Jerry Entin RIP

Edited by arttidesco, 05 July 2021 - 10:23.

Oh no, what a shock, I only 'knew' Jerry from here but always enjoyed his contributions, always great to learn from somebody who has been there and done it...

My condolences to his family and friends, he will most certainly be missed 

Indeed sad news to read of Jerry's passing. He was quite helpful when I first joined TNF around the time he was posting great photos from Wally Willmottt.

My condolences to the Entin family and friends.

Stephen

Very sad to find this out. Jerry's posts here always brought a very strong sense of being there. Sincerest sympathy for his family and friends. We'll miss you Jerry. RIP - Race In Power.

Such sad news to read. Like others, I only knew him through TNF threads but they were always informative.

                              R.I.P.

https://forums.autos...83-jerry-entin/

Very sorry to hear this.  An enthusiast to emulate...  Sincere condolences to his family and friends - and fellow fans.

DCN

Sincere condolences to his family and friends. He also revealed this about Roger Williamson:

"I will tell of another unknown test Roger did. In 1973 He tested the Trojan T101 that Jody Scheckter was to drive in the coming L&M Series in the States. Tom Wheatcroft had brought him to Silverstone to try the car. Tom treated Roger like a son. To say Roger drove the car beautifully would be an under statement. Sid Taylor told Tom we could run a second car for Roger if they wished. I wish they would have come to the States with us. Instead they decided to go to Formula One. Much to the loss of the racing world."

Like many others, I only knew Jerry through his posts, and our occasional interactions online. He was, of course, active here and in many racing history groups on FB. What I always respected about Jerry — among many other reasons — is that he nearly always went out of his way to credit the photographers of any images he posted. 

Edited by wildman, 05 July 2021 - 14:40.

I will miss him terribly. I knew him personally, as he would come to the Road America big historic meet every July. He and I spent hours and hours together. He would tour the paddock with me in tow, and introduce me to, well, just about everybody, because Jerry knew everybody. Everyone was his friend. To the best of my knowledge he had no enemies. During the rest of the year it was common to get phone calls and e mails from him. He called not only to chat, but to help out with whatever research project I had at the time. He was a great family man who loved his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. I don't know what took him from us, as it apparently came rather suddenly. But he is gone and we are poorer for it.

Tom

Sincere condolences to his family.  I always looked forward to reading his posts and photos.  We exchanged emails a little over a year ago and he was kind enough to post some of my photos to his topics.  RIP Jerry.

Mark

Willem informed me this morning of Jerry’s passing. I would like to express my condolences to his family and friends . Jerry made great contributions to motor sports and will be missed by many...Jack 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Oh, no....

I don't know what took him from us, as it apparently came rather suddenly. But he is gone and we are poorer for it.

Tom

Jack you are so correct ! Jerry was an encyclopedia of sports car knowledge,  and he was willing to share it with folks he didn’t even know. Willem sends his condolences to Jerry’s family and friends.

Will you make it possible for us to enjoy Willem's comments in the future? Or maybe it's time for Atlas to lift the ban...

This is sad,

I met Jerry once, back in 2011 at Indy. But we had contacts about a number of matters.

What a loss for his loved ones.

And this forum.

R I P  Jerry

Another great contributor to the forum taken, but all we oldies are in a queue that we struggle to stay at the end of, I'm on my third bout of cancer and have recently had my second heart attack - Hey ho, there's a golf course waiting for me tomorrow. As I said to my daughter, it's never a question of if, only when. RIP Jerry and may you have many laps of the great Laguna Seca in the sky.

What awful news.  My condolences to his family and friends.  RIP Jerry

RIP Jerry. Condolences to family and friends.

Like most I only knew him from here but a great deal of information as well as modern current historic racing from the US as well as NZ.

He will be missed.

Oh, dear.  Very sorry to hear this.  Like many of you, I was in touch with Jerry via email, etc.  But I did get to meet him at Legends of Riverside some years ago.  Very friendly, and I seem to remember him introducing me around.

Vince H.

Sad news indeed. My thoughts are with his family & friends.

Oh noooooooo! 

This is incredibly sad. Sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

Echoing many of the statements above, I found Jerry to be so endearing and helpful when I enquired about Can-Am Shadows ages ago. Here was a man who‘d seen and done it all, gladly willing to share his knowledge (and humour) with know-nothing me. Thank you, Jerry.

[/IMG]

Jerry was Sid Taylor's right-hand man in the US and can be seen third from right next to Sid in this well known photo taken at Riverside in 1972. infact he ran Jody Scheckter when Sid was indisposed in the UK trying to prevent Mary Taylor going to prison.

Jerry had a bit of a charmed life, his family having a major franchise for most of the slot machines on the West coast, and this allowed him to go racing.  I'm pretty sure he never had to enter a career of any sort. 

He knew everyone on the US racing scene, and put me in touch with lots of people as well as providing lots of information that Sid had long forgotten!

We spent many hours chatting on Skype, and he used to delight in sending me films prior to their UK release. Famous for never smiling in photographs, he would roar with laughter when telling me stories about Sid!

RIP Jerry, I shall miss you.

Edited by Giraffe, 06 July 2021 - 11:47.

Originally posted by myself
Friday morning we repacked the pickup ready for our next stage. A quick breakfast at the motel and then on the road, we'd checked with Jerry for his address and knew roughly how we were going to get there, the GPS seemed to be telling us the right things this time and we got up to speed. A relatively easy run...


 
Janet notes that the elements weren’t working for us…
 

Woke up about 7am – having tea prepared with our $8 kettle bought at the flea market a few days ago. Good buy.
 
The weather is bleak, raining, driving north up to the town of Holland. Jerry, the fellow we’re meeting is determined we travel a particular route for some reason. We wanted to go up the coast and com back inland to see more.

 
And the phone rang. "Are you on your way yet?" "Yes, Jerry, we've just left Sawyer." Then followed a bunch of instructions, too many to take in. "We've got the GPS set, Jerry, I think that's the way it's taking us." "Okay..."
 
Along the Interstate we saw this truck... count the axles!
 

 
Yeah, now I know it's hard, the water droplets on the screen have got the auto-focus bamboozled (who said you don't need a DSLR?), but you can see wall to wall wheels on that truck. It's a Michigan thing, apparently.
 
 
 

Driving along the highway, Ray wanted to take a photo of a truck with more wheels than he'd ever seen on a truck before, drove up alongside it, doing about 60 mph, very nerve-wracking. Then something happened to the accelerator - had to pull up and change the spring, fortunately that was one of the things he bought when we were stopping at nearly every car parts store earlier in the trip.

 
The spring I'd installed on the throttle back at Bloomington had snapped, but when you buy these you get a few in the packet and I'd taken the trouble to keep a spare. It didn't take long to instal, of course, but it made catching that truck again a problem and I just caught it as it was about to take an exit. Hence the poor photo.
 
Then the phone rang again. “Did you come to..." I tried to tell Jerry where we were, he then tried to convey as much detail as he could, meaning that you really needed to take notes to follow him. "It's all right, Jerry, the GPS will get us there..."
 
It wasn't much later that the phone rang again! "Have you gone past XYZ yet?" "I think we're just coming up to that, Jerry..." "Right. Now in eight more miles you'll come to a set of lights, you go through them and then take the next left. That puts you on a service road, I'm waiting for you in my white Ford, just come up behind me..."
 
Okay. Let's do what the man says. He phoned again just as we were getting there and we got the directions right, drove up behind him and he said, "Follow me!" Turning towards Lake Michigan, he took us quickly down one road, turned right up another, past some local scenery and turned right again and rapidly pulled up in a driveway at a little factory or workshop.
 
"You have to meet this guy, he's got some great stuff here," Jerry said after introducing himself.
 
 
 

Finally got to Holland, met up with Ray’s acquaintance, Jerry, who met us along the road and has taken us to a friend of his who has a workshop with all sorts of old cars – so Ray is on Cloud 9, taking photos and having his photo taken.
 
Jerry seems to have our day planned out, with lunch at a place called Applebees, it must be a franchise, it is all over the USA.

 
Pretty soon he was introducing me to Bill Wiswedel, the owner of the business called Olive Engineering. We were in Holland MI and about to see some fabulous race car stuff. Here's some of it, check them out:
 

 

 
Bill was very nice to us and answered all of my questions. I don't know what Janet thought of this introduction to people we simply didn't know, and racing cars are very much a foreign thing to her.
 
The ex-A J Foyt car was impressive, though it would have been more so if the quad-cam Indy Ford engine behind it had been in its rightful place. Bill explained that one of the chassis not seen in the pics was one of three in the world believed to be a particular car, but this was the right one. And that another chassis wasn't finished because it was one of a number laid down and it didn't get finished before the makers proved that the concept was an utter disaster.
 
Going from shed to shed it was amazing what he had there. There was a mid-thirties Dodge that had been turned into a more modern-looking car by someone in the fifties, a light plane frame hung from the rafters, aircraft and car engines were abundant, unfinished chassis and complete cars lay around in large numbers. And an ex-Indy ex-F5000 Eisert was there with evidence it had once been road-registered!
 
Jerry explained to me that Bill has an annual car enthusiast party and hot-rods and race cars and classic cars turn up in numbers. Oh, and it was time to go!
 
A total ball of energy, Jerry jumped into his Ford and ushered us to follow. Soon we were in the carpark of Applebees in Muskegon and being introduced to Ron Mack and his son-in-law, Rick Knapp.
 
 
 

We then went for lunch. I had a beautiful spinach and berry salad and Ray had fish and chips, he couldn’t eat anything else.
 
Another two fellows had lunch with us, one was a local policeman but both of them were car-crazy – that is why they were invited to lunch. Jerry’s wife, Carmen, came later, ordered a burger but didn’t eat much. We went thrift-shopping together and she had to go to Target and another department store. I bought a vew things while the boys went to another car place.

 
We ordered lunch and then Jerry's wife, Carmen, arrived. She also ordered and then asked Janet what she wanted to do for the afternoon while Jerry took me off elsewhere. "Oh, and by the way, how many days are you staying with us?"
 
We were in the process of being kidnapped!
 
"I like going to second hand shops," Janet told her, so their afternoon was soon planned. After we ate, Ron and Rick departed, pretty soon afterwards Jerry ushered me into his car and drove me to their workshop…
 

 

 

 

 
I looked over Rick's new in-the-embryonic-stages Mustang, which is getting the 570hp engine shown in preparatory stages in the pics, there was an E-type there too, while the ex-Can-Am car I'm sure was a Genie and I lost track of what the other car was. Except the 427 Cobra, I knew what that was all right, I saw one of them before... in 1965 at Lakeside... and that's Ron's pride and joy.
 
I was about to take more pics and ask Ron more about... "Come on, we're going now!" Jerry told me and we drove to his home, picking up my truck from the Applebees carpark on the way. Once there I helped Jerry load some jetskis onto a trailer and hook it up to his Ford, then we headed off somewhere I was to learn about on the way.
 
 
Jerry and Carmen were close to Ed and Pam Babbitt. Ed, I was told, wanted to get together a good collection of classic cars but kept buying ones that needed more money spent on them than was reasonable. "I told him to ask me to find him cars, then he started to get some decent ones," Jerry explained.
 
He also explained how Ed's budding museum was on three floors of an old building in town, and that there were ramps from one floor to the next, and that one day someone delivered a car and Ed was behind it when they started to unload it. The car got away, it was at the top of a ramp, Ed was crushed against the wall on the floor below and suffered head injuries. He was never the same again, then a brain tumor led to his death soon afterwards.
 
Pam took over the running of the family business...
 

 
...by the way, that's Jerry's Ford with the trailer and jetskis on it to the right. Babbitt's sells motorcycles and jetskis in summer, snowmobiles in winter. Carryover stock in the off-season gets moved to the basement of the museum building and Jerry takes care of that for Pam. This is the museum building:
 

 
They run a huge spare parts internet sales operation from this place too. Jerry fills a few roles there and has the run of the place, and when he wants a jetski to use, or a snowmobile too I guess, there's always one or two there for him. Before long we were loading three bikes on the trailer and taking them to the museum, Jerry unloaded them after showing me where Ed's collection was and leaving me to take photos:
 

 

 
There were other cars, of course, but I photographed the ones I thought either significant or appealing to me. Some of these I'd never seen before, like the Excaliber and the other similar device, while it was also the first Edsel I'd ever seen.
 
Pretty soon Jerry was back, "Seen enough? Let's go..." and we headed back to his place. Jerry and Carmen have a nice home on Spring Lake, they recently put a second floor on it and they have a jetty out into the lake for boating activities. Not long after we got there the wives arrived and we chatted together for a while.
 
 
 

Went to Jerry and Carmen’s place, told we were staying the night – beautiful lake house on Spring Lake – what an outlook to wake up to in the morning.

 
Their dog need to go for a walk so we volunteered to take it out and explore the neighbourhood with it... Janet led the dog:
 

 
Lousy pic, I know, but it's all part of the story. Like seeing cars in this kind of state:
 

 
That would never pass muster back home!
 
When we returned, discussion was turned to planning for dinner... ultimately we were taken off to a pizza restaurant which was very noisy and crowded, but the pizza was acceptable and we had plenty to eat. As you always do at dinner in America.
 
 
 

We went out for pizza to a more traditional place that had more of what we’re used to. Ham and pineapple, boring, I think, for Americans but what Ray could eat. Well, he still thought it was a bit spicy. Had to wait a while before being seated, it was packed out. Had a drink with Coke and Grenedine in it – pomegranate juice it is, quite nice.
 
Watched a movie with Carmen while the boys, of course, talked and watched cars on screen. We watched “Day and Knight” with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz – never heard of it before – hardly worth watching, ridiculous.

 
What I thought would be an hour or two with Jerry had turned into an overnight stop I hadn't planned, but it was okay, our next fixed time for being somewhere was still over a week away and we were flexible enough with things. We spent the night in the upstairs bedroom and woke to look out over the lake:
 

 
Our plans for the day were to get to Indianapolis, which wasn't going to be too hard. Why, we should be there in daylight even!

Edited by Ray Bell, 06 July 2021 - 16:31.

And the next morning...
 
 

Time to head towards Indy...
 
We've been wearing the inside of the front tyres, so getting back to Bloomington and putting on the new tie rod end (ordered but not received when we were there in the beginning) is somewhat important. And to spend more time with my son and to see the Indy Hall of Fame.
 
 
 

Woke up to a gorgeous morning on the lake, a bit overcast but sun trying to get through. Ray had to go to an eye care place to get a nose pad on his glasses. They did this for free. Jerry couldn’t do enough – a bit intense, even Ray found it hard to cope.

 
But when I got up on Saturday and put on my glasses they were starting to fall to bits! Somewhat difficult, but the nosepad holders screw onto the back of the lens at the bridge, there's a screw comes through from the front and it got itself nice and loose. And a pad has disappeared and I know it's a problem because unlike most rimless frames these require a kind of tapered bush under the head of the screw and that's been missing.
 
Jerry, of course, knows where there's an optometrist open on Saturday morning. And they're not far away, either. Delay No 1 on our trip to Indy. The people at the shop made some improvements, but say they can't tighten them properly because of the lack of the tapered bush. Unfortunately, like everyone else who ever touches these, they tighten the screws on the arms, which actually worsens the problem. We roll on... say our goodbyes to Jerry and Carmen and drive off.
 
Janet related a story Carmen had told her:
 
 
 

Jerry and Carmen’s 16-year old granddaughter, Sierra, the apple of their eye (they’ve even got Sierra numberplates on Jerry’s 4 x 4) got into trouble and is grounded for toilet-papering someone’s house. They just threw rolls of toilet paper rolls and it unravels, covering the house, heaps of toilet paper rolls being used. She was also in trouble with the police for driving after a certain time of night with passengers because of being young. They can start driving here when 14½ – young, isn’t it?

 
What a time we had in Muskegon! Jerry and Carmen, who both expected and wanted us to stay longer, couldn't do enough for us. I sure hope we can visit them again one day or return the favour if they come out to Australia.

 

 
Jerry - unmatched in his ability to make one welcome. But there's no photo of him there, so here you are:
 

Jerry and Carmen (and Janet) on their back porch. He made us stay - and we were so glad he did.
 
And the last pic I took of Jerry was at Bill's during my 2016 trip. It was a wet day, he was looking over the Plymouth GTX I'd ridden in during my 2014 trip when I called on the Montana Dodge Boys, Bill had subsequently bought it. A 426 Hemi engine enlarged to ridiculous size, went like the clappers, I wonder if Jerry ever took it for a drive?


 
By the way, quotes within the posts are excerpts from Janet's travel diary of the trip in 2012.




.

Edited by Ray Bell, 06 July 2021 - 16:25.

A better pic...

Did we almost get a smile this time, Giraffe?

If ever there will be a TNF Hall of Fame he should be a sure bet for induction.

He was extraordinarily generous with sharing his memories here on this forum.

Took me back to a time of classic sports car racing, cars, and people.

So sorry to hear of this.

Thanks for everything, Jerry.

Absolutely.  Great stories.  RIP and sympathy to family and friends.  79 though not a bad innings for someone racing in that era.

Yes Jerry is smiling ! 

2010 Legends of Riverside...l to r, me, Philippe de Lespinay, Jerry, Frank Lance, (Scooter Patrick to the right in the background)

We were all happy to be there...honest !

Vince H.

Edited by raceannouncer2003, 07 July 2021 - 05:46.

I phoned and his son, William, answered...

Naturally enough, he spent some of the conversation in tears. He's now seen this thread and I think the outpouring here has surprised him.

Jerry's heart problems have, apparently, been coming on for some time. But one has to be there to understand the grief of Carmen as she spent the last ten days of his life at his hospital bedside as his body failed to respond and finally shut down. We were not there, we could never have been there, but it makes it easier to understand why she's not talking to people outside the family at the moment.

A delightful lady and, from what I saw, the perfect partner for this dynamo of a man with such an outgoing personality and a huge desire to help others and make them happy. I hope that with every new day's delightful sprinkling of the sunrise over the waters of Spring Lake, over their jetty and their lawn running down to the water's edge, and shining into their lounge room window, she will progressively become more able to accept that others care and want her to know that they do.

.

Edited by Ray Bell, 07 July 2021 - 11:15.

Originally posted by Michael Ferner
Will you make it possible for us to enjoy Willem's comments in the future? Or maybe it's time for Atlas to lift the ban...

Willem has been a keeper of the flame just like Jerry. 

The obituary.
Alas, not allowed to quote without permission.

It’s been reported on Facebook that Jerry Entin has died. I’m so very sorry to learn this. He’d had a great racing career - Ol’ Yaller, Cheetah, McLaren M1 and Lola T70 in Can-Am, Le Grand in F5000 etc, but here at TNF we knew him best for his great contributions to this forum over so many years.

Sincere condolences to his wife Carmen and all his family and friends. RIP Jerry and thank you, you will be much missed.

So sad. What a week of painful losses!!! He was very kind with me and my enquiries. 

So sad to mark the first anniversary...July 04...of Jerry's death.  He was a great contributor here at TNF and a top bloke.

RIP, Jerry...

Two years now since Jerry was lost to Carmen and we here at TNF.  Remembered fondly for his wit, knowledge and comradery.

RIP.

Also his helpfulness...

The number of threads he started to help others tell their stories, he was very generous with his time. Just as he was so keen to show Janet and I around, he willingly gave his energies to others that we might share their knowledge, their memories.

I'll be pulling the Michael Argetsinger thread in a few days to remember him on the 8th (!) anniversary of his passing - I'd forgotten he and Jerry passed close to the same July date.

I will tip a cold one in memory of Jerry today !