.
At home they read books the teacher sent with him, going over them until Mike knew every word. During supper his parents asked him questions and he would report his activities of the day. Everything seemed to be fine. That’s why, when Barbara received a phone call from Mike’s teacher halfway through the year, she was shocked.
“Mrs. McGee, could you come in?” the teacher said. “I would like to talk with you about Mike.”
“What about Mike?” his mother asked, apprehension filling her voice.
“I’d rather discuss it with you in person,” the teacher replied.
This was it. Barbara knew that sooner or later Mike would be the subject of abuse by other children, perhaps even his teachers. She dreaded the meeting and prayed that she would know how to handle the situation. She was no psychologist; she would just have to rely on her mother-instincts.
“Mrs. McGee,” the teacher said when they were seated in a small conference room, “I’m sorry to tell you that I feel we should have Mike repeat first grade next year.”
“Why?”
“He can’t read.”
Barbara’s mouth fell open. “Wh-what do you mean he can’t read?”
“We sit in a circle and the children take turns reading,” his teacher explained. “When it’s Mike’s turn, he lowers his eyes and won’t look at me. ‘Do you want to read, Mike?’ I ask, and he just shakes his head.”
Barbara felt her throat close up. “But he reads to me every night,” she whispered. “We study his lessons every night. He knows how to read. Could you just ask him to come in and we’ll show you?”
Now it was the teacher’s turn to be surprised.
“Mike,” his mother said as she pulled him onto the chair beside her, “you remember this story we read last night?”
Mike nodded.
“You read the whole thing. Do you think you could read it for your teacher now?”
Mike looked from one to the other. “It’s okay, Mike,” his teacher said. “I would really like to hear you read.”
Mike’s voice quivered, but he read. He read without mistakes.
“Why wouldn’t you read in class?” his parents asked him later.
“I was scared,” he said.
With half the school year gone, parents, the teacher, and the principal, agreed that it was probably best to have Mike repeat first grade. He was called to the principal’s office. Mike stood between his mother and his teacher with his head down. “Mike,” his principal said, “You know that you are going to be in the first grade again because the teacher didn’t know that you could read?”
Mike nodded, looking at the floor. “Yes, sir.”
“You know that when the teacher asks you to read, you will read.” It was a statement— not a question.
Mike looked up at the principal with his liquid brown eyes. “Yes, sir,” he said in a voice too deep for a six year old.
That fall when school began, Barbara dressed her children, put them in their little red wagon, and delivered them to their classroom door. They went in holding hands.
Having Mike repeat the year had probably been the thing to do because he began making friends and was getting over his shyness. In fact, once he and his friends got in trouble because they didn’t come in at the end of recess. When the principal found them they were in the corner of the schoolyard digging for gold, because some of the older kids had told them it was buried there. They had been so intent on their quest they had not heard the bell.
They were not always in the same classes, but Phyllis and Mike moved from grade to grade together until they graduated in 1969. Not everybody in the family remembers Mike’s school years in the same ways. According to his mother Mike got along well, kept up his grades, had friends, and participated in school activities.
“How was school today?” It was the usual supper table question to both of the children.
“Fine,” was Mike’s usual reply.
“What did you do?”
“We had a track meet and I won.”
Phil and Barbara looked at one another. Phil shook his head.
“Mike, how did you do that?” his mother asked.
“They let me have a head start,” the track star replied matter-of-factly.
Only his teachers, coaches, and classmates knew how often that happened. However, over the years Mike collected awards, certificates, and trophies to prove his competitive spirit. He received the Track and Field Award in Physical Education; first place in the soft ball throw; first in Class E fifty-yard dash, and first in Class E high jump.
As a sixth grader, Mike was a member of the Safety Patrol, a cafeteria host, and participated in the Science Fair. His science project was an erupting volcano that spewed steam from dry ice inside.
Phyllis, who was always close enough to look out for her brother, and sometimes put herself in the role of protector, remembers things differently. Mike was teased and was often the subject of unkind jokes. While her brother had the ability to accept and disregard such behavior, it angered Phyllis. She knew her brother to be kind and every bit as smart as those who made fun of him.
Few people are able to accept themselves as they are and be content within themselves. Mike does. It was almost as if, when he first looked at his mother with such trust, he knew he would have more challenges than many. That’s the way Mike approached everything, as a challenge to improve—overcome—do better. He did that in his job, in racing, and today, in his painting. He will look at a piece and say, “I didn’t get that quite right. I’ll do it better the next time.
CHAPTER SIX
Mike heard automobile races before he ever saw one. The old speedway at the Tulsa Fairgrounds was not far from the McGee home on Hudson Street. On race nights, from their front yard, they could hear the high-pitched whine of collective engines, like the drone of insects, and saw dust hanging like a brown cloud above the grandstand, back lit from a series of megawatt lights on tall poles around the track.
Automobile racing in the United States probably began the first time two Model T owners challenged each other; before that there was, “my horse is faster than your horse.” Certainly, by the time the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909, automobile racing had become an organized sport. Initially the gravel and tar track was the site of small events until promoters focused on the potential financial rewards of hosting one major event. Thus the conception and creation of “the 500,” a 500 mile, 805 kilometer race, elevated the track to the status it retains today. Accidents and deaths seemed to have been the impetus for establishing new rules and improving conditions in the racing industry. After several deaths due to the uneven track, one of the principal owners, Carl Fisher, urged the paving of the track with 3.2 million bricks.
Some claim that modern day racing had its dubious beginnings during prohibition when moon shiners often had to out run authorities. To do so they began “souping” up their engines. “Rum Runners” who sometimes traveled together, whether for company, for protection, or maybe for the heck of it, started challenging each other to races.
Automobile dealers noticed that sales increased for which ever make of car won. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” became their motto. Manufacturers began making engines and parts especially for racers until the Homologation rule was instituted. The Homologation rule stated that any car entered in a stock car race must be made entirely of stock parts available to the general public; thus the name, “Stock Car.” It further stipulated that a specified number of a particular model had to be sold to the public before it could be raced. Thus began the era of competition among manufacturers to produce such models as The Trans-Am series, the C-300 series, the Hemi V-8’s, the Ford Cammers and the Dodge Chargers.
Mike knew he had an aptitude for math and engineering, and by the time he was in Junior High he knew he wanted to study automobile mechanics. His parents encouraged him to go into the field of airplane mechanics, rationalizing that given his size; he could easily maneuver his way around aircraft. After several conversations with Mike, the school guidance counselor called his parents in for a visit. “Let Mike study what he wants,” she told them.
The McGee home at 2217 S. Hudson when Mike and Phyllis were teenagers sat on a large corner lot. It had a two-car garage in which Phil liked to putter. When he built a bright red go-cart for his children they suddenly became the most popular kids in the neighborhood.
When Phil took Mike to his first race at the fairgrounds, that was it—he was hooked. Automobile racing was extremely popular in the Midwest, and indeed, across the country in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and Mike caught the fever. In school and in the neighborhood he gravitated to friends who were interested in mechanics. They came in all shapes, sizes, and personalities. Even though he was sometimes referred to as “Midget McGee,” none of his friends remember him ever being called that to his face. Somehow, he acquired the nickname of “Magoo,” and then later, “Dynamite Mike.”
At the track he began hanging out in the pits and helping when they would let him. Because he was good around cars, and eager to be helpful, he was invited to crew for two racers, Vic Paddock, who raced cars his dad Gene Paddock built, and Bill Rick.
Vic recalled, “My dad always built an ignition switch into his watermelon wedge shaped dashboard design. One time, one of the wires came loose and nobody could get in there to reconnect it. We didn’t have time to take the thing apart. ‘Go get Mike,’ someone said. So we did. Mike slid into the driver’s seat on his back, upside down. He scooted under the steering wheel with his head behind the dashboard and put the thing together. I have a picture of him with his feet sticking straight up in the air.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
While Barbara continued to work for Harley Van Cleeve she studied for her real estate license. In 1962 she became a real estate broker. This flexible schedule allowed her to be more involved with her children’s activities and to be at home to prepare the required regular meals for Phil's dietary schedule.
The stipulation Barbara made when Phil first asked her for a date was that he learn to dance. Well, he did. So they danced. They joined a square dance club with some friends who had been “the rink rats” they had skated with when they were first married. They added others: the Greenwoods who lived across the street from them, and Margaret and Melvin Johnson. While Mike and Bobby Greenwood spent their time tinkering with car engines and talking racing, their parents danced the weekend away. Margaret and Melvin Johnson’s son, Rex, began dropping by the garage. Partly, he admitted, because he was interested in cars, but he’d also begun to notice Mike’s sister, Phyllis, who had grown into a slender, leggy teenager with flowing dark hair and electric blue eyes.
By this time Phyllis and Mike were old enough to be left alone, and while Phyllis was upset when her parents came home late, sometimes having had too much to drink, Mike seemed to take it in stride. During these years Phil was able to keep his diabetes in check most of the time, but when diet or habits caused his glucose to spiral crazily he simply endured it, unwilling to give up the pleasures he enjoyed for a disease he so resented.
Barbara is, and always has been a social person. One of her concerns for her son was difficulties he would no doubt encounter in a stereotyped world of boy meets girl—boy and girl marry and live happily ever after. Among the articles, documents, and memorabilia she had collected over the years, is a Wall Street Journal article dated September 12, 1973 and titled Problems of Dwarfs Gain Attention As They Fight Job Bias, Ostracism. “Few children are prepared for what many little people say is the worst crisis: dating and finding a mate.”