THE MASKED MARVEL DOROTHY WALKER'S SUCCESS ON TRACK COULD NOT BE DISGUISED.

Byline: Tim Haddock Staff Writer

The Walker name is tied closely to auto racing history in Los Angeles. A.J. Walker gained fame by helping Troy Ruttman on his road to winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1952. On the way, Walker helped Ruttman win a handful of Midget class races at the old Gilmore Stadium in 1948 and 1949.

Walker's great-grandsons, Tyler and Ben, have started successful racing careers of their own.

The 20-year-old Tyler has three wins on the World of Outlaws series and 19-year-old Ben has become a serious contender for the NASCAR Super Late Model crown at Irwindale Speedway.

But there is one Walker whose name and accomplishments have much more significance than that of local legend and history.

A.J. Walker's wife, Dorothy Walker, might have been the first American woman driver to compete in an open-wheel race.

She is more than likely the first American woman driver to die during open-wheel competition. But the facts surrounding Dorothy's career in auto racing are sketchy - mainly because it wasn't until almost 50 years after her death that women were even allowed in the track pit areas, let alone in the drivers' seats of open-wheel race cars.

As a result, women drivers may have disguised themselves, as Dorothy did during a Memorial Day race at Overland Park in Colorado in 1926, in order to compete. The Denver Post dubbed Dorothy the ``Masked Marvel'' in a front-page story reporting the crash that took her life. According to the article, Dorothy's identity was only known to her husband, her sister and A. Carbone, president of the Overland Park Auto Racing association. The fans in the stands and the other drivers in the race were unaware that she was a woman.

The track held a special 5-mile exhibition race against time in which Dorothy participated.

According to the Denver Post article, Dorothy had turned a lap of 52 seconds in her husband's Big Car - which later evolved into something similar to a modern Sprint car and was the same type of car used to race in the Indianapolis 500 at the time - on the one-mile dirt track the Saturday before the fatal race. Her performance impressed Carbone enough to let her compete, in disguise, in the Monday race.

On race day, Dorothy completed one lap in 56 seconds, reaching speeds ``at a better than 60 mile an hour clip,'' the Post reported, before losing control in the first turn.

``At the first curve she came to grief. The car bounded; skidded in a cloud of dust and crashed against the fence. With miraculous skill she brought the speeding machine back onto the track. A sigh of relief went up from the terrified spectators. They thought she had regained control. But just then the car swerved again and the masked figure of the driver shot headlong from behind the wheel into the air and against a fence post,'' the Post reported. She was 23 when she died.

Documents and records show that the first woman to officially compete in an Indy car race was Arlene Hiss, who competed in the Phoenix 150 on March 14, 1976. Janet Guthrie made her debut in Indy car racing less than two months later in the Trenton 200 on May 2. As for women racers before 1976, the Hall of Fame Museum at Indianapolis Motorspeedway has no other records. The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Iowa, has done little research into the history of women in auto racing. Neither have documented accounts of women drivers in Indy or Sprint cars racing before 1976. But that does not mean that women were not competing in Indy, Sprint car or other forms of open-wheel racing before then.

Allan Brown, a Michigan author who wrote ``The History of America's Speedways'' and the annual ``National Speedway Directory,'' said finding a woman auto racer in the 1920s was ``very rare.'' Donald Davidson of the Hall of Fame Museum at Indianapolis Motorspeedway said it would have been ``unusual'' for an American woman to have competed in open-wheel dirt track racing in the 1920s.

Brown said it was considered ``bad luck'' to have women in the pits and that the segregation practices that existed with the Automobile Association of America, the sanctioning body of auto racing in the United States from 1904 to 1955, continued with the United States Automobile Club until the early 1970s, when a woman reporter from Philadelphia fought to cover a race in New Jersey from the pit area.

Pat Singer, a reporter from Philadelphia, wanted to cover a race in Flemington, N.J., according to Brown.

``But the track officials wouldn't let her in the pits until she brought them a note from her doctor saying she wasn't pregnant,'' Brown said. ``After that, more and more tracks started loosening their restrictions on women.''

Davidson has a different story. A group of women, including a reporter from New York named Denise McCluggage, were issued pit and garage access credentials to cover the Indianapolis 500 in 1971.

Two names come to Brown's mind when he thinks of women pioneers in open-wheel racing: Guthrie and Cheryl Glass, both of whom started competing in the 1970s. But Brown only refers to them because they were competitive. There may have been others before them, Brown said, but none were as good.

While Dorothy Walker's story rings a familiar chord with Brown, he was unable to recall any particular details surrounding her career.

Other auto racing historians, such as Leroy Byers of Denver, Harold Osmer of Los Angeles and Craig Agen of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, say they know something of Dorothy Walker's career as the ``Masked Marvel,'' but can recall little else of her racing achievements.

Osmer, author of ``Where They Raced'' and ``Real Road Racing,'' has a record of an all-women's open-wheel event that took place in 1918 at Ascot Park in Los Angeles. He says it is the first recorded open-wheel auto racing event in which women competed.

``But they weren't real, official racers,'' he said.

Seven women, dubbed speederettes, competed in three events at Ascot Park on Feb. 3, 1918. They were the only all-women auto racing events held at Ascot Park. Officials and support staff were all women as well. Ruth Wightman won the first race of the day, a three-cornered event pitting her against Mrs. P.H. Harmon and Nina Vitigliano, according to Osmer.

Mrs. C.H. Wolflet was named the Women's International Champion after winning the Katherine Stinson Trophy race that day, but Wightman was by far the fastest woman driver competing. She turned an exhibition lap in 51 seconds, or at 70 mph, on the one-mile dirt track that opened in 1906. Competitive men were running laps at Ascot Park in the 75-80 mph range.

Bill Hill, an auto racing historian from Las Vegas, says Dorothy Walker is more than the first woman to compete in open-wheel racing.

``I really think Walker could very well have been the first,'' Hill said, adding that she was probably the first woman to have competed in any level of auto racing, since NASCAR wasn't formed until 1947.

The Denver Post reported that the Memorial Day race was Dorothy Walker's debut. But Bob Walker, Dorothy's grandson and owner of San Fernando Valley-based Walker Engineering, says she raced numerous times before that day. When she started and how good she was, Bob Walker did not know.

Regardless of the details, Dorothy's career is significant enough that Agen said he is putting together a display at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame recognizing her achievements in open-wheel auto racing. It is scheduled to open this summer.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1) Because women were not allowed to race, Dorothy Walker assumed the identity of the Masked Marvel in the 1920s.

(2) DOROTHY WALKER

Photo courtesy Walker family

(3) Tyler, Bob and Ben Walker, two generations of the Walker family, compete regularly at Irwindale Raceway.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer