Crim: Nifty 50 for QHS graduate Garber as tradition of attending Indianapolis 500 continues

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — You can usually find Curt Garber sitting in his assigned seat along the first turn at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway long before most fans arrive.

Attending the Indianapolis 500 has become a tradition for the 71-year-old 1971 Quincy High School graduate who now lives in Springfield.

He has seen many of the legends of the sport — A.J. Foyt, Johnny Rutherford, Mario Andretti, the Unser boys and his personal favorite, Rick Mears — make history on the 2.5-mile rectangular oval track.

He admits listening to the singing of “Back Home Again in Indiana” in pre-race ceremonies “sends chills up your spine,” and the anticipation hits a crescendo upon the annual command of “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

“I met a guy in 1971 who said there’s nothing like the last hour before the start of the Indy 500,” Garber said. “I had wanted to go for years but never got to. I was smitten the first time I went. Race mornings are like Christmas to me. The feeling you get, there’s nothing like it.”

The 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 25 marked the 50th time Garber has watched the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” unfold in person.

Family members created a banner to commemorate the occasion. Hours before this year’s race, when fans were allowed to walk across the track, a security guard permitted Curt and his wife, Janet, to pose with the banner while “standing in the middle of the groove in turn 1.”

It was a special moment.

“There was like a thousand people there,” Curt said. “He told us to hurry so he didn’t get in trouble. Fifty is not a milestone to some of those people. There are people who have been going to 60, 70, 75 years. It was the 80th Indy 500 for one guy this year.”

Growing up on Schildt Lane just outside of Quincy, Curt and his father, long-time Quincy Public Schools educator Jack Garber, would listen to the Indy 500 on the radio — it wasn’t televised live in those days — and then later watch the television replay.

“My dad talked about going as long as I could remember,” Curt said, “but every Memorial Day weekend something else would come up — a family reunion, a family get-together, something.”

Curt, then working for JK Creative Printers, finally got his chance in 1973.

“It was totally by accident,” he admitted.

Curt said he was at the original Jack’s Discount on Broadway after work buying oil when the guy checking him out asked if he knew anybody who wanted to go to the 500.

The race had been aborted on Monday by a red flag because of a major accident involving multiple cars at the start and had been washed out by rain on Tuesday.

It was rescheduled for Wednesday morning, just hours away.

“He tells me his brother couldn’t go but had four tickets at $25 apiece,” Curt said. “He told me to go by his mom’s house to get the tickets. I had a hundred bucks, so I went, but she only wanted $25 for all four of them.

“By now it’s 7 or 7:30 in the evening. I call three buddies. One couldn’t make it, but the other two could. We headed out at 10 or 10:30, drove all night, crashed in the car for three hours and were there, sitting in turn 2, when they dropped the green flag at 9 o’clock.”

Gordon Johncock recorded the first of his two Indy 500 wins in a race shortened to 133 laps because of rain.

“Once I was there, I knew I couldn’t miss it,” said Curt, who later was able to share the experience with his father. “I ordered tickets from the Speedway the next year.”

And he’s been ordering tickets every year since.

He has missed it only twice — in 1996 when many of the top drivers chose to race elsewhere because of a dispute involving the upstart Indy Racing League (IRL) and the most established Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), and in 2020 when spectators were banned because of Covid.

“It’s the tradition of it, the history of the place,” Curt said, explaining his passion for the Indy 500 that he admits borders on an obsession. “There’s an aura about it, an excitement. It’s another world. The only other place I have been to that compares is Augusta National.

“It takes a while to feel the scope of the speed of those 1,600-pound vehicles. It fools your eyes. You don’t think they’re going to make that corner going that fast, but they make it again and again.”

Curt spent 18 years with JK Creative Printers before moving to Springfield, where he worked for two other printing companies before retiring in 2018.

“I did everything in the printing business except sales,” he said. “I’m a part-time limo driver these days.”

Curt, who now orders six tickets each year after having as many as eight, plans to continue to be among those sitting on one of the Speedway’s 257,325 permanent seats in the years ahead.

“I hope I can go to my 60th and then maybe hand the tickets over to a family member, with the idea that I would still go as long as I’m capable,” he said. “I saw some people this year in wheelchairs. I don’t think I would go if that was the case. It would not be fair to whoever has to push the wheelchair.”

Don’t bet on it.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the only place Curt Garber should be on Memorial Day weekend.