Remembering Swayne Pritchett
Irwin's friends Swayne Pritchett and Jack Edwards in 1947. Pritchett would lose his life in 1948 as a result of a crash at a track near Jefferson, Georgia.
Tommie remembered the early days at the beach.
“In 1947 I went down with Pritchett, Jack Etheridge, Pee Wee Dooley and some others. Etheridge was driving for Airline Auto Service, another tripper station in downtown Atlanta. Jack was a true veteran professional racer and the rest of us were learning.”
And Pritchett was a good study.
“I remember Glenn Dunaway and Cliff Ash coming from Charlotte and bringing two girls with ‘em to the beach. They left the women back in a room, took the car to the track, pulled out the backseats and taped the lights and went racing. Soon after, Ash started hanging out at Edwards Garage there with all the liquor people. Come to find out he was a snitch and a bunch of people went down because of him.”
“Nobody could ever find the guy after that. If they did, they would have killed him,” Tommie said seriously.
In 1948, Tommie lost one of his best friends when Pritchett got killed at the track in Jefferson, Georgia.
“We drove cars just alike back in 1948,” said Irvin. “Swayne had number seventeen, I was number eighteen and another fellow had number nineteen. That was a time before they were welding the doors shut and really even before some of them were using straps to tie them off. Anyway, Swayne won the main event and had slowed down and was waving at the crowd with his door open. Another driver plowed into the back of him. He died later that same day. It may be hearsay, but there had been some bad feelings between Swayne and this particular driver. He had sold the man a racing-type radiator and never got paid. Bad feelings brewed.
“I think all that played into the wreck, but nothing ever came of it,” Tommie told us. “I saw a letter the other day Billy Carden had written to Swayne’s wife after the wreck. He really made her feel good telling about just how he would be missed and what a fine fellow he was. You never read much about that type of thing back then. Drivers were looked upon as whisky runners and law-breakers.”