Ma Bickle – Remembering When Racing Was Fun

The passing of Jackie ‘Ma’ Bickle late last Thursday reminded me of how things have changed as I relived some of the most amazing times of my life racing across the country with Ma and her son, driver Rich Bickle.

I joined the ‘Bickle Clan’ in 1985 taking some promotional photos of Rich after his Late Model Championship season at Capital Speedway in Oregon, WI. It was fun hanging out with Rich and Ma – Rich won a lot on the Wisconsin short tracks back then and he was good copy for me, the racing writer at the nearby Madison Capital Times.

Meanwhile, Ma made sure everything stayed on track during the events taking detailed notes of every lap. With bows to Dick Trickle, Ma also threw the best parties in the pits afterward. I can’t remember how many times we were the last ones out of the gate in the wee hours of the morning at places like Capital, The Dells, Slinger and Rockford.

Who knew we could have so much fun?

Amazing times.

While it was new to me, those times had started for Ma nearly 30 years earlier when she stated attending stock car races to support her new boyfriend, driver Rich Bickle, Sr.

The couple married in 1960 and soon had a son, Rich, Jr. Jackie continued to support Rich, Sr’s racing throughout the decade. Meanwhile, she also took on the role of mom never missing one of ‘Richie’s’ oval track speed roller skating or later, motocross events.

When ‘Buzz’ graduated to stock cars in the middle 1970’s, ‘Ma’ Bickle as she was now known to all in the pit area was there to chronicle every lap. Later, when Rich came south to NASCAR for good in 1990, Ma regularly made the more than 20-hour ‘commute’ each way driving from Wisconsin to wherever to attend his races.

Behind the scenes, Jackie managed to have an amazing professional life few people at the racetrack ever saw. While still living in Wisconsin and confronted with the closing of the local manufacturing plant and the loss of her job, Jackie went back to school and earned a nursing degree. Over the next 30 years and until she retired from nursing last summer, Jackie put in countless hours at many Wisconsin and North Carolina hospitals assisting the sick and hurt.

Few people have ever cared so much for so many.

Ultimately, Ma ‘nursed’ me back to health too. In 1994, my initial break to come south and make the commitment to a career in NASCAR got shattered when Maxwell House decided to leave the sport at the end of the season. Without a job on the horizon, Ma kept me straight personally with her advice and Rich eventually rescued me professionally bringing me in to be the PR person on the Kleenex Busch (now Nationwide) deal in 1995.

For the next 10 years, Ma, Rich and I flew, drove, raced and partied together crisscrossing the country like racing gypsies. We did it all – Cup, Nationwide, Trucks, Late Models – every NASCAR track on the tour, every big money Late Model race on the schedule. The thrills were plenty, the wins – especially the grassroots racing victories at the Snowball Derby and the Miller Nationals – were amazing highs.

And thanks to Ma, we always seemed to leave the racetrack – or one of what she would call ‘shithole’ bars that she used to drag us into on every stop on the tour – with more friends than when we arrived.

While Ma enjoyed a good, cold one as much as the next person, she was always a racer first. Her attention for detail was legendary. Always armed with a clipboard that had two stopwatches attached at the top, Ma not only had Rich’s times in practice, but everyone else’s too including splits and segment times.

In an era prior to the electronic scoring today, that kind of information was invaluable.

If you needed to know anything, she had it.

And she kept it.

All of it.

Ma saved everything over the years. Helmets, uniforms, gloves, shoes – along with a couple hundred plastic totes filled with news clippings, photos, postcards, press kits and 1,000’s of personal notes pretty much detailing every race Rich Sr. and ‘Richie Jr.’ ever ran in any kind of competition. The boxes hold a complete chronicle or their life in racing together for 40 years.

What an amazing gift to leave behind.

The racing – and the fun it provided – pretty much stopped for Ma after the 2005 season. NASCAR had changed a ton in a decade we were on the scene. Rich became a victim of the ‘young gun’ syndrome as quality rides/funding became harder and harder to secure – especially if you were old school like we were, prone to a couple of frostys and a good time afterward regardless of where we finished.

Forget that we could still race – hell, Rich is still winning Late Model events in Wisconsin. We just didn’t fit the mold anymore.

Back then, things were way more reality and not perception based. Most everybody – not just us – raced hard, hung together and had fun in public afterward. At that time, big dollar sponsors with completely unrealistic on- and off -track expectations and minions of fans with cell/camera phones hadn’t driven everyone into hiding in the motorcoach lot just yet.

You could still be human and have fun in public.

Not anymore. Today, if somebody even thinks a driver farted, it’s all over the Internet on what we fondly call ‘TwitBook.’

How sad.

All these things raced through my head as I watched the races this past weekend. I especially loved watching the Indy Car race from Milwaukee, our old stomping grounds. I thought about all the times we raced and partied there. ‘The Mile’ was home for us and although we never got to hold the trophy there, the post-race parties at places like Yesteryears never seemed to suffer much for it afterward.

Not for us and not for our home state friends. Not for all the other racer types in the NASCAR garage area either who were right in lock step with us celebrating how lucky we were to be doing what we were doing regardless of the results earlier in the day.

Wonderful memories to be sure – and Ma was right in the middle of it, making friends and having the best time of all.

That’s what I will miss the most.

I know in my heart that Ma was watching the races this weekend too. After Rich stopped racing in NASCAR in 2005, she never missed a NASCAR event on television. Meanwhile, her personal life finally took a front-row starting position as she married Mike Swartz, a great guy who adored and took care of her to the end.

It was so great to see Ma – someone who had given so much to so many – finally putting her personal life first. Nobody ever deserved personal happiness than Ma did and her final years were among her best.

That said, I encourage all to tip one in honor or Ma Bickle the next time you have a beverage of choice in your hand. Give a salute to a great racer – someone who loved the sport and dedicated her life to it despite initially not even being allowed in the pit area because she was a woman – and to a wonderful human being who spent a lifetime engaging other people, caring for them and putting them first.

So long Ma. You’ll never been missed because you’ll always be in our hearts.

And hey, don’t forget the Truck Race is on Thursday next week. I know you’ll have the cooler full and ready to go for the party afterward.