Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 - (Page 25)

Clockwise from left: In 1960 Fitch ﬁnished ﬁrst in his class in Le Mans, France. Fitch during his Cunningham days. Fitch driving during the 1955 Tourist Trophy Race. escape kit and examined his silk cloth map and compass. He was more than 200 miles behind enemy lines with only his feet to carry him to safety. Fitch walked all night, until he collapsed wearily in a barn’s hay loft. Late the next afternoon, he woke up. Fitch quietly climbed down the loft’s ladder, but he startled a woman working there. Her cry alerted the farmer and Fitch was captured. “The succeeding weeks melded into a nightmare of prisoner of war camps, near starvation, exhausting marches, and endless interrogation,” he recounted. Fortunately, the war in Europe ended two months later, and Fitch was released. A GREAT ADVENTURE The day Fitch was gunned down was not the last time he crawled away from a crash site, nor the last time he went airborne. In 1953, he was again soaring through the air, this time in a Cunningham C-5 sports car during a race in Rhiems, France. The sports car, which was shaped like an airplane’s wing, became airborne when Fitch crested a hill at 140 mph. After tumbling end-over-end, Fitch climbed out of the wreck and crawled through the bushes toward the sound of rushing cars. “Once I reached the road, I recognized some of the cars racing and realized where I was,” he says. As a boy, Fitch heard the sound of racing vehicles and the roar of the engines when his stepfather, an executive with the Stutz car company, took him to see the Indianapolis 500. He was bored. He changed his mind in 1939, when just days before England declared war on Germany, Fitch watched the last race held at the Brooklands race track in Surrey, England. Awed by the drivers’ skill and the cars’ sophistication, he vowed that he, too, would drive competitively. Ten years later, Fitch made good on his promise when he raced through the streets of Bridgehampton, Long Island, in a MG TC. He went on to race throughout America and Europe, winning many of the sport’s most prestigious events, including the Seneca Cup, the Grand Prix of Argentina, Tourist Trophy, Sebring, and the Mille Miglia. A win in March 1951 at the Grand Prix at Buenos Aires while driving an Allard J2 won him a silver trophy—and a kiss—presented by Evita Perón. Fitch chuckles as he describes a very different victory reception he once received from his wife, Elizabeth. She approached the triumphant driver’s car and cordially shook his hand. “My wife was phenomenal,” Fitch says of Elizabeth, who is being treated for Alzheimer’s disease at a nearby nursing home. Rather than worrying about her husband’s dangerous hobby, Fitch’s wife of more than 50 years and mother of his three boys “thought I would never be hurt because I was such a good driver,” he says. “She was quite wrong, of course, but it gave us both great peace of mind.” In 1952 at the Nurburgring circuit in Germany, Fitch convinced more people than his wife that he could handle a car. After that race, he was invited to test drive for the Mercedes factory team, where he impressed the team’s manager, Alfred Neubauer. Fitch winter 2008 25

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Ugly is in the Eye of the Beholder Fitch's Law of Motion A Blessing to the Community The Amidonian Acclamation China Trip Bridges Cultures, Generations From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

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