Sherman M. Bruck rests next to his parents in Section U, Lot 228, Space No. 2 of the Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton, almost hugging the corner of the curved road just like his auto racing days of long ago. Bruck turned 105 years old on Oct. 31.

You wouldn’t know by looking at his grave marker. He doesn’t have one.

For 84 years the Hamilton race car driver has rested in a sunny spot at the cemetery just off Greenwood Ave. No marker to announce his birth of Oct. 31, 1907. No marker to announce his death on Sept. 9, 1928. No marker to suggest who is next to Louis and Katherine Bruck.

History may have forgotten about him, but Racers at Rest hasn’t. The non-profit organization relies on donations to purchase special markers for drivers who died in action. At last count RAR knew of 40 racers in unmarked graves out of the 1,156 known drivers who died from injuries suffered in open-wheel racing accidents.

Since his race car took that fatal tumble down a 15-foot embankment at an unfinished track in Hamilton, Bruck — just 19 when he died — has laid in anonymity. He’s not alone.

* Gordon Reid, whose sprint car plowed into the crowd at Dayton Speedway killing three on April 21, 1952, rests in an unmarked grave in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif.

* Samuel Dickson, a riding mechanic and the first fatality in the history of the Indianapolis 500 on May 30, 1911, rests unmarked at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

* Sam Jacobs, a riding mechanic from Cincinnati whose ride turned a deadly somersault racing on Aug. 26, 1911, in Illinois, rests unmarked in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Helping author Buzz Rose’s book Racers at Rest, researchers Steve Estes of Troy and Don Tash of Phoenix, Ariz., were amazed at the number of drivers without grave markers. Given permission to use the RAR name, Estes, Tash, Jim Thurman of Palmdale, Calif., and Mike Thompson of Springboro volunteered their time to fix that. The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Iowa, also came on board to handle the bookkeeping — every cent donated to RAR goes toward the grave markers — and give RAR added credibility and visibility.

The project is personal for both Estes and Tash. Estes was devastated when racing hero Pat O’Connor died in a fiery 15-car accident on the first lap of the 1958 Indianapolis 500. Tash idolized Jimmy Bryan, who won the Indy 500 the day O’Connor died and perished two years later at Langhorne Speedway in Pennsylvania.

“My dad used to take me to Dayton Speedway and I sat on O’Connor’s lap once when I was a child,” Estes said. “To me that was my hero. Then he got fatally injured at the Speedway in Indianapolis. That’s hard as a kid because your heroes don’t die. They’re not supposed to die. My dad took me to visit his grave. Maybe it started back then, I don’t know, the passion to find these guys.”

History lessons

To date RAR has placed five markers. A sixth could soon be placed for Curtis “Cyclone” Ross at Wesley Chapel Cemetery in Columbus. Ross — the only black driver on the RAR list and possibly the second black driver ever killed — died at Playland Speedway in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on July 30, 1949. Finding Ross was typical of the challenges facing RAR. According to RAR’s website, Ross’s family paid $25 to purchase his plot and another $20 to dig the grave located in Chapel Cemetery. With the exact location of his grave unknown, however, cemetery officials used string to triangulate a 100-foot by 100-foot area where Ross should be.

The average marker used by RAR costs about $850, a paltry sum considering the money high-powered sponsors and teams throw at the sport each weekend. Thompson estimates the entire project costs about $30,000 to finish.

Estes said RAR spent four years trying to place its first two markers, which ended up side-by-side in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit.

The story goes like this: Racer Joe Russo married Helene Yockey, a well-to-do socialite who helped fund his racing, but he died six months later in an accident at Pennsylvania’s Langhorne Speedway in 1934. Yockey then married Winn, who died in 1938 after being tossed high into the air when his car flipped in Springfield, Ill. It’s assumed Yockey bought the first plot at Mount Olivet for Russo and one for herself when her time came, but instead placed Winn there. In another twist, Russo died at Langhorne after replacing Winn in an ill-handling Indy Car.

“Since 1938, Billy and Joe rest side-by-side in Mount Olivet,” said Springboro’s Thompson, RAR webmaster and newsletter editor. “As luck would have it they are sort of on the front row side-by-side … and the first two stones we placed were for Joe and Billy.”

Since the program’s launch in 2011, RAR has placed markers on the graves of Billy Carlson, Bill Heisler, Earl Farmer, Russo, Winn.

“I think it’s one of the most worthwhile projects we’ve ever been involved with here at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum,” said NSCHoF curator Tom Schmeh. “We just really believe those that gave their life to the sport deserve recognition. They don’t have to be the best sprint car drivers of all time. Everybody who participates is a part of the sport and deserves recognition, especially for those who gave their lives to the sport. It’s a tremendous project and we’re really proud of the volunteers who took on this effort.”

Unexpected detours

Those efforts often find unexpected detours. Antiquated cemetery record keeping, drivers racing under different names and poring through almost 100 years of newspaper archives for snippets mentioning accidents presents its challenges. Cemetery regulations — some require the approval of blood relatives before a marker can be placed — and even family disagreements can hamstring efforts. And some drivers are forever lost to history with no records or known relatives to tell where they are buried.

As Thompson put it: “In some cases, cemeteries keep records on 3x5 cards and have since the dawn of time. For some reason there’s always a fire somewhere along the line.”

Most of what Estes knows about Bruck comes from a short paragraph in the Zanesville Signal, which lists his name as Brucks (the Piqua Daily Call spelled it Brooks). The paragraph said Bruck ran down an embankment at an unfinished track but didn’t say where in Hamilton the track was located. Bruck, though, is one of the lucky ones.

Indiana native and Dayton resident Cecil Edward “Bobby” Garringer was buried in IOOF Cemetery in Montpelier, Ind., after a fatal practice session at the Columbus Indiana Fairgrounds on July 28, 1940. They just don’t know where.

“They didn’t mark down where in the cemetery,” Estes said. “The cemetery has no marker for him so he might be lost to time.”

The first known racing fatality is believed to be Frank Day at Wisconsin State Fair on Sept. 12, 1903. That at least 1,155 have followed is a tragedy. But some good has come out of some of those accidents, mostly in the name of better safety equipment and regulations. That’s one more reason RAR doesn’t want those unmarked drivers lost to history.

“The reason guys like (sprint car driver) Kyle Larson survive is not because someone sat down yesterday and did a computer simulation,” Thompson said, referring to Larson’s gut-wrenching flips after another car slammed his and sent it airborne at Eldora Speedway in September.

“It’s because guys like Cyclone showed people we need a (safety) bar here, better helmets. Those guys sort of paid with their lives so drivers like Kyle Larson are sore (the morning after the accident), but alive. … To sort of discard these guys is a crime.

“This is just a modest proposal to put a bookmark on a guy’s grave to say this guy meant something to our sport, his sacrifice helped today’s drivers survive incredible accidents and he deserves at least a bookmark, at least a note.”