Car racing was an exciting new sport in early 20th Century America. Drivers were celebrated as heroes. Joe Thomas, born in Grays Harbor County, was one of them.
Joseph “Joe” Thomas
Joseph “Joe” Henry Thomas was born August 2, 1890 to Charles (1864-1924) and Emma Wilks Thomas (1864-1943) in Grays Harbor County. He had one sibling, Grace Evelyn Thomas Oman (1895-1971). Their parents immigrated from the United Kingdom in 1888.
It is not clear what the family was doing in Grays Harbor but by 1900 they had relocated to Seattle. Charles was a traveling salesman for a fish products company.
Though his parents hoped he would become a doctor, Thomas worked at a garage on weekends and after school. He ended up liking working on cars better than hitting the books. After graduating Seattle High School, he became a mechanic rather than applying to the University of Washington.
From Airplanes to Car, Joe Thomas Was a Speed King
All types of machinery fascinated Thomas. He jumped at the chance to fly when Gene Romano offered to teach him in exchange for being a test pilot. Thomas took his first flight on July 4, 1911, at the Seattle Potlach festival. He enjoyed flying but decided to take his risks closer to the ground.
Service chief at Olympic Motor Car Company, he signed up with the Mercer team for a salary of $50 a week and half of any prize money. He had no experience except for a few demonstration races.
Joe Thomas began his racing career riding with Eddie Pullen as riding mechanic (mechanician) at the Tacoma speedway in 1912. In 1914 Pullen and Thomas set a world speed record at the Thanksgiving Day Corona race in San Fransico, whirling around the dirt track at 87.7 miles per hour. Thomas was nicknamed the “Speed King.”
Thomas loved racing. Asked by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1916 if he would retire soon, he said he couldn’t. “It’s a game you can’t quit even if you want to,” Thomas told reporters.
Racing Safer than LA Traffic, Says Joe Thomas
In 1917 Thomas joined the military. Working at the Wright-Martin plant in Los Angeles, he tested and approved 368 planes for the Army Air Service.
Thomas stayed in Los Angeles, returning to the racing circuit. He loved it – but not the city. “Ripping off at 105 miles an hour on a race track,” he told the Los Angeles Record in 1920, “isn’t half as risky as driving through Los Angeles traffic at 15.”
Thomas competed in the Indianapolis 500 as a ride-along mechanic in 1915, 1916 and 1919. He entered the race as a driver in 1920, 1921 and 1922. He made the Top Eight in 1920 and 1921, and Top 10 in 1922.
He also drove for the 1920 film “What’s Your Hurry?” Thomas had previously driven for the 1914 short, “The Record-Breaker,” a story about the Corona races starring his teammate Eddie Pullen.
Thomas outlived many of his former teammates, surviving his fair share of accidents. His worst accident was in a 1923 race dedicating the new Kansas City speedway. One driver was killed and eight others hurt in a series of accidents. Thomas’s car collided with another driver, resulting in broken bones, facial lacerations, and internal injuries. That incident, he later reflected, spelled the beginning of the end of his racing career.
Thomas raced only one time after that, for the Washington’s Birthday classic in Los Angels in 1924. Later hearing that his father was dying, he let driver Joe Boyer drive his new racecar at the Altoona Speedway and rushed back to Seattle. Boyer, 1924 Indy 500 winner, was killed after the car fell apart.
Joe Thomas Retirement
Now retired from racing, Thomas moved to Mason County, opening a garage in Lilliwaup along Hood Canal. He married Irene Rasanen (1900-1998), a Lilliwaup schoolteacher, on January 2, 1926.
The couple welcomed son, Charles William, in 1934. Thomas told the Daily Olympian that it was a “greater thrill than I got when I won the world’s racing record.” While he gave up racing, he still liked to listen to them on the radio.
With six-month Charles in tow, he and Irene did a demonstration drive from the Peace Arch on the Canadian border to Mexico to demonstrate the efficiency of new Gilmore Record Breaker Red Lion gasoline in a new 1935 Ford V-8 car.
The couple had another son, Arthur J., in 1937.
Thomas was hired by the Washington State Highway Department as a traffic safety engineer. He became head of the state’s Tacoma motor vehicle inspection station in 1938. Most inspections were voluntary. The former “speed demon” was now all about safety. As a member of the State Patrol, he also arrested the occasional drunk driver.
But Thomas had not forgotten his days as a pilot. During World War 2 he moved down to San Diego to work as an airplane designer and inspector for Convair. Thomas continued to work for the company until his 1958 retirement. He took one last symbolic solo flight that year, taking controls of a Convair 440 for a few minutes during a flight to Helsinki.
Joe Thomas retired to Pacific Beach, passing away on December 28, 1965. Over his long life he was not afraid to try new things. An early race car driver and pilot, he later worked to keep people safe on the road and in the air. Joe Thomas may not be the most famous early racer, but he belongs among the greats.
