Mechanicians_Bob Perry 00:00:00 Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Mechanicians Racing Stories, where we meet the men and women that do the work in motorsports. I'm your host, Rob Klyver The stories that follow are personal interviews with the people that you've probably never heard of mechanics, engineers, office people, really any of the folks that make racing happen. Occasionally we will visit with drivers too, many of whom started in support roles. Hello listeners, and thanks for tuning in again. I apologize, it's been several months since I've done a post and I regret that. Um, life gets busy. You know that. So one of the things that just came up earlier this week was that one of the guests I was about to schedule with has passed away. His name is Bob Perry. And Bob was instrumental in fabricating the mechanics training programs delivery. When I was at Jim Russell, Bob and I go back quite a ways. When he used to work at Magee Motorsports and occasionally. And my wife, late wife introduced me to him. Anyway, Bob was a hell of a great guy. He understood students. He had a hell of a sense of humor. He was a kind and soft guy. Even though he was known as scary Bob Perry because he always came off like a hard ass. Bob had worked at Skip Barber for many years. Bob worked with us at Jim Russell, and Bob went on later to open his own fabrication shop and work with his, uh, former Russell coworkers in Pete Filippo's Hot Rod shop. It came very suddenly to hear this news. I happened to be on a work trip in Saint Louis and was inundated with what the hell happens? And I don't know. I don't think it really matters what happened. I think what matters is that we've lost one of the guys that gets it. You know, they used to say that. There is guys you'd have on your race team and there's guys that you'd have at your barbecue. I would have Bob at both my race team and my barbecue if there was such a thing. So to Bob, I'm going to share some images of you interacting with some students many years ago when, uh, IndyCar at the time came through, or maybe it was IRL. I can't even remember. Came through Sears Point, and he had known some of the guys in the Fernandez team. And so he took the guys over and showed them around a real race car because our school cars were not real race cars, and he spent some really good quality time expanding on what was going on and explaining what these components were and how in in board shocks and everything worked. I had a memory today of Bob and I discussing the loss of Greg Moore, because he was actually working on that team when that happened. And, uh, we talked about it and we talked about Greg's injury in his hand and how Greg should not have been driving, frankly, in my opinion, because he had crashed his scooter the day before. And when we were talking, Greg and I, he had quite a laceration on his paw anyway. And he couldn't didn't seem like he could grip the car back up out of the. Where the tire went in underneath the lip of the asphalt. But anyway, I digress. Bob and I talked about that and the danger of the sport and everything else, and his attitude was kind of like mind, well, you strap yourself into a race car, you got to expect trouble somewhere along the line. But Bob didn't strap himself into a race car. He strapped himself into life. He was a genuine individual. He fabricated stuff. And I think I'll close with a quote I heard from him once, and he created relationships with everybody that I saw him meet. He was a guitarist. He played excuse me, he played well, he played crazy. And he kept trying to get myself and my wife to come up to Petaluma and see him play his thrash metal. And anybody that knows me and her, we barely leave the house after dark. And thrash metal is not really our genre. But to Bob, I regret not setting up that interview because I think you had a lot to add. The quote I was thinking of that I heard Bob say, and I'll try and get it right. He was asked at the Irwindale Speedway once by Ken UT. After all the muscle cars that tried to do an oval and they crashed everything. They apparently destroyed everything. I was not at the event. Tracy, the parts guy, was there, said it was just a disaster. And early on, I mean, like in practice, we just didn't have oval training anyway. It said that Bob was asked, what are we going to do? And Bob said, ah, Ken, don't worry about it. I've been making something out of nothing for so long that I can make anything out of nothing in no time. And that was Bob. There was no way to get him down on the shop. I don't think there was ever any way to get him down that I ever saw. And he was a wonderful human being, at least to me. Your experiences may vary, but I doubt it. So did Bob Perry. Thank you sir. See you on the other side.https://docs.google.com/videos/d/1y6_jg4EL1TePCPmJCyMcI8ZBsTLkbrNE44kPPJgXep0/edit?usp=sharing
