Two days later, rescue crews found Teddy's body beneath the plane. Charlie also tried to find his little brother, but before he could, the plane exploded. He spotted a tuft of his father's white hair sticking out from beneath a pile of rubble, dug him out and pulled him to safety. Dick says their plane hit the ground at more than 100 miles an hour and then slid to a stop at the edge of a 60-foot cliff.Ĭharlie sprung into action as soon as the jet stopped moving. Moments after takeoff, the plane carrying Dick, Charlie and Teddy came crashing down. The rest of the family would be heading east. The plane landed at a small Colorado airport, where they dropped off Susan. Susan, Dick, and their sons, Charlie and Teddy, boarded a private jet in California. A lot more than just her name has changed since she first got behind the wheel as a teenager.It was the morning of November 28, 2004. She remains actively involved in motorsport and works tirelessly to encourage female participation. By her last appearance, in 2000, she was 53, the oldest driver to ever start the race. She finished 19th that year and in her four remaining Indy 500s she never improved on the 11th-place finish she had achieved on her debut. After retiring from the 1993 race, she qualified an excellent sixth the next year on a grid that contained four Formula 1 world champions. Having passed rookie orientation at the Speedway, she qualified 27th, only the second woman to qualify for the race (after Janet Guthrie), worked her way up to 11th at the chequered flag, and became the first female driver to be named Rookie of the Year.Īlthough appearances in the Ind圜ar series were only occasional, she became a regular in the 500. She duly tested for Dick Simon’s outfit and, despite her advanced years, was given the chance to compete in the Indianapolis 500. She had raced in Trans-Am, which appeared on the Ind圜ar under-card, and had therefore begun to appear on the Ind圜ar teams’ radar screens. She specialised in endurance racing and was a regular competitor at Daytona and Sebring, but it was not until 1992, at the ripe old age of 45, that she came to much wider attention. She won the Florida Regional Championship in a Ford Pinto and in the late 1970s and ’80s became a regular in sports car events across North America. This time she attended a racing school and, after an inauspicious start when she crashed into a lake in her first race, she began to make rapid progress. But Lyn grew frustrated at being regarded simply as Mrs Caruso and changed her surname to St James after the actress Susan St James. When John moved to Florida, Lyn followed, and they married and ran an electronics business together. She began to date one of them, John Caruso, and on their second date he took her to the Indianapolis 500 on the back of his motorcycle. Soon, much to her mother’s disapproval, Lyn was street-racing with her friends. Lyn, as she became known, was taught to drive by her mother when she was just 15 and was then allowed to practise on the deserted roads of the summer resort where she worked. Her given name (Carol) was almost immediately changed to Evelyn, after her aunt. And there was even a brief spell as Lyn Caruso along the way, but the history books tell us that Lyn St James made seven starts in the Indianapolis 500, won her class in the Sebring 12 Hours and twice raced in the Le Mans 24 Hours race. Carol Gene Cornwall does not sound like a racing driver, but when you take the same person and give them the name Lyn St James things are different.
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