Lawndale Tribune
AND lAwNDAle News
The Weekly Newspaper of Lawndale
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 81, No. 5 - February 3, 2022
El Camino College STEM Students Launch Startup
A group of El Camino College STEM students is embracing the challenge of getting a new business off and running, while also pursuing degrees in engineering. Their specialized startup received initial funding from a $5,000 grant awarded from the NASA Minority University
Research & Education Project (MUREP) Innovation & Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTIC), which challenges teams across the nation to create a product or service using NASA-patented technologies. Photo courtesy El Camino College.
John Morton from front page
Morton took on the task of penning a memoir
from a timeframe that had occurred almost
50 years ago. He said that he was a little bit
anxious to take on the project. “I knew how
to write,” he said, “but I didn’t know how to
write well.”
The book, Inside Shelby American, Wrenching
and Racing with Carroll Shelby, was published
in 2013 and details not only his formative years
when he caught the auto racing bug, but also
focusing on the four years (1962-65) that he
drew a paycheck from the powerhouse racing
team headed by Shelby, who was an automotive
designer, race car driver, and entrepreneur.
Backtrack to 1962. Morton, who was 20 years
old at the time, needed to get certified at a legitimate
driving school to continue chasing his
aspirations of becoming a paid race car driver.
He had attended the University of Clemson
for two years, post-high school graduation,
but figured out that the college route was not
for him. “I was not cut out to be a student,”
he said. He traveled to California to attend the
Shelby School of High-Performance Driving,
at the Riverside International Raceway, thinking
that the iconic Shelby would instruct him.
No dice. No Shelby. Instead, Morton’s instructor
was Peter Brock, who ended up playing a
pivotal part in Morton’s driving career about
a half-dozen years later. Morton’s selected car
for his five-day schooling? It was a Shelby
Cobra prototype.
Brock, an iconic name in the automotive
industry, remembers Morton very well. “He
is probably the most unappreciated driver in
the United States,” Brock said.
Morton said that his initial intention was
to return to the Waukegan area after the class
concluded, but on a whim, mustered the
courage to approach Shelby for a job. The
following Monday, Morton met with Shelby
and was hired to become a part of the Shelby
American team. Not as a driver, not as a car
mechanic or parts scrounger, but as a janitor.
Morton jumped at the opportunity to become
an exceedingly small cog in the phenomenally
successful Shelby American racing team.
He initially dutifully swept and mopped the
floors and kept the bathrooms as clean as a
20-year-old could.
Morton, who turns eighty on Feb. 17, grew
up in Waukegan, Illinois, with his parents and
brother Lyman. He was introduced to racing at
an early age by his father, who was in the real
estate business. Morton was first introduced
to racing at little dirt tracks in Waukegan and
Milwaukee in 1949.
When he was fifteen, Morton said that his
father took him and his brother to the Elkhart
Lake track to watch a 500-mile sports car race.
That sealed the career deal for Morton, who
remembers that “on that day, I decided that
this is what I am going to do.” It turns out that
Morton, a bit underage, had been driving on
family road trips since he was eleven.
Once Morton started his entry-level job
with Shelby American, he was occasionally
tasked with tackling other duties. He was soon
elevated to “parts chaser” and filled multiple
behind-the-scenes roles on the Shelby racing
Here is a quote from Shelby about Morton’s
tenure with the team: “He is very special to
me. He came to work for us as a kid sweeping
the floors. We used to look around the corner
and see him sitting in the cars, imagining that
he was driving.”
In his book, Morton writes about how, 50-60
years ago, racing was “a much more dangerous
sport,” chronicling the on-track deaths of
racers Dave MacDonald, Ken Miles, and Jim
Clark. He noted how, over the years, not only
the tracks that they race on, but the cars that
they encase themselves in, have become “much
safer,” citing the “foot-fire” problems that led
to the death of Shelby American’s MacDonald.
“You are probably less likely to get hurt
(racing) now than you are if you are a professional
football player,” he said. “The cars are
so safe,” he said, that maybe today’s drivers
“tend to take more chances.”
In the ’60s, Morton occasionally drove
for the Dan Blocker Racing team. Yes, Dan
Blocker, the beloved Hoss, one of the stars of
the long-running Bonanza television show, who
passed away way too early in 1972.
Morton did not have much interaction with
“Hoss,” though. “He was hands-off,” Morton
said of Blocker. “He would come to the races
and put-up money for the team,” he said, though
one quick story in the Morton book mentions
that when driver Morton was very fatigued
before a race, Blocker, calling Morton “little
buddy,” offered the driver pick-me-up pills.
Morton relates that Blocker said something
like, “take these, little buddy.” Morton, not
knowing the ingredients of the offered pills,
demurred and decided to just catch a couple
of winks in a nearby pick-up truck to freshen
himself for the upcoming race.
So as Morton, struggling financially, was
working a “poor paying job” in the late 1960s,
Peter Brock re-emerged in his life.
To be Morton as he prepares to embark on his racing career. continued next week!
Morton in his Indy car. Photo’s courtesy of Sylvia Wilkinson.
team, always aspiring to get behind the wheel
during competition in a Shelby-sponsored car.
Morton summed up his four years with Shelby
American this way: “It was an incredibly lucky
experience for me to be at that little driving
school, at that just the right week,” noting
how the Cobra prototype car that he drove in
1962 sold at a bidding war in Monterey a few
years ago for more than 12-million dollars.
Morton said that 60 years ago, the base price
for a Cobra came in at around $6,000 and that
Shelby was still making a profit.