Photos courtesy Indiana Racing Memorial Association.
For a man whose legacy includes one of the largest and most well known car brands in the world, Louis Chevrolet’s Indianapolis gravesite remains fairly humble decades after his death. His brother’s headstone towers over his own, and apart from fan-added decorations neither include any indication of the family’s place in automotive history. That stands to change this weekend, however, when a new memorial to the Chevrolet brothers will be unveiled.
“It’s such a sad story with the Chevrolet family: They gave so much in terms of racing and manufacturing, but they received no financial reward,” said Brian Hasler, co-founder of the Indiana Racing Memorial Association, the organization behind the new memorial. “We hope this will restore some appreciation of their legacy.”
The Swiss-born Louis Chevrolet might get the lion’s share of accolades thanks to his early racing successes and his partnership with William Durant that led to the Chevrolet Motor Car Company, but many of his endeavors involved his two younger brothers, Arthur and Gaston, both of whom followed Louis from their native Europe to the United States and who joined Louis in racing automobiles and making performance parts for racing automobiles.
Following Louis’s falling out with Durant, the three brothers founded Frontenac, an aftermarket performance parts company, and entered Frontenac-branded cars in the Indianapolis 500 and other national races. Gaston proved the most gifted racer, winning the 500 in 1920, but he also died while pursuing the AAA National Championship later that year.
The family buried Gaston in Indianapolis’s Holy Cross and Saint Joseph Cemetery, over the years other family members would join: Arthur’s son Arthur Jr. in 1931, Louis’s son Charles in 1934, and Louis himself in 1941. The elder Arthur hanged himself in 1946, but his body remains buried in an unmarked grave in Slidell, Louisiana. Louis never saw any of the wealth that the company using his name generated, so the family could never afford anything extravagant like Durant’s mausoleum in New York City’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway did install a memorial to Louis Chevrolet in 1975 and as the Indianapolis Star reported last year, IMS officials commissioned a headstone for Arthur Chevrolet in 2011, but placed it over Arthur Jr.’s previously unmarked grave in Holy Cross. That case of mistaken identity was far from the only indignity suffered upon the Chevrolets’ gravesite, according to Hasler, who described it as “small, inaccurate, and broken.”
Hasler and his group became interested in memorializing the brothers Chevrolet earlier this year as part of their push to recognize racing heritage sites around the state of Indiana. As Hasler explained, the Indiana State Historical Bureau had decreed that one state historical marker out of its more than 500 – at the Speedway – would be enough to cover the state’s broad racing heritage, so he and co-founder Mark Eutsler began to identify sites, organize funding, and erect their own historical markers.
Artist rendering of the memorial.
“As we were looking into a historical marker for the Chevrolet brothers, we saw the sad state of the grave markers so we looked into a replacement for them,” Hasler said. That replacement, a $15,000 carved granite monument incorporating the historical marker funded in part by Chevrolet Motorsport and local Chevrolet dealerships, will replace the existing grave markers and correct the record on which Arthur Chevrolet lies beneath.
Barb Hellyer, secretary for IRMA, said the group may even relocate the IMS-commissioned Arthur Chevrolet headstone to the cemetery in Louisiana.
The Chevrolet memorial and historical marker, once installed this weekend, will become the 17th such marker that IRMA has completed. Two more markers honoring Tony Elliott and the founders of IMS will be unveiled later this year, and Hasler said that eight more are funded for next year. In addition, Hasler said the group has discussed expanding their scope beyond Indiana’s state lines by founding an American Racing Memorial Association. “The demand is so high we don’t want to stop the momentum we’ve built,” he said.
The installation and dedication of the Chevrolet brothers monument will take place this Saturday at Holy Cross and Saint Joseph Cemetery in Indianapolis with the Chevrolet brothers’ descendants in attendance. For more information on the event and on IRMA’s efforts, visit IndianaRacing.org.
More gadget review in www.mamaktalk.com
