I didn’t know him personally, but I was lucky enough to be covering racing when John Paul Jr. was an active driver. Whenever he won, which was quite often, I was always glad because that meant there’d be an intelligent, considerate voice in the press room for the post-race interviews. John Paul Jr. was always one of the nicest guys in racing. If you didn’t know it, you’d never guess what he’d had to overcome. But everybody knew it. And everybody still liked John Paul Jr.
So when I heard he’d be signing copies of his new book, 50/50, I wanted to go see him. He was doing a signing at a book store called Autobooks Aerobooks in Burbank. (You can buy the book there or online at www.johnmortonracing.net). They have signings almost every week. You always want to go there on Saturdays from 10-2. Last time I was there Parnelli Jones was signing his book, “As a Matter of Fact I am Parnelli Jones.” Pete Brock was there a couple weeks ago, Jesse Alexander before that, Linda Vaughn had her book, all the real car people and racing people from L.A. are there. A couple named Chuck Forward and Tina Van Curen run the place. They’ll talk to you all day about French cars, Italian cars, racing, anything. They are a delight.
When authors come in, Tina sets up a table in an alcove near the front door, and that was where John Paul Jr. sat, still all of his handsome six feet four inches, even though he was slowed by Huntington’s disease. It had claimed the life of his grandmother, mother and sister and was now working on him. But he was fighting. The title of his book refers to the chances that he would get it – 50/50.
Next to Paul was five-time Trans-Am champ Tommy Kendall. Other friends and supporters were in the room. Sylvia Wilkinson, who wrote the book over the course of three years of interviews, struggling to understand every one of the forced words she heard, she was there, too, along with her long-time companion, the racer and another Trans-Am champion, John Morton.
They plopped me down in a chair next to John Paul. I pulled out two audio recorders and we started talking. John Paul had to fight to get every word out, so there weren’t going to be a lot of them. But economy of prose is a virtue, they tell us, and John Paul was virtuous.
Autoweek: You’ve lived a heck of a life.
JP: I have.
Autoweek: They should make a book about it.
JP: They have.
He was speaking with effort, one of the many side effects of Huntington’s disease. Every word had to be wrestled from his mind and shoved out through clenched teeth which sometimes, miraculously unclenched and worked normally. But mostly they were forced, as if he was terribly angry. You couldn’t blame him if he was, given all that has happened to him, so much of it unfair, so much of it not his fault. But he wasn’t angry. I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen John Paul Jr. angry. Never even heard of anything like that. His dad, John Paul Sr., sure, that guy got angry all the time. His rants were epic. He threw things, screamed, cursed. But John Paul Jr.? Never.
(A story about father and son John Paul Sr. and John Paul Jr. is coming in the print version of Autoweek, so subscribe to that here. Buy a few gift subs for your family members!)
Autoweek: Just the struggle to become a successful racer, to begin with, that’s really something.
JP: It was.
The words are difficult to hear but more so to speak. But John Paul Jr. is saying them, perhaps out of a sense of duty, just as he did the time he refused to speak any words at all when Federal prosecutors wanted him to testify against his father for the drug smuggling that financed their race careers for a while. He did 28 months in prison because of that one time he wouldn’t speak, “…almost three race seasons” as he described it in the book. Now he is free of prison but constrained by a genetic condition that is almost as confining.
Autoweek: Maybe they’ll make a movie out of it?
JP: We’re trying to do that.
Autoweek: Who would you get to play you?
JP: I don’t care.
He doesn’t care because he’s interested now in getting the word out about Huntington’s disease. Maybe that will help somebody find a cure. Sylvia Wilkinson, who wrote the book with John Paul, comes over. She points to a picture in the book of John Paul racing at Le Mans in a 935 in the rain.
Autoweek: That must have been terrifying, in the rain, at night?
JP: It was.
Autoweek: There were no chicanes on the Mulsanne then.
Sylvia: He was going over 200 mph and people were passing him at 240.
JP: They were passing me. I was scared to death.
Autoweek: What was your favorite car to race?
JP: 935 was my favorite.
Autoweek: Why?
JP: They are so scary.
Autoweek: That was in the era when if you lifted off, you’d spin. How did you handle that?
JP: Didn’t lift.
Autoweek: What was your favorite track?
JP: Road Atlanta.
Autoweek: Why was that?
JP: The curves, the Esses.
Autoweek: How did you take those?
JP: Flat.
Autoweek: That’s also scary, isn’t it?
JP: Yeah it was.
Autoweek: Was that as scary as racing at Le Mans in the rain at night?
JP: Same.
Tommy Kendall: You talked about Daytona, pre-bus stop. You were so scared because you couldn’t see well. (Then, to me, Kendall said) I assumed he wasn’t afraid of anything, but he couldn’t see as well so he went faster.
Autoweek: What was your favorite series?
JP: IMSA. I liked the long-distance races.
Autoweek: What was your second-favorite car after the 935?
JP: 962 and also the 956. That was at Le Mans.
Autoweek: Was that also scary?
JP: Yeah.
Autoweek: How about Indy? How did you like that?
JP: Oh, I hated that place. I was lucky I lead it one time. I was always slow there. One time I barely made the race. There wasn’t anything wrong with the car they were all good. But the first year I went there I crashed and broke my ankle. But I didn’t pass out, so I was in pain. It was Friday the 13th.
Wilkinson shows a photo of JP being pulled from the car, face wracked with pain. She later told me, “One day he would say he hated Indy, but he didn’t really mean that. He meant he got hurt so many times there it was painful to remember. And he never had a good car. But he refused to blame the car. And he never stopped wanting to win Indy.”
He doesn’t seem to be in pain that day at the bookstore, but he’s still wracked by Huntington’s.
Autoweek: When did you start to show symptoms?
JP: 40 years old. Same as my mom. Since 2000.
Autoweek: So you’re overcoming this just as you’ve overcome so many other things in your life. Is this struggle the hardest thing yet?
JP: Worst thing I ever did. In six months they’re going to give me a shot. It’s going to let me walk again. Six months. I’m going to be the first guy that gets it.
There’s a doctor at UCLA, Dr. Susan Perlman, who has found a potential cure. But it’ll be six months before it’s government-approved. There is a long line of people hoping it works, he has a lot of friends. Many were there in the book store. Many more, like me and maybe you, saw him race and admired his skill and the grace with which he carried himself both on and off the track, a grace that is slipping away from him, being dragged away now, by this terrible, slow disease. All those people want to see the cure work, but nobody more than John Paul Jr.
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