Description

The world famous Gar Wood good luck teddy bears were carried aboard Wood’s boats during races and speed records. When Wood was once asked, "How is it, Mr. Wood, how is it you're alive today?" he asked in return, "Don't you know?" holding his two teddy bears, Teddy and Bruin, in the fingers of his right hand. "Here's the reason," he said, seriously. "These, THESE are the captains of my fate-mine and Johnson's." For thirty years Wood had been tying these teddy bears to his engines. A fortune cannot buy them from him. After he won the Harmsworth Trophy in England in 1920, an Englishman offered him £1,000 for one of them. Wood refused the offer. Wood stole these teddy bears from Mrs. Wood, his wife. She had bought the first one for fifteen cents in St. Paul, Minn., where they lived. When Wood saw it in their home he took it and put it in his first race boat, Little Leading Lady. He won every race he competed in with that boat. Mrs. Wood bought another. Wood stole that one, too. When he built his Miss Detroit II, Mrs. Wood saw her lost teddy bears for the first time. She made each of them a cork life-saving jacket, a bathing cap, rubber-soled shoes. She even stuffed their ears with batting to keep out the thunder of the engines. She gave them to Wood and asked him to put them into his new boat, for luck. Wood smiled and tied them to his engines. Someone told Wood that his boats were not gentleman runabouts." No gentleman would ever ride in one of those boats," was the remark. In 1924 he took his Baby Gar IV, powered with the restricted Liberty engine, to Buffalo for the Fisher-Allison Trophy Race. Dinning in his ears was that fatal remark about "gentleman's runabouts." He and Orlin Johnson, his mechanic, appeared at the judges' stand in full, formal evening dress, sitting in the cockpit of their boat-silk hats, swallow tails, white gloves, patent leather shoes, everything for formal wear. Even the two Teddy Bears were in evening dress. They won the race. Wood and Johnson climbed out of their boat as dry, and clean, as completely ready for a formal affair as they had been at the starting gun. "Why, this is a gentleman's boat,"Wood said,"Milady may ride in it clad in a snow white outfit without danger of a spot of oil or grease." From then on the bears wore tuxedos also. But Mrs. Wood fondled them as her own, as indeed they were. She dried them out when they were pitched overboard, dressed them up again. Wood would never go out on the river in his fast boats without them. The only time he ever lost a race was when his son, Gar, Jr., gave one of them to his opponent. When one of his boats sank with the bears aboard he sent a diver down to retrieve them before the boat was brought up. Truly a unique addition to any collection, these speed boat racing bears give rare insight into Gar Wood. Bears’ condition is commensurate with the unbelievable things they have witnessed. (Excerpts from "The Speed Kings" by J. Lee Barrett)