Pete Craig – Early Georgia Racer


Pete Sr.

June 11, 1926 - Pete Craig is encircled with fans and officials after winnin his 10 mile dash at Daytona Beach in his "Chrysler 60."

Pete Jr. had a scrapbook of photos his father had collected during his racing career, which wasn’t very long, but that is only half of the story.

Pete Sr.’s father, William Harvey Craig (1855-1937) was the editor of the Gainesville Eagle, a weekly newspaper in Gainesville, GA.

Pete Craig was born Quentin Dorward “Pete” Craig in Gainesville in 1902.  He had an older brother named Britt who died in 1919 at 23 years of age.  Brother Britt was a pilot in WWI.

Craig, pictured left, apparently found just sitting in the seat rather boring. His only recorded injury actually came from a crash while testing an Indian Motorcycle at Daytona Beach. The intested by-stander is Craig's father, W.H. Craig, editor of the Gainesville (GA) Eagle.

To confuse matters, Pete Jr. has a brother named Britt, apparently named by for Pete Sr.’s lost brother.  Older Britt worked for the Atlanta Constitution and the New York Sun before his death.  Our Pete Sr. worked for the Atlanta Journal.

Pete Jr. recently sent me copies of material complete with an article from when his father retired. The article is from the Thomasville Times-Enterprise and dated April 1, 1967 (so let’s hope there is no April Fool’s joke here).  It gives a quick summery of Pete Sr.’s life, which reads like a Hollywood script.

He was considered at the time to be the youngest soldier in the United States Army at the age of 15 (according to the article, but Pete Jr. says he was 14).

He left Georgia to join and fight Poncho Villa in the border wars with Mexico right before we joined in on WWI.

“He was so small he had to wear his Boy Scouts uniform until the Army could come up with something that fit him,” Pete Jr. told me.  Later he was with General “Blackjack” Pershing fighting in France during the war.  He was drafted to serve in WWII but for health reasons, never saw much action.

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