All-American Soap Box Derby

• Private
• US

Dow Jones Description

It's been called "The Greatest Amateur Racing Event in the World". "The Gravity Grand Prix", and many other expansive euphemisms-but to most of the more than a million youngsters who've participated, it's just the "Soap Box Derby." And a "Soap Box Derby" it was christened back in 1933, when a Dayton (Ohio) Daily News Photographer encountered three boys racing home-made, engine-less cars down an inclined brick street. Myron E. ("Scottie") Scott was known at the News for his creative thinking as much as for his photographic ability, and one of the best ideas of his life hit him at that moment: Why not hold a coasting race and award a prize to the winner? He told the boys to come back to the same hill with their friends a week later, and they could participate in a race with a "loving cup"- as it was called in Depression America-as a prize. The week passed, and nineteen boys arrived at the site in suburban Dayton to contest for honors. One of the cars-which did not win the cup-personified Scottie's vision of a "Soap Box Derby" racer. Obviously handcrafted, painted black with a big white "7" on it, the racer had been built by Robert Gravett, son of a Dayton metal stamping plant employee. "Scottie" got his pictures-and "Old No. 7." as he christened it, would become the symbol of the Derby for the for the next thirty-five years. But now Newsman Scott wanted to expand this rolling-down-a-hill fun into something much bigger...

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