To all,
First off, thank you to all that participated in the "Mechanic's Prize"
donations. For those that hadn't been following along, Roger Menadue was
the Experimental Department Chief Engineer for the Donald Healey Motor
Co. Roger's task was the construction of all Healey race cars and
prototypes. He built over 30 cars that raced at LeMans.
He constructed a car (Nash Healey) on 2 weeks notice in 1952 that
finished 3rd overall behind 2 Mercedes. Somehow, even though he and his
assistant were awarded the "Mechanic's Prize", he never saw the prize
money... so we came up with it (without interest) 45 years later.
Roger's 85 years old now, still quite active and in good health. He
lives in Penryn, at the south of Cornwall in the UK. A few miles to the
west is the Atlantic, and a few miles to the east is the English
Channel. Roger lives in a small trailer on the modest property owned by
his daughter Gay. She and her husband Neil live in a small granite
cottage, originally built in the early 1800's. Mining in Cornwall was an
important industry, and cooincidentally, the name Menadue means 'black
rock" which exactly describes the granite that's mined there.
I arrived there Saturday early afternoon, via the train from London.
Roger met me at the station. He took me on a sight seeing tour of
Falmouth, the port town at the base of the Fal River. We had a late
lunch, then drove over to Trebah, the waterfront estate that Donald
Healey once owned that is privately owned, but accepts the public to
view it's extensive gardens. We had a pint there at the pub.
We went back to Gay's cottage for a Cornish dinner. Prior to dinner, we
went out to the cinder block shed that serves as Roger's workshop. He's
always tinkering with something, or has some project going. His latest
was fabricating a vent system that would draw outside aire from the
garage for the wood burning stove, rather than the already heated inside
air.
After dinner, Roger got out the scrapbooks and we told stories and
watched videos into the night.
Sunday AM, we departed for Perranporth, the town on the Atlantic side
for more sightseeing, then to the train station in time for the 11:00 AM
train.
One of the stories that Roger loves to tell is the fact that he never
used a torque wrench ever in his career. He always torqued things "by
feel" and never trusted the reading of a torque wrench. So, imagine his
dismay one year when he won the Mechanic's Prize at LeMans and was
awarded a gold plated torque wrench. He never used it!. It's been
rattling around the bottom of his tool cabinet for years. The plating is
faint, corrosion started here and there. He insisted on giving it to me.
One of motor racing's unsung heroes, Roger Menadue.
WST
Team Thicko
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