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Dad loved to drive and to race cars. His father was a stock car driver from the time Dad was little and he went to the races with his mother to watch. (I only enjoy driving when I can go fast, so I think racing must be in the Hill blood.)

Despite what the article (circa 1954) says, Dad and his dad went on to race the figure eight track, much to the horror of my grandmother who watched from the stands. Once, when she’d brought all her friends along, Dad crashed and she turned around to find that everyone had wandered off to concession area.

Dad’s racing skills held him in good stead when he had a spectacular end-over-end crash of his RX-7 in 1982. The car ended up impaled upside-down on a boulder and utterly totaled, but he walked away with hardly a scratch. He told me his trick: brace one hand on the car’s ceiling and one hand on the dash to limit your movement; you might break your arms, but your noggin is usually safe.