Bob Olds was destined to make his mark in the arts.
His mother, Gertrude, was a violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra and he was introduced to classical music at an early age. He geared his studies at East High School to pursue his interests at the University of Denver. He left DU with a degree in fine arts and with a goal of creating beautiful objects.
“I always had been interested in art,” Olds said. “As I was growing up, I always was drawing. I was into drawing more than I was into playing sports.”
But when it came time to go to work after college, Olds had to apply his skills in a different way than he had hoped. He got to do some painting, but not in oils or water colors, as he had planned.
“I had my degree, but I couldn’t get a job,” Olds said. “I went to work for Frontier Airlines and they put me to work painting the airplanes.”
Something else made an impression on him growing up, in addition to drawing and art. Olds had a paper route as a teenager and he discovered a location in his area where a midget auto racing car was housed. After delivering his papers, he frequently stopped by when he saw men outside the garage working on the car.
He learned that the driver was Buddy Martinson, who annually ranked high in the drivers standings at Lakeside Speedway. Olds began attending the midget auto races at Lakeside in 1939, but he couldn’t go into the pit area until he turned 21. He arranged a trip with the Martinson team to a race in Louisiana and was severely bitten by the racing bug.
Even though he maintained jobs outside of auto racing as an adult, the cars and the tracks became a bigger and bigger part of his life the older he got.
After serving in the military near the end of World War II, Olds was full steam into auto racing. Martinson left the scene and died of an illness, and Johnny Tolan became the top driver at Lakeside. Years later, in 1969, Olds entered the auto racing world big time when he bought an Offenhauser-powered car in St. Louis.
Tolan questioned the move.
“Johnny said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ But I did it,” Olds said.
With his racing world moving along, Olds added a Volkswagen-powered car and hired Sammy Sauer to drive it. The combination clicked and Sauer was always among the top drivers in the area.
Then, in the first race of the 1978 season, it all suddenly stopped. Sauer died in a wreck on the track in Erie.
“Sammy was killed in my car and the bloom pretty much came off the rose for me,” Olds said. “The track was a little muddy and the car flipped eight times. I told Sam at the start of the race to watch what he was doing out there. It was a very tough time for me.
“Sammy loved being the villain. He won a lot of races, but he wasn’t a villain,” Olds said. “He was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.”
Gene Pastor also drove for Olds.
“That accident pretty well took Bob out of racing,” Pastor said. “He was great to drive for. If you didn’t make it, he’d say we’d do better next time.”
Olds has remained a fan of racing, but no longer cares to pick up a wrench. In a twist of fate, he turned back to art late in life and has painted a picture of race cars coming out of a turn at Lakeside.
“I did it all from memory,” Olds said. “I made the sketches from memory and painted it like I remembered Lakeside.”
“It’s a neat picture,” Pastor said. “I think painting it might have helped a little bit to ease his mind about the accident.”
Everyone who saw the artwork wanted a copy. The initial printing is gone. Bob Olds had returned to fine art.
Olds bio
Born: June 29, 1927, in Denver
High school: Denver East
College: University of Denver
Family: Wife Bonnie; daughters Melissa, Mollie and Megan; sons Dave and Scott
Hobby: Model trains
